How do we live in a world that might be ending? By preparing to survive that end and by working to prevent it.
A production of Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness.
php/* */ ?>
How do we live in a world that might be ending? By preparing to survive that end and by working to prevent it.
A production of Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness.
Copyright: © Copyright 2024
On This Month in the Apocalypse, the James, Brooke, and Inmn talk about everything that happened in February, which includes a lot other fall out from new Trump administration policies, including the spree of job terminations that will greatly affect the impact of wildfires, the defunding of child advocacy in immigration detention, the war in Ukraine, and the state of immigration detention in Panama.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. James can be found on Twitter @JamesStout or on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/Jamesstout. Brooke can be found on Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness and Blue Sky @tangledwilderness.bsky.social You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Miriam and Inmn talk with the Billion Oysters Project about their goal of growing one billion oysters in the New York Harbor. Need we say more? It's one billion oysters!
Billion Oysters Project is a nonprofit dedicated to restoring oyster beds to the New York Harbor through public education initiatives. They can be found at https://www.billionoysterproject.org/
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Miriam can be found making funnies on the Strangers' Blue Sky @tangledwilderness.bsky.social
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness and Blue Sky @tangledwilderness.bsky.social You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Immortal Choir Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tangled-wilderness/the-immortal-choir-holds-every-voice
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Miriam talks with Daly from the Electronic Frontier Foundation about basic information security. They talk about encryption, VPNs, and redefining what is and isn't public information.
Daly (she/they) is a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Daly can be reached at daly@eff.org, if you'd like to consult her about information security.
The EFF is a digital civil liberties organization that makes sure that when you go online, your rights go with you. They can be found at EFF.org.
Surveillance Self Defense Tips and Tools: https://ssd.eff.org/
Miriam can be found making funnies on the Strangers' Blue Sky @tangledwilderness.bsky.social
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness and Blue Sky @tangledwilderness.bsky.social You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwildernes
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Miriam and Casandra talk about different fiber crafts, from spinning to weaving to basketry, and the communities that develop around the crafts.
Miriam can be found making funnies on the Strangers' Blue Sky @tangledwilderness.bsky.social
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness and Blue Sky @tangledwilderness.bsky.social You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwildernes
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
On This Month in the Apocalypse, James, Margaret, and Miriam talk about everything that happened in January, and especially a lot of Trump's executive orders. Margaret covers climate. Miriam talks about the nature of executive orders, and James covers immigration.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Miriam can be found making funnies on the Strangers' Blue Sky @tangledwilderness.bsky.social James can be found on Twitter @JamesStout or on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/Jamesstout
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness and Blue Sky @tangledwilderness.bsky.social You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn talks with Ben about harvesting gas and wood. And they talk about how to run gas engines off of wood and how to use different by products from the process.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret talks with Eric from When/If about the state of the climate and how not well it's doing.
Eric Shonkwiler (he/him) is the author of the newsletter When/If: A Leftist Guide to Prepare for a Changing World. He can be found at www.when-if.com or https://when-if.ghost.io/ where you can sign up for his newsletter. You can also find Eric on Instagram @eshonkwiler Twitter @eshonkwiler
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Casandra talks with Rabbis Ariana Katz and Jessica Rosenberg about their book, . They discuss what it means to bring traditions and spirituality together with radical politics, why it’s important, and how we can use it to build stronger and more resilient communities.
Casandra can be found on BlueSky @hey-casandra.bsky.social
Rabbis Ariana Katz and Jessica Rosenberg You can find their book at https://www.fortimessuchasthesebook.com/
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Casandra talks with Aaron, the host of the Propaganda By the Seed podcast about edible perennial plants that you can grow. This episode got compiled into a Live Like the World is Dying Skill Series zine that is also the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness January monthly feature. You can get a free PDF of it at www.Tangledwilderness.org.
Casandra can be found on BlueSky @hey-casandra.bsky.social
Aaron Parker can be found hosting Propaganda by the Seed or at Edgewood Nursery. IG: @Edgewoodnursery or @Propagandabytheseed or at www.Edgewood-Nursery.com
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
On This Year in the Apocalypse, the hosts of Live Like the World is Dying review the last year in the apocalypse that is late stage Capitalism while all embodying a flair for the musical. Inmn talks about a slew of anti-queer laws that were passed in 2024. Casandra catches everyone up on abortion legislation. Miriam talks about restoration work. James talks about the Syrian civil war. And Margaret talks about the intersection of climate and the economy.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Miriam can be found making funnies on the Strangers' Blue Sky @tangledwilderness.bsky.social James can be found on Twitter @JamesStout or on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/Jamesstout
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness and Blue Sky @tangledwilderness.bsky.social You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn talks to Margaret and James about the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness monthly feature zine Ready For Anything, which you can read at www.tangledwilderness.org. The zine has a lot of practical advice and checklists for preparing for another Trump presidency and a world that is growing more fascistic each day. Sign up for our monthly features at patron.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. James can be found on Twitter @JamesStout or on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/Jamesstout
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn continues the talk with Crystal and Hazel about jail solidarity and how to start a jail support team.
Appalachian Legal Defense Fund: http://bit.ly/AppLegalDefense
Atlanta Solidarity Fund: https://atlsolidarity.org/#why or @ATLSolFund on Twitter
Debrief from Richard Hunsinger's Defense Committee:https://freerichardhunsinger.com/reflection1/
Tilted Scales Guide to Being a Defendant: https://files.libcom.org/files/atiltedguide-web-1.pdf
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn talks with Crystal and Hazel springing you friends from jail legally. This is the first part in a larger conversation about jail support work and focuses on how to bail people out of jail.
Appalachian Legal Defense Fund: http://bit.ly/AppLegalDefense
Atlanta Solidarity Fund: https://atlsolidarity.org/#why or @ATLSolFund on Twitter
Debrief from Richard Hunsinger's Defense Committee:https://freerichardhunsinger.com/reflection1/
Tilted Scales Guide to Being a Defendant: https://files.libcom.org/files/atiltedguide-web-1.pdf
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Crystal (she/her): a community organizer Hazel (they/them):
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
On This Month in the Apocalypse, Margaret, Brooke, James, and Inmn talk about everything that happened in November. If they didn't talk about it, it didn't happen. Margaret checks in about what's going on with the environment, including droughts and somehow also storms. Brooke talks about bibles in schools. James takes a look at the Border and Immigration. And Inmn dives into some scary legislation regarding nonprofits and what it could mean for future repression.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. James can be found on Twitter @JamesStout or on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/Jamesstout
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, we have a cross posted episode from the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness podcast because it was just very relevant to the themes on this show. We have an interview with Henri Feola, talking about the state repression, getting through being in jail, and his new zine "The Veil Between Worlds is Plexiglass: notes, doodles, and poems from an incarcerated forest defender." If you want a copy of this zine, head to www.tangledwilderness.org.
On January 18, 2023, Atlanta police murdered Tortuguita, a protester defending the Weelaunee People’s Forest. Three days later, a vigil was held in downtown Atlanta, after which property destruction occurred and two police cars were set on fire. Myself and five others were arrested in the vicinity of the vigil. We all received the same set of charges, including domestic terrorism. All but one of us were denied bail and remained in pretrial detention. The state did not have to provide any evidence of our alleged crimes, or argue the facts of the case, in order to incarcerate us. The broken and overcrowded penal system in Atlanta forced us to wait months to appear in court again and argue for bail; many of our fellow inmates were in the same situation, waiting months or years for court appearances. I was released with a $25,000 bail and orders to leave the state of Georgia on April 26, after 96 days in jail.
This zine is a lightly edited collection of writing from my time in jail.
You can visit https://defendtheatlantaforest.org/ for more information on the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement.**
Henri Feola (he/they) is a writer, musician, abolitionist, and mutual aid organizer based in Appalachia. His creative work has been published in Apricity, Thimble Magazine, and Flash Fiction Magazine, among others, and his nonfiction articles have been published in American Scientist.
This podcast is published by Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org or on Twitter @tangledwild. You can support this show by subscribing to our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness
The host is Inmn Neruin. You can find them on instagram @shadowtail.artificery
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Casandra and Miriam talk with Spencer about what fascism is, what to do if you become a target of it, and different ways to fight it as they discuss Spencer's zine 40 Ways to Fight Fascists.
Mentioned in the pod: https://www.patreon.com/posts/85220523/edit
Spencer Sunshine, PhD, has written extensively about the U.S. Far Right, from militias to neo-Nazis. He has been documenting that movement since 2005, making him one of only a tiny handful of people tracking the explosion of the U.S. Far Right with Trump’s first presidential run in 2015 and then continuing into the present day.
Spencer can be found at: Twitter: @transform6789 IG: @spencersunshine161 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/spencersunshine?utm_campaign=creatorshare_fan Website: https://spencersunshine.com/publications/
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret, Miriam, Io, and Inmn talk about hope and how to plan for a future that feels very uncertain right now.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Miriam can be found at Strangers making funnies. Io can be found on Twitter @Bum_lung or on Instagram @Bum.Lung or you can find prints, shirts and stickers that they make on Etsy at https://www.etsy.com/shop/BumLung.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
On This Month in the Apocalypse, Casandra, Miriam, and Inmn talk about everything that happened this past October. They hash out Elon Musks most recent horrors, catch up on floods, super storms, and dam removal. For once water is not devastating. They also go over a study about the surprising effects of protesting on public opinion and give an exciting update on the Stop Cop City movement.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Miriam can be found at Strangers making funnies.Casandra is just great.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn and Casandra are joined again by two midwives, Rodin and Maryann, to talk about community-based births and the roles of midwives. This week Rodin and Maryann focus on connecting midwifery and community-based births to preparedness for things like hurricanes, they dispel common myths about giving birth outside of hospitals that historical dramas probably get wrong, and they even explain why the gnomes shook their heads at plague-era doctors. We promise it relates to safer births.
Maryann is a LM and CPM. You can find her on IG @wellinthedesertmidwifery Rodin is a CNM PMH-C. You can find her on IG @Tucson_Midwifery
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Casandra is just great and hopes you're having a great day. p
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn and Casandra talk with two midwives, Rodin and Maryann, about giving birth. Rodin and Maryann tell Inmn and Casandra about the world of midwifery. They talk about all of the various kinds of birth workers, how giving birth at home and birth at birth centers works, and generally how, if you want to, togive birth outside of a hospital. In this half, Rodin and Maryann focus on some of the philosophies around home birth. Next week Rodin and Maryann will focus on connecting midwifery and community-based births to preparedness.
Maryann is a LM and CPM. You can find her on IG @wellinthedesertmidwifery Rodin is a CNM PMH-C. You can find her on IG @Tucson_Midwifery
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Casandra is just great.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret talks about preparedness, hurricanes, and going down to Western North Carolina to help out with relief work in the wake of Hurricane Helene. She talks about the role of individual preparedness in the larger umbrella of community preparedness, organization methods, and the things that have and haven't helped folks living in areas affected by the storm.
Mega Link Tree for places to donate to and resources for Helene relief: Mhttps://linktr.ee/wnc.helene.aid
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn talks with Tucson Mesh about cool things mesh networks can do, how to build community-led internet programs, and what goes on in all of those tubes. You can find out more about Tucson Mesh at https://www.tucsonmesh.net.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
On This Month in the Apocalypse, Casandra, Miriam, and Inmn talk about everything that happened in September, whether it's good, bad, or memes. They talk about rising heat in Japan, entire mountains that collapsed, megatsunamis that shook the world, the world-wide impacts of avian flu, the state of the Internet Archive, and the insidious plot to profit off libraries. They follow how Texas and Florida are continuing to find new and horrible ways to restrict healthcare access and how Louisiana is creating a dangerous precedent for how a life-saving drug is accessed.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Miriam can be found at Strangers making funnies.Casandra is just great.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn talks with Logan about running engines off of waste oil. Is it a good idea, a bad idea, or a complicated idea?
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn talks with a plumber named Luigi about different problems that communities might run into that threaten their access to useable water. They also talk about how to design systems to catch, collect, filter, and distribute water for different environments.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Ariel talks to us about land stewardship, conservation, how climate change is altering different bioregions, and what people can do to help the environment adapt to harmful changes before it’s too late.
Ariel (they/he) works researching climate change, its effects on different bioregions, and how to facilitate peer-to-peer knowledge for doing restoration work.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
On This Month in the Apocalypse, Margaret, Miriam, and Inmn talk about everything that happened in August, whether it's good, bad, or airhorns. They talk about Mpox vaccines, uranium, indigenous sovereignty, floods, Gaza, book fairs, and, in general, what's been going on in anarchism lately.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Miriam can be found at Strangers making funnies.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Lynn continues to talk to Inmn about everything that's been going on in Ukraine for the last couple years with the invasion and different ways that preparedness manifests during a military occupation or invasion. For the second half of the conversation they focus on preparedness for blackouts and how it's always a great time to get into TTRPGs.
You can support Ukrainian leftists doing rad things at:
Renegade Relief Runners https://renegaderelief.org/ Solidarity Collectives https://www.solidaritycollectives.org/
Lynn also recommends you check out the podcast "Ukraine without Hype" for a weekly Ukrainian news round-up with leftist analysis from journalists in Kyiv, and interviews with some of the people she mentioned in our discussion, such as Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, the American transwoman who became the Ukrainian Territorial Defense spokesperson, and Vladyslav Starodubtsev a writer who talks about the Ukrainian labor struggle."
You can also support Lynn's partner, who is fundraising for equipment for his brigade, the 100th Separate Mechanized Brigade. They are defending towns on the Avdiivka Axis, one of the toughest directions at the moment. You can follow him on the platform formerly known as Twitter @SillyNami and if you would like to support them directly, you can send donations to his paypal account: wildflock100@proton.me
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Lynn talks to Inmn about everything that's been going on in Ukraine for the last couple years with the invasion and different ways that preparedness manifests during a military occupation or invasion. Next week they continue the discussion, focusing on preparedness for blackouts.
You can support Ukrainian leftists doing rad things at:
Renegade Relief Runners https://renegaderelief.org/ Solidarity Collectives https://www.solidaritycollectives.org/
Lynn also recommends you check out the podcast "Ukraine without Hype" for a weekly Ukrainian news round-up with leftist analysis from journalists in Kyiv, and interviews with some of the people she mentioned in our discussion, such as Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, the American transwoman who became the Ukrainian Territorial Defense spokesperson, and Vladyslav Starodubtsev a writer who talks about the Ukrainian labor struggle."
You can also support Lynn's partner, who is fundraising for equipment for his brigade, the 100th Separate Mechanized Brigade. They are defending towns on the Avdiivka Axis, one of the toughest directions at the moment. You can follow him on the platform formerly known as Twitter @SillyNami and if you would like to support them directly, you can send donations to his paypal account: wildflock100@proton.me
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret and Casandra continue their talk with Shane Burley and Ben Lorber about how antisemitism manifests on the left and about Shane and Ben's new book "Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism."
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
Shane Burley can be found on Twitter @Shane_Burley1, on Instagram @ShaneBurley, on Mastodon @Shane_Burley, and on Patreon at www.patreon.com/ShaneBurley
Ben Lorber can be found on Twitter @BenLorber8 or on IG @ben.lorber.18
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret and Casandra talk with Shane Burley and Ben Lorber about how antisemitism manifests on the left and about Shane and Ben's new book "Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism."
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
Shane Burley can be found on Twitter @Shane_Burley1, on Instagram @ShaneBurley, on Mastodon @Shane_Burley, and on Patreon at www.patreon.com/ShaneBurley
Ben Lorber can be found on Twitter @BenLorber8 or on IG @ben.lorber.18
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
This time on This Month in the Apocalypse, Margaret, Miriam, and Inmn talk about how, despite countless warnings from sci-fi, millions of computers failed us, how Project 2025 is just the worst, how the Supreme Court is paving the way for monarchy by a different name, how the line between memes and the news is becoming more and more difficult to see, how we're setting new records for heat and storms, and how bosses just don't care.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Miriam can be found at Strangers making funnies.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret talks to Inmn about knives, cause Inmn makes knives. Inmn walks Margaret through some of the mysteries, myths, and practicalities of knives and knife making.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn talks to Mike and Alex from Distributed Medical Device Manufacturing about the role of anarchists in manufacturing and their work manufacturing medical devices, and specifically, about their work manufacturing tourniquets with 3D printers and industrial sewing machines.
Find Distributed Medical Device Manufacturing (DMDM) at DMDM.icu or support their funding campaign on Give Butter at https://givebutter.com/pqygLj
DMDM is a small non-profit based in Tucson, Arizona, USA. We formed as an offshoot of MADR in order to begin exploring how regulatory compliant aid can be manufactured outside the existing profit driven, hierarchical medical device manufacturing industry. Our mission is to make high quality, FDA compliant CAT style tourniquets based on the GLIA design to ensure our communities have access to life saving supplies in the event of trauma events and supply chain breakdowns.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn talks to Monroe and Emmi about the anarchist publication Living & Fighting and the importance of creating our own narratives around what happens in our lives, communities, and struggles.
Living & Fighting can be found at https://livingandfighting.net/ and on Twitter @sw_commune or IG @Living.Fighting
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Carrot Quinn comes on to talk to Inmn about her new book "BETS," and about how writing speculative fiction can help inform how we live through the apocalypses we're currently facing. Carrot also reads a chapter from the book, which is out now on Kickstarter.
Carrot Quinn is the author of "Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart" and "The Sunset Route", as well as eleven thousand miles of daily hiking blogs at carrotquinn.com and a weekly newsletter at substack.com/@carrotquinn
Bets is a speculative fiction novel being self-published by Carrot Quinn. You can back it on Kickstarter at www.kickstarter.com/projects/carrotquinn/bets-a-speculative-fiction-novel-by-carrot-quinn
<h4>"The cities are dying. Bets escapes just in time to save her own life. But where will she go? She's heard that somewhere in the desert, people have found a way to be free..."</h4>Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Carrot Quinn on “BETS” and Writing the Apocalypse
**Inmn ** 00:14 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today, Inmn Neruin, and today we get to talk to one of my favorite authors, which is a really fun thing for me and a really fun--hopefully--a really fun thing for listeners out there. And today we're going to be talking to Carrot Quinn about a new book, a book about the apocalypse, a book about bikes, a book about the desert. These are all of the things that I want to talk about all the time. And I think that...I think it's going to be a great conversation. We haven't had the conversation yet. So I'm assuming some things, but I have high hopes. But first, we are a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts, and here's a jingle from another show on that network. [sorta singing] Doo doo doo doo doo.
**Inmn ** 01:59 And we're back. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Carrot. Could you introduce yourself with your name, pronouns, and just a little bit about what you...? What do you do in the world?
**Carrot ** 02:13 Thanks for having me, Inmn. I'm really excited to be here. My name is Carrot Quinn and I use she or they pronouns and I am a writer. I live in Alaska. I used to live in Tucson. And I write books and I do outdoors stuff. I do these guided backpacking trips that are fun, and I have to chihuahua mixes.
**Inmn ** 02:41 Cool. Hell yeah. And we've had you on the show before to talk about things like long distance hiking, and it it, like one of your previous books, just made me want to go out and walk long distances, which I have not done yet. But hopefully might [forlornly] someday. I was wondering if we could just start off by, could you tell us a little bit about your book and about the kind of world and setting, before we, I believe, you have a chapter prepared to read for us.
**Carrot ** 03:18 Yeah, totally. So I wrote a speculative fiction novel called "Bets" that will be out in January of 2025. And it is set in a near future, sort of post collapse western United States. And one reason, the reason I started working on this novel four years ago, I think the reason we all.... You know, everyone's who's writing speculative fiction right now, like what draws us to it is all of these things we see sort of coming down the pike around the world and in the US with climate with all these different things, and we're all trying to imagine like, what's going to happen? How's it going to happen? How's it going to feel when it happens? And what are we going to do? And so, starting to write this novel four years ago, which felt like a really therapeutic experience for me, because I imagined what if this young person was living in a city in the Western United States, and the city was collapsing, and she needed to flee and she needed to ride her bike across the desert to try and find people who had found a way to survive, who she could join living in the desert. Like, what would that be like? Like, who would she encounter? What would the, you know.... Who, if she met people on the road, what would they be like? What shape would the roads been? What would she eat? Where would she find water? What skills would she need? And, trying to imagine this as kind of a thought exercise was really comforting to me. It's sort of, I feel like we...one thing that fiction does for us is we can put ourselves in these scenarios and try and imagine how we would respond emotionally and how they would feel for us, and that and that almost makes us feel prepared for things that might happen, even if they don't ever happen. It's like this very comforting thing. And so I created this character who's living the city. And the rural United States, like Western rural United States, at least--I don't even really talk about the rest of the country because I didn't actually build that part of this world--but the western United States has been abandoned. Because, you know, the first thing, one of the first things to go, was international supply chains in the US, which basically destroyed the entire economy and the ability to access most goods. And then the rural United States, also there is like water scarcity and a lot of contamination and different things. Disease, because of the lack of access to different medical care, and so people in the rural United States, it just emptied out, and they all went to what was left of the cities. And the cities are these precarious places in this world where, you know, it's impossible to find housing, and most people live in these encampments. And it's really hard to find goods. And it's basically just like, really extremely poor people. And then a handful of like, super wealthy. And the biggest industry left in the US are the prisons, and there's new prisons being built all the time because the prisons have slave labor. So that's like a source of goods. So that's like, the US economy is really reliant on this source of goods. So things are super criminalized because they want more people in the prisons to create more goods. So this young person, Bets, she's 20, that's the world she grew up in, in the city. She was orphaned when she was really young, cause both her parents were disappeared. She doesn't know where her mom went, which is one of the sort of through-lines of the plot is this mystery. And in the beginning, she gets this clue. And then she's sort of trying to like follow up on that clue on her journey. And she also has this love interest, Georgia. They have like...she has very insecure attachment with Georgia. And we don't know much about Georgia. She's sort of mysterious. And then later in the book, it switches to her perspective. And there's kind of this reveal. And you learn all of these like secrets about her, and how she's part of this plot. So Bets, in the very first chapter--I will try not to give any spoilers, but you can read the first chapter online so you'll know exactly what happens--but something really bad hppens. And she realizes she has to flee the city or she's gonna die. And so she steals a bike, essentially, and also ends up with this little dog. [laughing self-reflectively] And that she just, she doesn't want to abandon. It's not her dog, but she ends up with it. And she does want to abandoned it. So she takes this little dog with her. He rides in the pannier, and she just sets out west and she doesn't know what she's gonna find. She can't find a map. The only thing she can find is this old guidebook called "An RVer's Guide to the American West" that has like very broad overview maps. And she's like, "Okay, what's the first thing in here? It's a KOA, okay, I'll just bike towards this KOA," which is, you know, like this funny camp. It's like Campgrounds of America. They have these like little cabins, and she's like, "Is it going to be? Who's going to live there? Is it going to be militia? Is it going to be abandoned? Will there be water?" And you know, like, she goes through everything that's in her panniers and all her supplies. You kind of know what she has, and she sets out on this journey. And then I have her sort of meeting different groups of people who have, who are surviving in different ways. Like, some of them, you know, at first you think they're really great. And then, you know, maybe turns out they're not and other people, maybe they are great. And she has to get out of various sticky situations. Nothing bad ever happens to the dog. And then--
**Carrot ** 03:50 Thank you for that clarification. Yeah, thank you.
**Carrot ** 05:43 I didn't want it...the dog is purely there just for joy and pleasure nothing bad ever happens to the dog. And there's...as we, as the novel continues, there's sort of like this unfolding of these other plotlines and these other characters who are...who have like other chapters from their perspectives, who are sort of like...all the characters are slowly converging towards the end. And then in the end, there's this huge plot twist that changes everything you thought you knew about the whole world right from the beginning, which I didn't know how to write plot twists. And then in the last year and a half, I've been reading all of these thrillers to try to learn how to write plot twists, because I really wanted to put one in there. So I finally figured it out. And I put it in there. And I'm so proud of myself, because plot twists really helped me stay engaged with the book if I'm like anticipating something. And so I wanted to put that in there because I really like that. So that's the novel.
**Inmn ** 09:31 Cool, cool. Cool. Well, I'm...I'm very, very, very excited for it to come out and to read all of the plot twists that you have. Yeah, I like dabble in writing and like the idea of having to write a convincing plot twist sounds really hard. And I don't know. Yeah, I.... So I feel especially excited because I have been--we know each other IRL from the desert--and I feel like I've been hearing you talk about this book for years. And so the fact that it's coming out, and that people get to read it soon is very exciting. And, you know, as much as I would love to launch into a conversation about preparedness, the apocalypse, bikes, and all of these things, I'm wondering if you want to read your sample chapter first, and then we can...and then we'll talk about that stuff? How does that sound?
**Carrot ** 10:42 Yeah, Sounds great.
**Inmn ** 10:43 Cool. This also works really perfectly with that we just did a two-part episode on riding your bike a really long distance.
**Carrot ** 10:53 Perfect.
**Inmn ** 10:55 Everything is perfect. Everything in the world is perfect. Don't tell me otherwise.
**Carrot ** 11:00 Yeah, yeah, plot twist, everything in the world is perfect. Turns out. So this is chapter four. And where we are is that Bets has left the city. And you can read the first chapter online on my Substack and that...you can kind of read like the kind of setup. And then she leaves the city and she's on a bike and she has this little dog and she bikes for a little while. And then she bikes through the night and gets to.... Some different things happen that are kind of exciting. And then she bikes through the night. And she's kind of...she's outside of the city now. And it's these kind of larger estates, like old farms and people's summer homes and she pulls her bike off onto the drive towards one of them and there's like the big house and she doesn't go in the house. She goes, she finds a barn behind the house where it's like still pretty nice inside. Like it's clean smelling and, you know, there's like it's not.... Like houses, once they're abandoned, you know, become kind of disgusting. But this barn is still pretty nice. So she barricades the door and puts her sleeping bag on the ground and goes to sleep with the dog. And so now she's waking up the next afternoon and that's where we're gonna start.
**Inmn ** 12:21 Cool.
**Carrot ** 12:24 Chapter Four. When I stepped outside the barn to pee in the afternoon, there's a deer browsing in the fallen apples of an abandoned orchard. A pang of regret. I wish I had a rifle. Although guns are popular with some of my friends, I've only ever chosen to arm myself with a knife. I want the freedom to move quickly and I don't want to draw attention to myself. I want to be liquid, able to flow around obstacles as they appear. A rifle would make me clumsy. I wish I had one right now, though. "What would we even do with a whole deer?" I say to the dog as I gather bruised apples in my shirt. The dog pads around me, sniffing the fruit. The apples are crawling with wasps and I shoo them away. My legs feel rested and I'm antsy to get back on my bike. First though, I want to check out this house. The back door to the house is locked, but the window is busted out and I brush away the broken glass and pull myself through, lift the dog up after me. Inside it's damp and smells of rotten wood. Trapezoids of sunlight gather on the dirty linoleum in the kitchen. And beyond that is a carpeted living room where the furniture hulks like dusty sleeping beasts. It's amazing how quickly a person's cozy home, after being abandoned, will turn into this, an eerie sickly place where you don't want to stay for more than a few minutes. Is it the dust, the mold, or is the house itself a living being, animated from within by its inhabitants and when they leave the house becomes a corpse and begins to rot? There's a staircase stained with water from the roof and I climb it to a landing with three closed white doors. The brass knob of the middle door is cool in my hand. The room is a bedroom, a bed, the quilt and sheets pulled back exposing the bare mattress,a bookcase cluttered with books, a closet tangled with clothes. The dust motes drift unbothered in the light from the window. There's a small rustling. It's the dog. He's padded up the stairs after me. I sit on the bed and look out the window at the apple orchard and let the sadness spread out from my heart like a fog. It spills out the doorway and onto the landing. It seeps under the doors to the other rooms and then I'm there, back in the dream, the dream I have often at night that I've been having since I was a small child. In the dream I'm in a large house and I'm searching for something. I wander through rooms that open into other rooms. The rooms hold antiques from another time, junk ,furniture from the apartment I shared with my parents. The rooms hold people I love who've been disappeared. The rooms who hold people I haven't met yet. The people welcome me or they do not know me. Sometimes I take up residence in one of these rooms, but always their true occupants appear after a while and telling me that I have to leave. In none of the rooms is that for which I am searching and so I push them on deeper and deeper into the house. I sink down in the bowels of the house or up into its castle spires. The house's corridors are maze, and I can't find my way out. The light is getting longer in the apple orchard. "Long light o'clock," I say to the dog, who's curled up on the carpet at my feet. That's what time it is. We're making a new system of time out here beyond the city. Long light o'clock is what comes before Time to Ride My Bike. The closet is full of useful things, but I'm not sure what to take. My panniers are pretty stuffed right now. Do I need more warm layers? Clothes to trade if I meet people on my journey? What sorts of people are out here beyond the city besides the militia? I haven't seen anyone yet. Maybe there'll be people at the KOA, my first destination, chosen arbitrarily from the RVer's Guide. The fabrics of the clothes in the closet feel good under my fingers, and there's a human scent here. Someone's lingering laundry detergent. Should I take another sweater, a canvas jacket? My fingers pause on a dress, it's fabric smooth and light, a simple airy dress printed all over with flowers, a few buttons at the throat, and elastic waist. I pull the dress off its hanger and fold it carefully. The smell rises up again. What is it? A smell from another time, a smell that supposed to evoke a shared cultural memory of something but that something doesn't exist anymore. The lid of a rain barrel connected to the houses gutters comes off with some effort and inside I find good clear water, yellow from the tannis of falling leaves and dancing with mosquito larvae but otherwise untainted. In the kitchen cupboards there are a few plastic bottles and I fill these as well as my own. There's a can opener and some canned goods too, rusted and missing their labels. Likely too old to be edible, and I don't want to risk botulism, so I leave them but take the can opener. "Goodbye," I say to the house as I push my bike down the dirt drive back towards the road. I feel like I'm leaving a mausoleum. When next will humans walk through those halls and bedrooms? In 100 years? Longer? The air is different tonight as I cycle away from the house, the dog curled up in one of my panniers. The city is the brown smell of trash and industry. But out here there's something else, a cold, clean smell that is somehow familiar. But from what? When have I experienced this before? Maybe it's a memory that's stored in my cells from previous generations, asmell from an old world that is also, for me, the smell of a new world, the world to which I'm headed? I shiver. It's not just the air that's different tonight. My mind feels clear to. I'm rested. This is my second day surrounded by silence with little to occupy my thoughts. I'm at the fringeedge of the suburbs, the houses far apart and on large tracts of land. The fields are overgrown with brambles and weeds. The cars that pass are fewer and farther between. I spend less time in the culvert, crouched next to my bicycle waiting for their headlights to sweep over me and away. My legs pump rhythmically My mind is an empty vessel and into this vessel comes the mirage of memory, the details so sharp I can almost smell them. Opening up an abandoned apartment building in the city with Georgia, the building is locked, plywood nailed over the windows. No Trespassing signs everywhere. We've got a few hours to work before the security guard on this block passes by on his shift and sees our headlamps. If we can get enough of the apartments open, we can move in folks we know from one of the encampments. We make quick work of the plywood over the first broken window and climb inside. There's debris everywhere, busted furniture, clothing, windblown trash. The toilet in the bathroom has an ancient turd in it but no water. A sweep to make sure no one's already living here and that it seems safe enough. No collapsing ceilings or floorboards rotted enough to fall through. And we move on to the next apartment, which is nearly identical. The window beneath the plywood on the third apartment is intact and we don't want to break it if we don't have to. So Georgia uses the tools in her bag to force the door. Inside our headlamps reveal something surprising. Everything in this apartment is in order, untouched. A sofa with a valour blanket tossed over the back, a low coffee table with a splay of magazines, a rag rug, a bookshelf. A small rack next to the door holds a couple of pairs of shoes. It's as though the tenants have just stepped out and will return at any moment. At first I think someone might be living here but then I see the thick dust on the bookshelf and run my finger through it. "You've got to see this," says Georgia from the kitchen. An avocado green stove and refrigerator, glass fronted cabinets. Georgia is pulling canned goods and boxes out of the cabinets one by one and inspecting them. Macaroni and sardines perfectly preserved as though they've been in a museum. There's a row of silver tins on the countertop lined up by size. The first contains recipes written in tidy cursive on index cards. The second holds sugar, hardened but still usable. The contents of the third makes me jump. "There's coffee in herem," I say. "Coffee." "Fuck," says Georgia. She grabs the tin from my hands and holds it up to her face, breathes deeply. "We can sell this. Make a security fund for the new tenants. That'll be a huge help to them." She takes a plastic bag from one of the drawers and dumps the coffee inside. The tin falls onto the ground and I pick it up, put it back in its spot with the others, brush the stray coffee grounds off the countertop with my hand. "Don't open the fridge," says Georgia. "I know," I say. "You don't have to keep reminding me."
**Carrot ** 20:28 In the bedroom, the circle of my headlamp illuminates a bed with a striped bedspread pulled taut. There's a lump in the middle as though a couple of pillows are stashed under there. I step into the silence of the room. It's a tomb. This room is a tomb, and that lump in the bed is a body. "Georgia," I whisper. I can't seem to raise my voice. I can hear her rustling around in the kitchen. The sides of the quilt are tucked into the mattress and I tuck a corner free. Under the quilt is the body of a little old man, curled into the fetal position and perfectly still. The skin of his face and hands are shriveled like the mummified cats we sometimes find in these buildings. He's wearing pajamas and he's drawn up into himself. So he was cold when he died. I arranged the quilt back over him. "You're lucky you got out when you did," I say before closing the door of the bedroom. I find Geogia sitting on the floor in front of the bookshelf in the living room, sifting through photographs and stacks of mail. They're cut glass figurines on the bookshelf: a horse, an elephant, a bear. "I found a pistol in his dresser drawer," I say "No ammunition, though." "His dresser drawer?" says Georgia. "What if we boarded this apartment back up?" I say. "Keep it like it is. We can say that it's too wrecked to be livable. Paint a warning on the door." Georgia shrugs, "Sure." I sit next to her on the carpet, and she puts down the mail, wraps one of my hands in her own. "Another body?" she says. "Yeah." Her light eyes are clear. The skin around them is lined from all the time she spends in the sun and the garden, digging in the dirt there. I've offered to try and find her a big hat but she says no. She likes the way the sun feels on her face. I told her that I'm worried about her getting skin cancer, and she says she doesn't care and besides, she doesn't think she'll live that long. "It's still possible to live a long time," I said. "But why would I want to?" she answered back. She reaches a cool hand into my hair and leans in, kissing me. Her breath smells like citrus and her lips are soft. For a moment I melt into this kiss, forgetting everything. Then I remember that Georgia will never be mine. Each time I try to know her better, she disappears, only returning when I cease looking for her. She's like a feral cat that will only slink close and let you pet it when you're looking the other way. Every kiss she gives me feels like a parting gift. "Let's open up the other apartments," I say, pulling away. The wind changes and I back in my body back on the bike. The darkness is vast. My bicycle tires a ship that slices cleanly through the cruel sea of the night. I don't know what time it is. But last night I noticed that the moon rose just before dawn. So tonight I'm waiting for that. The light of the silver half moon will signify that it's time to find a place to hunker down and sleep. I'm beginning to enjoy being unstuck from time like this, unfettered by the tyranny of minutes. The hours are liquid. They rush by and then slow to a trickle and sometimes stop entirely, forming a deep, clear pool in which I am suspended. I should eat. My legs shake as I climb off the bike and guide it to the shoulder of the road. I don't bother with a culvert, just uncinch the pannier and lift out the warm sleepy dog and then lay the bike down on its side. I haven't seen a car for hours. Have I reached the edge of all human existence? Is it just me now in this wild frontier alone forever? No, that can't be. There are other people somewhere out here and I'm going to find them. My new can opener slices easily into one of the cans of beans. Half a brick of dry ramen completes the meal. The dog disappears into the wide darkness and then returns, shakes himself and pushes his way into my arm onto my lap. He eats his ramen ration from my fingers and then circles once and curls up with a sigh. "Do you love me or just my body heat?" I say. "And my ramen." Speaking of ramen, I'm going to have to find some more food. A brick of ramen each day with some peanut butter or beans is not enough. Hunger has been following me as I pedal west like an alarm bell I can't shut off. I'm really banking on there being people at the KOA and not just any people but good people. And not just good people but good people who have food they're willing to share with me. That's a whole lot of unknowns that could determine my survival. I wonder if the KOA is abandoned or occupied by militia? Another thing not to think about. There was a sign for a small town in the last of the light, and I use that to place myself on the map in the RVer's Guide to the American West. I started off the night about an inch and a half from the KOA and I've been traveling a few inches on the map each night. I'm worried that I'll miss the exit in the dark with no headlamp, but there's not really anything to be done except continue pedaling and trust that things will work out somehow. I can feel We'll be aloneness lurking a stone's throw away in the dark. Better get back on my bike before it closes in. As I pedal, the sound of my own voice floats above me. I'm singing to remind myself that I exist. The dog is curled in the pannier asleep. He dreams of past lives, his small belly full of ramen. It feels as though I'm hurtling forward now, the night soft and yielding, like I could ride a thousand miles, like I can make it all the way to Nevada in one go. Fatigue as a stranger, someone I can't remember knowing. The surface of the road jostles violently, startling me out of my reverie and I tense on the brakes and rolled to a stop. There's a hissing noise and I press my tires. My front tire is deflating. "Fuck." I stand straddling my bike, eyes unfocused on the road. I don't have a patch kit or an extra tube. I wait for inspiration to strike but there's nothing I have just a little food or water left and there hasn't been a car all night. I have no idea where I am or how far to the next thing. Or even if there is a next thing. A pressure in my head. I'm starting to panic. I must not panic. My legs are shaking again. Presently, a little silver light crests the horizon. The halfmoon. "It's time to camp. This busted tire will be a problem for tomorrow me." Along the roadside is a forest and I push my bike into these trees. The ground is yielding underfoot and I've been in ragged forests and abandoned lots in the city, full of trash and danger. But this feels different. There's a soft welcoming feeling to this forest, a warmth. This will be a good place to rest. Relief floods my body as I unfurl my sleeping bag onto the fallen leaves. The dog drinks from his jar lid of water and then crawls inside the bag with me, his nose pressed into my armpit. "I miss you so badly, Georgia," I whisper into the forest before I fall asleep. That's the end of the chapter. Thank goodness. [Inmn clapping]
**Inmn ** 26:56 Yay. I don't know if the sound is translating. But I am clapping, clapping my little hands together. Thank you so much for reading that to us, Carrot.
**Carrot ** 27:10 Thanks for listening. I found it really hard to speak the whole time. But I made it through.
**Inmn ** 27:19 Yeah, it's really...speaking is hard. And, you know, that's why we write things, right? [a little dryly]
**Carrot ** 27:29 Yeah, totally. [both laughing]
**Inmn ** 27:39 Where do I want us to start? I think I want to, I think I want to start with, Carrot, would you identify as a prepper?
**Carrot ** 27:52 I think I'm a.... Like, I think I would like to be a prepper but I don't.... There's a lot of skills and things that preppers have going on. And I'm not quite there yet. But I would eventually like to be more of a prepper than I am now. Right now I'm just kind of like I like thinking about being a prepper.
**Inmn ** 28:14 Yeah. I think that makes you a prepper IMO. On the spectrum of thinking about preparedness, I think thinking about preparedness makes someone a prepper in like all of its like multifaceted ways. But I guess what I want to ask you about is, so in thinking about preparedness and thinking about the world that we currently live in and like the directions that we all imagine it going, I'm wondering what about what you're seeing in our world, how you created this world based on our world--if it's based on our world at all? Does that make sense?
**Carrot ** 29:14 Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, I do think that, first of all, you know, collapse is always happening all the time around the world. And that has been true throughout all of human history. Like, human history is just full of crazy catastrophes and collapses and, you know, it's always going on. So I think we do...sometimes I get this idea in my head that I'm like, "oh, you know, there's going to be collapse," but of course, collapse is always happening in different spots, and it just depends on like your positionality in spacetime whether or not collapse is happening to you at the moment where you are or to your community or to your, you know, in what ways to people around you. So, sometimes I think I can get fixated on this future thing. And it's actually comforting to remind myself that not only is collapse just inherently a part of human civilizations, and always has been, but it's already happening. So I do. And I do think, you know, people say that a lot of speculative fiction is just white people imagining, like, what if things that were happening in places that are, you know, predominantly people of color, what if those things also happen to white people? And I also think that's true. Like we ar so sort of hemmed in by our own experience. And since I, like, you know, grew up in the US, and--where the US is part of so many global collapses--but living in the US we are shielded from that. So far. We have been shielded from that. So even though we are, you know, we're directly involved in Gaza, and all these different things all over the world, and always have been, we in this country there has been an illusion of stability for some generations, for most people--although within that there have also been little collapses, you know? So I do think my own not having personally experienced collapse, influences my perspective. And I am limited in that way. So, within that, I do think a lot about, in North America, I think a lot about things like--or maybe the US in particular. US North America, that part of North America. Although I think Canada has some similar stuff going on. I think a lot about supply chains, which I think we all started thinking about during COVID. I'd never even considered supply chains before. And then in COVID, I was like, "Oh, wait, this is like a big deal?
**Inmn ** 31:45 They're really fragile, It turns out.
**Carrot ** 31:48 Yes! And we are--while collapse has always been a part of human civilization--we are approaching the first ever global collapse in human history. So that's new. Like, that's interesting. Because everywhere is so dependent on everywhere else. Like I don't know that much about these things. But I would imagine that most countries are pretty dependent on--or would be devastated without-- global supply chains. I don't know, maybe there's some places. But yeah, it's like a real global environment we live in. So I think about supply chains. And I think about in.... I've spent a lot of time in the desert southwest, you know, in the Sonoran Desert, and some other deserts. And I think a lot about the desert of the western United States and water. I think about groundwater pollution. And I think about the Colorado River watershed and all these cities that are dependent on the Colorado River and or have poisoned groundwater, and agriculture, and how that, you know, the Colorado River, how there's not enough water for all of it. Like it's not.... Anyway. And then I think about heat. And I guess those are like, the biggest things I think about. And so, in my head, when I'm trying to anxiously anticipate that for myself in my life, that's when I...that's kind of where these different ideas came up for building this world. And I also think about housing a lot. Which has been something I thought about since I was a child. And so I wanted that to be a theme of this book too, is the future of housing. And prisons. I think about prisons and particularly that them being a source of free labor in the US.
**Inmn ** 33:45 Yeah, it's.... I read the sample chapter for the the first chapter of the book and it's, I think it's.... Bets like describes paying $2,400 to live in a tent in someone's backyard. And I was like, that's, you know, the reality of that is not far off. And that's horrifying to think about. Or it's like, it's like even equivalently here already in our world, in our time, is that it's like...like housing insecurity is becoming a much bigger thing for more people. Like reading articles about how in certain parts of California--and I don't know how much this is blown up or not blown up--but that there's like parking lots full of people who like live in their vehicles because like on, what we would probably call middle class incomes, they can't find housing. And it's, I don't know, yeah, it's just becoming wilder and wilder.
**Carrot ** 34:59 The thing I get stuck on thinking about housing is all these cities where housing is inflated beyond all reason--like I just moved out of Anchorage and moved to Fairbanks because I couldn't afford the housing in Anchorage anymore. But also I am really excited to have moved to the town in Alaska I just moved to. So it's okay. But it does suck to be forced out of a place, you know? But, including Anchorage, all these cities where housing is inflated beyond all reason and or doesn't exist, like there isn't even anything available.... Like I have a friend who just moved to Anchorage, who was looking for a little house for her and her dog. And her budget was actually pretty high, because she makes really good money. She's been looking for six months and just hasn't found anything because everything's tied up in like short term rentals or it's weird investment properties. Like these cities where there's no...the cities aren't putting any thought into housing the people who live in the city. Like not just home...like not just disabled people, who should obviously be housed, who are the ones who--who traditionally end up, you know, homeless--not even those, but just middle class people. Like what that's going to do is collapse the economies of every single one of these cities. Because if you don't have workers, you don't have a city. Like you just don't. Like you don't have grocery stores, you don't have hospitals, you don't have schools, you don't have postal codes, you don't have any of it. So it's like such short sighted. It's like all these real estate people trying to make money, but they don't realize that if the whole city collapses, like they're also going to lose money. It's so weirdly short sighted that I'm almost...it's almost comforting that I can just like sit back and watch in horror as like these cities just like unalive themselves, essentially.
**Inmn ** 36:42 Yeah, it is funny to think about that sometimes within Capitalism, like seeing a function or tenant of Capitalism and being like, "I feel like y'all aren't even doing Capitalism right Because it's an unsustainable thing for itself. Like this will collapse. This will collapse under its own weight. And maybe the sad horror is that it's not collapsing under its own weight? And I don't know. I don't know. No, but also--
**Carrot ** 37:18 We'll see.
**Inmn ** 37:19 We'll see. The future, the future us will see. But, Margaret talked about this in a recent episode that we did, and she was just riffing on this William Gibson quote, like, "the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed." And she said, like, "the apocalypse is here, it's just not evenly distributed." And that has been sticking with me a lot like over the--I guess, it's only been like, a week or so--but it's like the...it's like, kind of what you're what you were talking about before, it's like, we...like all of these things, like a lot of the things that make up the world of your book, that make up like, a lot of the things that we get anxious or afraid of about where society is moving, most of those things are already happening to to other people. And eventually, they will happen to more people. Which is kind of how I always...which, I guess is how I always see the role of speculative fiction is--I totally agree with your with your definition of it and like how that works--but also that speculative fiction historically does not imagine a future, it is actually a reflection of the present in a way that will like hopefully get people to like understand it or explore the the extremities of it.
**Carrot ** 39:05 Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah, you're totally right, that specular fiction is this like...whenever it's written, it is a creation of like the present that's going on at that time. And that author sort of like...yeah, they're like, speculating about the present. And one thing I tried to do with this book also is, in writing speculative fiction, you can have a lot of kind of, like, scary, horrible things happened and I have some of those in the book, but then I also kind of wanted...I wanted, I wanted to write something that was comforting, because I think speculative fiction can be comforting because we can imagine all these ways that during collapse or after collapse, the way we live can shift and change in ways that ultimately, maybe generations down the line, end up being really positive. And so even something like Bets leaving the city, she's only ever lived in the city. And then she leaves for the first time ever. And she's out in nature for the first time in her life. And her experience of that on this long journey is like, she's has this like beautiful sort of transcendental experience in the desert. And I wanted to write something that could be really comforting as we like, imagine that there's going to be unspeakable horrors, you know, for like many generations. But then after that it's kind of fun to imagine the ways that we can reconnect with nature, live in smaller communities, tech will collapse, you know, like, the scary aspects of tech that are unsustainable. Because that's actually another plotline in the book I forgot to bring up is there's this sort of like, scary tech plot line that comes to a head in the end. And it was me thinking about how the scary parts of tech are inherently unsustainable because they depend on such intense resource extraction and grid power and things like that. So as grids and supply chains collapse, so will this tech, including the scarier aspects of tech. So like, that's fun to think about. So I do...I do try to...I like the way speculative fiction can be like really comforting, too. And I tried to do some of that for sure.
**Inmn ** 41:19 Yeah, no, I remember in like the in the first chapter, it's like, Bets is like talking about like getting some hacker to remove the tracking software in her phone, and it was a thing that.... I didn't know, this is like one of the things I think about a lot, and is how...as more of our lives become online, it's like we see...see people like Elon Musk and some other billionaire piece of shit that I can't remember the name of--may all of their names eventually be forgotten--are pushing for these things that really terrify me about technology, which is like the like "One apps." Have you ever heard of these?
**Carrot ** 42:10 No? What is it?
**Inmn ** 42:12 A one app is like, it's this idea that there is essentially one app that can govern most of the aspects of your life. Google is trying really hard to do this right now. It's like why a lot of Android phones just like, they're essentially just Google phones. They like rely on using Gmail accounts and stuff like that. And there's definitely ways to kind of like opt out of that, to some extent, but it's the idea that as more of our lives become online, we become more reliant on needing to use those technologies to like interact with basic services or bureaucracies. And it's mildly terrifying to me.
**Carrot ** 43:07 Yeah, I'm like...I feel pretty horrified. Like reading about...the most horrifying thing I read about recently were the human brain organelles that can do computing. Did you...have you read about that?
**Inmn ** 43:19 Oh, yes. Yes. They're like plugging brain cells into microprocessors or something? So fucked
**Carrot ** 43:26 They grew fetus brains with stem cells. They have little eyes. It's just a brain with two little eyes. They're from...they're like basically the brains of human fetuses grown from stem cells. And they are using them to do computing.
**Inmn ** 43:40 Oh my god.
**Carrot ** 43:42 And I'm just like, I'm just like, this needs to go. Like nuclear war or meteor, I don't care, we...it needs to stop.
**Inmn ** 43:54 Yeah, yeah. Just having some like dark remembrances of things from like Battlestar Galactica that I'm like [makes cringe noise/groan].
**Carrot ** 44:08 The one comforting thing, the thing I remind myself is, even though we have.... We're capable of making these like horrorfyingly incredible things, like even just a smartphone. There's still so much that we don't know. Like, there's so much that will always be unknowable. So try as we might, maybe it's not possible for us to make like truly scary tech, because maybe it is beyond our capabilities? Hopefully. I don't know. We'll see.
**Inmn ** 44:37 Yeah. You've talked.... You, I feel like you've essentially answered this question, but I love to just ask it anyways. What is the story kind of behind the story that you're trying to tell in Bets and what do you hope people get out of out of the book?
**Carrot ** 44:58 I really want to provide escapism for people. That's what I hope people really get is I want it to be the kind of read where you get to leave your life, like whatever world you're in, and get totally sucked into this really captivating world where you're on this bike trip with Bets, kind of in her shoes, experiencing the things she experiences. And it's kind of scary and kind of dark. But mostly, it's just like epic and interesting and fun and compelling. Because that's what I like, is to get really sucked into a book and not be able to put it down because it's so nice to have, like, just a break from our world, you know? Like a brain break. So that's what I that's what I'm trying to do. And also give people a chance to kind of like, you know, we like to think about if these things happened to us, how would it feel? And how would we respond emotionally? And then that makes us feel like we are sort of emotionally prepared for something. And so that's kind of what the book is trying to do too, even though none of us really know, like, what collapse will look like, at any given time in any given place.
**Inmn ** 46:05 Yeah, yeah. is, you know, I've only heard the sample chapter so far, but um, is it kind of set up like--or from what I've heard in the sample chapters--it seems like there's these moments of it being, you know, like a very traditional fiction novel but it has these elements of being like almost travel log-ish. And I really...I really love that because like, I was thinking about this recently, I was like, why do you like punks like travel logs so much? And I was reflecting on it for myself. And it was because I like I grew up reading zines like, like, No Gods No Mattress by Enola. And like, or whatever, it was a thing when I was a teenager, but like Evasion, and it's like...and then like reading your your other book Through-Hiking Will Break Your Heart, I'm like, travelogues. They're just incredibly interesting. And what I've liked so far about this book is that it's like, it seems there's these elements of being travelogues that are also coupled with fantasy and preparedness and having to think about, what do you have? What might you find? What happens if you run out of something that you need? And this isn't really a question but [your] thoughts? Question mark.
**Inmn ** 46:39 I love travelogues too, you know, it's funny. Evasion formed part of my subconscious. Also, I remember there was that other, it was like the small travelogue put out by Crimethinc about these two young women who I think went to Prague or something. Do you remember that?
**Inmn ** 48:06 Yeah, Off the Map.
**Carrot ** 48:06 Off the Map! Yes, that was another good one. You know, they say that a lot of novels follow the hero's journey, which is like this person's in this environment and just like going about their life, and then something big happens. And then they have to go on this epic journey where they're, like, changed somehow. So you could say that a travelogue is like the most literal interpretation of that and you know, humans, we love the hero's journey. Like, we love that. And so, I feel like travelogues really like scratch that itch. Also, what you're saying about like, what might someone find? What are they going to run out of? One interesting thing I thought about a lot with this novel is if international supply chains were destroyed today, what junk would still be laying around in like 20 years? Like, what would have been destroyed? Like if you're in the Sonoran Desert, and the stuff is outside, what would have been destroyed by the sun? Versus what.... So it was really fun having Bets go on this journey and go to these different abandoned places and being like, what condition would canned goods be in? What condition would plastic be in? What if the plastic was in the sun? What if it was out of the sun? It was like, it's really fun like to try and imagine this kind of stuff. Because there is, you know, we can look back at the way humans lived before the Industrial Revolution, or before the different time periods, when people had to make more of their own materials. Or like different communities around the world who were still doing that, or who are still doing that, like if you make your own stuff, what is it like? And we can think about how we might live. But one thing that will be different, post this global collapse, different than hundreds of years ago, is there will be all this junk laying around. So it's really fun to think about, if that junk is no longer in production anymore, with what's left how long will any of it last? I thought that was kind of fun. Like there's a scene where Bets and this young boy who she be friends, who she finds in the mountains, they build this cart out of...like part of it is like an old car hood. And so they have like this like scrap pile. Yeah. That's a fun thought exercise.
**Inmn ** 50:18 Hell yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. I know that stuff is so interesting. It's this thing that comes up in my sphere when I think about--or it's something people ask me about because I make knives--and people will ask me about like, "Oh, like in the apocalypse, do you worry about having access to materials, or it seems so helpful to be able to make knives and stuff like that?" And I don't...I think there's so many knives that have been created already, that it probably won't be a problem. But is obviously still a fun thing that I think is fun to do. But like when I think about it, I think about like, "Oh, I'll have to like do things like make my own raw materials, like harvesting ore and stuff like that. And then I'm just like, there are so...there's so much metal that has already been created. I'm actually not worried about a lack of metal.
**Carrot ** 51:25 Yeah, like with all the knife blades in existence, like, what's the first thing you would need to replace? The handles? And then it's like, if the handles are plastic, how long until that? If they're wood? You know? Yeah, yeah. But the blades would probably last a long time. I went to this...the anchorage museum a few months ago had this show that was really cool that was kind of about collapse. And one of the installations was all of these, like, I felt like they were very freaky new materials people around the world had been creating. And a lot of them are made in this...were these sort of like eco-conscious materials that were made using waste products. Like there was this one like kind of plastic thing that was made out of like sawdust and old diapers or something. It was really interesting, because I was like, wow, like post collapse there's gonna be all the stuff laying around, plus all these natural materials. Like people are gonna be like constructing.... Like there was, there was like an insulated thing that was insulated with cat tail fluff. And I was like, "Oh, that's really cool." Like, that's probably something that's been around. And then all these other like freaky hype.... A lot of things made out of mycelium that were like, looked like plastic, but it was mycelium. It was really interesting. Yeah, so it's fun to think about that kind of thing.
**Inmn ** 52:43 Yeah. I'm, curious, I'm curious about this...the kind of like thought experiment... Or, if this sort of if this was a thought experiment for you. In, you know, in this book having travelogue elements or being about someone's literal journey from one place to another place, in a world that is not super hospitable to traveling long distances, was it like--because you do a lot of hiking, you've written books about hiking--what was it like to construct the idea of someone doing a long distance trek without resupply? Because that's...when I think about like doing the PCT or doing like any of these things, it's like, yeah, you can do the PCT because you can get resupplied every so often. But what if that doesn't exist? Was this a thought experiment for you?
**Carrot ** 53:48 Yeah. I mean, she's definitely taking a lot of risks. Like I had to give her a really good reason to go on this journey, because it is kind of a stupid risk for her to go on this journey at all, because she doesn't even know if there's anybody out there. And she has limited food and water. So if she can't find people, she's going to die. So I had to have something happen where it's like, if she doesn't leave the city, she'll die. Because that was kind of the only thing good enough for her to do that. And even that, like she kind of just wanted to stay and die. So she had to, like, there had to be this whole thought process she had where she's like, "Well, this is all I ever know. I'll just stay in the city and die." So she had to kind of come to this conclusion that it was better to leave. So I had to give her this other reason to go, but it's like there's two reasons. She's like, gonna die if she stays. And then there's this other one that you'll find if you read the book, that she got she decides to choose the journey. But it is like very unlikely. Her survival is very unlikely. And, obviously, I keep her alive. But yeah, it was interesting to think about the risks she was taking and then how to kind of, in the nick of time, save her over and over and over. Like, put her in these scenarios where it's like, I don't know how she's gonna make it. And like water becomes a really big issue. But yeah, definitely, it's definitely...she definitely cuts it pretty close. But it was really fun. It's fun to think about like...because I don't...I'm sure the book has potholes but I try not to have potholes. So I really thought about, I'm like, okay, how much food would someone...what's the bare minimum food someone would need to be able to keep biking without like, you know, keeling over. And making sure that she had that or that she happened upon it. Or that different things happened. And then kind of bringing her back from the edge over and over in these different like harrowing scenario she gets into and trying to be realistic about it, you know? which is like, yeah, a fun thought experiment, for sure. But realistically she probably would have just died or been killed or something. [laughing in a grim way]
**Inmn ** 55:55 Nooo, that's not what I like to hear but is maybe real.
**Carrot ** 55:57 But it's fiction and she doesn't. But yeah, if you were going to do this in real life, you would be dependent on finding people who would sort of take you in. And I kind of...I kind of played into that where I thought about...I thought a lot about group dynamics and how quickly group dynamics can get very like cultish, and how people stay in groups--and what I mean by that is that people often stay in groups out of fear. And so with the group she encountered, I tried to create these situations where it made sense that people stayed together. And there was always an element of fear. The biggest thing was like fear of dying, if you were alone. And as a group, you, you know, each group she encounters has these different ways they found to survive and these different strategies. And so, yeah, like, I tried to be really realistic about the dangers and then what brought people together and how they survived, and also and how, by her joining these groups at different times, she was taking on this risk of the group dynamics, which were different in every situation.
**Inmn ** 57:10 Yeah, yeah. And that's like, you know, a big theme that we've tried to hammer home on this podcast is the idea of community preparedness or like that it is very difficult to, I think, in the future for whatever--whatever is coming anyone's way, whatever is currently happening to people--it is very difficult to do those things alone. And it is also difficult to do it with people. [said seriously]
**Carrot ** 57:45 [Laughing] The story of human existence.
**Inmn ** 57:49 The story of human existence. [Laughing] And yeah, I don't know, I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on kind of like community...the goodness or badness of community preparedness? I guess you kind of just talked about this. It's fear.
**Carrot ** 58:10 I think it's...I think group dynamics in general are really fascinating. Like, I do have some theories about human group dynamics that are just theories. I don't know if it's true, or just things that I think about, Like, I wonder if it's always true that groups stay together out of fear. [lauhing] Yeah, humans are really social--
**Inmn ** 58:31 I hope it's love too.
**Carrot ** 58:33 Maybe both, but maybe it can't just be love. Maybe it also has to be fear, you know? Like, even if it's just fear of not having a group, you know? It's really fascinating to me because we are social creatures, we do not survive on our own. We've never survived on our own. Like, we survived because of the way we're able to organize with each other. And so it's just so fascinating, because it's kind of like, groups, you can't live with them, can't live without them. It's like they're so terrible. So terrible. And yet so amazing. And it's just..it's such a wild--I can't--dichotomy like human social group dynamics. So wild, so wild to me. Oh, I have one other thought. I think as far as like, preparedness currently, in this year of our Lord, 2024, with groups, I think forming groups in our current environment is extra challenging, because the system we live in is the sort of horrific late-stage Capitalism that is like eating itself. And so I feel like it's impossible to create a group that exists outside of that because that's just what we're immersed in. And I feel like it like taints everything. Like it's...like I really believe that once there's some sort of massive collapse that we will very quickly revert to this much more like place-based, healthy kind of traditional group organizing structure that will function, you know, as like--difficult as it is to be in human groups--it will be functional. Whereas right now it feels almost impossible to organize in groups because of the environment we're in. And that...I don't know, I just.... Yeah, that's how it feels to me.
**Inmn ** 1:00:21 Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. And it's like, I feel like one of the big challenges is--which I don't know, it's like, I think that...I think major collapses in the worlds that we all currently live in are fairly inevitable. I feel like those will be slow or fast. And one of the things I think about a lot is like how to deal with those transitions because it's like, I don't know, it was...seeing seeing people like talk about this, especially in disabled communities, of how transitions, how collapses really very disproportionately affect people who are chronically ill, people who are disabled. And the work that needs to get done now to like, support people like that during these collapses, or if they become rapid and if they continue to be slow. And this also isn't really a question, but I'm just rambling now.
**Carrot ** 1:01:36 Yeah, this is what we're doing. We're doing these thought experiments to try and imagine what might happen so we can like emotionally prepare, like, "Okay, how do we?" Yeah. It's hard to imagine how...what might happen and how to prepare.
**Inmn ** 1:01:51 Yeah, and I think like, from what I've seen of the book, so far, it is playing with this idea of like, there are ways in which we are intrinsically reliant on Capitalism. And that is very terrifying to me...for me to think about. And I don't...yeah, I don't know. And that's like, what I hope every day for conversations of preparedness, conversations of community is how to become less reliant on these structures that we are currently relying on, even if you think we're not.
**Carrot ** 1:02:34 Yeah. I--maybe this is kind of nihilist--but I believe that we can't actually build anything outside of Capitalism until the collapses, I don't know, that's just what feels true for me, that we are right now just kind of running in place, like spinning our wheels, and that we don't know what's gonna happen or how it's gonna happen. But I do think that once it happens, we'll suddenly know exactly what needs to be done. That's how I feel.
**Inmn ** 1:03:12 Yeah, that's my hope. It's like, my hope is that...my hope is that the things that, if we can do enough kind of forethought beforehand that it's like...that the things that we will need, that our communities will need, that we'll be able to figure out how to do those things. That's my hope.
**Carrot ** 1:03:34 Yeah. And oh my gosh, it's gonna give people so much meaning, which is like...everyone is desperate for meaning right now, especially Gen Z. Gen Z is like, "What the fuck, like, everything is so fucked." And everyone will suddenly have this amazing sense of purpose. Like even if the next instant, we all get like wiped out in a nuclear war or whatever, like, our last moments of life will suddenly have this like really strong wonderful sense of purpose. And we'll be able to like organize with our neighbors and create these like...just everything will be like how do we communicate? Where does our food come from? We'll be worried about water and we'll all be like sharing and working together. It'll be so cool to have all of this purpose and meaning, even if then we get wiped out by like the wet bulb effect or something.
**Inmn ** 1:04:27 I have one last little silly question before we before we wrap up, because we are unfortunately about out of time. Um, this is a very silly question. But am I making this up? Was there an earlier draft of this book where instead of bikes it was horses?
**Carrot ** 1:04:45 So yeah, so when I very first conceived this novel, for some reason there was going to be a horse theme. I honestly don't remember why. I first thought of this novel, I was visiting In these hot springs in Nevada where there are all these wild burros that appear and drink from the hot springs that were like introduced by miners in the 1800s and they got loose become feral and they're doing really, really well. And they fill this like ecological niche there. And I started Googling, like, "Can you drink burrow milk? Can you eat burrow meat?" and internet was like, "Yes." And I was like, holy shit, you could live in this desert, this dry ass desert where there are these springs and you could drink burro milk. And so then I had Bets traveling there. And I mean, she still kind of is in the book. She's going to Nevada. And there's this...there's a plotline about the borough's. But for some reason, there were gonna be horse girls when she got there. And I, you know, it's funny, like, this is my first attempt at fiction. So I hope I did a good job. I really tried. But one thing I'm learning about fiction--like nonfiction, you know, you have all the stuff that happened. And you're just like shaping it into this compelling narrative. Nonfiction, at least for me, you write this whole idea and you're like, "This is what the story is." And then as you rewrite, it becomes something completely different. And it turns out, like, what was the point of those first drafts? I don't even know. So yeah, there's no horses in it now. But originally there were going to be horses. I don't know anything about horses. Someone should write.... Oh, my gosh, one of these groups of people, realistically, like would have horses in this world. So maybe if I knew anything about horses, I could write that but I don't.
**Inmn ** 1:06:31 I'm glad that I'm not totally making that up. Yeah, I think in my head when you were talking about this book years ago, it was like, in my head, it was, "horse girls v. the apocalypse." And I was like, "I can't fucking wait," which I love bikes. So like, it's great either way.
**Carrot ** 1:06:51 Yeah, someone should write that. I mean, horses, that's like a realistic thing. Like as--especially like, one thing I thought about with this novel is once maintenance...once road maintenance ends, how long until the roads are like undriveable? And so a return to horses, that would be a really reasonable thing to do once the roads are all fucked up and there's no gas and stuff.
**Inmn ** 1:07:15 Horses and bikes.
**Carrot ** 1:07:16 Horses and bikes.
**Inmn ** 1:07:18 Horses and bikes. I mean, I'm into this world. We are about out of time. Do you have any, any other thoughts on your book before we get to--you know, not the most important part but certainly time sensitive wise--an important part, which is talking about your Kickstarter.
**Carrot ** 1:07:41 No, we had a great time they're talking about this near-future collapse imagination. I feel good about it.
**Inmn ** 1:07:50 Cool, well, let's let's hear about your Kickstarter. As of recording, your Kickstarter launched today and it has already exceeded its goal, right?
**Carrot ** 1:08:07 Yeah, it's.... So the Kickstarter, I'm basically selling preorders. The book's gonna come out January of 2025. And it is June of 2024 right now. And I am selling preorders/ They're a little bit less than what the list price will be for the Ebook and the paperback. And then I'm also offering a signed copy of the paperback. And then a third thing, which is--or a fourth thing--where you can get all three of my books signed as a bundle. So that's what you can get and then the Kickstarter is going to pay for publishing costs.
**Inmn ** 1:08:44 Hell yeah. Is it..is it self published or you going through some a publisher or?
**Carrot ** 1:08:53 It is...it is self published. So my first book Through-Hiking Will Break Your Heart was self-published. My second book, I got a traditional publishing deal with an imprint of one of the big five publishers. And now I am back to self-publishing, which is a long story. But essentially, the publishing industry is a little bit broken and really difficult to navigate. And also generally a bad deal financially, and I do.... Independent publishing, self-publishing is great if you don't mind wearing a lot of hats. And I don't mind, I love researching things like.... You know, I love like finding an editor to hire and finding a cover designer and doing all that stuff. I don't mind at all. And then you end up making better money, ultimately, than you will with traditional publishing. So that's what I'm doing for this book. Also with traditional publishing, even if I got a book deal today, the book wouldn't come out for like two more years because of how slowly it moves. So the cool thing about this is the book is done and so it can come out in six months, which is great.
**Inmn ** 1:10:02 Yeah, yeah. Makes a lot of sense. You know, it is funny to talk about publishing world. I don't know what bigger, larger publishing world is, like. The only thing I know is like what we do with sSrangers, which is like, very small. And I don't know, it's like.... I'm very glad for you that you got to, that you're back in self publishing for this one. And also secretly, quite sad that it was not a book that we got to put out, but I'm glad it is a book that came out. And that that's better for you. And whatever, whatever we're not gonna talking about publishing. Anyways. Kickstarters going still for, I think, as of when this comes out, at least a few more days or like a whole nother week. So go and check out...go and check out Kevin's Kickstarter, and get a preordered copy, get a signed copy. It's going to be a really cool book, and you are going to have FOMO when other people are reading it and you're not. This is what I have to say.
**Carrot ** 1:11:13 Thanks, Inmn.
**Inmn ** 1:11:15 Yeah, any any final words, Carrott? Oh, where can people find you on social media or your work, or other other things you do in the world where you would like to be found?
**Carrot ** 1:11:26 I think I'm most active, currently, on my newsletter, which is on Substack. And it's just, I think carrotquinn.substack.com. So I write a newsletter every week. So that's like a that's good place. And then I'm also on Instagram, but, you know, don't post a whole lot there these days. And then I have a website carrotquinn.com where I post about the guided backpacking trips I do and stuff like that.
**Inmn ** 1:11:53 Cool. Cool. Hell yeah. When's your next guided backpack trip coming up?
**Carrot ** 1:11:59 In July, I'm taking two groups to the Brooks Range in Alaska, which is really fun. Hopefully we have good weather. It's always a little unpredictable.
**Inmn ** 1:12:09 Yeah, yeah. Cool. Hell yeah. Well, thanks for so much for coming on the show. And we will hopefully have you back again soon.
**Carrot ** 1:12:18 Thanks so much for having me. This has been great.
**Inmn ** 1:12:22 Hell, yeah.
**Inmn ** 1:12:27 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, then go read Carrot's book. You can't read it now. But you can read.... There are three chapters that you can read. You can--or listen to. You can read the first chapter. You can re-listen to the fourth chapter. And there's another chapter that you can listen to Margaret read on the It Could Happen Here Book Club, which is searchable on Cool Zone Media. And it's going to be a cool book. So if you enjoy this podcast, read and write cool books about the apocalypse. And also if you like this podcast, you can talk to people about it. You can tell people about it. You can tell people about it IRL. You can tell people about it on the internet. You can shout its name into the night sky of the desert and hope that a nice burrow hears you and comes and hangs out with you. You can also do things like, if you liked this podcast, you can support our publisher Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness and you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness or you can go and buy other cool books from us that are not Carrot's book but are equally as cool as Carrot's book. And you can find those at tangledwilderness.org and you can submit cool books to us that we will hopefully publish that will definitely be good deals for everyone. I'm not saying this sarcastically. And yeah, those are my plugs. We would love to shout out these wonderful people who have given us their...some some stuff on Patreon. And you can too. If you look at our Patreon you can sign up for our acknowledgement tier. And we will think you, a cool organization, a cool project, or a cool friend, or a cool dog. Anything that you ask us to, we will think. Unless it sucks. We would like to thank Connor, Bartholomew Spawndoom. Jason, not a real name. Aiden, alium, Amber, Ephemeral, Appalachian Liberation Library, Portland Hedron Hackerspace, Boldfield, E, Patoli, Eric, the People's University of Palestine, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, Ben Ben, anonymous, Janice and O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter S J., Paige, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Micaiah, Nicole & Tikvah the dog, and the immortal Hoss the Dog. Carrot, Do you have any people or dogs that you would like to thank?
**Carrot ** 1:15:33 Um, not off the top of my head.
**Inmn ** 1:15:36 Well, I'm gonna think your doggos.
**Carrot ** 1:15:43 Yeah, my dogs are great. All dogs. All dogs, because a friend of mine once said, "Dogs are the only animals on Earth to give a fuck about us." And I think it's true. Like they...we don't deserve their love. Like they love us so much. So shout out to all the dogs everywhere for the continued support of the human race.
**Inmn ** 1:16:08 Well, we hope you're doing as well as you can with everything that's going on and we'll see you next time.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Maria comes on to talk to Inmn about the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, the state of aid going to Gaza, and the obstacles the powers that be have erected to prevent aid from arriving.
Maria Elle is a wing nut anarchist Jewish dyke extremist whore anti-Zionist psycho who writes poetry, conspires against the Empire, and organizes for collective liberation. You can find her on IG @Lchiam.Intifada or @bay2gaza
Gaza Freedom Flotilla: freedomflotilla.org International Solidarity Movement: palsolidarity.org International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network: ijan.org
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Maria on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla
**Inmn ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today Inmn Neruin. And today we're going to be talking about a kind of different lens of preparedness than we normally talk about...or no--well, I guess we always kind of talk about it. But we're...you know, we're not we're not going to be talking about a skill today as much as the importance for figuring out how to provide aid when the powers that be: governments and nations that we absolutely don't put our trust in but...are trapped by fail to do that or purposefully obstruct it. And today we're going to be talking about the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and organizing efforts around that and trying to bring critical aid to Gaza. But before that, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on that network. [singing] Doo doo doo doo doo.
**The Ex-Worker Podcast ** 01:24 The Border is not just a wall. It's not just a line on a map. It's a power structure. A system of control. The Border does not divide one world from another. There is only one world and the Border is tearing it apart. The Ex-Worker podcast presents No Wall They Can Build: A Guide to Borders and Migration Across North America, a serialized audio book in 11 chapters released every Wednesday. Tune in at crimethinc.com/podcast.
**Inmn ** 02:04 And we're back. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. I know we had you on the Stranger's podcast recently for your poetry collection, which everyone should pause right now and go and listen to another hour long podcast episode first and then come back and listen to this...or don't. Or listen to it afterwards. Anyways, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Could you introduce yourself with your name, pronouns, and a little bit about yourself and your involvement with the Freedom Flotilla?
**Maria ** 02:44 Absolutely. Yes. Hi, thanks for having me. I'm Maria. She/her pronouns. I am a Jewish, anti-Zionist, anarchist, I don't know, organizer, agitator--whatever you want to call it--from the Ohlone of xučyun (Huichin), aka Oakland, California. And I am.... I've been involved doing Palestine Solidarity work since I was a teenager. Originally, I came to awareness around what was happening in Palestine during the assault on Gaza in 2008 and got involved in the student movement and the student occupations that were happening back then. And then actually got kicked out of university as a result of that, which ended up being perfect because I got the opportunity to join the International Solidarity Movement doing work on the ground in Palestine, which is an amazing group that folks should look up. They were defunct for a little bit during COVID but have come back and are working again basically bringing comrades and activists from around the world to stand in solidarity with Palestinian resistance on the ground in Palestine. So I had that opportunity and then I came home and got involved in organizing back here and was not.... So the flotilla, the Gaza Freedom Flotilla has.... So, freedom flotillas have been sailing, trying to break the siege on Gaza since 2008. Basically, a flotilla--for those who don't know--is a group of boats. So it's a group of boats from.... Our flotillas or group of boats from all over the world. There's over 30 countries that are involved sending comrades and activists to break the siege on Gaza. And so these boats are filled--our current boat--is filled with 5000 tons of food and medical aid that we are attempting to bring directly to Gaza in defiance of Israel's illegal naval blockade. These.... Like I said, these missions have been happening since 2008, trying both to bring aid to Gaza and to bring awareness, international awareness, of Israel's blockade and kind of getting a lot of international notoriety 2010 When the Mavi Marmara, a Turkicsh ship that was part of the flotilla, was attacked. And nine people were murdered in that process. And it made headlines at the time and brought a lot of awareness to the ongoing siege on Gaza. And then since then there have been many attempts to break the siege. This year, of course, is a different context. And it's a little bit hard to know what to expect. As you know, as many of us already know, there has been a genocide happening in Palestine since 1948. But the particular intensified moment of genocide that we're in creates a different context that we don't totally know what to expect. But we are determined to sail. We are determined to break Israel's illegal siege on Gaza. And especially now more than ever, while there's been a humanitarian crisis in Gaza for a very long time, and this blockade has been happening for 18 years, the famine that is now gripping Gaza is unprecedented. And we are seeing mass death, especially in the north of Gaza, and that is spreading throughout Gaza. Now with the most recent attacks on Rafah, the situation just gets more and more dire every day. One of the goals of the Freedom Flotilla is to emphasize that this is not a natural disaster. You know, there's.... A lot of the way that this gets covered in US media and global media is as if this was a humanitarian--people use the word, "humanitarian crisis," and they use the word "famine." And both of those things are true. And they're also a little bit misleading because this famine is being intentionally created by Israel as a tool of genocide. Israel controls the flow of all aid moving into Gaza and is intentionally and carefully counting how many calories it is allowing into the Gaza Strip in order to intentionally keep the population on the verge of starvation in order to cripple the resistance. This needs to be highlighted. This isn't.... It isn't like they don't know how to get the aid in. It is not logistical obstacles. They try to make it seem like this is, "Oh, how can we possibly get aid in?" Israel has closed every barrier. Like, the fact that we even need to go by sea is insane. They could open the land crossings, which would be the most effective way, but they absolutely refuse. And the United States, our so-called government that has the power to do that and has the power to force the--probably the only government in the world--with the power to force Israel to open the land crossings--is instead building this pier, spending millions of dollars of wasted money that could be being used on aid or, you know, on stopping Israel. And this long drawn out project that now isn't even functioning due to like "climate" or "weather." I can't even remember what they said. There's some kind of structural damage. I mean, they put all this money into it and like still can't deliver aid somehow. And we're supposed to believe that that's a coincidence. Meanwhile, we have a plan to,within three days, effectively deliver all of this aid to Gaza by simply having a basic little fold-out pier that we have packed on the ship that could unfold, deliver the aid, and then we can leave again. It's actually really simple. It's not complicated. None of this has to be complicated. It's being intentionally made complicated as a tool of genocide and as a tool of hiding what Israel is intentionally doing. So that's really a big part of what the Gaza Freedom Flotilla is about. I would say that it's rooted, ultimately, in the principles of DIY and direct action, which are fundamentally anarchist principles to me, and to many of us, the basic idea that no one is going to do this but us. If we want something done, we have to do it ourselves. We cannot rely on these so-called governments who, many of whom around the world claim to support Palestine and give lots of lip service to the need for aid to get in and even for Palestinian Liberation. Other governments, such as our so-called government, have done nothing but contribute to and fund and exacerbate this genocide, still give lip service to "Oh, we need to get aid into Israel," but they're not going to do anything. At best, they don't care. At worst, they actively want this to happen. We cannot wait for them. We've been trying.... Like, you know, not that.... You know, fight by every means necessary. I really do believe in a diversity of tactics. And at the same time, we need to be honest with ourselves that there is no amount of pressure that we can really put on the Biden administration that is going to change the US' has strategic Imperial interest in propping up Israel, you know? And there's no amount of electoral or domestic pressure within the existing system that we can put in that will change the fact that Israel is a beacon of US imperialism in the Middle East. It is a central part of US imperialism's operation globally. And not only our military imperialism but our economic imperialism. So as many of you may already know, and many of you may not, a big part of the impetus for this genocide has to do with global trade and global shipping. So, after the Suez Canal crisis, we saw.... It became clearer than ever to the international community, how delicate the infrastructure of global shipping is. We saw with the simple breakdown of one ship in the Suez Canal, the global economy was brought to a halt. And it is unacceptable-- [Interrupted]
**Maria ** 10:18 It's so fragile. And we saw its fragility even more with COVID and with the plague. And it has become clear to the West that having such an important chokehold located in Egypt is not strategic for them. And so Israel has a plan to build what they're calling the Ben Gurion Canal, which is going to be directly north of Gaza, within missile range of of Gaza to be clear, that would be an alternative to the Suez Canal and that would allow for Israel's, and therefore the United States', control over global shipping in a way that we do not currently have. So the depth of the economic investment in committing this genocide is deeper than even natural gas off the coast of Gaza, which a lot of us have also seen headlines about. And a lot of us already know Chevron's interest and BP's interest in colonizing Gaza and eliminating Hamas in order to secure access to that natural gas, but even beyond that, in order to facilitate the construction of the Ben Gurion Canal. With that much at stake, with both fossil fuels and global shipping at stake, there's a no amount of pressure that we can put up on the Biden administration to get them to like, hear truth, you know? If we want change, we have to make it ourselves. And no one is going to do this but us. And I think that the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, the amount of aid that we can actually deliver it with one flotilla is a drop in the bucket. The principle that we are trying to communicate to the world, and that we've seen in many places, is that we can't wait. We have to...we have to show up. We have to be there for our Palestinian siblings. We have to be there for our siblings around the world. And we have to do it ourselves. You know, I think we saw a similar thing with the Great March of Return, and I'm extremely inspired by the Great March of Return of Palestinians coming from Lebanon and breaking through the border there. And we, you know, continue to be inspired by Palestinian resistance globally and to work in concert with that resistance in order to do whatever we can to stop this genocide, both in the immediate sense and in the ongoing sense of Israel's colonization of Palestine from the river to the sea.
**Inmn ** 10:18 It's so fragile.
**Inmn ** 12:35 Golly, thank you for that very--I will call it a little bit of a rant thing. That was incredible and very informative. And now I have like 100 questions.
**Inmn ** 12:47 I have 100 more things to talk about but lay it on me.
**Inmn ** 12:51 Um, I think like, or.... I don't even know where to start. Actually, there's this funny place that I want to start, which I'm maybe gonna feel funny about and is maybe like.... Whatever, I don't think it's me feeling nihilistic about it as much as like confused by imaging in..... So I, as a lot of us have been seeing a lot of news graphics, infographics. And I saw this one recently that was talking about "planned distraction." And it was like this thing that was like, "Israel's really counting on Americans being distracted by Memorial Day weekend to intensify the assault on Rafah." And I was just like, I don't think Israel's thinking about what random Americans are doing. Like, as you say, I don't think there's any amount of pressure that we can put on institutions like the Biden administration to change those things.
**Maria ** 14:30 Yeah, it's an interesting question. I mean, I don't know. I mean, nobody really knows. I do think that it's worth noting that the last major assaults on Rafah began during the Superbowl also. So I mean, it's...who knows, maybe they are thinking about it. And Israel is very much concerned with its public image. [half interrupts self] Well, it's complicated, right? They are very much concerned with their public image and they're also on a genocidal, psychotic rampage, which is causing all sorts of domestic tensions. And Israeli domestic politics are a whole nother can of worms. You know, there isn't one--like anywhere--there isn't one unified Israeli interest. Israel, like every other country, is a contestation of political forces with central goals but also pulling at each other and pulling itself apart. And we actually are seeing Israeli domestic-- [Interrupts self] I think it's also very worth noting that last summer before the assaults on Gaza, before the most recent assault on Gaza began, we saw the first ever domestic Israeli social movement, really since the creation of the state. There was an actual--I mean, you know, fairly tame but for Israel significant--uprising of Israelis against their government. And several months later, this genocide happens, right? And this is not a coincidence. We've seen this kind of pattern time and time again, where a state in order to secure domestic unity will declare war or genocide on a foreign enemy. I think it's also worth noting that the plans for this--while October 7th may have been the the spark--the plans for this were very much already in place. And it is very clear from how quickly and strategically and efficiently they have acted that they have just been waiting for this opportunity. So I think that's worth emphasizing. I think, and then I just also want to clarify, as far as like "no amount of domestic pressure," I think that there's...I want to be clear that, like I said, I believe deeply in a diversity of tactics. And I do think that we need to do everything. And I think that there is very--like, I'm not saying that we should all just go to Palestine. I think there's very important roles for us to play here in the United States in organizing. But we need to be realistic about how we're gauging our targets. So we're never going to be able to appeal to the moral or even political interests of--as far as like electoral political interests--of these things. We...I think...I personally think that our best hope is to challenge their economic function, right, and to make this cost so much that they cannot continue. And that's a lot. It has to cost a lot because they have a lot to gain. But you know, what? We have a lot to lose. We have everything to lose and everything to gain. And we need to make this cost more than they can imagine.
**Inmn ** 17:28 Yeah. And yeah, maybe to be clear, the infographic that I was seeing, it was like, its suggestion was like, you know, "Get on the phone and call your congress people." And I was just like, you know, yeah, "by any means necessary," and whatever people can do, but I was like, I don't think the one thing stopping.... It framed it in this way--I am gonna get off this topic very quickly and spent too much time on this--but it framed it in this way of like, "Oh, if Americans just weren't so distracted by barbecuing over the weekend then genocide and then Gaza would have been over," and I was just like...that. Okay, whatever. Anyway, a real question. So I think maybe something that I've been curious, I guess, about is some of the like geopolitical--or like, specifically like geographical--forces at work where.... Like for the.... Can you tell me about waterways, waterways in and around Israel and Gaza? Like I guess like what is the proposed route? Or like, what are some of the.... Like, how get Flotilla?
**Maria ** 18:48 How get Flotilla.
**Inmn ** 18:49 How blockaded?
**Maria ** 18:52 Through the Mediterranean. So we had originally, we had originally planned to sail from Turkey, from Istanbul, and I was actually in Istanbul with hundreds of other people. We were, our bags were packed, the boat was full, we were ready to sail, and the mission was bureaucratically sabotaged by Israel. This was several weeks ago.
**Inmn ** 19:13 Is this the flag thing?
**Maria ** 19:14 Yeah, so Israel has tried many different avenues to sabotage the Flotilla, including physical sabotage of the ship. But one--and this has happened for many years--but one tactic they have not tried before, and that we were not prepared for, was that they pressured.... So I don't know how much people know about shipping. But every ship that leaves a port has to pass to sail under a flag, a national flag. As far as I understand, any ship that doesn't sail under a flag is technically considered a pirate ship. [says incredulously, laughing] So if we wanted to leave and be allowed to leave by the Coast Guard, we would have to have a national flag. And usually those flags have nothing to do with the mission. You basically buy a flag to sail under. It's interesting. It's actually kind of like a side hustle for a lot of poorer countries, they sell their flags at a cheaper rate and with less bureaucracy. So I think most international shipping actually happens under the flag of the Philippines. But we were gonna sail under the flag of Guinea Bissau, which was a flag of convenience. And Israel put immense--Israel in the United States--put immense pressure on Guinea Bissau to withdraw the flag. And so the flag was withdrawn literally the day we were supposed to depart, like bags packed and ready to go. And, you know, we could have...like the captain could have, I suppose, made the choice to sail anyway, but then that would have forced a confrontation with the Turkish Coast Guard, rather than with the Israeli naval blockade, which people felt wasn't...wasn't worth it. You know, for better or worse. Whatever. The people thought it wasn't worth it. And that it was a better plan to just try to get another flag. So the flotilla is delayed as we are searching for another flag. That process is well underway. And I am hoping.... We'll have more information within the next week about where that is at and when and where we're planning to sail from. It's not sure that we'll be sailing from Turkey anymore at this point. Turkey would have been about a three day sail to Gaza. And at this point we might have to be looking at somewhere further out. TBD.
**Inmn ** 21:27 Like somewhere further out to escape the influence of Israel putting pressure on those local areas?
**Maria ** 21:36 Yeah, so there was a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure put on the Turkish Government. And Turkey, while it gives incredible lip service to supporting a free Palestine, is actually deeply economically dependent on Israel. And the domestic politics there is a whole can of worms. Anyway, I don't know where that's at. That's not part of the...that's not the team that I'm on. You know? I'm doing a lot of more of a social media and grassroots organizing here in the US. So I'm not one of those people figuring that part out. But, I mean, we can all see, we all basically know the general geopolitics of that region and how complicated it is for any country in the world to allow us to sail because of the possibility of antagonizing Israel, and what that can mean as a nuclear power and as a proxy of the United States in the region. But we will. We'll find a place that we will do it. Inshallah, very soon. And that is underway. I think as far as what's happened in the past, so what's happened in the past, most of the Flotillas have not--actually all of the Flotillas--have not actually made it to Gaza. They are pretty consistently stopped, often in international waters--which is illegal--before arriving. There are no ports in Gaza that one could land at. So like we said, we had this plan with a pier that can unfold. In the past Israel has stopped the flotilla with its naval blockade. In 2010 the ships were famously--one of the ships in particular--was famously attacked, and nine people were were murdered in that process. Since then, there have been no fatalities. No one has been matyred. But everyone pretty much has been arrested and deported.
**Maria ** 21:37 From like international waters? [Said confused like it sounds sketchy]
**Maria ** 23:40 I think they get brought into Ashdod, usually, and deported from there, like on an Israeli vessel or whatever. I don't know. I haven't been on any of the flotillas before. This will be my first journey. One of my aunts was really involved in them for many years, so I learned a lot about the process, and I've been following the process, since 2010. She's been very involved in--or she was--very involved in it. Gail Miller, may her name be for blessing. So I've been following it but this is my first actual mission joining.
**Inmn ** 24:14 Cool. Um, yeah, it's...I don't know, it's.... Thinking about waterways has been something that's been really interesting with a lot of the goings on in and around the genocide in Gaza, like specifically with like...it was fun to see countries like Yemen be like, "Oh, we're gonna blockade Israel or we're gonna blockade shipping routes for Israel shit." And interesting to hear you talk about the connections to global shipping, because then that turned into this big global shipping catastrophe. And like the US and Israel were like "We're protecting global shipping lanes for like the good of Capitalism..."
**Maria ** 25:14 One of the first honest things they've said. Yeah, absolutely. I think even with that, it's worth remembering too, just kind of going back to what I said, that the governments of the world are not acting. It wasn't the Yemeni government who took that action. You know, it was it was the Houthis. And overwhelmingly, we see that is not governments anywhere, but rather people working with conviction and solidarity who can actually stop the infrastructure of global trade, can actually stop...can actually have some real impact on this genocide, right? Like, that's one of the only meaningful...you know, people know that acronym BDS, It's boycott, divestment, and sanctions, which is...was a movement in South Africa during the anti-apartheid struggle that the Palestinian anti-apartheid struggle has adopted, and that has been a global call for some time now. And one of the only real meaningful BDS actions we've seen has been by the Houthis, in that way, you know, actually interfering with Israeli shipping.
**Inmn ** 26:15 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay, that's, interesting to hear. I feel like this is a topic that I've tried really hard to learn about on the internet and every time I do it's deeply confusing. And I get more confused because there's a lot of propaganda from the US and from Israel about, like, you know, who's enacting these blockades and whatever reasons that they make up. I saw...I was reading a little bit about the 2010 flotilla where, either like before or after it, Israel was making these wild accusations that the flotilla was working with Al Qaeda or had all these connections to groups they labeled as terroristic. And then the claims were withdrawn later because everyone was like, "Literally what the fuck are you talking about?"
**Maria ** 27:15 Yeah, absolutely. And, of course, they're always going to do that, you know, and they're always going to try any possible means to antagonize and paint any kind of resistance is terrorism, which is also what we're seeing in Gaza, right? They will paint five-year old children as terrorists, you know? They have no shame and and they've gotten so far...they've spiraled so deep into their own narrative that they have really lost the plot. It's kind of wild.
**Inmn ** 27:46 Yeah. Yeah. I think there's...it's like this thing that's been happening for quite some time, which seems like less obvious to people who have been paying attention, but like, I feel like a decade ago, or a decade and a half ago--wow, time happens--there, like you said, Israel has had these moments of being deeply concerned with their public image and then these moments of just the veil coming off and being like, which is happening there, it's happening here in the United States, it's happening everywhere, just fascistic forces becoming less concerned with what their public images are and just owning being terrible and fucked up. Being like, "Who's gonna stop us?"
**Maria ** 28:39 Yeah, I mean, you know, it's, like I said, Israeli domestic politics are a total mess, but there is definitely a stronger and stronger faction that feels that way. And just thinking about it also, to bring it back to sort of the actual mission of the Flotilla, which is to deliver aid, and.... Well, it's twofold, right? It's to deliver aid and it's to break the siege and highlight the injustice--and not just injustice but absolute insanity--of the fox guarding the hen house here, so that all aid flowing...coming into Gaza has to be searched and is being monitored by Israel, and the sort of intentional, as I spoke to in the beginning, of the intentional famine that is being constructed there. And, you know, we saw in the news in March, that we were on the...we're at a tipping point of mass starvation. And that tipping point has been tipped. We are seeing unprecedented famine happening in Gaza. And I wanted to bring it back to that because I also want to just think a little bit about contextualizing what famine means. You know, I mentioned before that people often treat--like the media often treats this as a natural disaster or something or tries to paint it as a natural disaster--
**Inmn ** 29:53 Yeah, it "just happened"
**Maria ** 29:54 --as an intentional act of war and genocide. And I think that we have to frame it that way and we have to both make sure that aid is getting in immediately, and to recognize that this is political, that no matter how much money we send to the Red Cross, if aid isn't being allowed to cross isn't helpful, which is not to say don't donate. Donate. And donate, specifically, to Palestinian mutual aid funds, which are the most grassroots opportunities, the most direct way to get funding, and you can find that...I can direct you, at the end, towards different places to donate The Middle East Children's Alliance has been able to get a lot of aid directly in. There's also a lot of, there's a group called Bay to Gaza Mutual Aid, which has collected a bunch of on the ground places to help people in Gaza. So just to be clear, I'm not saying not to donate. You definitely should. And we have to recognize that without an end to this, to the siege and to the bombardment, and the occupation, aid can only go so far. And I think it's important to contextualize that, to remember that this isn't...this phenomena also isn't unique to Palestine, right, this ideathat the global media treats famine as somehow a "natural phenomenon," when in reality, it's politically constructed. It's not just for Palestine, It's true all over the world. And we're seeing that especially in..... I think you can't actually talk about Gaza right now without also talking about Darfur and Sudan and what's happening there. And I think even more than in Gaza, famine--the politically constructed famine--that affects Africa, and specifically, that affects Black people in Africa, is often treated as "inevitable," and "natural," when it is very much politically constructed. And what we're seeing in Sudan, and the genocide that is taking place in Sudan right now, and the famine that is gripping Sudan right now, is every bit as politically constructed, is every bit as entwined with resource wars with the UAE and Saudis, race for controlling natural gas and resources, and for having a monopoly over those things. And this is this genocide is being directly funded by the UAE, which the United States will not challenge because of our strategic alliances there. And the people being targeted by this genocide are overwhelmingly African agriculturalists who have continued to keep that land fertile and producing food when it is more within the interest of the imperialist powers, and particularly the UAE, to have the land become arid so that it can become extraction sites for minerals and fossil fuels. So all that to say, a big part of the goal of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla is to politicize famine itself, because it is political.
**Inmn ** 32:53 Yeah. Yeah, I know, it's hard to actually think of a famine, like a historical famine, that is actually not a political tool, or like an act of genocide. It's like we...when we...when we think of it, even like the word that we have, it's like when we think of famine, we think of there being a lack of something, we think of there being some kind of disaster that is just like, "Oh, the conditions just made it so that food couldn't be produced." And it's...it's never that. And, at least in English, like we don't really have a word for enacted famine that I can think of that isn't just genocide or that isn't just like purposeful starvation. It's like this entire language lacks a word for this tool that is used.
**Maria ** 33:51 Caloric warfare.
**Inmn ** 33:54 Yeah, um, I guess like kind of change tack a little bit, I feel like I'm using you as my filter for trying to learn about things on the internet and like running into so many weird like blocks that I'm like, I have no idea what's going on because the global media apparatus is horrible. But what.... I guess like what's going on with world government efforts to like get like food and aid into Gaza? Like I know there's been like a lot of back and forth with what like the UN is doing to get in food and it seems like that's not happening anymore?
**Inmn ** 34:40 Where was the pier being built? And, like, what, like there weren't other peirs?
**Maria ** 34:40 Right. I mean, one of the most bizarre things that's been happening that has been a lot of the efforts right now is airdrops. So people are like, "There's no way to get aid into Gaza. We have to literally drop it from the air," which is not only unhelpful, but has actually been dangerous and had has caused injury and the destruction of the aid being delivered and has been, shockingly, both ineffective and unsafe. Meanwhile, you could just cross the border, right? We shouldn't even have to be going in through the sea. There's not even.... Like we're going through the flotilla because we feel like that is our best chance of getting in. But there are... like, Egypt shares a border with Gaza. The Rafah crossing a should be open, and people should be able to bring in aid by land. And there's some aid that is crossing there. But as we've seen, to the extent that Israel will let anything in there, which has been very limited, there are settler...civilian--so-called civilians--although, they're not civilian, because they're armed to the teeth with AK--well not AK-47s but M-16s--actively blocking and looting and destroying trucks that are delivering aid to Gaza. I'm just like, can you even imagine? Like, could you imagine? It's hard like.... Like, what goes through your mind? What lives in your heart to destroy food, going to starving children? You know, I.... Whatever. But like, that's actively happening, you know. And so yeah, the airdrops have been a lot of like, you know, this whole US pier that I think I spoke to earlier that they're trying to construct this peir, they constructed this peir. It was pseudo operational for a minute. Now, it's non-operational, again, spending millions of dollars for this basically theater, when the US could, in a heartbeat stop sending aid to Israel and end this whole thing.
**Maria ** 36:45 Off the coast of Gaza. It's a floating pier. So yeah, it's whatever.... It's a floating pier off the coast of Gaza. No, it's...I mean, it's honestly, like it's a whole charade. To be honest. Like the United States could, tomorrow, stop this but they won't.
**Inmn ** 37:08 Yeah. And it's like the excuses are always these like strange logistical, bureaucratic excuses. Of like, "Oh, I don't know, the pier, the pier didn't work out. Or like, if only we could secure the border crossings, then aid could flow freely through." [Said sarcastically]
**Maria ** 37:29 Right, exactly. Which, you know, is a common thing that we see globally too. We see it in this country to some degree like the crisis at the US-Mexico border, which I believe you're at right now. Like, they treat it like..... They treat so much of the humanitarian crisis that's happening there as if it were an impossible problem to solve when it's a very similar situation. It's a intentionally constructed political crisis.
**Inmn ** 37:55 Yeah. And it's like, you know, there's a kind of, I guess, famous zine--or maybe people haven't read that one in a while because it's been a long time. But there's a scene called Designed To Kill, which is exactly how the US-Mexico border works. It's like the way that you hear government talk about it, they talk about it as if like, "Oh, we just can't do literally a single thing about it. We have billions of dollars, but we just can't solve this problem." And it's like--this is gonna sound weird--but it's like when you hear Border Patrol talk about like, like, "If only we could figure out how to stop people from coming in," which is not anything that I would ever want, but is what the government talks about. And it's like, you're not trying to do that. If you were trying to do that, it would be quite easy to do that. Like you have designed a system to funnel people in, to exploit them through private prisons, to psychologically terrify, and kill people.
**Maria ** 39:06 Absolutely.
**Inmn ** 39:06 It is a sick and twisted thing. It is a disaster of your own creation that you then LARP as being the humanitarian actors for, for like public image. Like Border Patrol has a.... Border Patrol has a search and rescue unit. They have like a helicopter that they tote around. [Affirmative sounds from Maria] Fucking absurd.
39:32 I know. I know. Yeah. I mean, I think that you know, I believe you were involved with No More Deaths at the US-Mexico border for a long time, and I think that there's a very similar principle as with the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, that the people who created this crisis are not going to be the ones to stop it. And if anyone's going to do something, it has to be us. We have to do something. Because, yeah, the colonizer isn't going to stop colonizing unless we do something about it.
**Inmn ** 40:03 No. And it's like we can't count on.... It's like, we.... Like a lot of people, I think have this, like this myth or hope or whatever that like, "Oh, well, if things ever get really weird, like the UN will step in," or something. And it's like the UN has proceeded to literally fucking nothing. Or it's like the...like, what is it? The I forget the acronym for that court, the UN court, the world....
**Inmn ** 40:31 Yeah. Yeah, the ICJ making rulings towards Israel about, "We want you to stop the genocide." And they're like, "Well, we're not going to do it." And it's like the ICJ does literally fucking nothing.
**Maria ** 40:31 The ICJ
40:47 I mean, I believe that ICJ is interesting. The ICJ did issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, which, as far as I can tell, only means that there's like, certain countries he maybe can't go to or like, if he loses this war, which inshallah, he will, that there could be potentially be consequences for him. But that really, like, you know, it's all about real politics. That really just depends on how the war itself goes, you know? Like the international arrest warrants issued in Nazi Germany only were meaningful because Germany lost the war. I just wanted to, I mentioned No More Deaths early and I realized that probably not all the listeners know what that is. So I just thought I'd say No More Deaths is mutual aid project at the US-Mexico border. Grassroots, mostly anarchist lead from what I understand, project. Once upon a time, at least.
**Inmn ** 41:45 Let's say anarchistic.
**Maria ** 41:48 There we go, there we go. That [NMD] provides mutual aid that both has like emergency medical care and food and also like hikes the desert searching for people who are lost and helping evacuate people who are in need and giving direct aid at the Border despite the Border Patrol's attempt to criminalize those efforts. Which I know a lot of our listeners have probably been involved in. I believe you were. I went out there for...a long time ago. I went out there to do that. But I do think that there's powerful mutual aid projects like that happening here in Turtle Island, too. So it's worth shouting them out.
**Inmn ** 42:29 Yeah, and it's like there's a lot of really interesting parallels between all of these mutual aid projects, and also the systems that create the need for them. Where, I don't know, there's so many Israeli defense contractors that got hired to build the virtual--like Elbit Systems got hired to build the virtual wall in the Border and it's like, the similar systems that get used in Palestine. And there's.... It's freaky. There's this, in Arizona, there's this company trying to build like a water pipeline from the Gulf of Mexico to Scottsdale or something. And it's the same Israeli company that builds pipelines through...or like distillation centers in Palestine.
43:28 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we see similar collaborations with Cop City in Atlanta. It's all, it's a global war machine. And we see it functioning exactly the way it's intended to function. But you know, we also have a power to be a cog in that machine. And I am weirdly optimistic a lot. I actually have a lot of faith that we can, you know, this machine can't operate without us, especially us here in the heart of Empire. Like this is in so many ways the veins of empire where so much of it is plotted and executed right here on Turtle Island. And we're uniquely positioned in a lot of ways to clog those arteries. We just have to find the courage and the confidence and the organization to make it happen. And I have so much faith in our ability to do that. Yeah, before, before we run out of time--I don't know if we're coming up on time or not. But I wanted to just also make sure that there's--and I mentioned this, but I just want to give it enough space that this crisis did not start in October. And it also didn't start with the siege of Gaza 18 years ago. This has been a crisis that has been exhibiting in its current form since 1948, since the creation of the State of Israel and the Nakba, which is the genocide of the Palestinian people in order to create the State of Israel and really for longer than that, since Zionist immigration began in the 1880s. And this crisis didn't start now and it's not going to stop when the bombs stop falling on Gaza. This crisis will not end until the settler, ethnic national...the settler, nationalist ethno state of Israel is dismantled. And really until the whole global system of settler colonialism--and all of the national states--are dismantled. But to look specifically at Palestine, like there is no...this is not over until Zionism is over. Zionism needs to be ended, and that the settler ethno state of Israel needs to be ended. And that until all Palestinians have a right to return to their homelands, until all Palestinians have a right to move freely in their homelands, until all Palestinians have a right to autonomy and self governance within their homelands. And by self-governments, I don't just mean to have a State, but to be able to have agency over their own lives and their own decisions. And until that, the struggle isn't over, and it can't be. And, you know, I think I'm actually very hopeful about this moment, I think that there is...that there is an incredible not, just an outpouring of support for the Palestinians, but incredible recognition of the state of global colonialism in the 21st century and its relationship to resource extraction and what we can do to stop it and I know that the Palestinian.... Like part of the reason that people around the world have responded to what's happening in Palestine the way they do is because this really resonates with so many indigenous people's struggles everywhere. Indigenous people all over the world see their struggle in the struggle with Palestinians and are rising up all over the world and it is very much a global struggle and very much that to free Palestine is in so many ways to free the world.
**Maria ** 43:28 Yeah, yeah. Um, I know that you're...you've been part of some...part of this larger project...movement...coalition? I don't know words. But are there...are there ways that people can plug into this? Like if someone's like, "Yo, I got a boat. I want to join the flotilla." Can they do that?
47:25 I don't know about a boat. Well, I mean, if you've got a big boat. These are big boats we're talking Yeah, these are these are big boats. But um, I would say in general, yes. So the website is freedomflotilla.org. You can also find it on all the social medias, but especially you can find it on you know, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram. Also, specifically for those in the so-called San Francisco Bay area, we have our Bay to Gaza contingent that is...we are currently growing and expanding and getting ready to sail, so you can follow us on Instagram @Bay2Gaza. We're also on TikTok and Twitter, and you can reach out to us there if you're interested in supporting or getting involved. My Instagram is @lchaimIntifada. You can also message me there. I check that a little bit more. And, yeah, reach out. We're definitely still recruiting. We don't know exactly when we're going to sail yet. But we need all types of support. And especially, you know, in a lot of ways, this is a media project. This is about shedding light on a phenomenon. So especially folks who have skills in media are very much needed right now. Both legacy media but also social media.
**Inmn ** 48:41 Yeah, yeah. Cool. Um, as we get...I guess, get to the end of time--our time, not the end of all time--are there any other things that you wanted to talk about? Any questions that I didn't ask you that you wanted to just touch on? I feel like I had 100 more questions that I will never remember until we stop the recording. And then I'll remember them.
49:11 Happy to keep talking after we stop the recording. But um, no. I mean, I think yeah, like I said, please, the best way to follow us is on social media. And please reach out if you are interested. And I would say other than that, taking the principle of the Flotilla, the principle that nobody is going to do this if we don't, and that we cannot depend on governments or higher powers to make change. We have to make it ourselves, and apply that to all of your organizing. Apply that to the ways, the strategic ways that you're thinking about challenging genocide and occupation and colonialism everywhere that you are, you know. I think that most of our organizing does need to be done at home where we live. And the message that I want people to take away, personally, from the Flotilla is that if we want change, we have to make it ourselves. And to use that framework, and I think...I think what that really is, is the framework of direct action, personally. I think that the word "direct action" has really lost its meaning. And a lot of activists spaces on Turtle Island in particular, people kind of think that direct action just means chaining yourself to something. And I am firmly of the belief that direct action means...it can mean three things. It can mean destroying something that needs to be destroyed, interfering with something that needs to be interfered with, and creating something that needs to be created. And you're doing it directly as opposed to protest, which is when you're asking power to do it for you. And I think there's a role for both. I think there's a role for protests and there's a role for direct action. But we should know what the difference is when we're framing our strategy, and encourage people to look to a framework of direct action and of destroying what needs to be destroyed, creating what needs to be created, and interfering with what needs to be interfered with. So I'd say that other than getting involved with the Flotilla, just holding those principles and all of our organizing,
**Inmn ** 51:05 Yeah. And, can I add a little suggestion to that?
**Maria ** 51:12 Please.
**Inmn ** 51:13 Also in the realm of when thinking about taking direct action, when thinking about protesting, like whenever, it's like making sure that these things that we're doing are community driven and not relying on, I don't know, political parties, or even nonprofits to guide us through taking action. Like, the only ways that we're going to make it through this is if we do it and can't wait for people with more power to just hand it over.
**Maria ** 51:55 Absolutely. And I think that's true on the micro sale scale of mutual aid, which is why we do mutual aid projects and it's also true on the macro scale of how this world will change. And, you know, to me, that's what anarchism is. So...
**Inmn ** 52:07 Yeah, well, thank you so much for coming on again. And yeah, listeners, if you want to hear more from Maria, then you can find her on social media or you can go and listen to the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness podcast and you can listen to us talk--honestly, a lot...mostly more about Gaza and the fuckery that is Zionism but through poetry and Maria's beautiful poetry collection, Escape Plan, which you can go check out on the Strangers in a Tangle Wilderness podcast.
52:47 And more about the West Bank, which I didn't get to talk about in this interview. And I'm realizing that was something I missed. But I do talk about that in the other one.
52:53 Do you wanna talk about it now?
**Maria ** 52:54 I don't want to add that as like a little side note, but I do just want to say that speaking of like distractions, while this genocide in Gaza has been taking place, Israel has been annexing land in the West Bank at an unprecedented rate, and that the violence, but also the land loss happening right now, is a crisis that needs to be confronted directly. I do talk about that more in the other podcast.
**Inmn ** 53:16 Yeah. Cool. Well, we'll see you next time. And I hope that....
**Maria ** 53:26 Free Palestine!
**Inmn ** 53:27 Great. Yes. Happen. Free Palestine. I got all the words. At least 10 of them.
**Inmn ** 53:40 Thank you so much for listening to Live Like the World is Dying. If you enjoy this podcast, then go do mutual aid. Break the siege of Gaza by any means necessary. But also, if you enjoyed this podcast and you want us to continue to put it on and do other cool stuff, then you can support the podcast and the best way to support the podcast is by talking about it. Tell people about it. If the people that you want to learn more about the weird myths, political myths, constructed to keep us not doing things, then tell them about Like Like the World is Dying. You can also support the show by supporting it financially. And you can do that by supporting our publisher Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. You can go to our website, tangledwilderness.org and find cool things like books and games and other stuff that we sell and make there. Or you can find us on Patreon and at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And yeah, you can get all sorts of fun things--we're gonna call them fun things--through the Patreon. You can get a zine mailed to you every month, like Maria's poetry collection--well, I guess you missed out on getting that one mailed to you, but you can get other future ones mailed to you-and also you can get us to thank or acknowledge things on your behalf. And we would like to thank these wonderful people and organizations. Thank you Reese, Jason, aiden, alium, Amber, Ephemeral, Appalachian Liberation Library, Portland's Hedron Hackerspace, Boldfield, E, Patoli, Eric, Buck, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, Ben Ben, anonymous, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, SJ, Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea. Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Micaiah. And a special shout out to one of our Patreon subscribers who told us that when they have more money, they're going to get the $20 a month tier so that they can get Hoss the dog another acknowledgement, we're just going to thank Hoss the dog like 20 times. Thank you, Hoss the dog. [Chanting] Hoss the Dog, Hoss the dog, Hoss the dog, Hoss the dog, Hoss the dog times 20. Times a million. Thanks all of y'all. Maria, is there anyone you would like to thank in particular today?
**Inmn ** 56:34 Oh, I wasn't ready for that question. I'm sorry. That's fine. The people of Palestine, the Palestinian resistance.
**Inmn ** 56:44 Hell yeah. Thanks for all and we'll see you next time.
freedomflotilla.org, palsolidarity.org, and ijan.org
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret and Inmn talk about all the stuff that happened in the last month that was in no way concerning. From a collapsing climate to crumbling supply lines to the ongoing attacks on abortion access, the apocalypse is here, it's just not equally distributed.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Transcript
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Spencer and Inmn continue to talk about bikes, how to go about planning a bike packing trip, and the usefulness of bikes in preparedness scenarios.
Spencer can be found on IG @spencerjharding or at www.spencerjharding.com
You can find cool bike resources at bikepacking.com, Gravelmap.com, Theradavist.com, RidewithGPS.com, and Bikepackingroots.com
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Spencer on Bike Packing Pt. II
**Inmn ** 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today, Inmn Neruin, and today we're gonna be talking more about bikes. Bikes, bikes, bikes, like it's a.... like it's 2005 and we're listening to Defiance, Ohio for the first time. Bikes, bikes, bikes, bikes, bikes. [Spencer laughing in background] And it's part two of a two part episode of about bike packing. So if you didn't listen to part one, you might miss some things, which is mostly about some stuff about gear, some stuff about bike travel and what the scope of it is, and some other content that you may or may not have context for. But first, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on that network. Doo, doo, doo doo [singing a simple melody]
**Inmn ** 02:06 And we're back. Thanks so much for coming back on the show, definitely a week later and not twenty minutes later. Could your re-introduce yourself with your name, pronouns, and just a little bit about what you do in the world?
**Spencer ** 02:26 My name is Spencer Harding. My pronouns are he/him/his. I work in various bicycle related things. My current day job is photographer writer, occasional editor at a website called theradivist.com. We do a lot of cycle related content. I have worked as a bicycle mechanic. I've worked as a bicycle tour guide. I have worked in bike co-ops, I've done a whole lot of shit bikes is the jist of all of that.
**Inmn ** 03:00 Yeah, cool. Cool. Well, we're just gonna...we're just gonna kind of jump right back into it from last week. So before we kind of get into the nitty gritty about how to plan a bike trip--you know, we've talked about gear for a little bit--let's just Let's start off with some good, like good feel heady stuff. Spencer, why is traveling by bike a cool idea?
**Spencer ** 03:31 A cool idea? [uestioning the question]
**Inmn ** 03:33 Or good idea. A fun idea? Is fun, or is it...Is it harrowing? Is it both?
**Spencer ** 03:40 Yes. There's always going to be a chance for all of that to happen. The big picture reason why I like biking as a means of travel is that it strikes a really good balance between walking or hiking. And traveling by vehicle, like train or bus or plane, you miss so much because you're really cut off from the world. And you're usually traveling at speeds that are hard to really digest what's around you. Whereas a bike, you're typically somewhere between three miles an hour and like 20mph. Unless you're real fast or going down a big old hill. So I feel that biking affords more of that connection and really seeing and absorbing your surroundings. Whereas I feel that walking is almost too in the weeds of that sometimes, and they just really want to get somewhere, in a way that cycling allows you to really, when you need to, you can really cover a great amount of distance in a effective amount of time and energy without having to resort to a motor vehicle or a large public form of transportation.
**Inmn ** 05:01 Yeah, yeah, I've always been really blown away by really how quickly someone can travel on a bicycle. It's like, you know, like, when me and Marie did our bike tour across the country, it took us two months to ride from Oregon to Boston, you know. And, you know, we were hauling it, we were riding like 80 to 100 miles a day.
**Spencer ** 05:26 That's fast!
**Inmn ** 05:28 Which is even more ridiculous because we absolutely had like 60 pounds of gear each, you know. And, but then meeting other people who were the really lightweight credit card tourer who rode from LA to Boston in 22 days or something. And I was like, "What?!" It was utterly incomprehensible.
**Spencer ** 06:00 And I'm going to tell you that I know people who have written from Banff, Canada to the Mexican border almost entirely off road in 16 days without any support, carrying all have their own gear.
**Inmn ** 06:13 Oh my God. Yeah. Okay.
**Spencer ** 06:17 So the scale of human capacity to move themselves and whatever they need by bike is incredible, whether that's like.... that's the upper echelons of endurance and athleticism, but in that same vein, it's bonkers, what is truly possible. But for people like you who are maybe doing less than 100 or like 20 to 30 miles a day, like that's super accessible for a lot of people.
**Inmn ** 06:47 Yeah, yeah. And actually, that's kind of where I want to start today's conversation is around like...it's kind of about preparation, but it's in the realm of...so, if I'm someone who doesn't have a whole lot of experience biking and I want to go on a trip like this, like, how do I...like I want to go ride my bike around for a month, you know, whether that's all on pavement or on gravel. How do I prepare for that? Like, if I don't have a regular workout routine or something like that? Like, what is that going to be like for me?
**Spencer ** 07:34 So are we talking about like, fitness here, then?
**Inmn ** 07:39 Um, I think like, yeah. I'm talking about kind of like bodily preparation, where it's like, I want to go ride my bike a long distance. I've never done that. What is that...what is that going to be like? And are there ways that I can kind of, I don't know, like train, I guess prepare? Do I have to? Will my body just like, do it on the trip?
**Spencer ** 08:04 Bodies are really good at adapting to things. And I've always felt the first week or so of bike tour, everything's gonna hurt a little bit. Like, obviously, there's a lot of muscles involved. Especially in your legs and your ass and your sit bones. Your sit bones are going to be a focal point of something that's going to be hurting and have a lot of pressure and possibly a lot of discomfort. So I think training...training is a poor word to describe what I think is necessary for bike touring. I think it's more of a conditioning. Like if you ride your bike to work or you ride your bike to the grocery store or like just to go run errands or like once a week with your friends like that's bike touring conditioning. It's just how much time have you spent in the saddle? And if you spent zero time in the saddle, something's gonna hurt. And this goes back to the first thing we talked about with gear selection was "Does your bike fit you?" Like, in a multitude of ways. And is it comfortable? And if you ride your bike a little bit, you're probably going to know if your bikes comfortable or not. Or maybe you don't. And sometimes you won't feel how you body's gonna hurt if you ride less than 40 miles. And sometimes those long days, things break down, skin gets tender, chafing happens, and that's totally different for every single person. I know people who ride like the smallest tiniest, hardest seats, and their sit bones are great. And I've got wild--not wild--wide childbearing hips personally, so I need to ride very wide saddles to keep my sit bones happy. And it's your hands, your handlebars, your grips. I was talking to someone recently and they were like, "My hands hurt when I run my bikes," and they had a bunch of old cloth tape that was reused from like four bikes ago. And I was like, "Well, you might need some actual handlebar grips. And this might help with the vibration." So I don't want to get too in the weeds of that, but your hands are gonna hurt, your butt's gonna hurt, your legs are going to be sore from pedaling. And that's...these are all things that are going to happen. And as you ride and travel for multiple days, adjusting your bike, adjusting how you sit on your bike, and adjusting the times and the distances that you ride is all a part of figuring out how bike tour looks for you.
**Inmn ** 10:33 Yeah, I remember in...it was the first two weeks of bike tour, were hell. Like, everything hurt. And like, I thought my knees were gonna explode. And like, I'd never written more than 40 miles in a day. And I remember being like, "I might have to give up." And then I made just a micro adjustment in how high my seat post was, like half an inch or something, you know? And the next day my knee pain just like disappeared.
**Spencer ** 11:15 So if you're privileged enough to have access to somewhere in your...where you live, that does bike fittings, a lot of times--we're talking real small increments--make huge differences as far as bike fit and comfort. And I'll be riding with a lot of my friends. And I'm not a professional bike fitter. I don't make any claim to be, but I've generally been around bikes long enough that I feel like I can be like, "Hey, what if you tried this?" And like, go over and adjust their handlebars. And then like, a week later, they're like, "Oh, yeah!" So, that's a hard thing to figure out. I feel like 15 years into bike touring, I'm now...I just got my sit bones measured for the first time two months ago to know exactly what saddle I should be riding besides anecdotally trying a bunch of them. A lot of it is trial and error. You're gonna have to ride your bike and see where it hurts, and then what do I do about that? And talk to your bike nerd friends or go to a bike shop that you trust and ask them what they think. They probably have some ideas. Or there's a wealth of knowledge. The internet's probably the worst place to go for a lot of that information.
**Inmn ** 12:21 Oh no.
**Spencer ** 12:21 I'd go to someone you actually know or someone who can see you. Because there's always somebody with a hot take on the internet about bike stuff, especially fitting or what's the best bike saddle or bike for dah, dah dah. And they're probably wrong, or they don't know your conditions. So go talk to someone you trust.
**Inmn ** 12:40 Yeah. Is it kind of.... And I feel like this is kind of something that I have seen as a trend that I see a lot on things that we talk to about people like on this show where it's like, there's these activities that seem really intimidating--and like maybe rightfully so--but it's like, I don't know...like your bike tour doesn't have to look like other people's bike tour. Or your setup doesn't have to look like other people's set up. You can adjust it for what you can and feel comfortable doing. Question mark. I'm asking a horribly leading question that I feel like I know the answer to but....
**Spencer ** 13:18 And this ties in with, "Don't ask the internet," because you're gonna line up with a Surly Longhaul Trucker and a bunch of gear that's probably not right for what you actually want to do. It's a good place to start or to maybe to ask more fine-tuned questions. What I always tell people, like if you have a bike shop in town, go to that bike shop--if you feel comfortable, and the people that you're talking to don't belittle you or like make you feel uncomfortable--go there and ask them a genuine question. They probably will help you in a genuine way. Or if you have a friend that's in the bike touring, ask them what they use. Maybe you can borrow gear. Because everyone...like if you look on the internet, there's such a plethora of sizes and different bikes and styles of bikes and styles of packing gear. It's just...I wouldn't even know where to start now. You know? Like, there's a bunch of websites. So I work for The Radavist. Of course, bikepacking.com is a great resource for reviews and gear. And they have...we both do long lists of like, "Here's a great bike for under 2k" or "All these bags" and dah, dah, dah. Bikegeardatabase.com is a great one as well. So there are a lot of things. And even Adventure Cycling does reviews as well. There's a plethora of stuff out there, but it's overwhelming. So you probably know a bike nerd in your life. And if you don't, go to a bike shop and find one because they're gonna at least pare things down, hopefully, for you to something that's hopefully more digestible.
**Inmn ** 14:44 Yeah, yeah. And it's funny to hear numbers like that get thrown out, which is my next question. How much does it cost to get to...like, I want to go on bike tour. I know my bike is like probably not the best condition. How much is it going to cost me to like, get on the road?
**Spencer ** 15:09 That is a very broad answer.
**Inmn ** 15:14 I'm sure. I'm sure.
**Spencer ** 15:14 So we talked about this last time a little bit as well, like, yeah, you can ride on any bike. I welded a tall bike out of a bike I pulled out of a trash pile and a bunch of conduit from Home Depot. And I strapped a bunch of shit to it. And that didn't cost very much money, you know? You're talking about hundreds of dollars, maybe. If you're not familiar with the network of bike co-ops that are in a lot of cities all over the world, so bike cooperatives are run collectively--usually--they get some kind of city funding or they're just donation based, but they're...imagine a little bike shop, and they're there to help you fix your bike. They usually allow you to do work trade. So if you can't pay or afford to, you can come in. They'll help you work on your bike, and you volunteer for a few hours and you pay off the debt. They have used parts. They have people who know what they're talking about and can help you with those fitment questions, with a gear question like "Why does my bike not shift? Why does the saddle hurt?" And these are your very like lowest bar to entry ways that you can get access to people who know about bikes and possibly gear--or recommendations on those things--or even get a bike to start with. A lot of them will refurbished bikes or they have a build-a-bike program where you go through the whole process of, "Here's a frame and here's a bucket of parts. We're going to spend two months and we're going to build this into a working bike. And you're going to learn how to do everything along the way." And there's a lot of value in that. And I'm sure we're going to talk about preparedness later, but knowing how every part of your bike fits together is kind of the baseline. So you're probably looking--I used to always joke and I probably need to adjust this number for inflation--but "there's no good bike under $300" was kind of the old adage. Either you get a bike for like $200 and you're gonna spend $100 on parts. Or you get a $300 bike that's ready to roll. Depending on what you're looking to do, that can be very true. And if you buy a custom touring bike, you can be easily in the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars, because the bike world is absolutely bonkers at the high-end.
**Spencer ** 17:28 Does that answer that adequately?
**Inmn ** 17:31 Yes, that absolutely does.
**Spencer ** 17:33 Let's put the bar at drag a bike out of the trash to take to the bike co-op and there's your free bike. So let's say $20 to $20,000 is a good range.
**Inmn ** 17:44 Cool, cool, cool. Ya, it's helpful to have a range of, you know, like a range of prices where it's like.... Because it's like, when I go...when I was trying to do research about like how to...like, a bike or something to use for touring, it was like, I went on and I was like, "Do I? Wait, do I have to spend three grand to get on the road?" And I was like, "Surely no. That's ridiculous." And like, yeah, there were things that sucked about it. But I took an old steel frame and put some mountain bike parts on it that I got at the bike co-op. And then a big thing that I did run into was wheels, where I was like, I think I need stronger wheels than I can find that the bike co-op for free. Or like for 10 bucks, you know? But buying new wheels was way unaffordable for me, for how strong they needed to be. And so I ended up building wheels. I just like built wheels from rims that I got at the bike co-op and some spokes that I bought. And it worked. [Said in a way that makes it seem like it didn't work] My rear wheel at the end of the trip, literally, was ripping itself apart.
**Spencer ** 19:09 Yep. I've seen that happen. That probably didn't have to do with your building, though. I mean, sometime you put that much weight on a rim for 3000 miles it just starts to [makes breaking sound].
**Inmn ** 19:29 Yeah, just starts to rip itself apart. Um, but yeah. Golly, wait, sorry. What was my next question? Okay, so how.... If someone wanted to plan a trip, like they're planning their first bike tour, regardless of where that is, whether it's on pavement or bikepacking. Like what...how...how do you start to go about planning. For people who aren't maybe more comfortable with the idea of just hopping on their bike and seeing what happens?
**Spencer ** 20:07 Yeah. A fun story. When I did that tall bike tour, I saw a photo of Glacier National Park. And I was like, "You know what? That looks cool. I've never seen those mounds before. "And I literally went like Portland, Oregon to Glacier National Park and Yellowstone. Google Maps, where do I go? Which I think was a poor decision because it just took me on highways. So at a baseline, Google Maps has bike directions, and that will incorporate bicycle infrastructure depending on where you're going. If you're looking to do a long distance route, if you're in the United States, Adventure Cycling Association, based in Missoula, they have a whole network. They're all mapped out. They've got all kinds of resources. They're well established routes all over the country. It's great because people will know what you're doing along the way. There's usually expectations of camping. Those things are mapped out. You can have a very reasonable amount of time or like mileage per day that set out for you that's reasonable, that will get you to resupplies. So Google Maps is your base. Adventure Cycling is a great second stop. If you're looking to do more off road routes, bikepacking.com has a bunch of maps. They have a whole map of the entire world of established routes with route guides. Gravel Maps has a bunch of stuff. A lot of these will wind up using a program called--and a website--called Ride With GPS--which is basically a mapping software--to do day rides or long tours, there's a ton of resources. Searching anything on Ride With GPS is an absolute nightmare. So it's usually a place you wind up once you've found a route you're interested in. The mapping works really great. And that's a great resource. Strava has something similar. They also...Ride With GPS and Strava have heat maps. So if you're looking in an area and you're like, "Well, where do people ride here?" you can look at those maps and it will show you a median of all the accumulated routes that have been ridden. So you'll see where places that are more popular for riding, and like, "Oh, I can write here because it looks like people have already ridden here." So those are good. Those are good resources. Sorry, dogs barking in the background. But yeah, there's there's a lot of long distance routes that have been around for 30-40 years, like the TransAm, Pacific Coast route, Tour Divide, which we talked about. So I'd be remiss if I didn't shout out Bikepacking Routes. They're a small nonprofit creating its own database of routes very similar to what Adventure Cycling was doing 30 years ago, but they're focusing on single-track and off road. I'm actually lucky to be a regional steward for them--or I don't know what the word is for it anymore. I manage route down near Tucson, Arizona for them that's on their map. They have a bunch of routes that cross the country north to south, east to west, lots of connectors, and all that stuff. So Bikepacking Routes is also a really good resource for off-road route specifically.
**Inmn ** 23:20 Okay, cool. Cool, cool, cool. Um, this is like a funny kind of thread to move into--or no it just makes sense. So we've talked about how to get started, we've talked about kind of the vagaries of what gear you need, how to start planning a route, and now, it's kind of a big question, I guess, but this seems perfect and wonderful but what are what are the limitations of bike travel? It seems like there aren't any. I can ride my bike over...like across the sun with the right tires it seems like. [Both laughing]
**Spencer ** 24:03 If you buy the $3,000 bike, you can actually ride on the surface of the sun, my dude. Yeah, so whatever...whatever marketing tells you is 100% real and you can do it ever you want. [Sarcastic. Switches to earnes in the next sentence] So limitations are going to be your capability. So that might be fitness or any disabilities. I can be in your bike. And that can be in various gear choices that you make, depending on how little or much you pack, what your gear range is, what your tire size is. But those limitations are things that can be built around. I mean, inherently your body and the amount of food you can consume and the lack of sleep you can deal with will dictate how far you can ride a bike in any amount of time. And those limitations can be vastly different for everyone. But typically speaking, I feel like a normal human can ride 20 to 60 miles in a day, depending on elevation. And then on most surfaces. So like fire roads are pretty common. Paved roads are obviously incredibly common. Single-track makes things more complicated too. But those are going to be--
**Inmn ** 25:31 What is single-track?
**Spencer ** 25:33 So, think of hiking trails. So like the width of your body. Double track you'd think car tires are gonna make the road. If you've seen on off-road stuff, that's what usually we call a double-track. Single-track would be a hiking trail. So just the width of your foot, kind of like your shoulder width. Pardon the jargon.
**Inmn ** 25:56 No worries.
**Spencer ** 26:01 So your limitations are gonna be set by the decisions you make in your route choice and your gear choice and your bike choice and then in how prepared you choose to be or what kind of fitness you need to be in for whatever you're setting out to do.
**Inmn ** 26:24 Cool. Um, what are...what are things that can happen on any kind of trip that people should be prepared for? Like, do I have to be like a master mechanic to go on a bike tour? Like if something goes wrong with my bike like, what...what are big, common things that people should kind of be prepared for, either in route planning going wrong or your bike having bike problems, or, etc...?
**Spencer ** 26:59 So as far as route or any of these things, you always need to be flexible, I think, is the most important part. Like things are gonna go wrong. Something is going to break. You are probably going to break. And it's going to be in how you deal with that and--not break--but you're going to get tired or maybe you fall down and scrape yourself or cut yourself. These are all things that happen when we're doing any activities or are the usual risks. So flexibility and being able to adjust your plans or not be rigid in those things. The cool thing about bikes that I really love is if you get one of those little multi-tools at wherever, there's going to be an array of hex Allen's [wrenches] from 2 millimeters to typically 8 millimeters. And those alone and maybe a Phillips screwdriver, so we're talking a multi-tool that probably has that as well, that's 90% of bike maintenance right there in those tools, which is pretty sweet.
**Inmn ** 28:01 Yeah, I was surprised by.... When I went on my last bike tour I got one of those bike specific multi-tools from REI or something, you know. And it was like 50 bucks or something. And it had a passable version of almost any bike tool that I've ever used, you know? I couldn't like take my pedals off or do bottom bracket work, but like almost every other tool that I needed was on it.
**Spencer ** 28:39 And this is what we're talking about with bike co-ops, if you don't know how to fix your bike or how your bike is put together, take your whole fucking bike apart andput it back together with the multi-tool. And then you know. Or figure out what you can take off with the multi-tool and then put it all back on. And then you're gonna know like, okay, if this breaks or this falls off, I know how to put it back on. And that's a little bit like hyperbolic. But I think knowing that...if you take a class on basic maintenance at a bike shop or at the local bike co-op, they're going to teach you a lot of things you can do mostly with a multi-tool on the side of the road, which is super accessible. You're not...if you go to a bike shop, there's like that last 5% of tools that cost like thousands of dollars and they're in a drawer. They get used like once a month and they're terrifying. And most bikes are never going to need to use those tools out in the wild. You know? But, never say never. So, most bike maintenance is just adjusting bolts, and there's usually going to be one of those hex sizes that's on a bicycle specific multi-tool. Or you just go get a set of L Allen keys at Walmart or Home Depot. Hell, Home Depot has them for free sometimes if you just, you know, walk out. But the biggest thing that's a concern is tires and, if you're using them, tubes.
**Spencer ** 29:12 Should you not use tubes? Convince me.
**Spencer ** 30:16 We're going to talk about the fact that tubes don't exist nearly as much as people think they do anymore. Yeah, it's a crazy thing. So first of all, let's talk about it. So you have your bike rim. So, the wheel consists of a hub, has all the spokes that hold the rim to the hub, and then on that rim, you're gonna put a tire. And the tire usually has a tube inside of it that actually holds the air and gives you the squishy loveliness that makes riding bikes a pleasurable experience. But there's lots of thorny things and nails and glass on roads and services that are trying to make that thing not hold air anymore. So the biggest skill I've known people to want to have for bike touring is being able to fix a flat tire. So that typically involves removing your tire, removing the tube, using a glue and patch that are available at any bike shop you have ever been to for like two bucks. You get like eight patches. So you can really extend the life of your tubes that way. It's not a fun process. You have to take your, usually, like take your whole wheel off. If you use tire levers, which are its own specific tool that you definitely have in your kit in addition to that bike specific multi-tool. Sometimes you can do it with your thumbs if you've got like rock climber strength, but you're probably going to scream and yell and curse at somebody trying to get a tire on or off at some point in your life. And that's okay. We've all been there. So once you patch at tube, you put it back in and you pump it back up. Bike pump is going to be something you're going to want to have. They make all of those little bike specific things in all kinds of sizes. I've seen people biking with like your floor pumps at home just like bungeed recklessly on the back of their bikes. They got tired of the tiny pumps they were carrying.
**Inmn ** 32:03 Wow. Relatable.
**Spencer ** 32:05 But, it's 2024. The tubeless revolution is here. It's been here for a long time. If you buy a new bicycle, you know, if you're getting into a $1,000 bike. If you're buying a lower-end bike, you might still be using tubes. Anything like more modern, getting slightly more higher-end, we're going to be running what's called "tubeless." So it's kind of like a car tire. So the rims and the tires are designed differently to mesh and interact with each other the way a car tire interacts with a car rim. Just pump it up. It makes a big scary noise and it pops in and locks the beat of the tire to the rim. Cool thing about bikes that you can't do on cars is you can fill it with a latex sealant.
**Inmn ** 32:58 The goo. Insert the good.
**Spencer ** 33:01 Yes, you inserting the goo into the tire. So with cars, rpms that care tires are at, you can't have anything in there that's sealed in for a long time because it affects the weight of the wheel too much, due the little revolutions in momentum. Bike wheels, for the most part, don't move that fast where it's noticeable. So they've develope latex sealant or goo, or goop. It's kind of like slime. You can get slime at Walmart that like works for like bike tires. That stuff sucks. It works in a pinch. There's better stuff we have nowadays, but basically what.... So the inside of your tire, it's just air at this point. There's no tube. You put the latex sealant in there. It stays liquid for a certain amount of time depending on climate. a,nd which brand you get. There's all kinds of different things. But basically ammonia, latex, and some kind of like glitter or rubbery compound. So what happens is if you've got a flat with a bike with a tube and a tire, the nail is going to go through the tire and then it's going to pierce the tube. The tube is going to go flat. You have to pull the whole tube out, patch the tube, put it back in. Hopefully it holds. With tubeless, depending on puncture size and a bunch of factors, nail goes in. You pull it out. You should have some liquid sealant in there. You move that puncture points to the low end so there's like a pool of that sealant. The latex sealant when it gets supposed to air kind of goopifies. And it will typically clogg most small to medium punctures without you having to do anything.
**Inmn ** 34:48 I mean you have to pull the thing out but...
**Spencer ** 34:50 You have to pull the thing out, but if it's in there, you can just leave it in there if it's not hurting anything.
**Inmn ** 34:54 I see.
**Spencer ** 34:57 A bunch of plug kits you can get as well. It's similar to like plugging a car tire. Those are like big things that look like strips of bacon that you like plunge in. And there's a whole host of stuff for that. But basically, you get.... This could be... Okay, tire choice. So there are tires that are more durable and there are tires that are less durable. And that's going to be how thick they are in various parts and how much sidewall protection they have. If you get a more durable tire for bike touring, it's going to last longer, it's going to be more puncture resistant, and it's going to do better once it's punctured to possibly seal that puncture. If it's a thicker tire with that sealant. If it's a really thin flimsy tire that's lightweight, it's probably going to get punctured or torn easier and it's going to be harder to repair.
**Inmn ** 35:52 I feel like this is the area that I kind of skimped on when I was on bike tour and I've never regretted it more. I changed.... I changed close to like, probably 60 flats in the course of two months. And so the really annoying part that you don't quite realize is, in a lot of cases, you have to completely unload your bike in order to fix a flat.
**Spencer ** 36:26 That's another part too. So, think about that in your baggage concerns, if he could lift your bike or get it off the ground and.... So tubeless is awesome until it's not.
**Spencer ** 36:37 So what goes wrong is either the hole is too big and you're just, all of a sudden you're riding, and you feel this faint white goo all over. It's usually kind of a milky consistency. It's sticky. You're like, "Oh shit, my tires, spuing sealant. I have a hole." Hopefully it fixes. Sometimes the puncture is just too big and it's like a tear. In that case, you can get your real crust punk skills out and you get the floss out and you can sew your tire back together so you can close that. And that does work. There's a lot of things you can do and hopefully it seals. But when it doesn't work or like your tire is too bad. So in order to get a tubeless tire onto a rim, like setup, you have to use an air compressor. It punches the tire on with a lot of pressure all at once. Depending on the tire-rim combo that can be very hard if not impossible to do with a small hand pump. So if you do get a flat and you ride and then that like kind of seal along the edge of the rim where the tire is seated to them breaks, that can be a really hard thing to get back if you're in the middle of nowhere. Co2 cartridges are good for this. They can pump a lot of air in. Sometimes that works. So that can be like a big kneecap of tubeless systems, a big puncture or you lose the seal on the bead. The cool thing about it is--but it's gross--is you can just carry a bike tube and you can then put a bike tube inside. It'll be covered in white goop. But as a failsafe, you can almost always still use tubes. So a lot of people do still carry tubes as an emergency if they have a tubeless system. There's also really cool new.... Oh, what are they made of? God I have one. I just gave one to my friend. They make these new tubes. They're not butyl rubber, there's something...some other kinds of new magical material, but they're like a quarter the size. They're like this big folded up. It's awesome. Sorry you can't see what I'm saying. They're like a third of the size of a regular bike tubes and they supposedly last better. I'm signaling the Inmn over video chat, which none of y'all are gonna see. So there's...that's always your failsafe is a tube, basically, if you have tubeless. Tubless is awesome if you live anywhere sharp and spiky like the desert or you do a lot of commuting with glass and shit like that, tubeless is hands down the way to be if you can. Learn how to use it. learn how to fix it the same way you would learn how to fix a tube if you had it. Just so you know what you need. But 99% of time, it's awesome and that 1% of time it goes terribly awry, but that's pretty good odds.
**Inmn ** 36:37 I see.
**Inmn ** 39:33 That is that is pretty good odds. I feel like I'm really interested in this from the perspective of like convincing myself to go tubeless.
**Spencer ** 39:50 Inmn, I have a whole bike shed. Come over. We'll get we'll get you set up.
**Inmn ** 39:53 Okay, okay. I do hate changing tires.
**Spencer ** 39:56 You live in the desert. You should.... you deserve tubeless. You deserve to never fix a tube again after those 60 on that tour. You just don't need to.
**Inmn ** 40:06 Never. Never again. To kind of switch gears a little bit. A pun, weirdly unintended. I'm, wondering how bikes as opposed to other forms of transportation can fit into different preparedness models for, you know, anything that we might be encountering, either a change in...a drastic change in our world like, thinking about a post-industrial world or a post-car world-and not like post-car in the Green Revolution way. I'm talking about like post-car in that like we live in a furtherly apocalyptic hell world. But also just, you know, in disasters and like needing to disappear for a few days. Like how do/do bikes fit into preparedness models?
**Spencer ** 41:11 I mean, we're looking at a bike and we're seeing the most sustainable, accessible means of transport...like self-propelled transportation that's ever existed as far as I can think of. So it only requires you to be on it and pedaling it. So you need to have like water and food to propel yourself. And it can fit between...like you can ride anything from single-track to a road. So any kind of surface that it needs to be. If there's stairs, put your bike on your shoulder, if there's a steep hill, you can walk up it. If there's a fence or a barricade, pick your bike up, put if on the side and hop over. You're not encumbered by things like traffic, typically. You can get between cars, if there's a big line of cars, if everyone's trying to go the same direction, and there's a traffic jam like or there's an accident or there's a chasm. Like, all of those things, the accessibility and the means, the way you can just get on a bike, or pick it up and move it and carry it entirely under your own power, I think is an incredible tool for preparedness. And if you understand how to then attach things that bike in a way that makes it accessible for you to carry things distances, I think that's an incredibly useful tool to have in your back pocket. If you have some of those bags or you have those kitty litter panniers that you used 10 years ago and you have them in your closet. Like gas.... I mean we saw during COVID like gas, people got scared and they hoarded gasoline. And like all of a sudden, you can't drive your car. But you can ride your bike.
**Inmn ** 42:52 Yeah, I feel like in a post-industrial world gas is gonna like instantly become unavailable.
**Spencer ** 43:03 Yeah, and just you see how quickly like... I mean, if we listened to like It Could Happen Here, the first season, like talking about how quickly supply chains can go awry. And especially in regards like oil and gas and things like that. Like, it doesn't take much to disrupt those kinds of...those systems in place. And all of a sudden, there's an incredible scarcity in just a few days. And then your mobility is pretty limited if you've only relied on cars or something or walking, you know? You could double, triple, quadruple the distance, you could easily walk in a day on a bicycle while expending the same, if not less, energy and moving more things with you at the same time.
**Inmn ** 43:48 Yeah, people have some pretty wild...like I've seen some like pretty wild bike trailer setups for things that people are somehow bringing long distance. And this is, you know, this is on pavement for the most part, but like, I don't know, yeah, I've seen some wacky bike trailers.
**Spencer ** 44:05 Wacky bike trailers, like bakfiets, like front loading cargo bikes are really popular all over the place. You know, we're catching up that here. There's so many ways. Like I have this cool little bike that I ride every day. It's got a tiny front wheel and then the rack is built in. I've got just a milk crate on it. But I can put a whole ass human on there or like 100 pounds of groceries or whatever and then still put two massive panniers in back and put a frame bag on it. I can easily probably move 200 pounds of stuff on that and that's like an old bike I got from a bike co-op with like a $300 fork that my friends company makes and a milk crate. And the ability to move things with cargo bikes, especially designed for those loads, is truly the car replacing in many, if not all, situations.
**Inmn ** 44:57 Yeah, yeah. And it's like, especially those cargo bikes where it's like.... I remember.... golly, this was a long time ago. It's like when I lived in Boston, there was some organization, their whole thing was like bringing...it was called like Bikes to Rwanda or something and it was like raising money to like build and buy cargo bikes for coffee farmers to be able to transport like hundreds of pounds of coffee across like some pretty shitty terrain in a very short time period. And I was like...it was the first time I'd ever heard of or considered that a bike like that existed, and it blew my mind.
**Spencer ** 45:44 Yeah. And there's tons of those. And you could...you could also, we're talking about welding a tall bike, like you could weld a cargo bike, you know, out of old trash and old bikes? I think one thing that's interesting to talk about too, can we go solar punk? Like can we talk about electric bikes?
**Inmn ** 46:01 Yeah, let's do it.
**Spencer ** 46:03 I mean, literally, you could get like a single 100 watt solar panel, controller, and like a battery...if you have any kind of small off the grid solar system with an inverter, you could have an ebike. And that can, in theory, like, you could power that. I'm not good on the math, but this is something I've wanted to do for my own personal things. Like, you can get conversion kits for bikes. You don't have to buy a brand new ebike. You can just get the motor that bolts on your bike, and there's a various amounts of that. But having a small solar generator or a small solar system could easily power or like charge an electric bike, and that changes your range and capacity into the hundreds of pounds or, you know, 60 to 80 miles quickly and efficiently in a way that's renewable and rechargeable without having to be on the grid or even consider having to like....Yeah, I mean, batteries do...lithium-ion batteries do wear out, they don't charge as much. Like, they don't last forever. There are limitations to this. But I think that's a pretty cool thing. We're seeing a huge influx of technology and development in e-bikes, especially the e-cargo bikes. And thinking about like, "Oh, if I had some kind of solar or some kind of battery backup, wind, water, whatever you got, and combine that with an electric bicycle can really extend that range and that capability and speed, you know?
**Inmn ** 47:33 Is that like...is that something.... Like...could you take an ebike.... Like, we'll I've never thought about this, could you take an e-bike or electric bike on a long distance bike tour with a portable solar panel? Depending on where you are?
**Spencer ** 47:55 I don't think it would work that way. I'm talking about in a preparedness situation. I think that would depend on.... I think for the amount of stuff you would have to carry to actually do it, I don't think you could be like riding and have enough solar panels to charge a bike while it's ridng.
**Inmn ** 48:13 Well, not like while it's riding but, you know, ride a day, charge a day. Like, how small is the solar setup that is doing this?
**Spencer ** 48:24 Probably not that small. If you had a trailer, I bet you could do something there. So this is.... So, for e-bikes for touring, this is where it gets hard because a lot of the battery, a lot of the power is going to be moving the battery and the motor, which are quite heavy. The more batteries you need to have a longer range, the more like motor you need to have. And then that kind of snowballs in a way that I don't think is efficient for bicycle travel. I think I'm more thinking of like a preparedness situation where you're settled a little bit. But if you can get between power sources or something like that, you can get 60 miles before you charge your e-bike, you can do that, and carry more weight in a more expeditious time and then charge for a few hours and keep going. We are seeing people doing e-bike touring. It's more popular in Europe because things are a little closer together. I was thinking more of preparedness. But, yeah, touring it's.... There's a lot of concerns. But as far as I know, I haven't seen anyone dragging a solar system with them to recharge their bike in any kind of timely manner. Because we're talking, most of the batteries are pretty huge. Not impossible. But, you know, like, at what point does the solar system outweigh the the range It's limiting you from, you know, bringing your own power factory with you?
**Inmn ** 49:53 Yeah, yeah. No, I was like having this moment where I was like, wait, is the technology like wacky enough that you could just have a portable solar panel that recharges your e-bike? And I'm like, no, no, no. Okay.
**Spencer ** 50:05 Yeah, those things barely charge an iPhone. I think we're far away from that being a reality. But as far as preparedness, like if you were set up on some kind of a compound with at least a little bit of solar, using that as a vehicle to get around or do what you need to do or something like that, I think that's a cool door to open. But for travel, it's much harder.
**Inmn ** 50:31 Yeah, yeah. And I don't know, it's interesting how thinking about collapse then makes you think about systems and technologies that have kind of just always existed. So when I was a train punk, when I was like, you know, early 20s, or something, I had this fantasy of setting up these little way stations across the country, you know, like, essentially little DIY sheds in the woods near the hop out spot, or whatever. And you go there and there's a little place to sleep and there's some food and a bicycle and and just any kind of random things that you wouldn't want to carry with you or that you might need to resupply yourself with. And I got really into the idea of developing these little way station networks, which I never did, which is maybe my biggest regret of my life. That's not true. I wish that I had been cooler or less busy with other things. But it's like, yeah, I don't know. It's like, I think about that stuff with bikes. I think about it with like.... This kind of already exists for like long distance hiking infrastructure. Like there's essentially just way stations that exist. And it's thinking about that stuff in collapse scenarios that relate to bicycle infrastructure, bicycle technology, is really interesting to me because it also like takes it out of the realm of being solo and on your own and like there being entire communities that can kind of spring up from like sustaining different forms of transportation. Sorry, this is a tunnel thought.
**Spencer ** 52:40 No, not at all. It's a sweet idea. And I'm definitely there with you. And I feel they're not solely for that, but bike co-ops exist in a lot of small places. And a lot of times they will have rentals if you can get to there. But I like the idea of like, yeah, you hop into a town and you're stuck 10 miles out of town, you don't want to walk it. But, there's this little shack with some snacks and a bike to get me there, and I leave it when I go back. You have the trail angels in the hiking world, which will help people out when they're far from resupplies or driving them town or they happen to have property next to one of the trails to help people out and stuff like that. So we're seeing the edge of that possibility for sure,
**Inmn ** 53:26 Yeah. Kind of one of the last things that I want to ask you about--I mean, I want to talk about bikes all the time, but we are coming up on time again--is what.... So you know, obviously riding bikes is a very outdoor activity. And I'm wondering if there's any things that you've seen or experienced or like heard people talking about, or just considerations for bike travel in a world with a very rapidly and drastically changing climate? Like, what things should...do people have to consider more of now? Or like what, what changes are people seeing?
**Spencer ** 54:14 Well, in regards to climate change, and we're talking about, I think, a lot of the discourses on like reusing or recycling is kind of a sham, but like, thinking about, I think, especially in the bike world, in the bike marketing world, they will market it to you like, "Hey, get this bike, it's the greenest thing you can do is like riding your bike." And riding a bike is a really sustainable way to transport yourself and to avoid using fossil fuels and, you know, getting down your carbon footprint or wherever the bullshit they're calling it nowadays. Individual responsibility. But in the same way that like not buying a new car, is like not buying a new bicycle. So reusing an old bicycle that already exists and maintaining what you have, I think is a big part of it. And we're seeing a lot of companies...there's a lot of there's a lot of bike companies that making stupidly proprietary things that will not have parts in like four years and there's a lot of companies intentionally using older standards--
**Spencer ** 55:22 Fuck them.
**Spencer ** 55:23 Yeah, they're making performance shit, it's performance. It's meant to last a season. It's fine. But that's not...it's not the part of bikes. Like, I can go to the bike co-op in town, I can get a bike made a 1987, and there's a bucket full of parts that are still rebuildable for that bike, and I can rebuild it and I can ride it today 40 some odd years later. So, sometimes you need to get new bike, sometimes, the bike co-op or the used market is not going to have what you need for your bicycle travel. And that's okay. And you might need to buy a new bike. That's great. Find a cool company you like that's doing cool stuff, and think about all the things we've talked about. But if you have a bike that works, there's so many options for retrofitting them and keeping them running. And if you...once you get a little bit deeper into bike nerd culture, you're gonna see there's a lot of standards that have been around for 30 plus years and various aspects of frame building and bicycle componentry. And being able to like be like, "Oh, I want a bike that has that because I already have the parts here. Or I know I get these parts really easily and cheaply to maintain the bike. So I don't have to buy a new bike every five years when the newest, coolest thing comes out." You know. I think that's a such an important and accessible part of bicycles. And if we're talking about supply chains failing, like, if there's a bunch of parts that are a similar standard, like every Walmart bike you ever had has what's called an American bottom bracket. And man, does it suck for performance riding, but you can adjust that fucker with a crescent wrench and some ball bearings you can probably pull out of most anything that has ball bearings. And that's super repairable and fixable without any specialized tools. Does that answer your question? Or have I gone too off the rails.
**Inmn ** 57:20 That's like a totally different track of the question than I was asking. But I'm glad that that's what you talked about.
**Spencer ** 57:27 Will you rephrase it because I want to...I want to make sure...I think I went off tangent. Rephrase it, if you would.
**Inmn ** 57:33 Yeah. No, I'm glad that you answered that question because I would have wanted to ask that anyways. I'm thinking more of as we see a drastically changing climate, which is like some places being just harder to be outside, how.... Like, I don't know, I'm wondering.... It's like, I always like to ask people in their weird little niche thing the ways that they experience climate change on a personal level or like a niche level. And like, I was talking to someone about paddling places where it's really cold, like ice and stuff. And they were like, "Yeah, we're seeing these changes in ice and freeze patterns." And I'm just wondering the small ways the stuff can like crop up in like places people might not expect it to.
**Spencer ** 58:30 Interesting. Okay. So I mean, obviously, a lot of places are getting hotter. And that makes it difficult to ride a bike if the sun's more UV intense and it's hotter for longer stretches of time or larger portions of the year. Like, if you ride your bike where it's over 100 degrees or it's incredibly humid. So we're talking about wet bulb effect and those things that are concerns for more humid parts of--a large chunk of the Earth. That makes a lot of physical activity without air conditioning or something like that, can be can kind of like totally kneecap everything we've talked about because if your body can't cool down while it's exercising then that's kind of game over, you know? You just overheat. I hadn't considered that for humidity. I mean, in the desert it's great. If you have access to some kind of water, like we are pretty dope swamp coolers in and of our own right. Like evaporative cooling works really well. If you're moving and there's any kind of breeze and you can sweat, our bodies are really efficient evaporative coolers. But as we're looking at climate change, a lot of places are going to be hitting 100 degrees and 100% humidity with a lot of regularity, which is going to mean if you don't have some means of cooling--not by evaporative because evaporation just stops working then--then that's when that breaks down, and your body temperature kind of runs away and you can't cool off. So those are definitely things to consider if you're living in a more humid place and possibly bike travel or self-mobility, in that regard, could be hampered.
**Inmn ** 1:00:12 Yeah, yeah, it's like we just did almost two hour long serious thing about why bikes are really cool. I'm sorry to sorry to ask at the end like, "And why we might not be able to do it?"
**Spencer ** 1:00:25 Why we might not actually be able to ride bikes? Because I hadn't considered the wet bulb thing till now. That's a really good question. I think it's a good thing to finish on because that's a limitation I hadn't considered till literally right now. And that's...that could be a huge limitation for hampering that.
**Inmn ** 1:00:49 But, you know, I don't like ending on totally sour notes. So yeah, do you do you have any kind of like last advice for people who like want to get into long distance bike travel? Long distance we're defining as anywhere....more than a place you could ride in a day. And, just any fun reflections or memories of like just really freakin cool things you can do on a bike? I don' t know.
**Spencer ** 1:01:27 everything in my life that I hold dear, and a lot of the people I hold the most dear in my life, I can always trace back to some aspect of cycling. Like riding bikes to go meet them for the first hangout or I was at this bike shop or I went on this event ride or whatever. The bike world is big and diverse as far as like what you can hope to find in it. There's an incredible community all over the world doing really rad stuff with bikes, whether that's going to be organizing, whether you're going to be doing mutual aid via bike, whether you're going to be racing, or just going for like a weekend ride. It's all there. And it's all propelled by you. And there's an incredible community. I can't say enough about how much bikes and cycling has totally taken my bike in a different direction than I ever expected it would go and it's the main fuel behind like everything that I do and a lot of the best things that have happened to me in my life. Bike travel has become that focus. The people I've met, the people that have taken care of me along the way, the lifelong friends I will have that I've met on bike tour or gone on bike tours with. It's a vulnerable way to travel. And that vulnerability leads you to leaning on strangers and leaning on new people that you've met. And those things lead to unexpected places and unexpected people and connections that you wouldn't have in any other way or any other situation. So take the bike you have, strap some shit to it. Go fucking ride somewhere that you're excited about like a cool dot on the map. I don't know. I can't recommend it enough. Learn how to fix your bike. Learn how to use tools. Go to your local bike co-op. Volunteer. Meet the folks there. They're probably doing really cool shit to in your same community. There's so there's so much good out there if you get past a lot of them marketing bullshit of going fast and racing and competing. There's so many cool things to be experienced and to do with bikes. And you'll just go outside every day and ride your bike and be like "Wow, this is awesome riding my bike." It feels really good. It's like when you were a kid and you like ride your bike to your friend's house in the summertime and go swimming and then.... Don't give up on that childhood joy of just riding your bike and doing cool shit while you ride your bike and just get there and, I don't know, fall in love with it in your own way. I hope.
**Inmn ** 1:04:04 Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah, I had something to say and now I can't remember it. If you had to recommend just a really great place to go ride, like a really good route that you've done, do you have any? dDes not have to be beginner. Could be utterly harrowing.
**Spencer ** 1:04:32 Oh, man, it's a big question. I want to just tell people to just go ride like 30 miles from your house and find a cool spot and sleep on the ground. Don't put a tent up. It's not gonna rain.
**Inmn ** 1:04:48 I mean, that's an answer.
**Spencer ** 1:04:50 That's an answer, but I feel like...I feel like you're asking for a place. Gosh, give me a sec here.
**Inmn ** 1:04:59 Um, I've always heard--while Spencer is thinking about this I'm just going to say what I've heard. I haven't done this, but I've heard that the the Lost Coast in Oregon, Washington, or Northern California... I don't really actually know where this is, because it's lost. And it's also somewhere that you could probably Google. But it's a really incredibly, beautiful bike tour spot. It's like short, like a few days or something. You can kind of like meter it yourself. And it's a nice introduction to kind of like being in the woods and less on pavement because there's no cars. It's completely inaccessible by cars. The only way to get there is on a bike.
**Spencer ** 1:05:02 I've biked a portion of the Lost Cost that is paved. I've hiked the unpaved sections. Unfortunately, you can't take bikes there because it's wilderness. And we've run into this a few times now. The Redwoods in Northern California on that first bike tour when I rode through the Avenue of the Giants just stopped me in my tracks on that trip. At that point, I've been doing like 60 something miles a day up to 100. And I was really going for it. And I rode into the redwoods and I rode 30 miles. And I said this is the most beautiful place I've ever fucking seen in my entire life. Like this is where they filmed Endor and like the Ewoks , and just sat and read my book for a whole day. And I was like, I'm not going anywhere. This is the most beautiful place I've ever been. And I got to ride my bike there. And I didn't really realize where I was going. I was just following some book and some route that someone had laid out forever ago and it would up being one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. I wound up going back there to lead tours and work later in my life and every time I ride through the redwoods it's absolutely magical.
**Spencer ** 1:05:46 Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Well, that seems like a great place to leave it. Do you have any things that you want to shout out, projects, could be totally unrelated to bikes, or places on the internet where you can be found where you would like to be found?
**Spencer ** 1:06:31 I'm really stoked working as a communitiy steward with Bikepacking Routes. So you can find them at bikepackingroutes.com. They're doing a lot of sweet advocacy. They're developing a lot of routes within the community. Like routes for bikepacking. They're doing a of cool workshops. I got to hang out with Noel recently at an event down in Mexico. She's awesome. Kurt Refsnyder, who started that with Kate Boyle are incredible athletes and humans. They're doing a lot of cool stuff. Tons of great resources on that website. I personally write and review for theradavist.com Type my name in there. There's a bunch of stuff. We have an incredible crew. We talk all about bike touring, and a lot of facets of cycling if you're looking for some resources. Super great. If you want to look me up on Instagram, it's just Spencer J Harding. Same from my website, SpencerJharding.com. It's a bunch of bike stuff all over that. If you have any questions about bike stuff or anything with this, I love when random people ask me questions on the internet. So this is your open invitation. Just send me a random message or email or whatever. If you have questions or you want recommendations. I have all this dumb knowledge in my head about bike shit and I love to share it with people. So if you are curious, please, please, please reach out. I won't ghost you and I won't be weird.
**Inmn ** 1:08:33 Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. And we'll we'll see you another time.
**Spencer ** 1:08:40 Thanks for having me.
**Inmn ** 1:08:46 If you enjoyed this podcast then pretend like it's 2006 and you're listening to Defiance Ohio with your friends and riding your bikes all over all over the planet. And yeah, just get out get out and ride or don't. But also, if you enjoyed the show, then you can help support it. And one of the best ways that you can support it is to tell people about it. So, you know, plan a bike trip with your friend. Listen to this episode. Get them stoked on bikes, probably listening to Defiance, Ohio. I don't know why I'm on this Defiance Ohio kick, but it's just they're synonymous with bikes to me. And, yeah, just go have a blast and see what adventures you end up on. Also, if you want to support the show, you can support our publisher Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness who puts out this podcast as well as a bunch of other podcasts and cool books and stuff. You can you can go and buy stuff from us at tangledwilderness.org There's also some cool free stuff on there. Like, we just released a second edition of Life Without Law, which is a really great just like primer, intro to anarchy zine. And it's been updated to be a little bit more relevant and referential for stuff that's happened in the past 10 years. Wow, did that zine come out 10 years ago? That's fucking wild. And yeah, you can also find us on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And for varying levels of donations a month, you can get some cool stuff like discounts on physical stuff we put out as well as just free digital versions of stuff we put out. You can get a cool zine mailed to you every month. And you can also get us to thank or acknowledge or shout out just rad things in the world, whether that rad thing is you or whether that rad thing is someone that you care about or whether that rad thing is a cool organization that you want to hear acknowledged on all of our podcasts. And as part of that, we would like to thank alium, Amber, Ephemoral, Appalachian Liberation Library, Portland's Hedron Hackerspace, Boldfield, E, Patoli, Eri,c Buck Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, Ben Ben, Anonymous, Janice & O'dell, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, SJ, Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Micaiah, and the eternal Hoss the Dog. Oh, this.... Actually, we didn't talk about this in the podcast, but I want to say it. If you have a dog and you're like, "I don't know if I can go on bike tour." I've seen so many people put their dogs in a bike trailer. You can take--I don't know if you can take your dog--but you can take dogs bike packing.
**Spencer ** 1:11:59 100%. Put your dog in a trailer. Take them on the adventure with you. Do it.
**Inmn ** 1:12:10 We hope that you're doing as well as you can with everything that's going on in the world. And we'll see you next time.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Spencer and Inmn talk about bike packing and how cool bikes are. What is bike packing? Where can you ride? What do you need? Find the answers here.
Spencer can be found on IG @spencerjharding or at www.spencerjharding.com
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Spencer on Bike Packing Pt. I
**Inmn ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today Inmn Neruin, and today we're going to be talking about something that I've been wanting to do an episode about for a really long time because I really love to do it. And I think what I'm going to learn in this interview is that I have been doing it really wrong. Or not wrong, but making it so much harder for myself. And it's just going to be...it's going to be a lot of fun. And today we're gonna be talking about different ways that you can travel long distances, or short distances over strange terrain, on a bicycle. And we're gonna be talking about bike packing. But before that, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Net of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo doo doo. [singing]
**Dissident Island Radio ** 01:27 You're listening to Dissident Island Radio, live every first and third Friday of the month at 9pm GMT, check out www.dissidentIsland.org for downloads and more.
**Inmn ** 02:15 And we're back. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. Could you introduce yourself with your name, pronouns, and just a little bit about what you do in the world? And what you're here to tell us about today?
**Spencer ** 02:32 Hi, my name is Spencer Harding. My pronouns are he/him/his. I do a lot of things related to bikes and I have for the last...oh, at least 10 or so years. I'm currently a photographer, writer, and editor for a website called theradavist.com. We do all manner of cycling related articles and content reviews. I've worked as a bike mechanic at local community coops and full on bike shops a like, and I've been traveling by bike since 2009 pretty regularly. And that's been a huge focus of my interest in bikes and kind of my forte in bikes.
**Inmn ** 03:18 Cool, cool. Um, it's funny because I know you real life and we, you know, we like play dnd together and I actually didn't know that's what you for work. And I just knew you knew a lot about bikes. So cool, great.
**Spencer ** 03:40 I don't love that I'll know people for years and years and years and I think in a lot of the communities I've been in for years, no one really asks what anyone does. And it's not really important because we're all just doing these weird niche activities or hobbies together. And it's kind of fun.
**Inmn ** 03:55 Yeah. I'm going to immediately go offer a little script. How did you get into bikes?
**Spencer ** 04:07 I got into bikes right on the verge of the huge fixed gear craze that happened in like the early aughts.
**Inmn ** 04:18 Oh yeah, I remember.
**Spencer ** 04:21 So I was in school at Long Beach State in Southern California. I saw some people riding around bikes. It was the begining of my second year of college. I was moving off campus and I realized that I could buy a bicycle for the same price as a parking pass. And it took me as long to ride from my apartment to my classes as it did to walk from the parking lot to my class. So I took the, what, $130 that that parking pass would have been and I bought an old Schwinn off Craigslist. And it's been all downhill from there.
**Inmn ** 04:59 [Laughing] I'm sure it has not been all downhill, but I appreciate the pun. We'll get into this later, but I did a big--introduction to me and biking--is that I have always just really loved bikes. Like similarly I had this thing in high school where a car became suddenly unavailable to me. And I lived in like a suburb of a suburb of a suburb. And I was like, can I take my dad's old Schwinn that's in the in the crawl space and ride it to the city? And the answer was, yes, I could. But like, fast forward many years to going on my first bike tour, and we like went over the continental divide and I was like, "So it's all downhill from here, right?"
06:00 [Laughing] That's one of the things. You never trust the elevation profile. There's always more up somehow. You could be on top of a mountain and somehow there will be some more uphill.
**Inmn ** 06:11 Yeah. Always uphill. Always. Um, cool. Well. So yeah, let's just kind of happen to it. Um, what is like...what are the different kinds of scopes of bike travel? I feel like there's like a lot of words that were new to me as of a couple of years ago where I was just always "bike touring." But now there's all these kind of other words that people use that maybe seem like little subsets of bike touring, like gravel bikes or bike packin or r maybe there's other words that I don't know about.
06:50 There's so many buzzwords, and most of it is marketing, and like an ever smaller niche-ification of bikes. When we talk about bike travel, I think the word that comes to mind is bike touring, like, everything is bike touring. You're touring on a bike, you're riding, you're exploring, you're traveling by bike. The buzzword of the last decade has been "bike packing." And there's a lot of arguments about what that means, what that constitutes, what's bike packing, what's not bike packing. I won't go down a huge rabbit hole. I feel like the word bike packing ushered in a more modern sense of ways to pack a bicycle as opposed to what was classically bicycle touring. But if you're traveling by bike and you're strapping shit to your bike, you're going bike touring, Call it bikepacking. Call it gravel biking. You can call it...there's a multitude of other things like that. But when it boils down to it, it's all bike touring in my mind.
**Inmn ** 08:09 Yeah. Okay. Um, golly, I'm going to immediately go on another tangent because I... [Spencer encourages it] It's reminding me of like.... I suddenly found myself thinking about like, wait, I wonder if Spencer knows the history...like what the history of the development of the bicycle was? This is a question I should have sent to you yesterday. And I mean, maybe you do, maybe you don't--
08:39 I'm not super familiar. It popped in my head like I should probably do some sort of research. I mean I know the vagaries of it. But nothing specifically. I couldn't sit tell you names or dates or anything like that.
**Inmn ** 08:53 Totally. But it's like, it is something that people have...like people have been riding long distances on bikes since bikes were invented, which is something that I find really interesting. Like there's.... Which I know you could take like a rewritten fairy tale and call it like absolute historical fact, you know but have you ever had any Angela Carter books.
**Spencer ** 09:22 I haven't.
**Inmn ** 09:24 She got famous for like rewriting the for rewriting a lot of fairy tales. And people were like, "Oh, you rewrote them with like a feminist lens." And she was like, "I absolutely didn't. My goal was to bring out the innate horror in all of these stories, and these stories just happen to be really like femicide-idle. And so that reads is feminism because the main conflicts in them are misogyny." But there's this story called Lady of the House of Love. About this vampiress who like lives in a collapsing, ruinous castle in Transylvania and is the offspring of like Dracula or something, who's just like quite bored in the world at this point. And there's this like whole diatribe in the story about this guy who she lures into the castle who has been traveling around France in Europe on a bicycle. And this is my funny tie in, and this is like in... this is like, in the early days of World War Two when this... Yeah, that's what.... And it's like, it's like these little nods where I'm like, okay, it's it's a fictional story, but I'm like, that sounds like a real thing people did, just travel around Europe on a fucking bicycle.
**Spencer ** 10:56 I am 100% sure that there is some real world influence. Yeah, there's all those memes, you'll see. Like, there's some Scandinavian guy who just lived by his bike forever and ever. And, you know, big beard and all that jazz. I can't think of his name. But I can only imagine that there's some truth or they met some weird guy in a cafe one day and decided to just write them into the story after that.
**Inmn ** 11:23 Yeah. Okay, wait, but back to the things. So if you had to kind of put a definition on what bike packing is, what is bike packing?
**Spencer ** 11:37 So I would even back up to just bike travel. So bike travel is riding your bike multi day--so that could include a single night--somewhere, taking whatever you need for that journey, whatever that may be. Totally self sufficient. Maybe just change the clothes and a credit card. But using your bike as a means to explore and travel to somewhere.
**Inmn ** 12:08 Cool. Cool. That sounds right. And what.... I guess maybe this.... It's like maybe some of these specific classifications kind of seems like it maybe gets down to what kind of bike you're riding or what kind of gear you're using? Or like something? I don't know.
**Spencer ** 12:35 Yeah, there's been some discussion last few years about intent. So by touring, they've gone to the more recreational side of the venn diagram. So people on vacation, people going for a weekend trip, or for enjoyment. And by packing has, since it came at a time when people were packing less stuff on their bikes in new and creative ways that lent itself to more off road or very light and fast travel. So some people had defined bike packing as like a racing intent or like a competitive intent. And there are bike packing races. Someone who's staying with me right now, Austin Trace, she's training to ride the Arizona Trail and possibly some others. And that's an incredibly long distance. That's 800 miles of off road. There's many like 3000 plus mile bike packing races that happen all over the world over. So some people say bike packing for that kind of competitive intent. Some people will say they're going bike packing, when they're going camping for a weekend. There isn't really a line in the sand that I can thoroughly really draw. Bike packing is definitely like a new buzzword that's popped up in the last few years. And it encompasses everything that bike travel or bike touring would, depending on who you talk to or how you want to delineate that.
**Spencer ** 14:07 Yes. And this is another fun thing where we have like, you know, all bikepacking Is bike touring but maybe not all bike touring is bikepacking. So all road bikes are gravel bikes, but not all gravel bikes or road bikes. If you really want to get into it--and this is even...I just wrote a review talking about how the word gravel needs to be split into two things because we're getting a recreational version of what gravel means and a competitive version of what gravel means, and those things are very different. Roughly speaking a gravel bike is traditional-ish road bike. You know, curvy handlebars, road levers. You're just getting bigger tires and typically a more relaxed geometry. That's the easiest without going into a whole mess of other unnecessary details, but the just is road bikes with bigger tires optimized for riding on dirt roads, like farm roads, forest roads, things of that sort.
**Inmn ** 14:07 Yeah. Okay, that makes...that makes sense. And then there's this other word that I've been hearing people use a lot lately, which is--and by lately, I mean, this is years ago and I'm just like, really behind the the ball on things--but like, gravel bikes?
**Inmn ** 15:35 Okay. Where can you ride a bike?
**Spencer ** 15:40 These days? Where are there
**Inmn ** 15:41 Or rather where are places that you can not ride your bike to?
**Spencer ** 15:46 Legally speaking or terrain-limiting speaking?
**Inmn ** 15:50 Terrain. Let's go with terrain limiting for right now.
**Spencer ** 15:54 Okay, we don't need to dive into like the Wilderness Act limitations on mechanized travel. There are, if you're looking into that, there are so many crazy bicycles out there these days. There are very few places that you could not ride a bicycle. You're looking at incredibly steep and loose terrain or very deep snow or sand. But even that...like there's so many cool things with...like fat bikes have opened up just an incredible amount of terrain and versatility that wasn't available even like, you know, 20 years ago to bikes. And that's even expanding now. I've heard about some cool stuff I can't talk about, but there is some cool new stuff coming down the line that I'm very excited about in the monster truck realm of bikes. So there's.... Off road in the last few years has just totally exploded with gravel, with the accessibility of fat bikes, and like what those can.... So, fat bike, if I'm talking about, you're talking about four to five inch tires. They're just massive. So you run those incredibly low pressures like 10psi You're riding on snow, you're riding on sand, like, you know, that just opens up so many things that you can experience by bike and can travel across. And you can type in "adventure fat bike," and you'll get some crazy shit in fucking Alaska. A bunch of my friends have done it and they're just like...they have little boats and they're putting a bike on boats and they're riding down beaches and like...just places you would never would ever expect you could ride or get a bike to. And they can get a bike there and they can ride it. So there's obviously limitations like verticality or steep terrain but as far as like surfaces, you're...the world's kind of your oyster these days with that. There's so many options.
**Inmn ** 18:07 Okay. Wow. Some of those are new to me and I'm like, okay, cool. Cool. Cool.
**Spencer ** 18:14 I have a fat bike I just built it. You can come over and ride it. Play monster truck. Come over here, Inmn. I'll show you next time you come over for dnd.
**Inmn ** 18:22 Wow. Love it. I, you know, on.... So like a background for me is my first bike tour, I didn't know anything about bike touring. I just knew that I wanted to do it. And so me and my friend Marie, we like...I met her up in Portland and then we rode our bikes to--Portland, Oregon--and then we rode our bikes to Boston.
**Spencer ** 18:56 Oh, wow. Okay. [Laughing with incredulity] My first bike tour was taking the train to Santa Barbara with my like messenger bag and then riding back to LA as an overnight. You went full hog. Okay.
**Inmn ** 19:11 Yeah, first first time ever riding a bike more than I could ride it in a day.
**Spencer ** 19:19 Impressive
**Inmn ** 19:19 It...you know, we're gonna go with a blend of impressive and utterly reckless.
**Spencer ** 19:30 I know and I want to talk to this in the end too. Like, you can be really reckless on a bike and if shit goes totally pear shaped just.... Yeah, and like the accessibility of things going wrong and the ability to fix those or to get out of those situations is just such a cool component of bicycle touring that you don't get with like cars or motorcycles or, I mean, I guess hiking even less so, like there's even less to pickup. But yeah, tell me the story. How did it all go, you know, on the way to Boston?
**Spencer ** 20:05 Oh, those are the worst.
**Inmn ** 20:05 Um, well actually, you know, we're going to talk about that a little bit later, probably. But just, as this one funny tie in, was that in Glacier National Park, we met a...we met someone who is about to finish his bike tour. And he had been...he'd ridden the entire continental divide on a bicycle with like a little, like one of those little swivel trailers.
**Inmn ** 20:06 Or, actually I don't know what they're called. They're like two wheels, in line.
**Spencer ** 20:20 Oh, the bob trailer.
**Inmn ** 20:42 Yeah, the bob trailer. Yeah, yeah. And he had crossed the Continental Divide like 30 times or something over the course of it. And it was utterly incomprehensible to me at the time. I'm like, "Are you riding on trails?" And he was like, "Sort of?"
**Spencer ** 21:03 If I may do a quick... So the Continental Divide Trail is a long distance hiking trail that is mostly not bikeable due to the Wilderness Act thing with the wilderness stuff. I think the route you're referring to is the Tour Divide.
**Inmn ** 21:18 Yes.
**Spencer ** 21:20 Yeah. So those things kind of get interchanged, but they're vastly different beasts. The Tour Divide is a very popular off road route that a lot of people do these days and is one of the first mapped long distance routes, and still remains one of the longer documented off road touring routes in the world, too, which is super cool.
**Inmn ** 21:42 Cool. Okay, wait, I'm trying to try to follow a little bit of a thread here. [Pauses, thinking] And maybe this is where to start. How do you...how do you start traveling long distances by bike in, you know, whatever capacity, whether you're like, I want to ride to a neighboring city, I want to ride across the country. I want to ride into the wilderness. These are vastly different. How do you get started? How do you get started?
**Spencer ** 22:19 So my start was literally, my friend in college gave a talk, and at the time I was a backpacker. I'd done some backpacking, like three, four days. Stuff like that. And my friend gave this talk about how she went to France and took a bunch of kids bike touring and they took all the camping gear and they put it on their bikes and they just rode their bikes for like two months. And that blew my fucking mind. I was like, wait, I could put all my camping gear on my bike and go ride my bike. And this is in the very like first few years of me riding bikes. I was like, "This is the shit. I love this. Wait, I can go camping and do this?" So that was my first introduction. And I literally, New Year's Day, 2009, I took my road bike and my like good o'le Chrome messenger bag and I zip tied my sleeping bag under my saddle rails on my road bike and I took the train to Santa Barbara and I rode from Santa Barbara down like Highway One, like out near point Magoo, and I camped for the night. And I rode back to Long Beach the next day. And that's part of the Pacific Coast bike touring route. So it's just another established route from Adventure Cycling, who also does the Tour Divide, which you mentioned earlier. And that was my first time properly traveling by bike, and I was like, "This is cool." And a few months later a good friend of mine, Julia, who had just ridden across the country, kind of as you did. I can't remeber if she started in San Francisco or Portland as well. But she did that same trans-america ride. And she was like, "Hey, I just got off school. Like, I don't want to drive back to Southern California. Do you want to just like take a bus up here, and we're gonna bike back to LA together?" So I went back a few months later that summer and tried...like I got a different bike that had racks and all that shit and some bags. And you know, as that ball rolls, you get more bags, you get more specific stuff, you get bikes that are designed for it. And then I rode back from Santa Cruz to LA and then I was like, "This is fucking sweet." So, two months later, I flew to Seattle and rode all the way back to Santa Cruz that same summer too. So that ball kind of rolled pretty quickly for me. So, I think it's literally taking...like at the time I had a messenger bag and a sleeping bag and a stuff sack and that was what I took and I had a little tiny pocket stove and a sleeping pad. I don't know if I even brought a sleeping pad. I might not have. I have to look back at the photos. It might have been strapped to my handlebars or something. But it's really what you have. If you have most any kind of like reasonably lightweight camping gear, from car camping to backpacking. Like, all of that gear translates. And if you have a bicycle, there's--especially these days--almost...there's so many ways that you can affix things to your bike.
**Inmn ** 25:14 And yeah, it's kind of funny, because I feel like I've seen this funny arc of like "bike luggage" or something. I don't know what to call it. [Spencer laughs] Where, like, when I was trying to get into bike touring, it's like--I'm sure like gravel bike/bike packing/offroad stuff, I'm sure I'm sure all that stuff existed, but I was less aware of it. But in the realm of bike touring, it seemed to be all about like how to like really neatly contain a lot of stuff on a bicycle, you know? And, like, now I see people's gravel bike or bike packing setups, and it's literally just like shit strapped anywhere that it could be.
**Spencer ** 26:02 Yeah, so if we're gonna get into like, if we're gonna delineate two words, we're gonna do bike touring on one side and we're gonna do bike packing on the other. If we look at bike touring luggage, or traditional touring luggage, was usually two to four panniers [rhymes with "your"], Panniers [Rhymes with "yay"]. There's a whole video you can watch about someone from Webster's talking to my buddy Russ about how to actually pronounce that fucking word. It's a bag strapped to a rack. You can argue about it all day long. Typically two to four panniers, maybe a little bag on your handlebars, some water bottles, that was kind of the traditional setup that's been around since the inception of bicycles. Bike packing is when we're moving to more off road focus. So you, obviously panniers are just little hooks on a rack and maybe a bungee. If you've ever written off road with those they don't...they tend to eject. I've got buddies who have got busted collarbones from catching someone's unwanted, flying paneer
**Spencer ** 27:02 Oh, no.
**Spencer ** 27:03 So in the other corner, we have more modern bike packing bags, which arose from a cottage industry of people developing bags for things that they wanted to do that didn't exist at the time. There's a ton of them, like Revelate Designs has been around since the beginning and were big pioneers in a lot of these venues. And typically what that looks like is you have a bag on your handlebars. It's typically a double sided stuff sack, say 10 to 15 liters. Smaller, bigger exist. That's rolled on there, secured with some straps. There's harnesses and all that jazz. A big thing in bike packing that has really bled out to a lot of the other aspects of cycling, it's really convenient, is using the main front triangle of your bike. So bags that fit the center of your bike and fill that space.
**Inmn ** 27:56 That's like the spot kind of like underneath where you're sitting, right? It's like the space between the seat and the handle bars, right?
**Spencer ** 28:01 Correct. So, if you're thinking about a bike frame, this kind of goes back to the--I wanted to actually mention this in the history too--so a double triangle, like a diamond. So you have two triangles. You have the front triangle and the rear triangle. That design has been around nearly since the inception of bikes and fundamentally hasn't changed, which is kind of miraculous. There's there's always going to be some kooky weird shit that people are cooking up to make bikes better. But 99% of bikes that have ever existed have been the same design, and it's still the best and most efficient. So, you're filling that front triangle with gear. So it's where you would typically have your water bottles and things like that, but being able to put four liters of water, as opposed to two bottles, and a bunch of camping gear is more efficient. So frame bag. And then there's a bag attached to your seat post called a rocket bag or a butt bag or...[laughs] And this is where stuff gets real bondage-y. There's like 17 straps holding those fucking things on. They sway if you don't pack them right. And there's a bunch of designs to make that better, and we're getting really close to really nailing it. So you have those kind of are your three main staples for bike packing bags. There's bags that strap your fork, there's bags that go onto your down tube, there's ones that attach to your stem to put snacks in. If there's a tiny spot in your bike, there's a bag for it, I guarantee it. And those are kind of your two corners of like bicycle luggage.
**Inmn ** 29:32 I see. I see. You know, what I.... Something I weirdly really appreciate about some of these bike packing luggage, or whatever, is when I was...when I was first hearing about some of this and I was like, oh.... Like I remember like 10 years ago when people were starting to have frame bags and stuff, and I was like "Where do you get a frame bag, like where can I go and buy this?" And the answer was, you had to just know someone who fucked around and made one and wanted to make you one. And it was like...it's like watching an entire--like, you know, fuck an industry, but it does make it more accessible for people that there's like more people making these things--but an entire way of making things, or a culture of making things, like erupting from like watching some people just fuck around with fabric and like cordura and vinyl and shit and just like.... Yeah, I don't know. I feel like...yeah, it's like watching that and watching the same thing happen with messenger bags like 15-20--I know, it's been more--years ago. But I don't know, it's something I've weirdly always appreciated about like bikes is that there's been a lot of innovation not on an industrial level. It's like on the level of people just messing around with stuff in their garages and figuring out some really cool things. I don't know, does that...does that track? Is that real? Am I under the right perception?
**Spencer ** 31:11 100% There are so many cottage bag makers and a lot of them have scaled up and some of them are still really small. And a lot of the innovation is still coming from those cottage industries. Big companies have caught up. So there are a multitude of companies offering frame bags produced overseas that you can get at REI or on Amazon. There's a there's a host of options. Industrial production has caught up to it. One thing that's cool that they will never be able to do is there's a bunch of frame bike bag sewers--builders? What's the word? And you can send them a photo and they've written their various different scripts and computer programs and you send them a photo of your bike with like a ruler in it. And they will make a custom tailored bag exactly to fit your bike where you can put bolts through it, like just over the internet. And that's somethingl.... Like I personally have one from Rogue Panda. Nick is a crazy mad scientist and incredibly innovative. Yeah, you can just send him a photo of your bike or if they have the dimensions already in their system, they just sew you an exactly perfect custom bag. So you can get a bunch of off the shelf things that will work for most bikes, but if you have a weird like I do, or many that I do, you can get a custom one, and that's something that's always going to be around as like a cottage level industry.
**Inmn ** 32:38 Um, okay, how.... Or.... Okay, so say...let's say I want to...say I want I want to ride my bike from where I live to a neighboring city. It's like...maybe it's four days away, or something, by bike. What...or, this is a regular thing that I want to do. This is a thing that I want to kind of invest in doing. And I'm asking this from the perspective of, so like on my month long bike tour, I feel like there was a way to have a bike that I didn't fucking hate riding. And so I'm wondering...I'm wondering kind of like what kind of bike do I need to do that? What will make my life be less terrible? I was on an old Schwinn steel frame that I put a mountain bike drive train on, essentially. And some like other mountain bike parts. I like converted it to 700s [wheel size]. I didn't know anything about fat tires. I just had like--
**Spencer ** 34:03 It barely existed back then. So yeah.
**Inmn ** 34:05 It was like, I don't know like one and a half inch ties. This is embarrassing to say at this point.
**Spencer ** 34:14 That's fine. I can't tell you the breadth of dumb ideas around bicycle.
**Inmn ** 34:22 Yeah, yeah. And it's like my life was so bad in comparison to my road partner who was riding a Surly Long Haul. [Specialty touring bike]
**Spencer ** 34:34 Yeah. So to segue out of this, if you ask the internet, the internet's gonna tell you the Surly Long Haul Trucker's the best bike touring bike for blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to tell you right now, the Surly Long Haul Trucker rides like fucking dogshit without about 100 pounds of gear on it, and I don't think is the right bike for almost anyone in this current day and age ofbike touring. But let's get into your actual question. So the cool thing about touring is the bags will fit to most bikes without racks or rack mount. So if you have a bike that's comfortable, that fits you, it's probably...it can probably be made to be some kind of touring ready. So every bike is a bike touring bike if you have enough gumption. I've written tall bikes halfway across this country on multiple occasions. So I wanna say that you can always a specific bike tailored to the trip or the adventure you want to go on. But you can probably make whatever you have work. And I could recommend, if you give me more specifics, I could be like, yeah, you should get this size tire. This is a great bike for that. Like, height matters. All right, before I run away on this, let's start at the...let's start at the bike. So more important than any other consideration is whether you have a bike that's comfortable for you? Does it fit you?
**Inmn ** 36:07 What does that mean?
**Spencer ** 36:09 So bikes come in multiple sizes for different bodies, different heights. Like, I'm all torso. I've got relatively short legs for my height, but I'm like 6'1" so I ride an extra large bike. If you're 5' or shorter, you might write an extra small. That's going to be...those bikes are gonna fit differently. So there's a varying size run. So most importantly, you want a bike that fits you. And that's going to mean different things to different people, depending on if they have any back issues or what have you. So comfort is going to be kind of paramount to start. So your four day trip, is it off road? Is it mixed between the two? Is it single-track mountain biking? You're not going to take your Schwinn Varsity on a bunch of single track trails in Arizona, because you're not going to have any fillings or teeth left at the end of that ride. So, once you have a bike that's comfortable, once you have a bike that fits you, then you want to say, "Does this bike...is it adequate for the terrain?" And that's typically going to be tire size. So tires come in a bunch of different flavors, but you're pretty much looking at anywhere between a 26" rim, a 27.5" rim, or a 29" rim, which is also coloquially referred to as 700c. And those come in--oh my God I'm really in the rabbit hole here--so many sizes. But, so is your bike comfortable? Does your bike fit you? Do you now have the appropriate tire size for the terrain you hope to traverse? And we're going to assume that you have all of those things. And the next consideration will probably be luggage. So how much frame bag space do you have? Can you get a frame bag for it? Do you have mounts to put a rack on the front, or even the back, of the bike? You want to make panniers to go on there? You can strap anything, like anything with the stuff sack, you can strap. I mean the quintessential like bike co-op special is the old kitty litter boxes with hardware hooks and some bungee cords. Like, do you have a cat? Do you use cat litter? And these are all things that can become bike touring luggage. It's so up to you and how you can fit it. I've seen such a plethora. There's such a rich community of people DIYing these things. And there's ways to use like old cutting boards to make handlebar rolls to hold stuff sacks, you know? Like, I could go on and on. So the next thing you want to figure out is how are you going to pack all your shit on your bike? And okay, we've got that. There's a plethora. And next thing is food and water. Is there water available? Do I need a water filter along the way? Where can I get more food, snacks, etc... along the way? How many days of food I need to pack? Those water and food options are probably going to inform how you pack or what kind of luggage you're going to need, beecause those your essentials. Like if you want the bike to move, you have to pedal it and you have to be alive to do that. So you're gonna need to eat and drink.
**Inmn ** 39:36 Yeah, can I have a little segue off that? It was funny on this cross-country bike tour, like our attitude about that changed throughout the trip, you know, where it was like--Marie definitely had more like bike touring experience than I did--but like when we started, we were in rural Oregon, we were in Montana, we were in all of these big western states. And we didn't have a water filter, which is probably something we should have brought. But like, you know, we weren't camping. We weren't--or sorry, we were camping every night, but we weren't trying to ride off to find nice places. We were like, whatever's along the road, you know? And so we were like, "Okay, well, we just have to bring all of this stuff with us." Like, I think we had like two weeks' worth of food each and three gallons of water on us at all times. And it was utterly absurd, like our bikes were so goddamn heavy. But we often went a week without going to a grocery store.
**Spencer ** 40:57 That could be the reality of your trip. And there's some of these long distance routes, especially the off road ones.... Like road touring, if you're on established routes, like highways or secondary highways, you're gonna hit a gas station hopefully once a day, if not every other day. And like, you know, it's not gonna be great food. But that's...those are all considerations to how much you need to pack. And that's...that's typically the first thing I would be like where's my reasonable resupply? Especially ifwe live down to the desert, like water is the main concern and the limiting factor for a lot of my trips. Like how much do I have to carry? Where can I get it? How can I get it?
**Inmn ** 41:39 Yeah, cuz it's like, you're not--unlike being in the Northwest or something, you're not just gonna happen on a stream that you can like....
**Spencer ** 41:47 Exactly. I mean, maybe you can if you know that's there. But that's a big if, and I've planned to get water from a stream and then I got there, and the stream was dry. And I was like, "Oh, this is going to be interesting."
**Inmn ** 42:01 But yeah, sorry. You're talking about water, food, etc... I don't know what you were going to say next.
**Spencer ** 42:09 Yeah. So once you figured out how much water and food you need to be able to carry between places that you can get water or food, then you're gonna go to gear. So clothing, is it going to be hot? Is it gonna be cold at night? And then you're thinking about sleeping. So tent, sleeping pad, sleeping bag, at the bare minimum. How warm is that sleeping bag need to be? What's the weather going to be like? Is it going to rain a lot? How nice of a tent do you need? How many people are going to fit in that tent? And once you've figured out those things, those are all going to inform all the decisions we made already about like luggage. Like oh, I need to make a three person tent because there's three of us. Are we going to split it? Yada yada yada. If you've been camping at all, you understand that these are like kind of the basic things you want to have with you. Or maybe you're going there's a hotel every night and you're like, I'm just gonna get a hotel in and take a shower, and people do that and it's great. It's a different way to tour.
**Inmn ** 42:10 We met someone like that who was credit-card touring, as it's called, I think. And, you know, I have a friend who just writes crazy distances in like single times, but like meeting this person who was like...he had a very fancy performance road bike and a couple regular small water bottles and like some granola bars and in his fucking lycra pockets, or whatever, and a credit card that was it. That was every single thing this person had.
**Inmn ** 43:07 Still bike touring. My 20 year old self would be would be shaking at me saying that but still bike touring.
**Inmn ** 44:01 Yeah, I mean if you got a credit card and he just like fucking get a hotel every night.
**Spencer ** 44:08 But, you know, these are considerations with things. Like, I've stayed at hotels on bike tours. Like I had a real shit day got rained on for like this last trip I did in the Midwest past summer. We got stuck in like damn near a tornado. And I was putting up our tent in the downpour rain and then it was drizzling the whole next day. And I was like, fuck it. I'm getting a hotel. Going off route. I'm going to a hotel. Sleep in this hotel and shower and dry all of our shit out. And these are things you want to consider and this is all part of what goes into considering to go on a bike trip.
**Inmn ** 44:44 Yeah, um, so we're getting close to the end of our time for today. I didn't say this at the beginning, but this is a two part episode. And I'm wondering if we could kind of end today's episode with, could you just tell us a story about going on a bike tour. Could have gone well, could have gone horribly. Kind of whatever. Tell us about a trip that you went on and kind of like what... Yeah. Yeah.
**Spencer ** 45:21 Alright, I'm gonna tell you about my favorite bike tour. And it will bring it back together because you met that lovely gentleman in Glacier on the Tour Divided some years ago. So my buddies Kurt and Sam--this was 2016--so fledgling days of kinda packing bags. This is when one of the bigger companies, Blackburn, was getting into making bags. They sponsored a bunch of folks to go ride big long off-road routes. My friends got this scholarship sponsorship thing. And I was like, okay, cool, like, I'm gonna go meet them. I just finished up work. I worked as a bicycle tour guide, but the van stuff, not so much the touring that we're talking about, but going to hotels, yadda yadda yadda. And I got off work, drove out there. I took my dad's hybrid from like 1994 and I strapped a bunch of bags to it. And we went riding down. They had like slick bikes, all the new bags. But the fun thing was they were big rock climbers at the time. So we were carrying all of our camping gear and a full 60 meter rope, a full trad rack of cams and nuts and like our climbing harnesses and shoes, and every week we were climbing at least once a week. So we're doing trad climbing up some mountains in Montana or Wyoming or wherever the hell we want that being that week. And we packed nothing. We had.... Like none of us had real tents. We have like one spare tube between us because we just didn't have room for anything with all the climbing gear. It was just so reckless and stupid. We hitchhiked a ton and climbed a bunch of shit that was really sketchy. And it still to this day is one of my favorite memories of traveling by bike, just getting to go climb and just riding those wide opens stretches of Montana, Wyoming, a little bit in Colorado. And it was just the dumbest fun. God I miss you, Sam and Kurt, if you're out there listening somewhere. That was my bike penultimate trip that had been on. It just...it was silly and dumbn. There's photos and videos of that from years ago that I can send you some links to or whatnot. But the joy I still take from those memories and that trip stick with me.
**Inmn ** 47:35 Hell yeah. That's wonderful. Um, one of my like, weirdly favorite memories of going on bike tour was--and we'll talk about this a little more in part two--but is preparation, how to prepare for a trip, how tolike plan an actual trip, you know. And me and Marie didn't plan literally at all. We just hopped on our bikes and started riding. Every day we woke up and we were like, "Yeah, let's go on that road. That makes sense. Whatever. It'll be fine." Weirdly, we did end up on...we accidentally ended up on Adventure Cycling routes, you know? Which makes sense. They were the most logical roads to ride on. We just didn't know. But our lack of preparation and planning was actually the most fun part of the trip.
**Spencer ** 48:39 So my buddy Kurt on that trip, and we did a bunch of subsequent trips, and I'm a big planner and Kurt hates planning. He made me fly to fucking Columbia with zero plan and like one half contact that we called when we got to Bogota and a bunch of paper maps and was like, "Nah, we're just gonna figure it out." Speaking of accidentally winding up on ACA routes, did you the pro move where you found someone riding in the opposite direction and you asked if they were done with their maps because you were going the opposite way?
**Inmn ** 49:11 No, that would have been smart. But we didn't... We met a couple other people on bike tour. We were incredibly surprised. We met exactly three people on bike tour on a two month long trip and I was actually surprised about it.
**Spencer ** 49:30 Wow. I wound up on that TransAm for a little bit. And I didn't have any maps because I was being a total of shit bird and would be like, "Hey, you done with that section?" cause I didn't want to buy maps.
**Inmn ** 49:42 Yeah, they're expensive.
**Spencer ** 49:45 I mean, Adventure Cycling is a really lovely organization that has done a lot of good and they're a nonprofit. Do you ever, did you guys go through Missoula and go to the headquarts?
**Inmn ** 49:55 We did. We got the free ice cream.
**Spencer ** 49:56 Popscicles and soda. Yeah. Okay, well, that's why those maps are so expensive is they gotta give free sodas and ice cream to all the dirt bag toursists that won't buy them.
**Inmn ** 50:07 Yeah, yeah. Cool. Well, that about does it for the time that we have today. Before we go, are there any things that you want to plug, any projects, any places that people can find you on the internet where you would like to be found? Anything like that?
**Spencer ** 50:29 Anything on social media, is just Spencer J. Harding. Like I said, I write for the theradavist.com. You can type my name in there and there's a bunch of reviews and trip reports and stuff like that. My website is just SpencerJharding.com. There's a bunch of photos organized there from a bunch of my bicycle travels, if you want to check that out.
**Inmn ** 50:50 Yeah. Cool. Cool. And for folks who...just to let you know what we're gonna be talking about next time, next time being next week, we're gonna be talking about how to actually plan a bike trip, what are things you should be prepared for kind of like on the road, why traveling by bike is just a really cool idea--if you haven't been swayed already--what are its limitations, and how does this fit into preparedness models for any kind of collapse or disaster situation that we might be in. So tune in next time.
**Inmn ** 51:33 If you enjoyed this podcast, then go hop on a bike and ride around and see what happens. And also, if you like this podcast, you can please just tell people about it. It's the best way that people hear about the show and one of the best ways to support us. But if you would like to support us in other, I think, sillier ways, you can support the show financially. And you can support us financially by supporting our publisher Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. And the best way to support us is to go to tangledwilderness.org and buy some books. There's some really cool books you can buy. You can buy a cool TTRPG that me, Margaret, Casandra, and Robin wrote called Penumbra City. You can get a lots lots of other really cool books too. And you can also support us by supporting our Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And there's a bunch of different levels of support that you can give us, anywhere from like $5 a month, which kind of gets you a lot of cool stuff. It gets you discounts, it gets you digital versions of all of the stuff that we publish and just like lots of really cool updates. You can also get a zine mailed to you every month, that we put out as part of our monthly feature, which if you also just want to hear those, you can read them on our website or you can check out another podcast that I do called Ttrangers in a Tangled Wilderness, where we take our monthly feature and turn it into an audio zine and interview the author. And then there's another fun part of it, which is that for $20 a month, you can get us to thank or acknowledge anything that you want us to thank to or acknowledge, whether that be you or a cool organization that you want to get shouted out, or whether it's just someone you love and care about. Or as I'm still plugging for, a fictional or theoretical concept. So check us out on Patreon and we just want to give some special shout outs to these folks right now. Thank you alium, Amber, Ephemoral, Appalachian Liberation Library, Portland's Hedron Hackerspace, Boldfield, E, Patoli, Eric, Buck, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, Ben Ben, anonymous, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, SJ, Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Michaiah, and Hoss the Dog. Thank you so much for everything and we hope that you're doing as well as you can with everything that's going on and we'll see you next time.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn and Margaret review the new film Civil War. Spoiler alert, it's all kinda of weird.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Inmn and Margaret on Civil War
**Inmn ** 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm one of your hosts today Inmn Neruin and with me is the always lovely. . . [trails off inviting Margaret to speak]
**Margaret ** 00:28 Margaret. You should do the [intro] as if I'm Garth. You should be like "And with me as always is Margaret." Like...because Wayne's World. Because I'm an elder millennial. Nevermind. Hi, I'm Margaret, I'm your other host.
**Inmn ** 00:43 And today we're going to be talking about...we're kinda going to be doing a movie review about-- [Interrupted]
**Margaret ** 00:49 Wayne's World.
**Inmn ** 00:50 About Wayne's World, the most important movie of our time.
**Margaret ** 00:53 I once...I changed my--actually I dropped out of school--but before I dropped out of school, I was gonna change my major to film because of Wayne's World. This is a true story.
**Inmn ** 01:03 I love that so much. [Laughing]
**Margaret ** 01:07 It's so well done. Woman-directed too. Anyway, what are we talking about?
**Inmn ** 01:15 We're talking about a much less joyful movie today. And that movie is Alex Garland's Civil War. And the reason we're kind of talking about this is that I think this movie feels very relevant to--or at least when I went to go see it, I thought it would be very relevant--to some themes on the podcast. And since then, I've been a little bit confused, but we'll get into that later. And I am told that me and Margaret might have some differing opinions about this movie. And so y'all will get to see us argue.
**Margaret ** 01:56 Yeah, I'm going to argue in favor of Wayne's World, and Inmn is going to argue against Civil War.
**Inmn ** 02:01 Yes. But first off, we are proud members of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts, and here's the jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo doo doo. [singing]
**The Ex-Worker Podcast ** 02:18 The Border is not just a wall. It's not just a line on the map. It's a power structure, a system of control. The Border does not divide one world from another. There is only one world, and the Border is tearing it apart. The Ex-worker podcast presents "No Wall They Can Build: A Guide to Borders and Migration Across North America," a serialized audio book in eleven chapters, released every Wednesday. Tune in at crimethinc.com/podcast.
**Margaret ** 02:54 [Mimicking a movie trailer voice] In a world... [stopes voice] That's all I got.
**Inmn ** 03:01 [Inmn takes up movie trailer voice] Where a vague civil war has gripped the nation for the last 14 years, we...
**Margaret ** 03:12 About literally nothing.
**Inmn ** 03:13 [continuing] we join a group of war correspondents and photographers who...are kind of shitbags.
**Margaret ** 03:26 Don't have any motivation besides art.
**Inmn ** 03:32 [Not movie trailer voice anymore] I don't really have to do a "Introduce yourself" to the thing because we all know who me and Margaret are. But to kind of get right into it, we're going to be talking about the movie Civil War today. And my hard take right now is if you haven't seen it, do NOT subject yourself to having to go see it. But, you know, make your own opinion. I'm not going to tell you what to do. But maybe we can kind of do a brief kind of like overview of the movie and then we'll get into what me and Margaret think--each separately think--about it. How's that sound?
**Margaret ** 04:17 Sounds great. Am I overviewing or are you overviewing?
**Inmn ** 04:20 Um, I can do it, you can do it. I don't care.
**Margaret ** 04:22 Are you prepared to.
**Margaret ** 04:24 I'm not. Let's do it.
**Inmn ** 04:24 I'm prepared to.
**Inmn ** 04:26 I'm gonna do it.
**Margaret ** 04:27 Go ahead. Great. Pew, pew, pew. [mimicking gunfire] I'm gonna make pew-pew-pew noises the whole time you're talking, though, so that people get into the head of the viewer, which is that whatever's happening there's also a lot of gunfire in the background.
**Inmn ** 04:39 So much gunfire. And I have something to say about that gunfire later.
**Margaret ** 04:44 Okay. Okay.
**Inmn ** 04:45 Yeah. Which will be very funny with the pew-pew-pews. [Margaret makes more gunfire noises] So, Civil War is a movie about a... [Margaret makes more gun and explosion noises]
**Margaret ** 04:57 Okay, I'm gonna stop now. This will get old. Go ahead.
**Inmn ** 05:03 The setup for Civil War is it's a movie about a Second American Civil War. And we have a few different sides in it. We have the Western Forces, which are made up of California and Texas. And they have formed a coalition of secessionist forces known as the Western Forces. And they are trying to.... All we really know is that they're trying to kill the president. And that--
**Margaret ** 05:39 Relatable.
**Inmn ** 05:40 Yeah, relatable. And then we have a couple other sides that never make it into the movie. There's.... The ones that do make it into the movie, we have Florida, who is attempting to join the Western Forces. And we have a few other players. The creator's that movie released a map of the US set in the time of the war. There's like the People's Army of the Northwest, or something. It's confusing. And when we join the narrative, it is...I think the war has been going on for about 14 or 15 years at this point. And the Western Forces are closing in on Washington DC and kind of like the East Coast. And we have a...we have a country that has been completely engulfed in in this war for, you know, over the last decade. And it follows a group of war photographers and journalists...correspondent people--I know words--who are out on a strange mission, which is to photograph and interview the president before he gets killed by the Western Forces. This is the setup for our protagonists' journey. And we have Kirsten Dunst as this middle-aged, jaded, war photographer, who is paired up with--I don't remember his name--
**Margaret ** 07:25 Some other guy.
**Inmn ** 07:26 Some other guy, who's a journalist. And as a tagalong they have this older journalist who's trying to tag along with them. He's like, old friend, co--
**Margaret ** 07:42 Wise, old, Black man archetype.
**Inmn ** 07:44 Wise, old, Black man archetype. And then we have a--I think she's 23 in the movie--younger, very excited, and naive photographer who is a fan of Lee (or Kirsten Dunsts' character), and they're all headed to DC to try to photograph the president before he dies and they run into a lot of wacky shenanigans along the way.
**Margaret ** 08:19 It's a road trip movie.
**Inmn ** 08:21 It is a road trip movie at its.... At its core, it is a road trip movie. Margaret, what.... I guess like.... I have quite a lot of opinions about this, but I'm the person who's technically hosting right now. So I'm going to ask you questions. What did you think?
**Margaret ** 08:42 I think we should more duke it out a little bit. But I think we should each just give treat ourselves as having equal time on this. So I went into Civil War expecting to hate it. Most of the movie takes place in West Virginia, Western Pennsylvania, and Western Maryland. It takes place where I live. I drove to go see it in a town that is like, I think one of the towns that they filmed in and I went to the movie theater and I was like, "It's going to be all fucking chuds. It's all going to be these right-wing motherfuckers. Like I'm going into enemy territory," you know? I went to a Saturday matinee on the second day the movie was out. And there was like eight old couples. And then one dude who I read as gay, who was there alone like I was, and that's who went to go see it. Some couples in their 70s and some guy who probably went and kind of similar reason I did, to be like, "What does this have to say about the people who are trying to kill me?" you know? And I enjoyed watching it. I got some popcorn. And I watched a movie that had pretty good action, lots of loud bang noises everywhere. I was like, I was glad I saw it in the theater because it was like, I thought the audio was well done. And it seemed to me.... Okay, so it's like, if you go into it being like, this is gonna be a movie that explains where we're at in the country, It's not going to work, because it's not. And it absolutely dropped the ball on that. But that was the point. Now, I don't think that was a good point. I don't think that they made a good decision. Like, if I had made this movie, this is not how I would have made it. I enjoyed watching the movie. I also thought it was really interesting. So I went home, and I was like, "Oh, that was a...that was less bad than I expected." And it was on my mind. You know? It made me think. Mostly it made me think, "The fuck were they thinking?" But it's like, I was going to do war journalism when I was in high school and I was like, a photo, kid, you know? And then I went off to school for photography. And then I was like, "Fuck this, I'm going to drop out during the revolution," or whatever. And I very quickly was like, the idea of the neutral journalist is nonsense, you know?
**Inmn ** 11:24 Fucking nonsense.
**Margaret ** 11:26 And that is like one of the main things. This is like a statement. It's trying to be this like grand like, "Oh, it's so important to have this neutral position or whatever." But no one's really neutral. And they kind of present it like people are. But I don't think that they try all at hard. And what I realized.... Okay, my takeaway is this movie is centrist propaganda. And this movie is centrist propaganda that is specifically...it doesn't this whole thing where all of this stuff is like, "There's no good guys or bad guys." And they do very intentionally and kind of, honestly, interestingly, have it where you don't know which sides are fighting at any given point.
**Inmn ** 12:07 No clue.
**Margaret ** 12:09 And that is that is very intentional. There's a scene where there's like a sniper and there's a counter sniper. And the people are like, "Wait, which side are you on?" And he's like, "I'm just trying to kill that guy. He's trying to kill me." And like--
**Inmn ** 12:20 And they're like queer-coded.
**Margaret ** 12:22 Yeah, they have pink hair or whatever.
**Inmn ** 12:25 And fingernail polish.
**Margaret ** 12:28 Oh, I didn't catch that. Yeah, no, totally. And it it feels.... That part feels a little bit real. It's a kind of a little bit of a like.... What's that "Heart of Darkness" movie?
**Inmn ** 12:45 Apocalypse Now.
**Margaret ** 12:46 Yeah, like kind of this like, "I don't know, man. War is hell" kind of vibe, right? And like, okay, so it's centrist propaganda because at the end of the day, despite that they make this big deal of like, "Well, we don't know who's the good guys and the bad guys," you do. The President is bad. The Western Forces are good. Now they're not "good: perfect, everything's great." But the movie opens with a person with the United States flag suicide bombing. Noone presents suicide bombing as a positive thing in Western media. The United States government is the bad guys in this movie. That caught me by surprise. I expected passively to think that the way that they would do centrist propaganda--I knew it was gonna be centrist propaganda--is that they would have Texas and California being the far-right and the far-left. And they're the bad guys. Instead, I think they are meant to--and this is a sloppy...it's not how it should have been done--it represents the far-right and--sorry, the center-right--and the center-left teaming up to stop a fascist. Because the President has a couple like.... Okay, so if you like read all these reviews of people talking about it, I remember I was reading these right-wingers on Reddit. Everyone was like, "Oh, it's all neutral." And this right-winger was like, "It's not. It is anti-Trump. It is antifascist." And he was saying.
**Inmn ** 14:17 It's the only clear thing. That's the only clear tie-in in the movie is that Nick Offerman is supposed to be Trump.
**Margaret ** 14:24 And so he noticed everything that I noticed and pointed it out to say "This movie is actually leftist propaganda." In that, for example, the dude's Trump. The only actual bad person--there's people who do war crimes in it. Like they gunned down some prisoners and stuff, and it's a little bit of a like, "War is hell." There's one group of actually bad people and they're the racists.
**Inmn ** 14:58 Or...there's a couple. I don't know. There's the gas station keepers who shots some looters, you know?
**Margaret ** 15:05 I think they're negative, but they're not.... Yeah, no, that's true.
**Inmn ** 15:11 Then like Jesse Plemons' group, which are the racists--
**Margaret ** 15:16 Okay. Yeah.
**Inmn ** 15:17 [Continuing] --or the the anti-immigrants? And yeah, I don't know. And they're confusing to me because when I saw...when I was watching the movie, I was like, "Are these supposed to be the Western Forces?" because the Western Forces are talked about so mysteriously, to the point where it's like vague in a way that is confusing and, I think, harmful.
**Margaret ** 15:38 I don't disagree with you.
**Inmn ** 15:41 But so it's like, and then I was trying to tell where I was like, "Wait, do these characters have the WF on their arm?" And I couldn't really tell. And then I think I read something later that was like they were supposed to be a militia.
**Margaret ** 15:56 Yeah, that was the impression I got. But they also have one of the military Humvees.
**Inmn ** 16:02 Yeah, so it's confusing.
**Margaret ** 16:04 But the Western Forces have the Black woman that kills the president.
**Inmn ** 16:08 Yeah, yeah. Which is where it all starts to get confusing is like the... they really.... When they meet up with those other journalists who are embedded in the Western Forces, they talk about them, really...they talk about it really poorly. They're like...because our protagonist don't like the Western Forces. Our protagonists think the Western Forces are like, are weird. You know, they don't like the president either.
**Margaret ** 16:34 Do they?
**Inmn ** 16:35 Yeah, they say something like "You embedded with them? Like what the fuck?" And they're like, "This is just what it is now."
**Inmn ** 16:42 I believe you. But I think that the Boogaloo Boys that they were embedded with Western Forces.
**Margaret ** 16:45 Like the Hawaiian shirt wearing folks?
**Margaret ** 16:45 Yeah. So that was one of the other things that was interesting because the Boogaloo Boys are on the good side in this movie.
**Inmn ** 17:04 That was really confusing to me.
**Margaret ** 17:07 Yeah. I think they're trying to present them as like, a center-right force fighting alongside the center-left force of California to overthrow a fascist. That's my takeaway.
**Inmn ** 17:24 Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's--
**Margaret ** 17:27 I don't--go ahead.
**Inmn ** 17:30 Oh, no. Finish your thing.
**Margaret ** 17:32 I just...I don't think... It was sure ain't how I would have written it. Because I don't think it's realistic at all. But wait, I talked to one journalist friend who also doesn't...isn't a fan. But they pointed out, right, Alex Garland's like not American. He's what, English, maybe? I don't know.
**Inmn ** 17:52 I don't know. He's from London. Or, I think he's an immigrant to London too. I don't remember.
**Margaret ** 18:01 There's this argument that they're kind of doing the thing that American war movies do, where someone who's not from your country oversimplifies and fucks up all the local politics in order to make a war movie about art.
**Inmn ** 18:15 Oh, god. Yeah. Totally.
**Margaret ** 18:17 And that's kind of interesting? [Said reluctntly and in question] But the person who presented that idea isn't a fan of this movie.
**Inmn ** 18:23 Yeah. I think some of the politically confusing things to me about it were like, the Western forces are ambiguous and, for most of the movie, you're supposed to be...the viewer is kind of supposed to be fearful or confused about them, which makes sense, you know. It's like our protagonists don't really know... Our protagonists are...they're neutral in that they're like, "Yeah, the government sucks. And also the Western Forces probably suck too." Like, there's all these mentions about how they're going to like tear each other apart after they kill the president. Which feels far more realistic.
**Margaret ** 19:05 Totally.
**Inmn ** 19:06 The thing that kind of really did it for me is that it's like whoever Jesse Plemons--red sunglass militia dude--is supposed to be aligned with, the viewer is kind of supposed to think that they're the Western Forces. And then what really cinched it for me is the Western Forces, before they make this final strike on DC, rally in Charlottesville.
**Margaret ** 19:41 Ohhh...
**Inmn ** 19:43 Which in a movie, which in kind of an arthouse movie, where like everything's intentional and not intentional and everything's a reference and not a reference, [Margaret makes affirmatiive noises] it was this thing where I was like, you're having your politically-vague secessionist forces that we're kind of supposed to think are maybe, you know, far-right fascists of their own color, are rallying in Charlottesville of all places.
**Margaret ** 20:11 Yeah. No, and it's funny because we know that they worked with at least the far-right Andy Ngo, right, who's thanked in the credits and we know that they worked with at least--I can remember the prominent TERF's name, who's also thanked in the credits.
**Inmn ** 20:29 Oh yeah, I don't remember.
**Margaret ** 20:32 No, that is the like.... No, that's good point.
**Inmn ** 20:37 Yeah, but I think what it is, the the politics that are confusing for me are that the world that we encounter in Civil War, like the world in their world that existed before the civil war, is not our world. It's like, it is a fantasy. It is a fantasy movie, in that it is not.... It's like, based on our world. But it's not our world.
**Margaret ** 21:06 Yeah, because also it takes place like 20 years from now, and nothing's changed technologically. Iff anything, it's regressed.
**Inmn ** 21:14 Yeah. Which kind of makes sense for a war sometimes, you know? Like wars in some ways halt.
**Margaret ** 21:22 Nah, we get a lot of new technology during wars. I mean, I guess the propagation through civil society of new technology is slowed, but like--
**Inmn ** 21:29 I think that's more what I mean.
**Margaret ** 21:31 Okay.
**Inmn ** 21:32 Like civil technology.
**Margaret ** 21:36 I was left with an uncomfortable feeling about it when I was done, but I didn't hate it as much as I expected because I think...just taken as like, I'm kind of easy to please with movies. And I'm just like, I don't know. Pew, pew. [gun noises] Oh, that's fun. And also, like a Black lady shot the president. That's cool. And like, but then it's like, it does a lot of like, "art is so neutral tropes." I kind of hate self important photographers. It's like a thing. It's like part of why I dropped out of school and didn't get into photography is that photographers are so fucking self-important.
**Inmn ** 22:18 Yeah, the treatment.... Okay, I think one of the other things I had a really hard time with was its treatment of journalists in a way where I was like.... Like, the whole movie I was like, is the purpose of the movie to make journalists seem like the most like self-important douchebags on the planet? Because that's what I'm getting right now. And I kind of dug into some of it because I knew that Garland, like chose journalists as his protagonists on purpose. And like, part of that was because he like, he sees them as heroes. He grew up with like--I think his dad was like a war correspondent or something--and he like grew up hanging out with all these like old war correspondents and like journalists and photographers. And so like, and he said it publicly that he thinks that they have interesting insight or whatever for telling the stories of this. And then he portrays them to be like, kind of dick bags and kinda just like.... They're portraying this idea of neutrality, which I think is really embraced with Western journalism, over like, "We have to be neutral and our neutrality is important." and then it's like all these like wild things happen. And it's like.... Okay, it's like.... Spoilers. Everyone, there's spoilers.
**Margaret ** 23:46 I think people go that already.
**Inmn ** 23:48 You already got their spoilers. But it's like, we open up on the scene where like Kirsten Dunst and our young protagonist--I can't remember any of these people's names.
**Margaret ** 23:59 Old lady journalist and young lady journalist.
**Inmn ** 24:03 They meet at a rally. The rally gets bombed. And like literally moments later, they're both just snapping photos of people who are dead and dying. And they are not helping anyone. They're not....
**Margaret ** 24:16 Well, and that's the point. I mean, that is the moral of it. I mean, uuuuh, it's not well done. Because she's like-- Sorry, I cut you off. I'm sorry.
**Inmn ** 24:24 Oh no, I think it's like, we see this reproduced throughout the rest of the movie where it's like, they're...like Stanley, they're older, Black, wise...wise Black man character gets shot saving them, saving the group from Jesse Plemons and them. And they like.... You know, because Stanley's like, "This is a bad idea. You're gonna get fucking killed" and then he's right. And then he saves them. Gets shot doing it. And I know this is how movies work or whatever but he gets shot and they do nothing. They let him bleed out in the fucking car so they can have a whimsical drive through a forest fire with like whimsical music.
**Margaret ** 25:12 Well he doesn't tell them, but like that's on the writer. You know?
**Inmn ** 25:16 Well when they switch drivers, he's bleeding.
**Margaret ** 25:19 Oh, yeah, you're right. Okay. Yeah.
**Inmn ** 25:21 They know that he's been shot for hours and they do nothing.
**Margaret ** 25:25 I mean, my thought was that they were like trying to get, they were like, "Well, we better get to the place because there's gonna be medics there," or whatever. But they don't say that. And they also like.... No, that scene, and how they treat that character, that was when I was like, these writers are hacks and are playing into bullshit, racist tropes. Like, even that scene, that scene where.... All of the people of color die in that scene. That's what happens in that scene. Well, I guess the journalist man is a person of color also. But like, the three.... You know, whatever, like, only white people and this one person of color survives that scene, because because of the fight with the racists. And like, that is lazy, racist writing, I think, to kill all of them off. And then also to like.... Yeah, the way they drive away with it, and they're like, "Oh, I was saved, thank god," or whatever, and like, no one gives a shit about.... I mean, but they also tri to do the like, "No, we are fucking shell shocked." And they try to do this, like weird remove--and they all have mental breakdowns, you know? Like every one of the journalists either dies or has a mental breakdown during--at some point--during this movie. And but I also think that there's this like.... We all know racists are bad, you know? And so it's like a little bit of a like, "Conngratulations, the racists killed all the people of color..." like? The thing that makes me angriest is that they knew that that red sunglasses man would become a meme. That was part of their marketing. He was the most interesting character in the movie.
**Inmn ** 27:12 Yeah, if you watch the trailer, you assume that that interaction is most of the movie.
**Margaret ** 27:18 Yeah, totally. And there's a couple things that pissed me off about it. That's in West Virginia. And that is the like...they don't hillbilly code them in any other way, except for the fact that they're white racists in West Virginia. But that is still something that is a...that is like a "Yeah, it's West Virginia, so of course all the people..." you know, like it fucking "Deliverance's" that shit. I've never seen "Deliverance," but I know it's the fear of Appalachia thing. And, but also by knowing it's going to be the meme, and then having him be like, really, actually a fucking monster, you have now.... All of the people who vaguely identify with him.... Like, I watched a bunch of YouTube video responses from tactical and prepper and whatever spaces, which tend center and far right, you know? And, you know, they're all like, kind of mad that they made that red sunglasses guy such a racist, because they're kind of like, "But he was our guy," you know? Which is, in one way, kind of accurate, right? But you also just now have all these people who are excited about this fucking racist dude. And like, he's a meme. And I've seen memes that are funny and leftist that use it like, "Oh, you're an anarchist. but what kind of anarchist are you?" or whatever. You know, but it's about murdering.... I don't know. It's in bad taste. Dislike it. But, okay, wait, one more thing, sorry. The other thing.... My thoughts are not collected. The other thing that I thought a lot about is that when I watched all these response videos and all these things, the far-right and the left hate this movie, and the center likes it. And I think that's interesting. I actually think that.... The one art thing that I think Garland might have pulled off--I overall feel very negatively about.... You know, I mean, I enjoyed the movie from a like pure popcorn point of view, right? But like, how I feel about the movies is that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But this thing, the fact that it pisses off the two people who are mad at it, like me and that right-wing guy on Reddit had taken literally the same notes of all of the political coding throughout. So the people who are watching this movie because they think there might be a civil war.... Like, I think there might be a civil war. I don't want there to be. Some of the right-wing people, and probably some of the left-wing people--but I don't think it's as prevalent on the left--want there to be a civil war. And so all of those people, everyone who went at it being like, "Is this an oracle of our future" was like, "This movie sucks." And then everyone who was like, "This reinforced my preexisting beliefs that the extremes are bad, but the right and the left can get together to stop fascism and Trump" liked it. And it's hard, because that's the centrist nonsense position, but it's also like, we got to figure out how to not have a civil war. Like, we got to figure out how to get the center-right to stop going further right. This movie isn't gonna help do that. That's all I got.
**Inmn ** 31:01 Yeah. Oh, no, no, thank you. That's great. I have two more things to say about the journalist treatment. Which is like...and this ties into how the movie was shot. So Garland talks about some of the commitments to realism that he was trying to do with the movie. And specifically, part of that is how gunfire was recorded, which is that gunfire was recorded and projected in different ways than it normally is in movies.
**Margaret ** 31:37 Oh, interesting.
**Inmn ** 31:38 Yeah, it's kind of like the.... I forget the words they use, but normally in movies, you have these kinds of deep, hollow sounds, and they recorded it in a way to make it sound like tinnier and like higher in register.
**Margaret ** 31:54 Like the crack of it?
**Inmn ** 31:56 Yeah, so you feel it in your ears and your shoulders instead of in your chest. Which is how real gunfire works. And so it's like they had commitment to realism where they really wanted people to feel like the reality and discomfort of gunfire. And the war choreographer was this ex-Navy SEALs person. And so that they're this commitment to like portraying combat in realistic ways. And this commitment to portraying war in realistic and horrifying ways. And, I know this is just like a thing with movies, but it's like their commitment to realism was a commitment to realistic violence and not a commitment to what people might actually do in those situations, which is like, you know, back to Stanley. My friend gets shot, and we're driving to a potential medical facility. Let's show some realistic first aid. Let's show...let's show some Stop the Bleed. Let's show some like...let's show a fucking tourniquet. Let's show holding pressure, doing literally anything.
**Margaret ** 33:14 Totally. Well, when it happens in a battle, they do that. They do a better Stop the Bleed than the average movie, where the guy gets shot, the Bugaloo Boy gets shot. Yeah, but when they're doing plot, that's why I'm mad about them killing that man. It was a plot death. It wasn't a battle death. Like, I knew he was going to die before it happened.
**Inmn ** 33:42 The second asks to tag along, we know he's gonna die.
**Margaret ** 33:45 Oh, yeah, totally. And then even like that scene, it's like, he's like, "Oh, I can't drive anymore." And I'm like, oh, he's dead now. And there is no reason why, realistically, that scene, if he had made it that long, he's suddenly gonna die. You know? Yeah, like the average you get shot once.... Well, actually the average you get shot once with a rifle, I think you do die, but it's not a high...more than.... Whatever. They didn't need to kill him. It was a plot death and it pisses me off as compared to some of the battle scenes. Which is funny because then when they get in DC then the battle scenes kind of like get a little like... like, here comes the helicopter really low among the buildings, and like fucking Secret Service who are just like, [pew pew] instead of like...you know?
**Inmn ** 34:38 Well, it's not the Secret Service because he dissolved the FBI.
**Margaret ** 34:42 Oh, is Secret Service part of the FBI? Okay. No, yeah, like I liked the gunfire thing, though. It was a tense movie.
**Inmn ** 34:54 Yeah, the gunfire.... I mean, I hated it in the theater. I want to literally fucking die. It's just the...it's like people who have a commitment to.... I wish that people who had a commitment to realism would have a commitment to like showing a wider spectrum of realism in their movies.
**Margaret ** 35:13 No, I agree.
**Inmn ** 35:13 I think it's a huge failing of like, filmmakers and I think it's a huge failing of Garland to be like, "We're gonna commit this to like making war uncomfortable, but like, we're not going to show realistic ways in which like..." Yeah, I don't know.
**Margaret ** 35:28 Like, again, they did it in the battle, but not in the plot thing, is how I feel about it.
**Inmn ** 35:34 Totally, and then it's like our other plot death is Lee, or Kirsten Dunst, at the end of the movie, and it's like--
**Margaret ** 35:43 Yeah, you knew she was gonna die in that scene.
**Inmn ** 35:45 Totally. And it's like, she, you know, she saves our young protagonist from getting shot, and how does our young protagonist thank her? By photographing her death.
**Margaret ** 35:58 But, see that, I actually liked that plot death. It was a plot death through and through, but it served a purpose, which was the completion of the like, because the girl is like, "What are you gonna do? You gonna fucking film my death?" And then the other way around happened. And I was like, that's clever.
**Inmn ** 36:16 I guess so.
**Margaret ** 36:17 Because like that.... Okay, so it's like the character arc of older lady, Kirsten Dunst, I thought that was interesting, because she's the, "I'm so hardened. I don't have any emotions." And then she fucking breaks. She like, shuts down during the siege of Washington in Washington, right? Like, I actually kind of liked that. It was cheesy. It was not a commitment to realism. It was a plot death through and through.
**Inmn ** 36:54 Yeah, she's also wearing a plate carrier and gets shot center mass and just dies.
**Margaret ** 37:00 Oh, shit. I didn't think about that. Yeah, totally. It's like, it's cheesy as shit, right? But like, I also thought that was like, kind of realistic in a bad way, the like, when they're like...when the Speaker for the President--whatever, the press secretary comes out--and it's like, "We want to negotiate," and they're like, "No, we're gonna shoot you." And then the President's last words, were like, "Don't let them kill me," and gets fucking popped. Like, I actually like.... No, you're right. I think you've got it. The central tension of this movie is a commitment to realism that doesn't go all the way through. You're right.
**Inmn ** 37:43 Yeah, I don't know.
**Margaret ** 37:44 Wait, I'm supposed to disagree with you?
**Inmn ** 37:46 Yeah, yeah. I think we didn't disagree as much as I thought we would disagree.
**Margaret ** 37:51 Nah, not like this is the fucking.... I just like.... I like war movies. I don't know. There's something wrong with me.
**Inmn ** 37:56 I think I was more horrified by.... I think I was just more horrified by it than you were. But it's like, okay, so my other thing about journalists is that I think that what I could draw from it is like, "Oh, this is like a critique of this neutrality. It's a critique of non-interference. We're watching these people make really weird decisions." But it wasn't. And I don't think Garland would....I don't think Garland meant it that way. Garland, based on his history and based on this idea, this like Western idea of what journalism is, and based on how these characters behave, there is no critique of this behavior. They are his heroes of the movie.
**Margaret ** 38:47 What he....what I think he thinks he's doing is pointing out how messy and complicated these righteous people are. But what's interesting is you could say the same about the revolutionary forces, you know? Because it's like, he brings up all the gross things that journalists do. But then kind of says it's necessary, right? And then the same as actually happening. Like, in a weird way, there's like this thing where it kind of, you expect it to be an anti civil war movie, like an anti-war movie or whatever. But it's kind of not. The Western Forces in this movie righteously oust a tyrant. And by the end of the movie, you know that. And you're meant to be rooting for them. In the same way, you're rooting for the journalists even as they do things that are bad. They do morally unconscionable things in service of the greater good of art, or whatever fucking bullshit. The Western Forces are doing the same. I got... Yeah, and the movie feels like kind of disjointed in that like as soon as they reach the Western Forces in Charlottesville, you're suddenly like, "Oh, I get it. These are the good guys all along, " or whatever, you know?
**Inmn ** 40:06 Yeah. And I don't know. My other kind of big note is like, I.... It's weird, I never thought I'd have so many opinions about like portrayals of journalism, but it's like I think, you know, all the reasons that I've stated about really feeling like this treatment of journalists is like, you know, both accurate and about, they fucking suck. Some of them suck. And then also, there's this other context right now, that I think makes it suck even more. And that is that like, you know, this movie is coming out, and was being produced, at a time when the genocide in Gaza was happening, and currently is still happening, and this is a place where, you know, notably, journalists are getting assassinated, bombed, shot, starved. All of these things. And to have this be like the portrayal of journalists as people who like watch a bombing and then like, photograph people as they're dying, or watch their friends get shot and just take pictures of them, and like, all of this stuff, just like, hid in this really weird way where I was like, "I don't think this is how journalists in places where like their homes, the places they live, are reacting to this kind of stuff." And it feels really...it hits really weird, with everything going on in Gaza right now where I'm like, "I don't think people, I don't think like Palestinian journalists are watching their friends get blown up. And then standing by and taking pictures." I think they're like getting down in the rubble and helping like dig people out of buildings. And I don't know. It's like, it's like that aspect. It's because the journalists won't pick aside--I don't want them to pick a side in Civil War--but it's like, I don't know. I don't think any of us are neutral anymore.
**Margaret ** 42:18 Yeah, I think that there is the like, this film, the centrist propaganda part of it is holding on to this fictitious idea of the neutral journalist. I think that that's a good point. That war correspondent, Jake Hanrahan, who does who did Sad Oligarch and does a bunch of other like...did a lot of like...has done a lot of really impressive war journalism, posted about it on Twitter and was just like, "If you hang out with this style of war journalist, you will die. " It's like these are the people who will get you killed. And that like...it's like, hearing that this guy like idolizes this fictitious war journalist is a perfect example of yeah, he's just like, you know, this like Gonzo journalist hero or whatever who puts themselves in dumb danger. Yeah, no, I think they did a terrible job with the journalism. I think they did a terrible job of like.... Also just like, oh, it's so quirky. You brought a 35 millimeter film camera to war....
**Inmn ** 43:35 They did.... They did the bad sci fi trope of inventing technology to have the thing that they wanted aesthetically.
**Margaret ** 43:45 You could do everything that she did. She's developing on the fly. You could do that.
**Inmn ** 43:53 Yeah, I don't know. I talked to some photojournalist person about it. And they were like, "This is complete. This is.... The most absurd part of this movie is that this person is shooting film during this." They like named the film that she's using and she's like, "That's hard to get now. Where the fuck is this person getting this film?"
**Margaret ** 44:15 No, totally. It would be absolutely nonsensical to shoot film in this kind of situation where anything else is an option. No, just the way that she's developing on the road or whatever. Like, I think you could do, because you can make your own negative. If she had a dark room mother, I'd be like, "What the fuck?" But it's still like no, it is absolutely like, you know, "Oh, you're a fucking weird artist," or whatever. No, and like...yeah. Yeah, bad journalism. No, literally the thing that this movie succeeds at is it goes "pew-pew" and the people were like, "Ah, fuck, I'm getting shot," and then people are like...like me in the audience, I'm like, "I'm feeling really tense right now." And I'm like, "Oh, this is a...this is like." You know, I think I watch war movies like other people watch horror movies, where it's kind of like, oh, to get that safe version of a thing that like.... Like, I've never been in war, but I've been in some pretty tense riots and things like that where like, you know.... So getting little bit of that vibe. Yeah, that's like, I enjoy it. I enjoy a good war movie. And, you know, they shoot the president. And, like, also, I just, I.... And there's like, some interesting...I kind of like the scene where there's the town that's like, "Oh, everything's normal." I think that's Frostburg, Maryland. I'm not 100% certain. A lot of the towns in Western Maryland look kind of similar. But there's a small town vibe of a central Appalachian town, you know? And then it works because there's dudes with guns on the rooftop. I actually thought that was a kind of well done. They're like, "Oh, we're totally out of the war." And you're like, "Just kidding. Our local militia shoots anyone who tries anything." And I'm like, that feels real.
**Inmn ** 46:03 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's true. That does feel real. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It was a weird movie. And I think maybe this other thing is, like Garland did like some interviews about it. And like, he's purposefully vague about his politics to the point where he went off record during a interview with The Guardian to explain to the reporter what his actual politics were because he didn't want to say them, but I don't know, I guess was trying to convince the reporter that he wasn't something.
**Margaret ** 46:48 Like a Nazi or some thing?
**Inmn ** 46:49 Like a Nazi or something.
**Margaret ** 46:53 It makes sense that like.... Okay, so I watched a bunch of review videos by random right-wing people, and I was like, "Fuck them." And you watched interviews with Garland and Aarland sucks, it seems like. So it kinda like...I think it kind of like makes sense where we kind of ended in our like.... I'm not, again, I'm not trying to sing this movies praises, you know?
**Inmn ** 47:14 Yeah. But I think there were some.... I don't know, to bring this back to preparedness, because that's where we're always here to talk about.
**Margaret ** 47:22 Okay.
**Inmn ** 47:23 It's like, I guess what I hope is that...what I hope that people don't get from this movie.... Or what I hope that people get from this movie is seeing an absolutely horrifying portrayal of journalism or people that we would kind of see in these kinds of support roles of struggle, you know, that you should spend probably less time worrying about developing film during the civil war and probably more time taking a Stop the Bleed training and developing relationships and community with the people that you're photographing and having real connections to the things that you're reporting on, versus going on a road trip to fuel your gore porn lust. I don't know, maybe throw a few more tourniquets in your bag and an IFAK and maybe drop the film/ I mean, you can bring the film, but if you have to choose between an IFAK and an on the road developer kit, choose the IFAK.
**Margaret ** 48:42 No, totally, like, if you have your film camera too, I'm like, "Oh, quirky." If you have only your film camera, you're a joke. Like, you are not prepared to do your job. It would be like if someone had a saber on their side instead of a fucking AR-15, you know? Like, if you bring your saber, chill you're quirky. If you only bring your saber, you are not prepared to do your job in this war Yeah, no, from a preparedness point of view, the one thing I could say about it, it's kind of a like It Could Happen Here, it's just a like, "Hey everyone, we're not magically, specially immune from being torn apart by crisis. And even some of the like... Okay, I still think it was a coward's move for them to not really talk about any politics at any point during the movie, but they could have--
**Inmn ** 49:49 Totally.
**Margaret ** 49:51 --but they could have done the exact same weird split where Texas and California are on the same side because you could say, "Hey, war makes for weird bedfellows," because it does. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact where the communists are sending the Nazis guns, you know, or like....
**Inmn ** 50:14 Or the Spanish Civil War, where the anarchists were fighting on the barricades with...cops.
**Margaret ** 50:18 Yeah, totally. Cops and anarchists stopped the coup in Barcelona. And then the anarchists joined the government, which made a lot of the anarchists mad, but I think they had bigger problems then.... Everyone's like, "The big problem is we joined the government," but I think the big problem is that Stalin and Franco killed everyone. But whatever. No, it's just like an interesting like.... Like, because you could be like, alright, shit could break down in ways that you don't expect. And like, and they could have done that well and they didn't. And then the other thing is that I hate every protesting scene I've ever seen in a mainstream movie.
**Inmn ** 50:57 Yeah, they're always not done well.
**Margaret ** 50:58 I've never seen it done well. The two ways they try and do it is they either use stock footage of riots, like they do in this one where they got it from fucking Andy Ngo, the fucking Nazi, or you have this crowd that's not big enough and is either too angry or too passive. It's always like 50 Cops and 50 protesters. That's the way they always do it. And I get it. It's really hard to get 40,000 people, you know, to be extras for your movie. But like, I don't know. None of these motherfuckers have ever been in a fucking riot. Whatever. I didn't like the scenes at the beginning. But honestly, the suicide bombing part, I thought was well done.
**Inmn ** 51:41 Yeah. Well, any any final thoughts on it as we near an hour of talking about this, what I will call, strange garbage.
**Margaret ** 52:05 I don't know. Pirate it. If you enjoy it. Don't make memes out of that guy. I'm not like mad. It's not like problematic. I don't give a shit on like a real level. But like, fuck that guy. I don't know. Whatever. That's what I got.
**Inmn ** 52:27 Cool. Yeah, mine is, I don't know, don't let this movie serve as your conception of journalists.
**Margaret ** 52:38 On a one to five stars, I'm giving it a three as a movie, not as a political piece. As a political piece, I give it a two.
**Inmn ** 52:52 I'm giving it like one and a half because I actually just thought it was a bad movie. On political, I'm giving it zero stars. But on a movie, I'm giving it one and a half. My plug for this movie is go see "The People's Joker" if you can, if it is in your city. Go see that instead.
**Margaret ** 53:18 And mine is go watch "Wayne's World." I can't really defend it politically. I don't know. There's probably really fucked up things in it. Whatever I liked it. Maybe don't go watch "Wayne's World." I just remember really likeing that movie. I tried to do a non-sequitur here. We should end this podcast. My mouth hurts. I had oral surgery. I probably complained about that a lot.
**Inmn ** 53:46 If you enjoyed this podcast, go watch "Wayne's World." That is our weekly.... [Both laughing]
**Margaret ** 53:54 There's probably somehting bad I just don't remember.
**Inmn ** 53:59 If you enjoyed this podcast, enjoy the nostalgia of, not the reality of, "Wayne's World."
**Inmn ** 54:06 The People's Wayne's World.
**Inmn ** 54:07 The People's Wayne's World. Also, if you enjoyed this podcast, we would love for you to tell people about it. It's one of the best ways to support the show. And like I don't know, talk to your friends about it. Talk to your friends about movies. Go to go to the movies with your friends and talk about those movies. And don't let movies define what your concept of the world is because, I don't know, filmmakers are fucking weird sometimes, you know? But you can also support the show by supporting our publisher Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. And you can support Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness by telling people about stuff. You can support it by buying stuff from us. We publish, we put out books, zines, we have shirts, we have cool games, and you can also support us, and the show, by signing up for Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And there's a bunch of different levels of stuff that you can get for supporting our Patreon, anywhere from discounts on physical things that we make, to just free versions of all of the digital stuff that we put out. And you can also get like a cool zine every month. And you can also give us $20 a month to acknowledge or thank a thing of your choice. This could be you, this could be your friend, this could be a organization that you think is cool, or it could be a fictional or theoretical concept, which no one has asked us to thank yet.
**Margaret ** 55:43 Or.... Sorry, finish your thought. I want to. before you do the list, I want to present another thing that people could do.
**Inmn ** 55:51 Which this is my new post podcast thing, if you liked this podcast, please pay us $20 to thank a fictional concept. That is...that is my plug.
**Margaret ** 56:04 Also, you could troll us by taking one of the names or projects that's already on our list and adding it to our list again, so that we have to read it twice. Like Boise Mutual Aid, what if that got read out twice? Wouldn't that be funny?
**Inmn ** 56:19 Yeah, or what if...what if we thank...we could thank Amber twice. We could think Julia twice. We could think Marm twice. And we're going to thank all of them twice right now. Thank you alium and alium. Thank you, Amber and Amber. Thank you Ephemeral and Ephemeral. I have to transcribe this and I'm going to hate this. Yeah. Thank you Appalachian--I'm going to stop. Thank you Appalachian Liberation Library, Portland's Hedron Hackerspace, boldfield, E, Patoli, Eric, Buck, Julia. Look we thanked you three times. Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Miranda, Ben Ben, Anonymous, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid. Look, we're thanking you like three times. theo, Hunter, SJ, Paige. Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Mic Aiah, and the immortal Hoss the Dog. Thanks for everything that you've done.[Margaret makes pew-pew gun noises] Pew, pew.
**Margaret ** 57:24 That's a call back of me interrupting you with the.... Evryone will be happy and not think I'm a jerk. Please continue. [Both laughing]
**Inmn ** 57:24 We.... Wait, wait.
**Margaret ** 57:24 I'm like high off of pain and my mouth hurts because I've been talking. Oh, no, was pew-pew.... We recorded two episodes in a row. Was this the one that I pew-pew'd in? This is the one I pew-pew in the middle of, right?
**Inmn ** 57:45 No, no, but just wait for the...wait for it for the visual cue, Margaret.
**Margaret ** 57:49 Okay.
**Inmn ** 57:51 We just hope everyone is doing as well as they can with everything that's going on [Inmn pauses as if winking at Margaret. Margaret makes pew-pew, gun, and explosion noise] and we'll see you next time.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Tav and Inmn talk about the utility of waterways and the ways that industrialization has changed our relationship to waterways. Inmn learns new terrifying things about river rafting and how river guides really come up with the scariest things to name potential dangers.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Tav on Waterways
**Inmn ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today Inmn Neruin, and today we're going to be revisiting a subject that we've talked about before which is paddling on water. And we're going to talk a lot about rivers and we're gonna talk about—a little bit about planning trips and just generally the importance of getting to know your local waterways, with some specific contexts on places that are really cold. But first, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts, and here's a jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo doo doo!
**Inmn ** 01:43 And welcome back. Thanks so much for coming on the show today. Could you introduce yourself and tell us just a little bit about what you—what you do in the world and what you're excited to talk about today?
**Tav ** 01:59 Yeah, I'm Tav and I'm a, I guess broadly a wilderness guide from so-called Canada. Yeah, I've worked everywhere from the East Coast to Newfoundland, up to the Yukon. And yeah, I'm mostly a paddling guide, so everything from whitewater rafting, to sea kayaking, to canoeing, but I've also been known to guide hiking trips, and yeah, pretty much that's what I do.
**Inmn ** 02:32 Cool, cool. That's—I feel like, you know, we've had people come on and talk about like, like arctic hiking, or hiking, or paddling, mostly in the desert, and I feel like—maybe this is just me having a very not understanding of all of these things for the most part. But what—I'm curious about, like, what kind of changes, like, in places where it gets super cold and you're having to be in the water? Which sounds cold. It sounds very cold to me.
**Tav ** 03:06 Um, yeah, I think the main thing is that it really depends on what—well, first of all, what time of year it is and, like, what exactly you're doing or planning on doing. So if you're going to be running rapids, you're certainly going to get wet. And so we have these things called dry suits, which are, well, it's kind of exactly what it sounds like. It's a suit that keeps you dry. They have these rubber gaskets on your wrists and your neck. So it, like, suctions completely to your neck and your wrists and the rest of its waterproof, including the feet. And you usually have, like I have these, call them river boots, and you just put them on over the suit. And then you're nice and protected. And you can wear warm stuff underneath if it's super cold out. But personally, I run hot. So generally, I find that like, just a base layer underneath is good enough for me. Because as soon as, like it really traps in all that air, so you stay pretty, you stay pretty warm. Even if you're in like really freezing water. But in other times of year, like to be honest, in the summer here, it gets pretty hot, like people—people don't really think of it. It's not like it's frozen year round. Obviously the waters running at a certain point and, especially these days, the summers can get up to, you know, like 30 degrees. And yeah.
**Inmn ** 04:40 Cool. I'm gonna pretend I know what the conversion is on that. Wow, that's hot.
**Tav ** 04:46 Yeah, I mean, it is pretty—it's probably not hot for you coming from the desert actually. But yeah, I think, I think broadly the biggest thing is always, at least for me, dressing as if you're gonna fall in the water. Unless it's really hot out. If it's really hot out and you fall in, it kind of feels great. But, but if it's chilly, you always dress like you're gonna go in the water, and not like you're just gonna have a nice day on the river. And yeah.
**Inmn ** 05:25 Well, I guess like, I'm curious about, like, what the kind of preparedness like like, what—like, what do you what do you do if you fall in the water? What do you do if you fall in the water and you get wet? Like, what's—and your dry suit doesn't keep you dry? These scary questions that I have about being in the wilderness and being cold and wet.
**Tav ** 05:50 For sure. Definitely, I mean, so the first thing that's gonna happen it—and again, it all really depends on where you fall out. And like, because rivers are a very dynamic environment, actually, as one of my coworkers put it to me. He was more on the hiking side of things. And he told me that like paddling really scared him, because if something goes wrong on the river, you're still moving down the river as this thing is going wrong. So you have to like deal with the problem, but also maybe deal with a hazard that's like right in front of you. And then it's always about, like, figuring out what the best course of action is in regards to, like, dealing with the hazard, but also, you know, saving the person, and making sure everybody else who's still in the boat is safe. But I think broadly, what I tend to tell people if I'm taking them on a trip that's going to involve whitewater, is: the safest place on the river is in the boat. And if you're not in the boat, you should be on shore. So if I'm gonna, like, enter a bunch of rapids—and the other thing is actually, before I say that, you need to know, like, how to swim if you're gonna like be in whitewater. They call it a defensive swimming position. And you kind of sit back like you're in a lawn chair, and put your feet forward. And that way, if you like smashed into a rock, it's not your face that smashes into a rock, it's your feet. And you just kind of, like, you should have a lifejacket on. So that'll keep you floating. And, and then there's also, like, an offensive swimming position, which I wouldn't normally teach somebody, that's, yeah. Anyways, so yeah, so if I'm about to enter a bunch of rapids, I'll tend to tell people like, hey, if you do fall out, and for whatever reason you can't get back to the boat, you need to swim to the left shore or the right shore. Because sometimes it might not be safe to swim a certain direction and people don't know that and they're just gonna panic and swim whatever way seems the best. But if you let them know beforehand, like, hey, swim left, if something goes really wrong, I don't know, then they'll at least know the safer way to swim. Yeah. And then other than that, like, we have, I guess, a couple tools in our arsenal—and this should be the same with rivers everywhere. We'll have throw ropes, which are just some buoyant rope. And it's in a bag, and you throw it at people. And they should hopefully grab on to it and then you can pull them in to safety. And then there's obviously, again, like, as with all things, it can get more and more complicated depending on what the problem is. Actually, this one place I worked—I wasn't on this trip, but there was a person who got stuck on a piece of debris in the middle of a rapid which is, like, absolutely horrifying, especially because we've run that river—or that section of the river, like, a million times and that's never happened. So there was well, so—this is kind of insane, but there was a an old mill there, like a lumber mill. Or maybe it was a paper mill. I don't know, it was some industrial thing. And rather than, like, you know, when it went out of business, disposing of all the waste properly, they just decided, hey, there's this big river right there. Let's just throw the whole factory in the river. Why not? So there was all this big machinery and like metal under the water, and a lot of the rapids are actually created by that like big hunks of metal and stuff. But anyways, we had no idea that that, like, was there. And maybe it was just like the water level was perfectly right that day or perfectly wrong that day. But yeah, this person got like caught on their swim shorts, like, right on the piece of metal. And they were stuck in the middle of a rapid. So I cannot imagine what my friends went through trying to rescue that person. It must have been pretty terrifying. But yeah, so in situations like that, it would be like a much more complicated rescue than just like throwing a rope at them and hoping for the best. So yeah.
**Inmn ** 10:23 Wow, that is—you unlocked a new fear for me. I thought that Blix had like gotten all of my fear out of me, you know, in horrible things that can happen in a river, and new fear unlocked. Thanks.
**Tav ** 10:39 Yeah.
**Inmn ** 10:43 What do you—I guess I'm curious—I guess my guess is, because boats, you just—I didn't know, boats are super interesting to me because, like you said, it's like the boat keeps moving down the river. And so it's like, I want to be like, okay, like, what, like, you know, what do you do if there's an emergency? What do you do if someone needs to be like, medivaced from an area like that? And I guess I'm expecting the answer is: put him in the boat and keep going. But—which is like a cool one interesting thing about boats, is they keep going?
**Tav ** 11:20 Yeah, for sure. I mean, again, it really depends. Like everything is situational, right?
**Inmn ** 11:26 Yeah yeah yeah.
**Tav ** 11:27 And you really have to assess the situation and figure out what the best course of action is. Like, the best thing to do might be to like pull over and call EMS and hope they can land like a bush plane or a helicopter near you, or get to a place where they can land it. I had this one evac where a lady actually had a stroke on the river.
**Inmn ** 11:53 Oh no.
**Tav ** 11:53 Yeah, I was pretty terrible. I was the only person there with, like, you know, decent medical training. I'm not like a doctor or anything, but I have my wilderness first responder and all that fun stuff. And yeah, so it was just like me and these other guides, who had, like, some training, but not as much as me. And my coworker—love this guy, he's amazing—but he said that she had a concussion. And I was like, this is not a concussion. This is a stroke. Yeah. And so, so yeah, so what ended up happening is we had to take one of the boats and—honestly, mad respect to my to my coworker for this—he got her down like a 45 minute section of river and like 15 minutes. We were just lucky because we had a raft there with an oar frame on it. And those, like—an oar frame is just like, you know, like a rowboat—
**Tav ** 12:51 —with like, the two oars and you're like rowing it. It's that, but you like, it's a big metal frame, and you like strap it down to the rafts. So instead of—like, if you have less than the ideal number of people, you can just have one person paddle the boat. So in that case, it was actually my group, where I only had like two people. So I just ended up strapping the warframe on because it's easier than having them paddle. So anyways, my coworker took that boat and just, like, ripped down the river faster than anybody ever has probably since then. So, so yeah, I mean, in that case, like, it was a serious medical problem, we couldn't deal with the problem, you know, you need to like, get that person to definitive care as fast as possible. And in that situation, we were close enough to the end, that the best thing to do was to just call EMS, get them to bring an ambulance to the takeout and get her there as fast as possible. But you might not be in a situation where that's, you know, plausible, you might have to call a bush plane or something like that. Or, even worse, like a bush plane can't come and you're stuck for like days with somebody with a serious medical problem. That can happen, unfortunately. Yeah.
**Inmn ** 12:51 Oh okay.
**Inmn ** 14:18 Yeah. Yeah. I feel like—and I think this is a topic for another time—but I really want to—folks listening out there. This is my plug to our audience. I would really love to talk to someone at some point about like, like we have this idea in, like, wilderness first aid, response, etc. I have like an expired wilderness EMT. I haven't done that work in a very long time and my brain has totally fallen out of it. But like, interested in this conversation of like, long term care in, like, when definitive care is very far away, you know, like, how to troubleshoot situations where it's like, yeah, definitive care is days away. Definitive care is a week away. And I'm like really interested in talking to someone about that. So if that feels like you, Tav, or ambient listener, then send us a message.
**Tav ** 15:31 Yeah, I can't say that's exactly my area of expertise. I can offer like, an anecdote from a friend of mine, who—
**Inmn ** 15:41 Oh yeah. Love anecdotes.
**Tav ** 15:43 —it's pretty, it's pretty grim. I'm not gonna lie. This guy is friend of mine, he's much older than me. He's been doing this river guide stuff for his whole life. And he's had lik three people die in his arms.
**Inmn ** 16:00 Oh my god.
**Tav ** 16:01 Yeah. But like that's, unfortunately, the reality of the situation where, if you're that far away, and someone's not getting there, and there's a serious problem, and you can't deal with it, that's what happens. Right? That's the unfortunate fact of existence. And it's pretty horrifying to realize. Also from a somewhat selfish perspective, like, if I continue along this career path that could very well be me telling another young person and a few years like, oh, yeah, this one horrible thing happened to me. And yeah, like, I've definitely seen my fair share of, like, pretty intense situations that could have gone pretty badly. Thankfully, I haven't had anybody die on any of the excursions I've been on. But be I've had some pretty close calls there. So yeah. It is it is something to always consider, like, when you're heading off on a trip that's going to be far away from a hospital or civilization, I guess. That, yeah, like you are far away, and you need to have a certain level of confidence in yourself to deal with the situations that you might need to deal with. But also, in that, like, for me, it comes with a certain level of, like, risk acceptance. And like, everybody has a different level of risk tolerance. You might not be the person who's going to go, like, on a month long trip through the wilderness. That might not be okay with you. And that's fine, it's not for everybody. You know, in my case, the way I tend to look at it is, like, if there's a problem I can't deal with—pretending I'm alone in this scenario—like, if there's a problem I can't deal with myself, and it's so serious that I'm gonna die, like, in a few minutes, then like, I just accept that, like, that's what's gonna happen. Like, if I can't deal with the problem, and I can't call for help with the problem and it's that bad anyways, then I'm alread—can I swear on this? Is this a no swearing show?
**Inmn ** 18:31 Oh, yeah, you can, yeah.
**Tav ** 18:32 I can swear? Okay, I was gonna say, I'm already in a lot of shit if that's—if that's happening. So for me, my risk tolerance, I mean, it might be higher than others. But I don't know—it's just like, something you have to accept when it comes to taking risks. I mean, you can be prepared and informed and know everything and still an accident can happen. And then you just have to accept that, yeah, accidents happen, and it might be a really big, bad accident. So, so yeah.
**Inmn ** 19:06 Yeah. Yeah, that' very true. I feel like—I feel like there's a lot of aspects of our societies that have kind of—have had our, like, brains adapt to this idea that, like, that there is always a solution to something. And I feel like this was like a big thing with, like, with COVID, like, for a lot of people, was the expectation that there was a solution to something, and a lot of people, like, getting to the ER and being like, oh, there actually isn't a solution right now—or there isn't like a one 100%, like guarantee that this problem can be fixed. And yeah, I don't know. It's—I think that's the thing that I've been thinking a lot about, is how our societies have kind of expected there to always be a guaranteed solution to something that there might not be a solution to. And I think that's like—I think that's getting more extreme as things in the world change more. There's—when we are used to certainty, there is now more uncertainty. That is an articulate thought, I'm gonna stand by it.
**Tav ** 20:42 Yeah. No, I mean, definitely. Like, I could see that in society at large, actually, now that you mentioned it. But like, yeah, I mean, with regards to wilderness travel, I think anybody who does this sort of thing, like you have an understanding of the risk involved, and like what—you know, there's things that you can deal with there and there's things you can't deal with. And, yeah, like, but I mean, okay, you know, I also don't want to scare people. It's not—like, yes, you have to kind of look within yourself and accept that something bad might happen. But at the same time, I've done, like, I don't even want to know how many 1000s of hours of paddling in my life. And I, yeah, I've had, like, some problems. But I think a lot of those kind of stem from the fact that it's my job. And I'm taking people out there who aren't necessarily prepared for what they're going to—like, they go online and they're like, oh, I want to go on a guided paddling trip. And they Google, whatever, paddling in the Yukon. And then they find this company and they book a trip and they go. And that's all the preparation and thought that they put into it. Where—and that's exactly what they're paying for, I guess, if you look at it from like a service perspective. They're paying for somebody else to do all of that thought. And what I'm, what I do, like, independently—like if somebody listening wanted to go out paddling, if you just, like, talk to somebody who knows what they're doing locally—like join your local paddling club, a lot of places have those, or like find a group online—and like, learn from people or learn from the Internet. We have a lovely resource of, like, all of the information anyone could ever want. So, yeah, it doesn't have to be dangerous. I think most of the danger, and most of the dangerous situations I've been in, happen simply because it's my job to take unprepared people out into the wilderness. And, like, that kind of sucks. I—that's why I'm not actually working as a guide this summer. One of the reasons is because I'm pretty tired of dealing with unprepared people in the wilderness because it's stressful. It's really stressful. And yeah, so I mean, I guess the the main point is, like, it doesn't have to be dangerous as long as you're prepared. And I think that's a pretty great theme, considering this show.
**Inmn ** 23:43 Yeah, yeah. And it's—I don't know, like, I totally understand the outlook of someone who's like, yes, I want to pay someone else to be prepared for me. And it's like, you know, reality is very different from, like, adventure tourism. But like, it's funny because it's a thing that is like a little antithetical to preparedness in general. And I'm divorcing adventure tourism and preparedness, like, because they're different things.
**Tav ** 24:21 Yeah.
**Inmn ** 24:21 But, yeah, it's like, that is the thing that we're always trying to talk about on this show is, like, if in our own lives, like, if we are all more prepared than it—then like your prepper friend has to, like, do less when stuff goes wrong because everyone's a little bit prepared.
**Tav ** 24:41 Yeah, for sure.
**Inmn ** 24:44 I kind of want to switch tacks a little bit though and talk about this other thing. So I'm curious—I guess in, like, in the Yukon specifically, like, there's places where I live that I'm, like, okay, yes, that is a less accessible place via like roads and things like that. But I'm curious kind of like what the Yukon and, like, that whole area is like in terms of, like, history of transportation and stuff like that. Because, like, waterways have played kind of like a pretty large part in that from what you've told me before this—and now I sound like it's something I already knew.
**Tav ** 25:27 Yeah, for sure. To be honest, it's not just the Yukon. Throughout this country we call Canada, if you actually look at all of Canadian history, like, Canada's like three companies in a trench coat. Always has been. And it was founded on fur trading. Right. And how that was done is basically, like, white people came over, and then they met the ndigenous people. And they were like, wow, these people move pretty far and they have some neat boats. And then they kind of co-opted those boats. And of course, Indigenous people and Metis people took part in the fur trade as well. A very large part, to be honest, in making sure a lot of white people didn't just die in the wilderness. Yeah, but like throughout this entire nation's history, every single place is really connected by water. Like that's just how people got around. Everywhere from, like, the far north, the Inuit had kayaks and—actually dogsleds. ou know, when the sea froze in the winter, they had greater mobility, because—I mean, and they're still moving over water, it's just frozen water, which is kind of like land. But it, yeah, so every single place in this entire so-called country is connected by water in some capacity. And I think that really forms the way that I look at places now. Because yes, we use roads to get around now. But very likely, there is another way to get anywhere you want to get. Because all of these settlements are built on rivers, on lakes, on the ocean, and the way people got there is probably on a boat, and not on a car because we didn't have cars 400 years ago. So yeah, I guess I just, I think it's really important to recognize that and recognize that it's still very very possible to go extremely long distances. And, you know, reach inaccessible, quote/unquote places with relative ease, to be honest. So actually, something that's pretty insane to me—it's mind boggling, to be quite honest: the longest river system in the country is the Mackenzie River. And it's technically, like, if you go by names, it's a bunch of different rivers that are connected. But it's really, like, from source to sea—I don't actually remember how many kilometers it is. But you can go from Alberta, like, around Jasper, if anybody knows where that is, all the way to the Arctic Ocean on a single river. And you can do that in like a single summer, too. And throughout that whole river, there's a bunch of towns. And a lot of them are not accessible by road, but they are very easily accessible by the river. So if you really think about it, like, in my mind, they're not inaccessible places. They seem inaccessible because of our modern transportation infrastructure, which, you know, makes anything that doesn't have a road seem like it's impossible to get to and you have to spend thousands of dollars and fly or whatever. But really, all it takes is, like, one person in a canoe and you can just go anywhere you want. Yeah.
**Inmn ** 29:31 Yeah, that stuff is super interesting. It's like the—I don't know, it's like, I get on some level that, you know, cars are convenient. I love being able to drive somewhere. But it's like, I don't know, obviously cars are also terrible and we need different—we need something different before the planet dies. But It's like also this thing that, like, it's like car—I imagine that like switching over a transportation system to be, like, based on moving around on the river versus based on, like, driving around on some roads that demolish a bunch of shit. It also, like, divorces us from nature and like any connection that we have to, like, the natural landscape that we are using. And, like, used to be on the river and now it's put the remains of petrified trees in your thing and blast around on concrete or whatever. I don't know. It's just funny.
**Tav ** 30:43 Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, I definitely—cars are—I wish I could just live out of a canoe. But that, I can't do that. I mean, I live in my car right now. So I get their convenience. But I do think that as, like, as things progress and the climate gets worse and worse, and I mean, even now, this is probably going to mean absolutely nothing to you—Oh, you know what, actually, I was in Alaska, like, the other day. And it's actually a bit cheaper than here. But the gasoline that I purchased was $5.50 American per gallon, which I think is $1.67, or .68 per liter. What I normally—like in the Yukon, it's like 1$.80 to $1.90 per liter right now, which, it's getting pretty unaffordable to go large, long distances in a in a car. And I think that like as this progresses, like—they're not getting—these prices are not getting cheaper, inflation is continuing, and it's quickly going to become really hard, I think, for your average person to go anywhere in a vehicle when it's costing them, like, over $100 to fill a single tank. And that's, I think, where we have to return to what we did historically, which is travel on rivers. And I mean, it's not even just returning to, like, historical transport, I guess. Like we can still use road infrastructure, a lot of people bike everywhere. And you can go pretty long distance—like actually, it's super common in the Yukon to see people biking the entire Klondike highway, or the entire Dempster highway, like all the way to the Arctic Ocean, which is pretty awesome.
**Inmn ** 31:27 Whoa.
**Tav ** 32:03 Yeah, yeah, I see them all the time, actually. Yeah, so—but anyways, the point being like, as we're getting, like, priced out of these things that we once took for granted, we're gonna have to understand that, like, people think about collapse and preparedness from really local perspective. And I think that's great. Really, I think getting more local is awesome. But I think what people also forget about is the fact that, like, we still are really an interconnected species. And we always have been, even before modern globalization. Like people really were traveling very far to go trade or whatever, on rivers or on the sea. And I think it's important to recognize that we probably should still be doing that because it does strengthen everybody's community. Like, just, I don't know, checking in on the community next door, or, you know, a few kilometers down the river is important too and, you know, sharing, I guess. Like, I guess there's inter-community preparedness and then intra-community preparedness. And I like to think that, like, using the environment and more specifically the waterways to like stay connected, even when we can't drive everywhere, is is pretty important.
**Inmn ** 34:15 Yeah, I don't know. We live in a—we live in a strange world now. Um, I, you know, I didn't know this for a while and finding it out kind of blew my mind in a funny little way. But um, as far as like the eastern half of the United States is, like, someone told me that it is technically an island because you can circumnavigate the, like, eastern half of the United States and a boat. And this has, like, always kind of blown my mind. Like I'm not going to remember what the actual waterways all are, but it's like you can go from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi—whichever one of those lakes connects to the Mississippi—and like take the Mississippi down and then, like, get out into the Gulf and like sail around Florida, and like sail up the Atlantic, and then, like, through—it might be through a series of rivers and it might require using a canal, but you can like, get right back into the Great Lakes system. Like the Hudson Bay, or something. And—
**Tav ** 34:50 —probably the same. I mean, if I was gonna do that I'd do the St. Lawrence River.
**Inmn ** 35:47 But cool. Yeah. I don't actually know what these waterways are.
**Tav ** 35:52 Yeah, for sure. I spend, like, way too much time of my life, like, I'm looking at a map and being like, okay, where does this river lead, and I'm, like, follow the river, like, all the way to its source. And then I go, like, all the way to the sea. And I'm like, okay, that's how far I can get there. But what if I portaged to this lake, and then I take that lake to this river. And like, anyways, I have, like, a whole folder have these like map files of just, like, random paddling routes that I've planned out. And I probably won't get to do all of them. But, yeah, I just, I am kind of a nerd in that I just like to go figure out, like, how I can get around places. Yeah. It's really crazy. Like, once you start—once you realize, like, your mind is opened up to the fact that, like, you can travel, basically anywhere on a boat, all you have to do is look at the blue lines on a map and trace them and figure out how you get from point A to point B using them. And I think it's also actually important to note that, like—so in a context of—yeah, like, in a context of a world where we're not able to use our highways and stuff. Like that, following a river or a creek, even if you don't have a boat, is a great way to make sure you know where you're going. Because, yeah, like, I mean, it's like a really obvious landmark. And you can just follow it the whole way. Especially in places where rivers are super seasonal, like, part of the year, it might literally just be like a bit of gravel, and you can just walk on it all the way to where you're going. Yeah, so I think that's also important to mention, that they're not—it's not just boats, it's just that they're very convenient ways to traverse a landscape, especially one that's, like, heavily forested. There might not be like a lot of other clearings nearby, so yeah.
**Inmn ** 38:01 Yeah. Um, have you—so this like folder of, like, wacky routes—I'm gonna call them wacky routes—have you gotten to—could you tell us about a creative, like, trip that you took via waterways. Or, like, what's like the longest that you've traveled in like—I don't have words for the things that I'm asking you...
**Tav ** 38:28 Yeah. Honestly, like, the longest trip I've ever done is unfortunately with my job, and that would be about a 10 day trip on the Yukon River. But—and that's just, it's mostly like a time thing. Like I said, you know, I—it's—we live in this cold place, and the water's only running for, like, a certain amount of time. And unfortunately, I've made it my livelihood to, like, spend my entire summer taking other people on trips. So in terms of my, like, crazy, wacky trips, I haven't gotten to do, like, any of the big ones that I want to actually do. Because, you know, they take, like, a month or more. And I just don't have a month because I need to make money.
**Inmn ** 39:17 Yeah.
**Tav ** 39:18 But I'm hoping that will change this summer. I'm planning on a very long trip at the end of August, and it should be awesome.
**Inmn ** 39:28 Cool.
**Tav ** 39:29 But yeah, so. So yeah, I guess in that respect, I haven't done any of those like ones that I concoct that are kind of wild. But I do like to just go and explore, like, little waterways and figure out, I don't know—I just like find a river and I'll go upstream. Or, actually a few days ago I did—I went just downstream and I I literally walked back to my car at the end, it was just a day thing. And that kind of sucks, being alone, because you're like, oh, cool, I did this river. And now I'm gonna just like walk back to my car and drive and pick up my boat. But yeah, I wish I had more cool stories of me on my own doing things that I want to do, but capitalism exists and all my fun river stories are with tourists that I'm taking. So.
**Inmn ** 40:31 Yeah, that makes sense. What is this trip that you're planning gonna be like?
**Tav ** 40:40 Yeah, so actually I have a couple different options in that regard, and it is kind of gonna depend on, like, what's on fire and what's not on fire. So, but my main route that I want to take is, basically, it'll be I think 1000–1500 kilometers. And, yeah, and it'll be from this place called Eagle Plains, which is, like, in the Arctic—it's like right kind of on, slightly below the Arctic Circle, on the Dempster highway. And I'll start on the Eagle River, and then go through a series of other rivers. I'll reach Old Crow, which is the furthest north settlement in the Yukon. And then I'll take the Porcupine all the way across Alaska—I'll cross into Alaska. And that'll take me down to the Yukon River. I'll hit up a couple towns on the Yukon River in Alaska, and then I'll get off at the last point where there's road access. That the trip that I'd like to do if the fires allow me.
**Inmn ** 41:58 Yeah, yeah. Um, what—are there—I guess like, when planning—when planning a trip that is not, like, a super pre established, I guess, route or something, are there any things that that are important to consider or important to, like, prepare for?
**Tav ** 42:19 Yeah, for sure. The first thing is, I wouldn't recommend doing a non pre established route unless you kind of know what you're doing. But the second thing is that, like, basically, my strategy is: I figured out the route. I map it out. And then I scour the internet for information on any of these rivers. So in this case, all of the rivers—it's actually very likely somebody has done this route before. Like, I'm definitely not the only person to think of it. At the very least, some Indigenous people did it, 100%, before I did.
**Tav ** 43:01 Yeah.
**Tav ** 43:02 Yeah. But yeah, it's a pretty obvious one, as far as routes go. It's just a bunch of rivers, and they all kind of feed into each other. There's no, like, crazy portages I hope—there shouldn't be any crazy portages or anything like that. I have heard one of the rivers runs pretty low sometimes, so I might have to, like, drag my boat along. But um, yeah, so. So yeah, and that—like I met people who've done the route up to Old Crow before. So I know that—I've heard about that portion from a couple of people that I know. And, yeah, other than that, I look online. And, like, you just have to kind of incessantly Google until something comes up about the river you want. And like, it's probably going to be some like, weird, obscure blog from 2006 where someone's like, I paddled this river with my friends and it was cool. And like, it might not even have, like, all the information that you need. But, like, to me, a lot of the time I'm like, okay, cool, if someone did it, that means it's probably fine, right. And that's kind of my strategy. Like, you're not gonna get all of the information you want. But you can get a lot of information just by, like, scouring the internet. And actually, go to your local bookstore. If you're going to like plan a river trip near you, go to a bookstore—or not your local bookstore if it's not near you. Go to the bookstore there and look for maps, because they probably have maps of local places. And if they don't have maps, you should ask them where to get maps, because they probably know where to get maps. I know in Canada, though, you can go on natural resources, Natural Resources Canada, and they should have like topographic maps of the entire country if you need, like, that kind of math. But you can also just, like, go on Google. But, um, but yeah, I guess mostly it comes down to getting information from wherever you can get your information from, whether that's people who've done it, the internet, or your local bookstore. And the second thing is, if you're doing a route you're unfamiliar with, especially if you're alone, you have to be cautious, and you have to know what to look for. And you have to be able to react really quickly to situations. Actually, literally a couple of days ago I was paddling this river in Alaska and the water's really low because of the time of year. And I was coming around a bend and there was a sweeper right across the river. And what happened is the river really, really narrowed, like, in this section. And it just, like, it went right for the sweeper—a sweeper is a tree that's like right across the water. So if you think about it, like, a broom, it'll be like right over up the surface. And then there's all these like branches on the way. And I think there was like a log and there's like other stuff underneath the sweeper. It was not a fun thing to be like hurtling towards really quickly. And yeah, so I was alone. And I, like, swung my boat around and, like, jumped out—because like, it was really low water so that it was shallow, which made it much easier to just, like, jump out of my boat as fast as possible and, like, drag it on shore. But like, it's stuff like that, where you're not necessarily expecting it and then you're like, oh shit, like, I need to deal with this right now. Get out of the way. And I actually lost my paddle it went down—I got it. It's fine. That's why you always have a spare paddle. That's the moral of the story. Have two paddles.
**Inmn ** 47:09 I feel like the moral of the story is: river guides continue to come up with horrifying names for dangers in the river. I thought I had heard the worst but "sweeper" is—sorry this is uh, this is a call back to Blix telling me about, like, just the—I forget what they're—I feel like one of them was called a "blender," and I—
**Tav ** 47:35 Blender? I dunno about a blender. Maybe American river guides have different names for stuff. I don't know. I don't know. To me, the most horrifying feature on a river is an undercut. And it's unfortunately something that comes up a lot in places where the rivers freeze. So what will happen is like the banks will be covered in ice. And if you're—and if you're paddling at that time of year, there'll be undercuts along the whole riverbank, like the whole way down the river. And an undercut is basically just where the current goes like underneath a ledge right? At the worst case, it can be, like, a recirculating current under there. So like you get sucked under in like basically an underwater cave. And then it just, like, like, circles you around underneath and like an underwater cave and you just, like, sit there and die.
**Inmn ** 48:30 [Quietly] God.
**Tav ** 48:30 Yeah, so that's what an undercut is. And then like the ice undercuts and kind of terrifying, something to be aware of if you're going to be paddling a river during spring or fall. Yeah, those are—to me, that's the most terrifying thing. Because like a lot of other stuff, there's like a way to kind of get around it or, like, you know, figure it out. But if you get sucked into an undercut you're kind of boned. Like you're pretty—there's not a lot you can do.
**Inmn ** 49:03 Yeah.
**Tav ** 49:04 Especially if you're alone. There's other people—I've heard of someone who got sucked into an undercard on the Ottawa River actually. And, like, there's this—I don't remember the name of the rapid, but there's this one part that's like this crazy undercut. And someone got sucked in there. And they got a rope on them somehow. And they had a truck, like a pickup truck. And they were pulling them out of the current with a pickup truck and the rope snapped. And, like, the pickup truck couldn't even go against the current. Like they were just stuck under—that person didn't live. But yeah, like it can be pretty—those are—yeah, again, that's like the most extreme horrifying thing I think to me, but...
**Inmn ** 49:50 Stay away from—I know we're just—we're talking about our rivers are cool, but everyone's stay away from rivers. Golly. That's not my actual advice.
**Tav ** 50:02 I think it—no—they're definitely—like that's the thing, right? They're definitely a force of nature. I always like to tell people: you will never win a fight against a river. But that doesn't mean you should be afraid of going on the river always, like, yeah, I feel like I've been talking about a lot of negative bad things that can happen. And I don't want to freak people out. Rivers are really nice and cool, and they help you get places, and it can be really fun. It's not all whitewater. Like, the Yukon River is a giant—like it's a highway. It's like, huge, flat river. It goes like 10 kilometers an hour or something crazy. Like, you can paddle it super fast. And there's, like, basically no hazards. Like, there's like some log jams and like stuff like that, but they're very easily avoided. And it's, yeah, as far as, like, as far as rivers go, if you want to go a long distance and not have to worry about any of that scary, complicated stuff, the Yukon river is fantastic. Actually, every year there's a race called the Yukon River Quest, where people paddle from Whitehorse to Dawson City, it's like 730 kilometers, and yeah, people are doing that in like, three days. Well, less than three days actually. Like they're times because you have to like stop-there's a mandatory rest point where you have to sleep for a certain number of hours, and they don't count that towards the final time, but basically the the race lasts like three days. That's like paddling nonstop. But to be honest, if you think about the fact that you don't have a motor, and you're not in a car or anything like that, and you're traveling 730 kilometers in three days, that's crazy. And there's like no hazards. It's so crazy.
**Inmn ** 50:18 That's really cool.
**Tav ** 50:32 Yeah, you can go really fast and get places on certain rivers.
**Tav ** 51:21 Cool. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay, that sounds fun now. Now that sounds fun.
**Tav ** 52:09 Yeah.
**Inmn ** 52:12 Um, we're kind of coming up to the end of our time. Is there anything else you want to say about waterways, or paddling, or any questions that I didn't ask you that you're like, golly, why didn't Inman asked me about this.
**Tav ** 52:29 Yeah, um, I guess mainly just—I think I didn't get to talk about oceans as much as I would have liked to. But, like, I think the main thing I would hope people can take away from this is that it's really important to learn about the water near you, if that's the ocean, if that's a river, if that's a lake. You know, learn about whatever boa, the Indigenous people in your area use to travel on that water, because it's probably really well suited for it, to be honest. And yeah, just learn about your local waterway, learn about the ecosystem. I didn't get to talk about that as much too, but—because I'm really into traveling rivers—but they're also sources of food and just, like, life for everyone, you know. So learn about what animals live there, learn about how to help your river, and—or the ocean. And just learn about your local water and have some kind of relationship with it, whether that's, like, paddling or, like, picking blueberries on the riverbank. I think it's just important that everybody is aware of water and the life that it brings us and how it connects all of us. Yeah. I think that's that's it.
**Inmn ** 54:00 Cool. That seems like a great—that is a better place to end on than the blender—the sweeper—whatever that terrifying name was. Is there anything that you want to shout out, whether it's places people can find you on the internet where you would like to be found, or projects, or just anything you want to plug or shout out?
**Tav ** 54:25 Um, yeah, like, I guess I have a tiny YouTube channel that like doesn't have really much—it's mostly just my music, if anybody cares at all. It's, um, I'm birchbark online. You can find me there. That's whatever. But I think the main thing I want to plug is: go have a nice day by the water and be nice to yourself.
**Inmn ** 55:00 Cool. That's a great thing. I'm going to go find water. I think there's water here right now.
**Tav ** 55:08 Awesome.
**Inmn ** 55:08 I will try. Cool. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show.
**Tav ** 55:14 Yeah, for sure. Thanks. Thanks for having me.
**Inmn ** 55:21 Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, then go learn more about your local waterways. And also come up with a new and terrifying name for a river obstacle so that I might live in fear of water forever. But also, if you liked the show, you can support it. And you can support it by telling people about the show, or doing stuff that involves an algorithm. I don't actually really know anything about any of that. But there is stuff that one can do. Also, if you would like to support the show, you can support it financially. And you can support it financially by supporting our publisher, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. You can find us at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And you can sign up for different tiers. There's a super basic tier where you just get discounts. I mean, not just you, you get discounts and you get access to digital content. And there's another tier where you can get a zine that we send you every month, and it's a really cool zine. Sometimes it's a short story, sometimes it's poetry, sometimes it's an essay about something. And they're all really cool. And you can listen to those features in audio form on our other podcast, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, and you can listen to interviews with the author, it's really cool. And in all of the ways that you support our publisher financially, it goes towards paying our audio engineer, and paying our transcriptionist, and maybe one day paying the hosts and the guests of the show. And, yeah, that's all that. We would like to give some special shout outs to some of our patrons who support us at the acknowledgement level. And just to plug how cool the acknowledgement level is: If you give us $20 a month, which goes towards us doing really cool things, then you can get us to shout out, acknowledge, or thank an organization, yourself, someone that you love, or a fictional and theoretical concept on all of our shows—except for things like, you know, if you ask us to think the Empire, we're not going to thank the Empire. So don't try. But we would like to give some special things to these folks: Thank you, Amber, Ephemeral, Appalachian Liberation Library, Portland’s Hedron Hackerspace, Boldfield, E, Patolli Erik, Buck, Julia, CatGut, Marm Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, Ben Ben, Anonymous funder, Janice & O’dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, SJ, Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Micaiah, and Hoss the Dog. Thank you so much for making this show and so many other projects possible. Thanks so much for listening, and we hope that everyone's doing as well as they can with everything that's happening in the world. And we'll see you next time.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Brooke, Margaret, and Inmn talk about some news from Gaza, the climate, hurricanes, University occupations, Texas' latest attempt to become a mini fief, abortion laws that are older than states, an update on an Arizona gun law, Taylor Swift, and TikTok.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: This Month in the Apocalypse: April, 2024
**Margaret ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. Oh, wait. Brooke, you had a better... You wrote us a new jingle to sing, right? Why don't you do that right now?
**Brooke ** 00:26 [Singing] I wrote us to do jingle to sing. Bling, bling, bling, bling, bling, bling, bling.
**Margaret ** 00:36 And that's now our jingle forever. that doesn't even include our name in it. That's what happens when... Right before we hit record, we were like who's going to record the intro. And I was like, I'm going to record the intro because I have an idea. And my idea was to make Brooke come up with something to sing off the top of her head, because I'm a good person. But who's not a good person.... Wait, I'm not introducing the bad stuff yet. More good stuff. Also a host today is Inmn. Hi, Inmn.
**Inmn ** 01:06 Hello, hello. I hope everyone is doing as well as they can in our in our great times.
**Margaret ** 01:15 Statistically, at least one of you is punched a cop in the last week. So that's pretty cool. And also, we're a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. [Singing] This is a new jingle for a show on the network. It goes like this.
**Margaret ** 01:46 And we're back. So anything happened in the world this month, Inmn?
**Inmn ** 02:22 Nope. Not at all.
**Brooke ** 02:24 Everything was good. Bye, yall!
**Inmn ** 02:26 Absolutely. Absolutely nothing has happened. Only sunshine.
**Margaret ** 02:29 What if we just did updates about like the things that we saw on TV? I guess that's a different kind of podcast. It's the wildest thing. Velma got the Scooby Doo gang together... Anyway.
**Inmn ** 02:43 We do This Month in the Apocalypse, but it's only it's only from the fictional worlds that we spend too much time inhabiting. [Everyone lauging]
**Margaret ** 02:52 I conquered the entire world for my god.
**Brooke ** 02:56 My child has been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer because she's been curious about this show that was like my formative high school experience
**Margaret ** 03:05 Aw, to like connect with you, watching old people shows like Buffy.
**Brooke ** 03:09 Right? So that's what's happening in the world right now in my world. Yeah. Wow.
**Inmn ** 03:14 You know, every once in a while it lines up though. Because, you know, I was recently watching, as part of my delve back to things I watched in high school, which is the Gilmore Girls, the family that I grew up with on TV. And they actually talk about Palestine quite often in the show. Or like they mentioned that... They mention that that stuff is happening, which lines up politically with like when the show was on the air and there was also a lot of bad stuff happening in Palestine. And but I don't think the show's creators were... They were kind of like adopting a neutral but mostly support Israel thing, which is, you know, it's--
**Margaret ** 04:07 Not our line here.
**Inmn ** 04:11 Which is not our line here, but is... How much can you expect from mainstream TV? Like I wasn't surprised to rewatch it and discover this.
**Margaret ** 04:24 So what's our Gaza update?
**Inmn ** 04:27 Yes, this is my very funny segue into Gaza stuff.
**Margaret ** 04:31 No, it's good.
**Inmn ** 04:32 Yeah, so... Which, I mean, there's nothing absolutely nothing funny about this. But so there's like a big... There's like big kind of like ceasefire talks happening right now, which I feel like this is something... You know, obviously people have been wanting there to be ceasefire talks for a long time and they they sort of happen and then Israel's, like, "We're not doing ceasefire talks. Fuck everyone." But they're... In this more recent round, while people kind of like imminently await a ground invasion of Rafah, which like the last little southern piece of Gaza that pretty much everyone who lives in Gaza has been forced into. And Hamas has responded to a call for ceasefire negotiation talks, saying that in order to start negotiations, they need for there to be a ceasefire. And part of part of what they're asking for at this point is like, yeah, we're willing to talk about hostage stuff, because I think they are still like 130 hostages, or something--
**Margaret ** 06:03 Which is sort of--like from a pure detached point of view--like kind of impressive that they've still held on to these hostages, as the entire region falls?
**Inmn ** 06:16 Yeah, yeah. And--
**Margaret ** 06:20 Like, tactically impressive.
**Inmn ** 06:25 Yeah. And they. So, kind of what they're asking for is like, yeah, we're willing to play ball. We're willing to do... like, we're willing to release hostages. But what we what we need is for Palestinian people to have basic human rights, and to not get bombed, and for there to be a ceasefire. And what do you think Israel's response to these like, pretty, pretty basic requests were?
**Margaret ** 06:56 Did they build a time machine to kill all the peoples'.... No, they probably already did kill all those people's parents. Nevermind. Something really disproportionately, impressively evil. That's my guess.
**Inmn ** 07:12 Yeah, well, it's kind of like.... So you know how this thing happens in politics, sometimes, where people kind of talk up a response as being much more internally conflictual than it actually is? The same things kind of happening in Israel were awaiting Netanyahu's response, like all of the like defense, prime ministers and stuff have been like, "If you don't continue with a ground invasion, we're abdicating and your government's going to fall apart." And Netanyahu was has vowed multiple times that regardless of whether negotiations happen, or there is a ceasefire, that a ground invasion of Rafah will happen. So it's kind of like fake strife, like fake internal strife. You know? Cool. And, yeah, that's kind of the state of the ceasefire talks. And something... This is just a piece that I've been trying to learn a little bit more about, which is a topic on a lot of people's mind, which is like, "Jey, Egypt, what's up? Why aren't you letting people into Egypt to escape genocide?" And there's kind of a few different factors at place. And one interesting development on that is that Egypt has started to build a buffered wall zone. Like a border between the border kind of thing. Which is just like a giant concrete pen that can fit about 150,000, people that they're building in anticipation of the border between Rafah and Egypt rupturing during Israel's ground invasion of Rafah, which they've... which Israel's all but announced is imminently going to happen. And likepart of what Egypt has said about this is they have been saying like, "Oh, well, we don't want to let people cross over into Egypt because we don't want people to then not be allowed back into Palestine when the war is over." It's kind of like this farcical idea that Israel's gonna do a war, take care of Hamas, and then just like peacefully leave Palestinians to like go about their lives.
**Margaret ** 09:47 Yeah, I mean, like, it is true that... It certainly seems likely to me that Israel will not let anyone back in after they leave because Israel seems pretty clear that their goal--and has been their goal since 1895. Can I tell you a thing I learned about this? Sorry.
**Inmn ** 10:05 Yeah, absolutely, please.
**Margaret ** 10:09 I'm not sure when this podcast comes out. I just recently recorded, and it'll be out around the same time, an episode of Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff about Palestinian resistance to the British Mandate of Palestine, basically the period between 1917 and 1948. Well, technically, the Mandate kicked in, in 1922. But after the British control started, right? And in that I learned a little bit more--like maybe a lot of the listeners already know this stuff--but everything that's happening now was in the diaries, and often public statements, of all of the founders of the State of Israel, down to very specifically like, "No, we are going to absolutely remove all of the--" they would never use the word Palestinians. They wouldn't even use the word Arabs. They specifically only said "non Jewish people" when they refer to the people who are already living in Palestine. And it's just really, blatantly clear that since the beginning, the project of Israel has been not just to create an Israeli State--or sorry, a Jewish state--but to remove non Jewish people.
**Inmn ** 11:24 Yeah, yeah. And it's--yeah. Which it's like part of that, that makes it really confusing to see Egypt's response--
**Margaret ** 11:35 I mean, I'm sure they're still doing it because they're bastards. But that part about like, oh, well, no one would be allowed back. That's probably true.
**Inmn ** 11:45 But it's probably true regardless. And like Egypt not wanting people to go into Egypt, I think is probably more based on Egypt's fear of being drawn into a military conflict with Israel or, as they've also stated, Hamas kind of like migrating to Egypt and like taking up the fight in Egypt. And so it's... they're kind of adopting a "tread on no one's feet and just kind of not let anyone in" kind of situation, all while saying that it's for the... it's better for Palestinian people to be trapped in the city. You know?
**Margaret ** 12:30 Can I do one other random history interjection about all this because it's on my mind.
**Inmn ** 12:34 Totally.
**Margaret ** 12:36 Okay, so there's this huge revolt in 1936, where all of the--especially the Muslims and the Christians fought--against the Zionist takeover of their land, you know? And, and their main military enemy at this point wasn't the Israeli settler or the Jewish--the zionist settlers--it was the British, right? Because the British were in control. The British used human shields. The British invented the fucking Mad Max car.
**Inmn ** 13:11 Oh my god.
**Margaret ** 13:12 They actually invented it in Ireland where they strap a guy.... They invented it by, you take an Irishman and you strap him to the front of a car and now the other Irish are afraid to fucking shoot the car or blow up the car because they don't want to kill their own guy. And there's photos of this. There is a photo in Palestine of the British in an armored car with like kind of a... It's not like a guy crudely lashed to the front Mad Max style like totally, but it is instead almost worse. It's like they went and manufactured a little cart that sticks in front of the car with two guys tied up on it. Anyway, there's the whole like, every accusation is a confession thing, and I think no government in the world has ever been more guilty of that than Israel.
**Inmn ** 14:05 Yeah, yeah. That's very, very true. But yeah, that's kind of the state of things in Gaza right now. And just because I was curious about this, I looked it up and like, for a lot of folks who are raising money for people to, for families, to get elsewhere from from Rafa, it's like those current... It's like that that is something that is possible to happen but it kind of involves...it involves a lot of bribing and involves a lot of waiting for a long time and a lot of just finagling political situations, and it costs anywhere from like 5000 to like $10,000 per person. So it's very expensive, but but it is something that's happening, but it's mostly available to rich people right now.
**Margaret ** 15:02 And there's a lot of fundraising going on. And I wish I had a link more directly in front of me. There's people who have collected together spreadsheets where they keep track of all of the families that need to get out, and like what their specific fundraisers are and stuff like that.
**Inmn ** 15:17 Yeah. But Margaret, what's kind of been happening with people's responses to stuff going on in Gaza here in the States?
**Margaret ** 15:29 So one of the things about the way that we do the show is that there is a lag between when we record things and when we put things out, so don't... So we're not going to like do like the news about the occupation movement that's happening now in the US, we're going to kind of really briefly touch on it. But I'm guessing most of you all are more familiar already what's happening with that than this show, which will be a little bit out of date by the time you hear it. But there is a huge movement across the US, especially this week, as we record, of--maybe even more so in the future, you know, who knows, every social movement goes different directions--of students taking over their universities and demanding that their universities divest from Israel. And it's really shattered a lot of the.... The more pro-Zionist elements of the mainstream media are still touting the like, "And these are anti-semitic protests." But that line is failing more and more on.... Like, people aren't hearing it anymore. People are like, "That's so clearly not true. The people at the front of this are the Jewish Voices for Peace," like, you know? It's like more and more people aren't falling for it. And so there's a big culture war thing that's happening. I got really lucky in that I was scheduled to speak at the New School anyway last week, or something--I lose track of time, all the time--to some students who had read one of my books, and then the occupation had kicked off. So instead, I was sort of invited--like anyone from the occupation was invited to come--and we talked, instead of talking about my book, we talked about the directions that social movements go and how they succeed and fail. And I don't know, maybe we'll do a episode about that at some point. But those movements are fiery and interesting. Anyone who's listening who's part of them, don't let the fucking liberal sell you out, and don't let the fucking authoritarians take you over. And that's what's involved. And don't let the cops divide you into "good protestor, bad protester." Those are the ways that people try to sell you out. And you can not get sold out until you, at the very least, get the demands of divestment. And as we're recording, this is the stuff that might change. As we're recording, I think it's Brown University is starting to enter negotiations about divesting from Israel. Whereas Colombia, where a lot of this started, is promising suspensions. And everyone's like, "You don't understand. Stopping this genocide is more important to us than our stupid--" you know, like, I think people don't get.... And then in the right-wing, and even some of the Liberals, are all like, "I don't get it. This isn't even a war that's happening in the US?" and everyone is like, "Basic fucking empathy? Like what the fuck is wrong with you?" Another kind of protest that happened that I actually only found out recently is that around 50 Google employees were fired because of a non-violent protests that they took against a Google contract, a project called Project Nimbus, which is an AI that has been used by the Israeli government that was developed by Google. Google denies certain parts of their claims around project Nimbus. But the 50 employees are currently suing, I think through the Labor Board, to get their jobs back. And so there's other ways that people are standing up about this. And we've been, of course, seen some other ways all across the US for the past six months and all across the world.
**Inmn ** 18:58 Yeah, and just to like shout out this thing real quick because I thought it was really cool. It's this trend of people kind of like...it's like fighting in any possible way they can to do something for people in Palestine. And like outside of university encampments and stuff, it's like finding ways to act in solidarity with those struggles or to just find other little gaps in the armor. But shout out to the bus drivers union in New York City for utterly refusing to transport a bunch of people who were mass arrested at at a demonstration. They're like, "No, no. We're not letting the NYPD commandeer our buses and make us their accomplices," and they just refused to transport people.
**Margaret ** 19:57 I think this is a really important part of why.... Like, labor organizing fell out of style until--well, about five years ago picked back up again--but overall, there's this idea that like, "Oh, class, reductionism. And like, you know, it's boring. And that's the old way of doing organizing and shit." And there's like some problems with the way that labor organizing has been done, especially in the middle of the 20th century, when they created a bunch of corrupt organizations--that were still better jobs--but, you know, they lacked the fiery interestingness of early 20th century and late 19th century unions. But sorry, who knew I was just gonna talk about history this whole time. But this is the other thing about what unions are, is like in order to.... This is what is involved when we talk about building workers power, like building power among the people who actually have to work for a living versus the people who can make money off of the fact that we work for a living, like having the bus the union be like, "No, we're not transporting prisoners." and they can say that because they have power within their own workplace, even though they don't own their workplace, which is like the next step. That's what you want to build to after you build a union, you know? But anyway, unions. Fucking cool. Y'all ready to talk about climate?
**Inmn ** 21:14 God, no.
**Brooke ** 21:16 Never.
**Margaret ** 21:16 Well--I know this is the thing I keep coming back to--this is the thing that always slips through the cracks of even radical news because it is easier to wrap our mind around things that feel incredibly direct and present. And that is not to say that these direct and present things don't deserve our attention. They absolutely do. But keeping in mind the climate context that we all live in, I think is important. So I'm gonna tell you some stuff about it. Almost the entire continental US is forecast to have a hotter than usual summer, surprising nobody. The only exception to this is basically North Dakota and some of the like areas that like--nature doesn't really care about our borders-- that might be the same. Everywhere else is expected to be hotter. In particular, the swath cutting across Eastern Oregon and Montana and then cutting all the way down through all of Texas, kind of at an angle, that is the huge swath of the country that is like extra expected to be way hotter. And southern Alaska is the only place in the US on the map that I saw--Hawaii wasn't on this map--where it might be colder than usual. But most of Alaska will still be warmer than usual. The Rocky Mountains are expected to be dry. And the East Coast, especially the South, is expecting a wetter than normal summer. The actual wildfire prediction map for this coming summer is mostly normal--new normal, so bad--but mostly new normal. With the Sierra Nevadas in Southern California, like LA and kind of that surrounding area, are actually less fire likely than normal. And then the more likely fire than normal is Idaho, like southern Idaho into Nevada and Utah.
**Brooke ** 23:10 Was gonna say that a lot of Idaho has had a lot of fires a lot of years.
**Margaret ** 23:15 But it's like this map is like not totally the map of where you look and expect wildfires, which is not to say there's not gonna be wildfires everywhere. It's just that's the current anticipation. The National Weather Service has put together a heat risk website that does a daily forecast and a weekly forecast that also shows like where people are more at risk for heat problems. And it takes into consideration the wet bulb temperature and access to all kinds of stuff. There's actually a fair amount of adaptation that is happening by scientists and some of our infrastructure to try and figure out how to handle.... Because like some people are taking climate seriously and some of those people have access to weather data and shit, you know? April, as of this recording on the last day of April, was probably the 11th straight month of the hottest of that month on record across the world. Which means that if we pull it off next year, every single month for a year will have been the hottest ever. There is a 55% chance that this year will top 2023 as the hottest year on record. The reason that we might not beat last year--I know everyone's rooting for us but we might not pull it off because the other side will be like "Well they had us in the first half." We're expecting a slightly cooler than normal fall and stuff because of La Nina weather patterns hitting. However, La Nina weather patterns are gonna fuck up a whole bunch other stuff. And okay, I know you all are ready to root for America, number one. so you want to hear something else that we are number one about across the world?
**Brooke ** 24:57 No.
**Margaret ** 24:59 Economic impact of natural disasters. Doesn't that kind of surprise you?
**Brooke ** 25:03 What? Say more.
**Inmn ** 25:06 I've heard a little bit about this.
**Margaret ** 25:09 We are number two in our spending related to per capita wealth, but we're number one in total spending on this kind of stuff. It costs us about point .4% of our gross domestic product every year to take care of natural disasters. This is twice China and four times Canada. And, I mean, it's just because we suck and Capitalism sucks, is the is the reason why this is happening. Home Insurance went up 21% between 2002 and 2023. A ton of people are just going uninsured because they can't afford it anymore. Also, insurers are jacking up prices and/or entirely pulling out of certain areas. And now a lot of countries just kind of say, "Well, we kind of just can't build where there's fires and mudslides all the time." But America is like, "No way. This is our country. You can build wherever you want." And so there's also like fewer building codes and stuff around how to make houses that makes sense in your area in terms of disaster and climate and things like that. So that's something we're really good at, is spending money that we shouldn't have had to spend. There's been a whole bunch in the past couple months. In April there's been a whole bunch of tornadoes that have moved through Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and north Texas. However, we are currently lower than normal by a little bit on tornadoes. However, they've been a little bit more deadly than normal, I believe. And overall, this is expected to be a fairly more active than usual tornado season coming up. So if you're in the Great Plains and the tornado lands, which is of course, as I think we've talked about before, the tornado belt is like slowly moving east because of climate change. Speaking of the American South, it is facing some of the most rapid sea rise in the world. We, once again America is number one--I don't know if we're number one. We're actually not number one. But we're doing... We're doing pretty good. We have twice the worldwide average in sea level rise. Isn't that? Anyway...
**Inmn ** 27:15 Which means that there's going to be a lot new beachfront property.
**Margaret ** 27:22 I mean, a lot of the old, a lot the old beachfront property has gone away. Or rather, people are like struggling to hold on to it. A lot of places across the American south have already gotten four, six, or eight inches of sea level rise since 2010. The highest is Galveston, Texas with 8.4 inches. And the results of this, of course, are wetlands are drowning, which leaves areas more vulnerable to storms. We'll talk about the hurricane season in a second. Septic systems are backing up and contaminating waterways. Insurance companies are just dipping out entirely. And roads are now below high tide in plenty of places. People are periodically cut off. Why don't we hear about this more? Well, because the people who are affected are Black. That's why. Environmental racism is a real thing. A lot of these areas have had specific redlining policies in place, or used to be in place, or whatever. The economic landscape is such that people of color, and especially Black people, are living in the flattest areas that are the lowest to sea level and in the most risk, and it is largely poor places that people have already not cared about because this is where a lot of like pollution happens, you know? Other fun news... The kind of thing that like.... I feel like every week there's something that should have been big enough news for us to entirely overthrow the world order, but a whole bunch of--
**Brooke ** 28:51 I'm concerned about what you call fun, Margaret.
**Margaret ** 28:54 You take it where you can find it, ya know? Okay, so I'll explain my idea of fun. The very beginning of the movie Gladiator, right? I don't give a shit about the rest of the movie Gladiator. But there's this is one scene where the Roman army, who are somehow the good guys in this situation (they're not the good guys), they're attacking the Goths. And obviously, the Goths are good because they're goths.
**Inmn ** 29:20 Yeah, we love that.
**Margaret ** 29:20 And at one point, the barbarians come out of the woods and they're like holding the Roman messenger's head and then they all grab their axes and run screaming into the Roman army. and to their own death--
**Inmn ** 29:34 Which is how no army ever fought ever.
**Margaret ** 29:36 Yeah, I know. It's also not a very good way to fight, specifically, the Roman army. nd at least in the movie Gladiator, they all die horribly. There's a certain honesty to that. There's a certain honesty to just being like, "This isn't about winning or losing. This is about like, 'Can we fucking do this?"" But we can't because we don't have.... We're not in a revolution and individual actions don't.... This is the sketchiest thing I've ever said on the show. So anyway, a slew of documents came out, showing that oil companies in their private correspondence are like, "We're not going to bother meeting any of the Paris agreements. Why would we do that? There's nothing in it for us. We don't care." And they're just ignoring it in their private correspondence, while of course, they're all publicly like, "Oh, we're so committed to it." And it's just like, and the.... You know, and this isn't like weird conspiracy stuff. The Democrats introduced this in Congress, you know? And it's just like one of these things where it's just like, well the oil companies shouldn't be allowed to exist anymore. That seems fucking obvious, right? Anyway, I don't have a better tactical idea. And that didn't work in Gladiator. So I don't recommend it. Flash floods killed at least 169 people in Kenya in April. About 150,000 people in the country have been displaced by the rains. More than half of the country is facing intense flooding right now. Dubai got two years' worth of rain in one day at the end of April. It was 10 inches in 24 hours, the heaviest it's had in the past 75 years. The more center and center-right media is like, "Oh, it's because they're doing cloud seeding. They reap what they sowed." But the Washington Post article I read about this was like, "It wasn't fucking cloud seeding. It was fucking climate change." And that makes sense to me. Hurricanes. I promise you hurricanes. Colorado State University researchers are predicting a very active hurricane season this year. They're guessing there will be 24 named storms. And the way that we like named storms is that there's like 21 letters of the alphabet that we use. I don't know why it's 21 and not 26. I didn't bother looking it up. And then they're like, "Oh, fuck, we're out of things. And then they like do other shit, you know? Because when they first started naming hurricanes and tropical storms, they didn't really imagine that there would be more than 21 of them in a year. But now this is the third or fourth year. There's been like three years in the past couple of years where they've run out of names. And this one, they're expecting probably 24. They're guessing--again, this is all forecasting and this is not certain--that starting June 1st with hurricane season they're guessing it'll be about eleven hurricanes with five of them being major because the accumulated cyclone energy in the...mother of storms--it probably is a science name, but Mother of storms is cooler--is twice normal. And this is bad. It's like only a little bit worse than the new normal. So it's like bad, and the new normal is bad, but what I'm not saying is "2024 year is gonna be the worst ever, and we're all gonna fucking die in hurricanes. And everyone needs to leave New Orleans." is not what I'm saying. Although, maybe? But it's just the new bad and a little worse than usual, a little incremental.
**Brooke ** 33:05 Maybe they need to give those four-five sidelines letters a chance at being part of the naming process and then--
**Margaret ** 33:14 What five letters is it? I bet it's like X--
**Brooke ** 33:17 Yeah, and Z. Give X a chance.
**Margaret ** 33:21 What about Xereses? Does that start with and X?
**Brooke ** 33:24 There we go. Zeus.
**Margaret ** 33:26 Well, Xerxes is probably not in the Roman alphabet anyway. We can transliterate things however we want.
**Inmn ** 33:36 It's kind of like the emergence of the new category six, the theoretical--we talked about it earlier this year--but the theoretical category six hurricane, which we might see this year.
**Margaret ** 33:48 Cool.
**Inmn ** 33:52 New albums about to drop!
**Brooke ** 33:58 But Taylor Switft already put out a new album. What are you talking about? Oh, that's my news clip for the month. That's all I need to share.
**Margaret ** 34:05 Oh, yeah.
**Brooke ** 34:06 Taylor Swift put out a new album.
**Inmn ** 34:08 I wonder... I wonder how many of our listeners are Swifties?
**Margaret ** 34:14 I bet a good amount.
**Inmn ** 34:15 Yeah, not a condemnation. Just a curiosity.
**Margaret ** 34:18 I think about a quarter of my friends really like Taylor Swift. But the thing that I have said on Twitter that has been the most controversial and the thing that has most people thinking I'm a liar is when I said I cannot name a Taylor Swift song and would not be able to pick her out of a lineup.
**Brooke ** 34:35 What?
**Margaret ** 34:36 People think I'm lying. I'm not lying.
**Brooke ** 34:38 I think you're lying.
**Margaret ** 34:40 I'm not lying.
**Inmn ** 34:41 I do not think Margaret is lying. [Laughing]
**Margaret ** 34:44 If you put three 30 year old blonde, white singers in front of me, it would be a...I'd have a 33% chance of fucking picking Taylor Swift. Now, I'm certain I've heard some Taylor Swift songs, but I would not know they're Taylor Swift songs. And this is not like.... I'm not even saying this as a a point of pride. I mean, okay a little bit because I'm a fucking contrarian asshole, but that's not something I'm proud of. I'm not proud of my own pride about this.
**Brooke ** 35:13 This is now going to be a Taylor Swift episode. Goodbye to the news. Hello to me singing Taylor Swift songs to Margaret.
**Margaret ** 35:21 But then do like one of them that's not a Taylor Swift song in the middle and see if I can tell you which one it is.
**Margaret ** 35:26 Totally. Yeah.
**Margaret ** 35:29 [singing] "Where have all the flowers gone." That one's not her.
**Inmn ** 35:33 That is not Taylor Swift. [Brooke singing unknow (presumably) Taylor Swift song in the background]
**Margaret ** 35:37 Wait, we don't want to get sued. And I don't want to hear Taylor Swift. Oh my God, no, I actually am a bad person. There's nothing inherently good or bad about being interested in pop culture. Alright. But speaking of hurricanes, the East Atlantic's warmth is three months ahead of schedule for the average of the past four years. Not for the old average but for the new average. The East Atlantic's warmth is, on April 2nd it was as warm as July 2nd is on the average. And then there's one other piece of bad news. But then I have positive news. Or, then I have like neutral news. The one other piece of bad news is that, as of this recording, King Charles III has not died of cancer. [Disappointed grons] I also wouldn't be able to pick him out of a lineup. That's not... I don't know if that one's true.
**Brooke ** 36:37 70 year old white man. Yeah, no. Yeah, probably not. At least not if he's in normal clothes.
**Inmn ** 36:43 Um, well. Yeah, I absolutely believe all of that. Weirdly in.... I'm gonna say a controversial--
**Margaret ** 36:51 I thought you didn't believe me about Taylor Swift.said you believedno, I, I
**Inmn ** 36:53 What? Margaret I believe you.
**Margaret ** 36:56 Oh, that's right. It was Brooke that didn't believe me.
**Brooke ** 36:58 Inmn trusts you about everything.
**Inmn ** 37:00 I feel like I'm one of the few people that just very much knows this to be true in a real way.
**Margaret ** 37:09 That's true. Inmn has seen me live in an off grid cabin in the middle of the woods.
**Inmn ** 37:17 But, so, like, Arizona... I'm going to talk a little bit about Arizona. Arizona weirdly has been like, like we just had one of our wetter springs ever. And cooler springs. To the point where, there's like a big outdoor thing that happens in the last week of March every year, and we were scrambling to find new places...like an indoor venue for it because it was raining and we were all like, "When the fuck has it ever rained at the end of March?"
**Margaret ** 37:49 Yeah, you're supposed to only get rain in the monsoon season in like what, Fall or something?
**Inmn ** 37:56 It's in like July-August. And then like, we do have a winter rainy season. It's just hit or miss. But March? March is weird. Like it rained like four times in a week in March. And I was like, "What's going on?" And like, just because it was a big outdoor performance was the only reason I was like that asshole who's like "Why the fuck is it raining in this desert?" you know? [Everyone laughing]
**Margaret ** 38:24 "I moved here for one reason: I hate water."
**Inmn ** 38:27 Yeah. But I have some other updates from Arizona. Shout out to.... Shout out to Logan, who is a bud who always texts me like weird, really in-depth updates about headlines that we touch on and then is like, "Inmn, the story is so much bigger than you thought it was!" And I'm like--
**Margaret ** 38:48 That's cool.
**Inmn ** 38:49 Please keep sending me these updates. So on a previous This Month, we talked about this expansion of kind of like Castle Doctrine in Arizona, which is like aimed at like, you can defend your...you can like essentially shoot and kill people without repercussions for trespassing, not only into your house, but on your property. And Logan was telling me that.... So the reason that this law was being pursued--you know, there's speculation about it being very anti-migrant--and it was actually in response to this criminal case where George Alan Kelly, who lives just north of Nogales, encountered some people crossing over his land, right near and along the Border, and he, suspecting them of being migrants, just held up an AK-47 and started shooting at them from 100 yards away. And he killed one of them. He killed Cuen-Buetimea, who was a 48 year old man who lived in Nogales. And some of the people in the group, who were then witnesses in the trial, attested to just, you know, crossing for work. And the person who was killed has two adult daughters who live in Nogales. And they were trying to pass this law ahead of the trial so that George Allen Kelly would not be accountable to wildly shooting a gun into the air and killing someone. But George Allen Kelly was...there was a mistrial due to jurors not being able to come to a unanimous decision. And it does not appear, as of right now, that prosecutors are going to try to refile charges. So yeah. Some other stuff going on in Arizona is.... So this is kind of like good news, bad news. And it's gonna start with some bad news. On April 9th, the Arizona Supreme Court made a ruling upholding an 1864 law that declares a near-total ban on all abortions, carrying a two to five year prison sentence for doctors who perform abortions except to preserve the life of the person giving birth. And yeah, so this is like from.... Prior to this, Arizona was a 15 week abortion ban. And currently, as we wait, we're like still waiting for this law to go into effect in like June, I think. But, so in June there will be a near-total ban on abortion in Arizona. But the Arizona House just passed a bill that would repeal this law from 1864. And this is a law that was passed before Arizona was a state.
**Margaret ** 42:15 Yeah, that was like the first thing, when someone was like.... I didn't reshare this when I first came across it because I was like, "Arizona didn't exist. This is..." Because it's always like people come up with this horrible thing that's happening. And about half the time it's true and half the time it's not. Yeah, I totally didn't believe this one at first, because I was like, "There wasn't a state called Arizona. There was a territory and they had their territorial laws."
**Inmn ** 42:16 Yeah. And the Arizona Supreme Court has somehow upheld this law. But the House just passed a bill to repeal it. And we're recording this on Tuesday. As of April 30th, tomorrow, Wednesday May 1st, the Senate is expected to pass the bill that would repeal this 1864 law.
**Margaret ** 43:09 Didn't even Trump come out against that law?
**Inmn ** 43:13 I don't know.
**Margaret ** 43:14 I think I watched a video of Trump kind of being like, "Maybe that one wasn't the move."
**Inmn ** 43:21 That would be wild.
**Margaret ** 43:23 Because that one I think, was bad enough that I think that there's bipartisan anger at it.
**Inmn ** 43:31 Yeah. Which is kind of how.... That's like how stuff has progressed in the House and the Senate is like it... It required bipartisan agreement in the House. And it will require like two Republican senators to get on board for the Senate vote, which there are two that are expected to vote for the bill that would repeal the ban.
**Margaret ** 43:54 They're just trying to not get up put up against the wall. Anyway, Margaret's in a weird mood today.
**Inmn ** 44:01 Yeah, and, you know, one last kind of bad world thing--bad politics--in the realm of some Republican-led states really trying to be their own little mini fiefs and like testing state-federal stress test, whatever shenanigans. So, Title IX regulations were just updated. And they were updated.... They were amended to include specifically protections against discrimination based on sexual-orientation and gender identity. Whereas previously, it was just based on being a woman, essentially. And for folks who don't know, Title IX regulations are for educational institutions that receive federal funding, they have to abide by certain regulations in order to receive that funding, which is, you know, most public schools. And big surprise, guess which three states? Florida, Tennessee, and Texas are all essentially either instructing their education systems to not listen to, to not uphold the regulations, or just straight out suing the Department of Education over it. And the rallying cry around that is, big surprise, sports and trans athletes. Surprisingly, the new Title IX regulations say absolutely nothing about sports. So it's like they're rallying around something that the new regulations have not even codified.
**Margaret ** 45:55 I mean, literally, the only time that these people pay attention to women's sports is when they're worried about trans women existing. So it doesn't surprise me that, you know.
**Inmn ** 46:08 Yeah. But Margaret, you have some maybe good things to tell us?
**Margaret ** 46:15 I got neutral stuff first. TikTok has been officially... The law passed that TikTok is now--not immediately--banned in the United States. TikTok has been.... Its parent company, which is based in Beijing, has nine months to sell it. And so by any realistic standard, it'll be about a year before TikTok would do any disappearing. And then of course, obviously you can ban software. But that's not a easy thing to enforce. It would get taken down off of like the Google Play Store and the Apple Store and stuff like that, but people who had it still would have it. And then it would get buggier and buggier or in shittier and shittier as updates are unable to go out, unless people use VPNs to get from another country, etc, etc.
**Margaret ** 47:02 There's ways around it? What? [Sarcastically]
**Margaret ** 47:06 I know. It's also completely possible that since every one involved is a capitalist, they're probably like, "Alright, well, we'll sell the fucking thing. Like, who cares?" You know? That's like my guess. I don't know, I could be wrong about that. I would be surprised if TikTok ends up going away because of this. However, the actual thing that I think ties into this is there is a bipartisan bill that people are working on, called Kids Off Social Media Act, which wants to say that kids under 13 should not be on social media, and pass all kinds of like things about how like algorithms can't focus on anyone 17 and under. And just like lots of like, "social media is bad for kids." And now I think social media is probably bad for everyone. However, to me.... I haven't given us a lot of thought. It seems like a basic free speech issue. And also, like, old people fighting the future and screaming at clouds kind of moment. And the idea of banning TikTok, I'm like.... Okay, I'm not accelerationist. I don't think things should get worse before they get better. But the idea of some fucking 80 year old liches in Congress being like, "I don't like the tocks ticking around like that." And then like, it's like, incredibly popular. I think about half of Americans have a TikTok account. Like, telling half of Americans they can't do a thing sounds like a way to get people really mad. And I know I get really excited by the idea of like.... They have their bipartisan tyranny, and there's this idea that maybe one day we'll get over this fucking culture war and we can fight back in the class war that is waged against us. And like, if TikTok is the thing that brings it, I'm fear for it. I'm too old for TikTok. I have an account. I don't know how to use it. I've never uploaded a video. TikTok doesn't need me. But like, whatever anyway. But actually, I'm kind of curious, not having a child, Me--I'm the one without a child--Brooke, do you have thoughts on this no social media for the kids thing? Like am I...am I totally off base? Is it just protecting.... Like, I don't know. What's up?
**Brooke ** 49:28 I mean I get where they're coming from with it, and all the research that's shown how negative social media is for--I mean, they've done particular studies for kids and how it affects them--but turns out it's actually bad for all human beings, the way social media has come for us and the atmosphere is it creates. So, I get where they're coming from with it. As a very involved parent, you know, my solution is always to pay attention to and engage with your children, which is not a reasonable thing for all people to have as much engagement as it would take really to have healthy social media interactions. But then, you know, the anarchist side of me says, "No, you don't get to ban things ever."
**Margaret ** 50:18 Well and also like, I don't know, a lot of people are rumbling about how TikTok is why a new generation of people supports Palestine and doesn't buy into the myths about the Zionist project being a thing that represents all Jews, for example, right? And then anti-capitalism is spreading and being pro capitalism is 100% bipartisan for the ghouls who feed off of the youth and somehow live too long. This is the most ageist shit I'm ever going to say. Some people are capable of performing their jobs well into their later years and gain wisdom. The people who run this country are nightmare men.
**Brooke ** 51:00 I feel like it's, you know, the same kind of things they've said about all new technologies that have come out over the last,, you know, whatever, 30 years.
**Margaret ** 51:09 And like the only person who said this stuff, and was right, was a little man who had some bad strategic and ethical ideas, but wrote that "industrial society and its future have been a disaster for the human race." At least be consistent.
**Inmn ** 51:31 I was researching this for another episode once, and I didn't end up talking about it because it was hard to learn too much about, but some of the lawmakers have specifically cited youth information spreading about Palestine as a reason for the TikTok ban. It's like a specifically listed reason from lawmakers. And the other thing about the Kids Online Safety, whatever it's called, is it's heralded as a way to protect children from pornography and from the proliferation of child pornography, which is the thing that lawmakers say all the time, and pretty much all these human rights organizations who are, you know, much more aptly trying to protect children from shit are like, "This is most asinine bullshit we've ever heard this. This bill is utterly absurd." And it has other implications, which are that it's trying to herald in this idea that you could no longer be like anonymous on the internet, and that the government has a lot more to...has a lot more agency to track your goings on on the internet. So it would.... It's like the bill would require you to essentially show a driver's license in order to engage with a lot of things on the internet, which I think is just trying to...I think it's capitalists' attempt to really make a thing like the internet something that is like more of a interacting with the government process and less a whatever the internet is, you know.
**Margaret ** 53:24 That makes sense to me. and yeah,
**Inmn ** 53:26 And it kind of falls in line with the our futuristic hellscape of like the "One app," for example. Like, you gotta scan your fucking fingerprint to log into Instagram or do anything on the internet.
**Margaret ** 53:43 It's funny because sometimes they use a VPN just as a basic practice and sometimes I use a VPN that's set in Europe. And when you browse the internet as a European, every site you go to is like, "Hey, do you want us to track you?" And you're like, "No." And it's like, "Okay, fine." Because the EU has some good internet laws, you know? About restricting the tyranny part of it instead of the like.... Whatever. Okay, I'm gonna do my vaguely positive news at the end. Y'all ready?
**Inmn ** 54:18 Yeah, what's good?
**Margaret ** 54:21 People are sleeping more than average than before.
**Inmn ** 54:25 Yay. I'm not. But good for them.
**Margaret ** 54:28 25 minutes more on average for the same people--not like the same individuals, right. Because how often you sleep is dependent on how old you are and also very heavily dependent about whether you have children. But people are sleeping about 25 minutes more on average than they were in 2002. And the best guess is that it started picking up a lot recently because of remote work and a lower percentage of people commuting. The biggest cool thing, the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, has banned non-compete agreements. 30 million people have been freed from non-compete clauses.
**Brooke ** 55:07 Oh, nice.
**Margaret ** 55:11 The EPA is banning most use of methyl chloride, which is a paint stripper that has killed like 88 people or something in the past couple of years and it's just bad. The EPA is actually, for the first time in a while, starting to get like...they're trying to stop forever chemicals. And there's like some shit that they're actually trying to do, right? They also--do you want to guess when asbestos was finally banned in the United States?
**Margaret ** 55:39 It was late. It was like the 90s.
**Inmn ** 55:41 Was it last week?
**Margaret ** 55:45 March 2024.
**Brooke ** 55:47 Oh, shit.
**Inmn ** 55:50 I was right, sort of.
**Margaret ** 55:52 Yeah, Inmn was closest. There's about six types of asbestos and one of them had been sort of.... Enough people, enough industries had been like, "But we want to use it." And so for the past 33 years, this particular type, people have been trying to ban. Because the 90s is an accurate assessment of when I think most of the others got--I don't know, I'm making that part of it up--all I know is that for 33 years, they've been trying to ban this fucking asbestos and they finally succeeded in March of this year. Also, the FDA did an emergency approval of pre-exposure prophylaxis for COVID called Pemivibart, which is a dumb name because it rhymes with farts. And nothing should rhyme with fart if it's a drug. And it is for the immunocompromised. So you would take this before, you know, if you're going into a situation where you're worried about getting COVID. And it's an emergency approval like the original vaccines were so it's not through all of testing, but it's important enough that they feel like it's safe enough. Also, recently passed phase three trials is a vaccine to pretend prevent UTIs, or urinary tract infections, which is the kind of thing that I never would have occurred to me you could run it against because it's usually, I believe, bacterial infections. But it's a really common problem. And that's cool if we can fucking solve it.
**Brooke ** 57:22 And some people are super prone to them just based on, you know, bodily health or genetics or whatever. Like it's a thing. They have ongoing, chronic UTI kind of thing. So fuck yeah.
**Margaret ** 57:37 It's kind of like when they finally got an HPV vaccine through and it was just like, oh my god, this is actually pretty fucking game changing, you know? I wish they would give it to fucking assigned male people. But yeah.
**Brooke ** 57:47 And then conservative Christian types that were like, "Oh, we don't think that our children should have to have this vaccine."
**Inmn ** 57:54 Any kind of person can get the HPV vaccine.
**Margaret ** 57:57 Oh, interesting. Good to know.
**Inmn ** 58:00 Yeah, it's a different vaccine, I think. But anybodied person can get it.
**Margaret ** 58:07 That's good to know. And hopefully, next time, we'll have different news about King Charles III and cancer. But who knows? But that's This Month in the Apocalypse, which you have now listened to, or participated in if you are named Brooke or Inmn or Margaret. Unless your named Brooke, Inmn, or Margaret and you're not on the podcast, in which case you didn't participate in it. You just heard it. And then probably have a different kind of parasocial relationship with us if you share our names, especially if you're Inmn. Like, there's not a ton of you. And like, Inmn's pretty cool. So do you have like a different.... Please write in, Inmn's in the audience. Pretend to be our Inmn and we'll read a prepared script from you next time as if you're our Inmn. This is not true. I'm lying.
**Margaret ** 59:08 But what I'm not lying about is that if you want to support this podcast, you can do so by supporting our publisher, which is Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. And you can do that by going to patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And if you do, we put up zine and podcasts. We do a lot of fucking stuff. We are your source for all of your anarchy culture. And another way you can support us this week of all weeks, if you are listening to this during May Day week, like the first week of May in 2024. Although if you listen to it in a different May Day week. It'll probably be true again. We are doing a 50% sale off of everything on our website. And that includes stuff that's really expensive, like the hardcover of Penumbra City, which is a $50 book, but now it's only $25 book. And you use the code MAYDAY24 at checkout and get 50% off because we fucking love May Day and we care more about our stuff getting out there than anything else about it. And if you support us on Patreon, we might even shout you out like we're going to shout out allium and Amber, Ephemoral, Appalachian Liberation Library, Portland's Hedron Hackerspace, Boldfield, E, Patoli, Eric, Buck ,Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, anonymous, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, S. J., Paige. Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Micaiah, King Charles III--What?! And Hoss the Dog.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Colin and Brooke talk about flooding, water damage, and how to avoid having your home damaged by those things.
Colin (he/him) is a carpenter, industrial electrician, and backpacker.
Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Colin on Flood Plains and Water Damage
**Brooke ** 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm Brooke Jackson, your host for this episode. And today our friend Colin is joining us again, this time to talk about flooding and dealing with water damage. But first we'd like to celebrate being a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts by playing a little jingle from one of the other podcasts on the network. Doo doo jingo here!
**Brooke ** 01:40 And we're back. Colin, thank you for joining us again today. And this time to talk about dealing with floods and water damage. Would you remind your pronouns, where you hail from if you want, and a bit about your background?
**Colin ** 01:52 Yeah, my name is Colin, he him. I'm from Pittsburgh. And I've been a contractor sort of on and off for the last about 20 years, as well as working in the power plants and industrial electricity, and sort of in and around industry for about the second half of my life. And, yeah, it's, I'm glad to talk about floods, because it's one of those things we're seeing more and more. And unfortunately, it's probably going to happen to pretty much everybody who's listening to this podcast at some point in their life in one form or another.
**Brooke ** 02:27 Yeah. And we've talked about flooding on the podcast before. I don't know that we've ever done a whole episode on it by any means. But it has definitely come up as we've talked about news and other major events. And you and I even talked about it when we did our first episode, a little bit. So I think it's—itll be good to dig into, you know, a nice reminder of what to do and not to do in a flood. And then also, I don't think we've ever talked much about flood recovery. So I'm excited to learn and teach more about that today. I wanted to share one of my own stories about flooding, if you don't mind me kicking off with that before we get into all the do's and don'ts and how tos.
**Colin ** 03:12 Yeah go for it.
**Brooke ** 03:13 Okay, cool.
**Colin ** 03:14 Everybody's got one of those stories.
**Brooke ** 03:16 Seems like it. Well, when I was growing up in the 90s, there was a major flooding event where I live. My hometown. It was built around a river, which of course is true of most older cities, right, because access to fresh water is critical for survival. And then there are also a lot of creeks that run through my town and feed into the river. And I live in the Pacific Northwest and it rains a whole lot here. So we're kind of accustomed to having occasional sudden and heavy downpours and the possibility of some rainwater pooling or briefly flooding. It's not uncommon. But this particular event when I was a teenager was something else. It was a really complicated set of weather events that led to it. But the important part is that, so the creeks that are all over town are overflowing. And then the river, it doubled its level on the first day of the heavy rains. And then within the next two days had crashed at its banks, and then for three days after that remained at flood levels. So the city's downtown area, for instance, it's fairly flat, it's right along the river, and most of the homes there have basements. So in addition to streets flooding, the basements flooded, filled with water. There were houses that got washed off their foundations, of course cars got washed away. And then even in other parts of town where there wasn't, you know they were more on the hills or what have you, there was so much water in the ground that it caused foundational issues to a lot of houses because the pressure of the water pushing on home foundations are running around it. And there had been an ice event right before the rain started that had caused his damage to a lot of pipes. So there were pipes that were bursting and breaking because they'd been weakened or already had broken because of the ice storm. And it led to all this flooding. And it's interesting as I've grown up in the town and come back to it as adult, that the damage of this event, the way it's imprinted itself on the psyche of the city, even my mom, when she comes back to visit will drive around, she'll go, oh, you know, such and such creek looks a little high today. You know, this creek is, you know, she always looks around at all the creeks to see where the waters levels are kind of this caution about how high is the water. Like, are we in danger of having some kind of event again. And anyone that lived here, you know, had or knew someone that had some kind of really severe damage or loss because of that flood. So that's really imprinted into my psyche because, of course, I was still a young person at the time this happened. And it's really impactful to me. So when we talk about flooding, it's like, oh, yeah, that was one of the major traumatic events of my youth, at least collectively in my society or my, you know, my town.
**Colin ** 06:13 Yeah, that's actually a really common situation you describe, of having an ice event or cold weather and then a warm front comes through, drops several inches of rain onto frozen ground, there's nowhere for it to go, and it just goes straight into rivers. Like you're seeing that more and more and that's actually exactly what I was gonna open with is that, with climate change, even if you're not living in someplace like Charleston, or Miami, or one of the other low lying areas that everybody knows is at risk for flooding either from rising ocean levels or because you're in a major floodplain. Just having these wild swings in temperature and rainfall makes flooding a much bigger issue. It's like living in Pittsburgh, it seems like we don't get mild old rains anymore, we either get four inches right now, or nothing. So it's not the, like, nice, gentle soaking rains that I remember from being a kid, it's like everything comes in a burst. And when that happens, dry ground does not soak up water nearly as well as slightly damp ground. So dropping lots of rain onto parched ground, you end up with lots of run off, and even though it's very, very dry, you end up with massive flooding.
**Brooke ** 07:35 Yeah, one of our cohosts and one of the collective members was—we were talking about it and she was describing, like, if you go to water your garden and you haven't watered your garden in a while, and like the first water that you put on, it kind of rolls off. It takes it a minute to actually, like, settle and sink in, and then it's easier to water the ground. And it's the same kind of thing with these flooding events which I, you know, had never thought about but can picture in my mind how that, oh yeah, how that happens, how that works. So it's, you know, we're at risk of flooding for so many different reasons than ever we were before because of super dryness or, you know, I feel like we've seen more atmospheric rivers in the news as well. Maybe I'm just paying more attention, but that seems to becoming more common too.
**Colin ** 08:26 Yeah, and with the big events, like, there is a definite limit on how much you can really do to prepare yourself short of just moving to someplace where these things don't happen, you know. Somebody told me, water always wins.
**Brooke ** 08:44 Ah!
**Colin ** 08:45 You're not going to beat it. It's heavy, it's powerful, and if it wants to come into your house, you're gonna have a really hard time stopping it.
**Brooke ** 08:56 Okay.
**Colin ** 08:57 You know, you can fight back against the inch or two, but if nine feet of water comes knocking at your front door, you're not gonna win.
**Brooke ** 09:06 Sure, but surely there are some things that we could do that would, you know, maybe help prevent the smaller amounts of water or help make it less bad, yeah?
**Colin ** 09:16 Oh, yeah, definitely. And especially if you're in one of the areas like sounds like you are, or like I am in Pittsburgh, where there's enough terrain that I'm not worried about a flood filling up the valley nine feet deep, because if that happens, you know, we have bigger problems. The issue is more, you know, an inch or two of water flowing along the surface running down the street, coming across the yard and down to the basement steps. Like that kind of stuff you can defend against, and it's really not that hard to do. But it takes a lot of preparation and, particularly if you're in an area where this has simply never happened before, it's very easy for that to catch everyone off guard. Sounds like that's the situation with the floods you described was this was what used to be a what they call, you know, a 100 year storm.
**Brooke ** 10:07 Uh huh, uh huh!
**Colin ** 10:09 Now the 100 year storms are happening every six months or so.
**Brooke ** 10:13 Yeah, well, we haven't, you know, had another one quite like that since the 90s. But also, I know that a lot of, you know, houses and whatnot are much better setup for it, you know. For instance, the downtown houses that got basements flooded so badly, a lot of them—I want to say all of them, but that might not be true—had sump pumps installed after that. And, you know, I would hope that many of those houses have done a good job of maintaining those pumps. Which, you know, I think probably wouldn't prevent the kind of flooding from the storm that we had back in the 90s, but would certainly help, you know, mitigate a smaller storm or recover from it more quickly. Whereas they didn't have them before that that wasn't a common thing.
**Colin ** 11:04 Right, and it doesn't really take very much water in a basement to cause major problems. You don't need three feet of standing water in your basement to ruin your day. Just an inch or two is enough to really mess things up, especially if it happens to an entire town and everyone is dealing with it at the same time. The disaster recovery services that're around to help out when that happens to one or two people can't handle it when it's suddenly 5000 people that all have the exact same problem. There's just not the capacity and you're going to be more or less on your own to at least get through, you know, a few days to a week before they can get around to helping you out. Again, with the idea of triage, like just trying to buy yourself a little bit of time before all the services come back online.
**Brooke ** 11:53 My former husband worked for drain plumbing company that went around and did a lot of those installations of sump pumps and it was, like, a couple of years he worked for them and that was basically what he did. And it took, yeah, that long to get them installed in that many houses. It was a long—and that wasn't even just the recovery from the flood, but that was helping, you know, prevent it with things in the in the future. But yeah, a very long time. For sure.
**Colin ** 12:28 Yeah, so just to kind of dive right into it.
**Brooke ** 12:30 Yes please!
**Colin ** 12:31 The first step in trying to prepare yourself a little bit better than you are is to just walk around the house and take a quick assessment of sort of where and how water can get in. Four big ones: the obvious one is rain. Things like, make sure your roof is intact, make sure your gutters work.
**Brooke ** 12:55 Windows? Doors?
**Colin ** 12:55 Windows, doors, but they're usually fine. Water hits those and runs off, and if water is trying to come in your door, you're already—it's already too late. Then surface water this is things like grading around the house to make sure that the water doesn't get too close, and any water that does get close goes away. After that is below grade water, so this is, you know, what you're talking about, where the ground was so saturated the pressure of the water in the ground pushing against foundations damaged the foundations. And then you also mentioned the last one which is one that gets overlooked which is burst pipes. You have water in your house all the time, it's just normally it stays inside the pipes where it belongs, until those pipes freeze, and then it ends up places that you really don't want it.
**Brooke ** 13:44 Yeah. Can the pipes break from flooding, like that water pressure that damaged foundations, I imagine that could also damage then piping—pipe systems.
**Colin ** 13:59 Yes. When the ground gets soft and has more flexibility in it—usually not just the water in the ground itself, but because the ground is softer—if you live in an area that has lots of hills, you end up with a higher risk of landslides and things shifting and that will definitely break water mains.
**Brooke ** 14:17 Okay.
**Colin ** 14:17 That happens a lot in California.
**Brooke ** 14:20 Okay.
**Colin ** 14:20 Where you get—you get heavy rain combined with landslide and now you have additional, either just people not having water because the mains are broken, or you have the mains flooding a section of a town because there's spewing water out.
**Brooke ** 14:35 Yeah, it's not just the dirt that moved, it's all the shit that's in the dirt, like the pipes! [Laughing]
**Colin ** 14:43 And that's another thing complicating factor with floods is that usually flooding is not a disaster that happens by itself. It comes with loss of electricity, loss of water, loss of gas, because all these things are buried in the ground.
**Brooke ** 14:58 Yeah. Okay, now, you must and floods and we have said this several times on this podcast and we'll say it many more: don't go into the water. If it's flooding, stay out of the floodwater.
**Brooke ** 15:09 I'm glad to hear that your puppy is joining us again on this episode.
**Colin ** 15:09 Yes, that was my very first point before we even got into talking about any of the, you know, how to deal with things like rain surface water is, like I said before, you know, when you're in a disaster, there's always a way that you can make it worse. So don't don't get sick and don't get hurt. Floodwater is full of mud, trash, sewage. It's usually cloudy and turbid, so you can't see what's down there. The risk of you stepping on something or kicking something is really high. So just don't go into it if you don't have to. And if you have to wear rubber gloves, wear boots, try to keep it off your skin as much as you possibly can. Most people probably have some kind of rubber boots in their home, I would hope. If you don't, they're cheap, I'd recommend keeping a pair around. The one thing that people probably don't think about is rubber gloves—even dishwashing gloves are fine for keeping the water away from your skin, but they're not very sturdy. So if you're doing work in floodwater, put on rubber gloves, and then put on some kind of regular work glove overtop of that to protect the rubber, and make sure that barrier stays intact. Just the inexpensive knit work gloves from like Harbor Freight or something like that, that are $1 a piece. It's all you need. All you're trying to do is keep that robber from getting cut by sharp things in the water when you're handling them. [Dog barking]
**Colin ** 16:40 Yes. There's somebody outside that doesn't belong there, clearly. It's probably the mailman
**Brooke ** 16:46 That's all right. We are dog friendly on this podcast.
**Colin ** 16:51 Okay, so, rain is probably the easiest one to keep out of the house. It's the one that everybody is aware is a problem because you see on a fairly regular basis. And for the most part, it's not that hard. You know, it's, make sure that there's no holes in your roof, make sure your gutters actually drain the way they're supposed to and don't get clogged. And the one part that people occasionally overlook is: make sure that your downspouts discharge far enough away from the house. You're not pumping water back in against the foundation.
**Brooke ** 17:23 Yes,
**Colin ** 17:25 I work in houses all the time, I see the downspout that comes straight down off the roof and dumps on to the ground six inches away from the wall. And just like, that's just going to end up straight in the basement. So.
**Colin ** 17:37 Yeah.
**Colin ** 17:38 This is something—a lot of the things I'm gonna talk about, you really kind of need to be the homeowner to do, but moving downspout discharge further away from the walls, even if you're gonna rental, that's something you can do. Get a piece of plastic pipe, anything to just move it as far from the house as you possibly can.
**Brooke ** 17:56 Yeah. That's a cheap, that's a cheap and fairly quick fix that can make a world of difference. And even if you don't have a basement, just the water pouring into the foundation at one consistent spot over and over and over again can, you know, damage that part of it and cause a much bigger problem.
**Colin ** 18:17 And the biggest one, if you are the homeowner, is take a look at the grading around your house. This is something that, at least in the area that I am, I would say 75–90% of the houses that I see have inadequate drainage. You're supposed to have ideally 10 inches of fall in the first 10 feet away from the house. Six inches is the bare minimum, but 10 is a lot better. In most cases I see no fall at all, or even the yard slipping back in towards the house. When you have that means that any water that lands in the yard is gonna try to come into the house. It doesn't take a whole lot of elevation change to really dry out a basement.
**Brooke ** 19:08 So those who aren't construction nerds like the two of us, when when Colin's talking about grading here he's talking about the incline or decline, the direction that the ground is going towards the house, away from the house. That's what "grading" means. Just in case somebody needs that.
**Colin ** 19:24 Yes, you are 100% correct. This is a thing that is—it's labor intensive, but it's actually fairly cheap. I don't know what dirt costs on average across the country, but where I am it's around $50 per ton for just—you don't need topsoil, it doesn't need to be good quality. It just needs to be dirt, and does not require any skill at all. If you can wield a shovel, you can fix the grading around your house.
**Brooke ** 19:58 How would they check the grading, Colin?
**Colin ** 19:59 For that you need a level—it can tell you, you know, when something is level. If you own a cell phone, you already have one, because cell phones have accelerometers in them that can tell the phone which position it's in. That's how it knows how to change your screen from one orientation to the other when you move the phone. So there—are there are apps that are just a visualization of a physical bubble level. All it's doing is telling you, you know, how tilted is the phone? They're not the most accurate thing in the world, but for grading dirt, we're not going for high precision, you just need to know more or less where level is.
**Brooke ** 20:37 Yeah, okay. All right. So you mentioned like buying dirt. So if people have a spot in the yard that's higher than the where the foundation is, are you—are you saying they should put dirt between the high spot in the house to make it level? Or go the other way? Are there other ways to solve it? Sorry to get so pedantic.
**Colin ** 20:58 No, no, it's a very good question. And that's why the rule of like, you know, 10 inches in the first 10 feet or 6 inches in the first 10 feet, if you can't manage that, is a rule of thumb. But you kind of have to look at your yard. And unless you have a perfectly flat manicured yard, you've got humps here and there and some parts are higher than the other. Having one or two high spots near the house, not really a big deal, as long as the water is generally going to go away from the house. And this is one of those things that you kind of just have to look at it and eyeball where downhill is. If nothing else, you know, you can take a five gallon bucket of water, dump it on the ground, and see where it goes. If it heads towards the house, hat's bad. If it heads parallel to the house and kind of away from the house, that's probably fine.
**Brooke ** 21:53 Yeah. Okay, so solution might be taking away dirt. You might buy dirt to regrade, or you might need to dig out some dirt and haul it some place.
**Colin ** 22:03 You can have a very, you know, lumpy yard, you can move dirt around. Really what you want is just to pay attention to that 10 feet immediately around the house. And make sure that's as high as you can possibly get it. If you can't get it high enough, there are other options like French drains and building drainage swales and berms. Those get more complicated. They're still well within the capability of the average homeowner, but you kind of need to see a demonstration of it. So that's what YouTube is for.
**Brooke ** 22:36 Got it. Okay, sorry to spend so much time on that.
**Colin ** 22:38 Those are fantastic questions. I can go on and on about drainage swales for the rest of the hour, but—
**Brooke ** 22:43 [Laughing] Yeah, how about we not. Now tell me about some other ways to keep the water out.
**Colin ** 22:52 Okay, so the one that everybody knows about and has seen and news and movies are sandbags. And they're okay in some situations. But the problem with them is that sandbags leak.
**Brooke ** 23:09 Yeah.
**Colin ** 23:10 So no matter how good your sandbag wall is, it's not going to stop the water, it's just going to slow it down. And once the water is on the wrong side of your wall, now you have to get it back out. And that means using a pump of some kind. And as we've already said, if you're in a flooding situation, there's a good chance that you're going to lose power. So relying on any kind of active pump to keep your house and your basement dry is not ideal. So your comment about people having sump pumps in their basement, that's fantastic for average storms and normal amounts of rainfall where you just have a trickle of water coming into the basement and nothing is really going that wrong. But when you get to the point where, you have, water sheeting across the ground several inches deep, lots of water coming into the house, most sump pumps aren't going to be able to keep up with that in the first place. And even if they are, the risk of you losing power at some point and now you have water in the basement is too high. So that's why I'd normally recommend, if you can do it, do it with grading, do it with dirt. Keep the water from ever getting close enough to the house to be a problem. Don't rely on being able to block it with things like sandbags.
**Brooke ** 24:30 Yeah, okay. That makes a lot of sense. So should people not use sandbags or just...?
**Colin ** 24:37 Oh, no, they're fantastic when you have, you know, things like hurricanes where you have a lot of water coming in a hurry, and you're just trying to keep the entire house from going underwater. Or if you have an area where you have water sheeting across the yard towards the house and overall your drainage is fine, ou just need to deflect the a little bit. So you can build temporary wall of sandbags just to kind of get the water pointed in a better direction. Relying on them to actually totally barricade the house is not going to work.
**Brooke ** 25:12 Make sense? So this there's some limitations.
**Colin ** 25:14 Yeah, the last one that almost nobody thinks about is what's called backflow prevention. And this refers to the sewer line that, ideally, you want your poo to go into the sewer and away from the house and not come back.
**Brooke ** 25:34 Always.
**Colin ** 25:35 When the poop comes back, you're gonna have a bad day.
**Brooke ** 25:40 I want that on a sweatshirt now. Whoever's listening, somebody make us a sweatshirt design—a tshirt or something with that. I want that. When the poo comes back, you're gonna have a bad day. Okay.
**Colin ** 25:54 This is something that, if you live in an area, if you're in a floodplain, if you have a high water table, where there's a risk that the sewer system is going to flood at the same time as the ground floods, look into this. It's a very complicated topic, and I am definitely not qualified to talk about it. This is the thing that, you know, you need a PhD to understand the exact, you know, flow of everything. The poo flow It's very complicated. It's not that expensive, but beyond what a homeowner can do by themselves.
**Brooke ** 26:31 Do homeschool you have some kind of backflow prevention, or is that not common?
**Colin ** 26:35 It depends. If your house is older than I'm gonna say 50 years old, it's very, very unlikely that you have it if you haven't installed it yourself. In Pittsburgh where I am, we have what's called a combined flow sewer system. Which means the sanitary sewer from your toilet and the storm sewer from the drains in the street all go into the same set of pipes.
**Brooke ** 27:04 Okay, yes, so do mine.
**Colin ** 27:05 Yeah, it's, again, not uncommon in older systems. But it means that every time you get heavy rainfall, all that water has to go into the sewers, and it overloads them. So in Pittsburgh, every time we get more than about a half inch of rain, we just end up with sewage flowing straight into the rivers and they put out an alert, you know, don't go into the rivers for a couple days until everything has a chance to clear out. But when you do that, it also means that the risk that you're going to overflow the sewer and cause backflow into houses that are lower down on the sewer system goes up. So if you happen to be one of those houses, look into getting a backflow valve installed on the sewer where it leaves the house so that the poo stays on the correct side.
**Colin ** 27:52 So once the water gets in, the first thing to know is you're probably not going to get it back out by hand. I have occasionally seen advertisements for the little tiny, like, siphon hand pumps at Home Depot, the other big box stores, advertising: you can use this to pump out your basement. No. Just no.
**Brooke ** 27:52 Yeah, geez louise. The shit we do to our rivers. [Laughing] Alright, so keeping the water out, check. We've got some methods for that. Okay, what about after the water gets in.
**Brooke ** 28:29 Why not?
**Colin ** 28:31 Water weighs—I'm gonna say 64 pounds per cubic foot.
**Brooke ** 28:37 7 pounds a gallon, roughly.
**Colin ** 28:37 Yeah, 7 pounds a gallon. And if you have even a small house, say like 20 by 30, and you got a foot of water in your basement, that's something like 19 tons of water—
**Brooke ** 28:38 Oh my gosh, wow.
**Colin ** 28:50 —that you have to lift up 6 or 8 feet to get it high enough that it's above ground, and then move it out of the house.
**Brooke ** 29:03 Okay.
**Colin ** 29:04 You're not doing that by hand. There are—there are really big pumps that are designed for places where there's no power and you have to get water out of mines and things like that. They work very well. They're also I want to say between $5,000 and $10,000.
**Brooke ** 29:20 Oh my gosh.
**Colin ** 29:21 So you're...
**Colin ** 29:24 Not practical. So sump pumps: fantastic as long as you have electricity, but if you don't have electricity, you're gonna be in trouble. You're probably going to have to wait until the water level goes down and it's able to drain back out on its own. So you're not gonna be cleaning up 3 feet of water in the basement. You're going to be dealing with the last inch or two that doesn't make it over to the drains and out of the house on its own. So for that your two best weapons are honestly a good old fashioned floor squeegee, and a wet/dry vacuum with what's called a dust separator. It looks kind of like a 5 gallon bucket with a cone on top of it. And it works by pulling the air into the cone and spinning it like a cyclone. So all the water gets flung to the outside, the air goes up the center and the water falls down into the bucket. The advantage of those is you can work kind of like a bucket brigade, because it's just a lid that goes on top of a five gallon bucket and that way your shop vac never fills up.
**Brooke ** 29:24 Not practical.
**Brooke ** 30:40 Oh! I was just picturing using my shop vac for this because I know it can do water. And then it's like, oh yeah, and then we're talking about the weight of water just now. I have to stop, unclick the lid, you know, take it out or hand it out or whatever, wait for them to go dump it, bring it back in, put the lid back on. So, but man, something that attaches to a 5 gallon bucket which is like such a common thing to have around. That's awesome.
**Colin ** 31:02 The first time I saw one of those it was revelation. I was like, oh my god, I need one of these. And then, yeah, it means you have, you know, one person vacuuming, filling buckets, and the other person running them outside and dumping them. It dramatically speeds up the process. And they're—I wanna say they're between $20 and $50 depending on where you get them and what the exact design is. You don't need anything super high quality, all you need is a way to separate the water and the air so that you can get the water back out of the house as quickly as possible. And then the floors for squeegee can move a lot of water in a hurry, assuming you have a working for drain. And also really good for getting mud moved around because it kind of scrapes the floor as it goes. Again, that's the thing that is not very expensive.
**Brooke ** 31:51 Yeah. Cool. I was just just—for price purposes, I just quickly looked on like Amazon for—and it looks like the— no sorry, not the squeegees, but the cyclone dust thing is maybe starting about 50 bucks and going up from there.
**Colin ** 32:06 Okay, they've gone up a little bit since I bought mine.
**Brooke ** 32:07 Yeah.
**Colin ** 32:08 It was a few years ago.
**Brooke ** 32:09 Yeah, if you're doing some community emergency preparedness, and if you work with friends or whatever to collect and have some of these tools—I'm trying to do more of that in my own life so that we don't all own every single tool you might need. Might be a good one to go in on together and, you know, somebody stores or keeps track of it or whatever.
**Colin ** 32:30 Yeah, definitely. And a lot of the preparation for construction-related disasters is tool and equipment heavy. And there's no reason for everybody in your social circle to have duplicates of all the tools, because you're also going to need lots of hands helping out. So as long as one person has the tool that you need, everybody has access to it.
**Brooke ** 32:56 Okay, awesome. I'm just adding one of those to my wish list now to look at some more later. Okay, so that's some of the ways we get the water out of that. And I assume that, like, if you're in a basement, and you've got stuff in your basement, you probably want to like get your shit out of the basement and then start attacking the water, right? Like get your belongings to dry ground before you do that, or, you tell me.
**Colin ** 33:24 Um. It depends on sort of, you know, do you have a place to put all of your belongings or are you going to need to move them out into the front yard once the rain stops? So it's kind of a judgment call as to whether you can deal with water first or get your belongings out of the house first. It's whatever you have time and space and energy to do. As long as you are making progress on one of the fronts, it's all going to have to happen at some point in the next, you know, 24 to 48 hours. The exact order that things happen doesn't matter all that much.
**Brooke ** 34:03 Nobody's sleeping for a little while after the disaster, and that's okay.
**Colin ** 34:06 Yes.
**Brooke ** 34:06 I mean, it sucks, but.
**Colin ** 34:10 So yeah, that is the next point is dealing with all your belongings. And step one is just separate the wet and dry things. Anything that has managed to avoid the water, get it out of the basement and get it out of that damp room as fast as you possibly can. Because once things get wet, your next big issue is going to be mold. Even if you have things sitting in the basement that didn't get wet with the floodwater, they're now in a damp space that has been contaminated with all sorts of wonderful biological material for mold to grow in, and basements tend not to be the best ventilated places in the house.
**Brooke ** 34:53 Yeah.
**Colin ** 34:54 And your mold spores are everywhere all the time. You can't avoid them. All you can do is try to make a environment that mold does not like to grow in. And once the house has been flooded, mold becomes very, very, very happy.
**Brooke ** 35:09 Okay. Yeah, a lot of moisture.
**Colin ** 35:12 So get everything out of the basement, dry things can go upstairs, wet things need to be moved someplace away from the dry things so that they don't contaminate those as well. So if it's—ifyou have things that are totally soaked, furniture, carpet, things like that, they're not going to get any worse by just chucking them into the front yard. So you can put down a tarp to keep them out of the mud. But once they've been soaked, the damage has already been done, just get them out of the house, that's easier. Throw a tarp over it to, you know, keep the worst of the weather off. But your big concern is getting the space emptied out. And also, mold does not like UV radiation, and we have a great source of radiation outside in the form of the sun.
**Brooke ** 36:04 Hey!
**Colin ** 36:04 So just parking things out in bright light is going to help slow down that mold.
**Brooke ** 36:08 Yeah. And so even if you've got an apartment or what have you, you know, if you can put things out on a porch. If you've got things that are really soaked, you could take them into the bathroom and you can put things in the in the tub or the shower. And, just as the initial, like, letting some of that water run off, while you then go deal with other issues, or sending them in a sink—not for long term but, like, short term places to stick things if it's still raining outside and you've got wet stuff.
**Colin ** 36:38 Yeah, put them someplace where they can drain and start to dry out a little bit. Your most important thing is keep the airflow going. Because if you've got good airflow, that's going to slow down the growth of mold.
**Brooke ** 36:52 And even cold air flow, right? Like—
**Colin ** 36:54 Even cold air flow.
**Brooke ** 36:55 —blowing a fan even if it's, yeah, okay.
**Brooke ** 36:57 Okay, but what about if it was like brief flooding in your carpet—like this is not quite we're talking about, but if a pipe burst—a waterline burst in my basement and gets everything wet? I get that turned off and dried back out.
**Colin ** 36:57 So once you have your belongings out, take a look at the walls and flooring. And pretty much anything that is wet and porous, like drywall or carpet pads., if it's wet and porous, it's probably trash. It's not in most cases worth salvaging carpet that has been totally saturated with floodwater because you're never going to get the mud and all the sewage back out of that carpet. Now you have your antique oriental rug, that can be salvaged. But just regular old wall to wall carpet and the padding behind it, it's going to be cheaper to replace that than it is to try to salvage it.
**Colin ** 37:56 Yeah, that is salvageable. For that you don't need to trash it. I was thinking more along the lines of, you know, muddy, sewage filled water in your basement. But no, if you just have—if you have clean water on a carpet, as long as you can get it dried out before the mold starts, you'll be fine.
**Brooke ** 38:13 Okay.
**Colin ** 38:13 And again, this is where that shopvac and the dust separator really shine, because you can suck the water out of the carpet. And that means there's a whole lot less work for the fans and the dehumidifier to do to try to get that carpet dried back out before the mold starts.
**Brooke ** 38:30 Okay. So the type of water matters a lot. Like if you're basement window, the seal breaks and you've got maybe your downspout water is going into the basement. That might be salvageable, again, if you don't have mold and stuff, right?
**Colin ** 38:45 Right. If it's clean water and you can get it dried out, you're fine. But once it has been contaminated with groundwater, think long and hard about how important it is to salvage it. Because, again, once you have stuff like sewage and mud into the carpet and into the backing, the odds that you will develop mold problem later on if it gets wet again are significantly higher, because now you have all that food for the mold to grow on.
**Brooke ** 39:14 Yeah, and then that mold of course, you know, ongoing health issues can be caused, you know, mold sucks. But yeah, it's not just that mold sucks and it's gross and smelly. It's like literally bad for you.
**Colin ** 39:31 You're two best weapons, in addition to air and light, are honestly vinegar and borax. Both of which are available at pretty much any grocery store. They both work by the same mechanism but at opposite ends of the spectrum. Mold needs a certain pH to be able to grow. Believe it's between 4 and 8. But it can go as far as between like 3 and 9. And vinegar is just outside that range on the acidic end, and Borax is just outside it on the basic end.
**Brooke ** 40:10 So I should pour vinegar on my carpet,
**Brooke ** 40:12 Oh, okay.
**Colin ** 40:12 You can do that.
**Colin ** 40:13 Yeah, just use full strength vinegar, put it in a sprayer or, you know, slosh it around, you know, spread it out the squeegee. But if you—
**Brooke ** 40:21 Full strength do you mean the normal, like 5%, white vinegar at the store?
**Colin ** 40:25 5%, yeah.
**Brooke ** 40:25 Okay, because you can buy, in case folks don't know this, 10%, 20%, 30% vinegar at department stores that works well as a weed killer.
**Colin ** 40:35 Yeah, that's actually what I keep around for cleaning because it takes up less space, and if you have the 30% vinegar, you just dilute it with water to get it back down to 5%. And now you have—
**Brooke ** 40:45 Just don't spill it on your skin.
**Colin ** 40:47 Yes.
**Brooke ** 40:48 I've done that.
**Colin ** 40:49 Coming back to the safety issue. You do not—like, even regular strength vinegar, I've used for cleaning walls in a basement before and walked back into the room after I had a chance to off gas a little bit and walk right back out again because I couldn't breathe. Vinegar is pretty safe, but it's still an acid and your lungs don't like breathing it. So open the windows, wear gloves, keep it off your skin, and by all means keep it out of your eyes. Same is true for borax. As chemicals go, they're pretty safe, but you still don't want them in your eyes. Safety glasses, chemical goggles if you have them. Again, Harbor Freight, 2 bucks for a pair of inexpensive plastic goggles is all you need.
**Brooke ** 41:39 Hopefully at this point, a lot of us have respirators, you know, post COVID and protests and whatever. You probably don't need to go that hard, but you can, right?
**Colin ** 41:51 Correct.
**Brooke ** 41:52 Yeah.
**Colin ** 41:53 So it's just the full strength vinegar, the 5%, on anything that is going to take a long time to dry out or you don't have time to deal with. So if you have a pile of soggy bedding, and your washing machine doesn't work because you don't have power, just go ahead and dump vinegar all over that. Vinegar is fine for most fabrics. And as long as it's acidic, as long as the clothing is too acidic for mold to grow, it can sit there for a week and it'll be probably fine.
**Brooke ** 42:26 So you could like, put them in your sink, stopper it, and pour some vinegar over the top of the bedding or the clothes or whatever it is that you need to soak. Do they need to be like, do they just need to be damp with the vinegar, or do they need to like sit in vinegar?
**Colin ** 42:40 It depends on what you're trying to do. Vinegar will kill mold, but it takes a long time as chemical methods of killing mold goes. You figure, most people know, like, bleach will kill mold in a couple minutes. Full strength vinegar can take an hour or more depending on the surface. So if you're using it to disinfect a surface, it needs to stay on there for a long time. Usually with fabric if you just dunk it in vinegar and hang it up to dry, by the time the fabric is dry, the vinegar has been on there long enough that anything that was on there is now dead. So even if your clothes aren't clean, dunk it in vinegar, hang it up outside on a clothesline, let it dry, and the vinegar will keep any mold from developing in the time that it takes the clothing to dry.
**Brooke ** 43:32 If bleach is so much faster and more effective, why not use bleach to clean the walls, clean the carpets, all of that kind of stuff.
**Colin ** 43:42 You can do that. Bleach, as everybody knows, is a little more dangerous. Not good to get on your skin. Not good to breathe. And bleach bleaches things. So if you use chlorine bleach on your, you know, vintage clothing, you're going to be in the market for some new vintage clothing.
**Brooke ** 44:05 Yeah, okay.
**Colin ** 44:06 Vinegar is—if you read online, there are articles of clothing and fabric that you're not supposed to use vinegar on. But I can attest to the fact that you can get away with using it on pretty much anything, including—the friend of mine that I've mentioned, I think last time, that had the apartment fire was using vinegar to clean a lot of like vintage suede. And it wasn't happy about it, but it survived and it came through it.
**Brooke ** 44:37 So you can use bleach, it just comes with more caveats and dangers and you're less likely to maybe screw something up if you're using vinegar as your agent.
**Colin ** 44:47 Right.
**Brooke ** 44:47 It sounds—that's what I'm hearing, is that accurate?
**Colin ** 44:49 Bleach will definitely work. Vinegar is nice because almost everything, you can just dunk it in vinegar and let it dry and it's not going to do that much damage to it. I used it on furniture, leather clothing, silk, everything. Even things that you're like, oh this should be dry cleaned only. Eh, vinegar is generally okay. It's not gonna love it but it'll be fine.
**Brooke ** 44:51 [Laughing] Gotcha.
**Colin ** 44:52 Borax is, you know, you've probably seen it in your grandmother's basement as a laundry booster. Borax is a—
**Brooke ** 45:27 White powder
**Colin ** 45:28 Yeah, white powder, sodium metaborate, I think? It's a caustic alkaline salt. So it has the advantage of being persistent where vinegar is not. So once the vinegar dries out, it's gone. Which is nice because your clothes will not smell like vinegar forever, you know, after a week or two, the smell totally goes away. Borax, it's like table salt. Once it dries out, you're left with a white powder on everything.
**Colin ** 46:00 Which is probably not what you want for all of your possessions because you don't want them covered and white powder. The advantage it has is that it does stay around. So if you are trying to get mold off of the walls and the joists in your basement, if you spray them with borax, once the water dries that powder is still going to be there and it's still going to prevent mold from growing. So the borax, once you put it down, will continue working until you clean it up. Yeah, so if you have a basement that has a major mold problem, just coat everything with borax, you can leave it on, there even when you put drywall and insulation everything back up, it's not going to hurt anything.
**Brooke ** 46:00 Okay.
**Brooke ** 46:42 Okay. You're wet clothing that's at risk of molding. Can you dust that with borax? Does that work?
**Colin ** 46:47 You can. That would work just fine if you happen to have borax not vinegar. So the vinegar I like just because it doesn't leave a residue on things. You can use it on everything. So when you have a giant pile of belongings, of some clothing, some furniture, or some antiques, just hose everything down with vinegar and sort it out later.
**Brooke ** 47:08 Yeah, I was imagining a circumstance where it's, you know, I can't get to the store, the store is out of things, and I have half a gallon of vinegar and half a jar of borax and, you know, Dollar Store tiny container of bleach and, you know, what can I use where and what can't I use where and how would I spread out what I have available?
**Brooke ** 47:30 Why not? Sounds like fun!
**Colin ** 47:30 You should not mix the vinegar and the bleach, that's the first thing. [Laughing]
**Colin ** 47:35 For some definition of the word fun, yeah. It's exciting. In general, don't mix anything with bleach because bleach is a sodium hypochlorite I believe is the chemical? There's different versions of it. But anyway, it contains chlorine. And when that chlorine breaks three of the things that are holding it to the rest of the molecule, you now have chlorine gas in your house, and that makes it really hard to breathe, and it's a good way to put yourself in the hospital. So if you're going to use bleach, do not use anything else. Vinegar and borax, they can actually be mixed. If you do that, the downside is that because vinegar is acidic, and borax is alkaline, you pull the pH a little bit closer to the center and it's not going to be as effective against mold. But then when the vinegar disappears and evaporates, the borax will still be there to help prevent the mold from coming back. So there's no harm in mixing them. And a lot of websites that talk about mold cleanup will actually recommend it because the Borax is persistent and the vinegar will generally be enough to kill them all quickly and the borax keeps it from coming back. But for the purposes of just trying to inhibit low growth immediately after the flooding event, either one is fine. You don't need to mix them to get the best effect and you'll be able to cover more of your possessions if you're not using both products on everything. So vinegar on some, borax and others, there's no reason to hit them double strength.
**Brooke ** 49:18 Right. Yeah, so I'm imagining, like, I might bleach spray the walls, dust some powdered borax on the carpet, soak the clothes and vinegar. Again, this is like, if I don't have enough of one thing or a couple things to do everything that needs to get done, you know, what benefits the most from each thing or how can I use each one individually most effectively. But yeah, very good, important thing about mixing chemicals. There's another one too I think ammonia and bleach you're not supposed to mix, it also has a bad chemical...? Yeah.
**Colin ** 49:48 Ammonia and bleach does the same thing. It's still—the chlorine is the ones gonna get you. Chlorine gas is nasty nasty stuff.
**Brooke ** 49:54 Seems like they use that at one point and like did bad things to people with it.
**Colin ** 49:58 Yeah, yeah, we don't like chlorine gas. It's not fun.
**Brooke ** 50:01 Yeah, I'm not a history person but boy, that sounds familiar.
**Colin ** 50:04 Speaking of gases, one of the things that people may see, as far as mold abatement goes, is the use of ozone.
**Colin ** 50:12 And I have used that. I actually have an ozone generator, and it does a fantastic job of getting rid of the, you know, the few mold spores that are in places where you can't get to them. But I will say, in general, for anybody listening to this, don't bother.
**Brooke ** 50:12 Oh, uh huh.
**Colin ** 50:30 Oh, okay.
**Colin ** 50:30 The ozone generators that you can afford are not going to be big enough and powerful enough to take care of like an entire room. And ozone is maybe not quite as bad as chlorine gas, but it is still a nasty toxic gas. And it can cause both you and your possessions serious harm. The reason it works is because it has—it's O3, so it has an extra oxygen atom or molecule—attached the molecule. That makes it very, very active, and it tries to oxidize everything that it comes in contact with. Which if it's coming in contact with mold that you want to kill, that's fantastic. If it's oxidizing all of the plastics and all of your synthetic fabrics and turning them into, you know, various nasty compounds like formaldehyde, that's not so good. And I've read horror stories about people getting, you know, small ozone generators off Amazon and saying, well, you know, this is not powerful enough to get the levels up high enough in an hour, so I'll just let it run for three days.
**Brooke ** 51:41 [Laughing] That's three days, that's not an hour.
**Colin ** 51:45 Yeah, when you do that, it's sort of like the difference between baking something in the oven at 150 degrees for 8 hours versus searing a steak at 500 degrees for 5 minutes. They do very different things. And letting everything just kind of stew in ozone for a very long time is not a good idea. You do not want to do that. And I would just say steer clear of those. Leave that to the professionals. Save your money. Buy more vinegar and borax.
**Brooke ** 52:19 Okay, that's good to know. And if you want to learn more about chemical combinations, I created a board game for children. That's totally an aside thing. Okay, I want to go back to one thing here and I'm sorry, I'm risking going long, but um, we talked about removing like walls and carpet and I sidetracked us and talking a lot about carpet. You mentioned briefly about, like, taking out what drywall material, right, if there's water damage. And with the carpet I had asked about like freshwater versus, you know, sewage water. Does the same thing go for removing walls? Like if I have a pipe burst and it's, you know, just fresh water that person got the walls wet. Can they be recovered? Or is that a situation where, sorry, it got wet, you pretty much got to take it out? Um, I don't know I'm asking.
**Colin ** 53:12 It depends on how wet it got. If it's just a pipe that burst in the ceiling and it sprayed a little bit of water on the wall, that's probably fine. That's salvageable. If you have a pipe burst inside the wall and it saturated all the insulation and soak the drywall through, that needs to come out. Not because the water is necessarily going to damage the drywall, but now you have created a damp space with no airflow inside the wall. And if you can't get that opened up and dry it out, you're going to end up with mold.
**Brooke ** 53:45 Can you dry out insulation? Like if you take out a piece of wet insulation and put a fan on it and dry it out, can you put it back in or does it get ruined?
**Colin ** 53:56 With fiberglass insulation, you could do it but there's no reason to.
**Brooke ** 54:02 Okay.
**Colin ** 54:02 The cost of replacing the insulation is going to be less than probably the cost of trying to get it dried back out and salvageable.
**Brooke ** 54:11 Okay. Okay.
**Colin ** 54:13 And a lot of houses have insulation that has already been contaminated somewhat with mold over the years. Usually when insulation comes out of walls, it's not perfectly clean. It already has some mold and things in it just because temperature fluctuations, you know, that's why you have the insulation there is to help slow down the temperature changes. But that means that the insulation is constantly going up and down in temperature. It has a small amount of condensation in it. Over time, little bits of organic matter and mold start to grow on it. It's not a huge problem until it gets soaked and now it takes off. So basically once installation gets wet, it's trash. And along those lines with drywall, another thing that I've seen a lot in basements that have had some water damage is either the homeowner or the contractor that they paid to do the recovery was trying to be as...
**Brooke ** 55:12 Cost efficient?
**Colin ** 55:13 Cost efficient, yes, that's a good way of putting it, as possible. Fake cost efficiency. And they pull out the bare minimum of insulation and drywall, basically the only things that came in direct contact with water, and they put new drywall back up, and six months later you have a mold problem, because there was still moisture higher up in the wall that was not addressed. So once a wall gets wet, you want to remove the drywall to, I'm gonna say, a good foot or more above the waterline at minimum. If you want to take out the entire wall, that's probably overkill but it's not the worst idea. But, you know, minimum of a foot above the waterline. And then for any insulation in the wall, reach your arm or up inside the bay as far as you can and get out anything you can possibly reach. The more space and the more airflow you get inside that wall, the better off you're going to be in the long run. And coming back to the borax, if there's any doubt about whether or not you've gotten anything, hose some borax water up inside there, let that dry out, and now you have something that's going to inhibit mold growing in that space for the remainder of the life of the house.
**Brooke ** 56:34 Okay, now I know this is going to be probably beyond the average homeowner's ability to to judge, but what about the framing, the studs, you know, the the wood that's in the walls that your your drywall is attached to and your insulation runs between? Any tips on being able to tell whether or not that needs to be replaced? Or is it just a, sorry, you got to call a contractor at that point to figure out if that needs to get redone.
**Colin ** 57:04 It's probably going to be fine. I'm sure there are exceptions. But, you know, wood is used to being outside. And as long as it has a chance to dry back out after it's gotten wet, it'll be fine. If it's sitting in water for weeks or months, you may have an issue. Your biggest problem honestly, with wet wood, is that it attracts termites. So you don't want to have damp wood. But as long as it gets dried back out, again, not too much of an issue.
**Brooke ** 57:37 Okay, that's really great. Okay, I feel like I am much better prepared to deal with flooding, hopefully make it happen, less things to look out for. And then definitely after it comes, knowing what I should do immediately and fairly quickly in that process. And that's awesome. I like learning things. Is there anything more you want to say about dealing with flooding and/or water damage that we haven't talked about?
**Colin ** 58:10 Oh, the one thing I didn't didn't get to was the burst pipe.
**Brooke ** 58:13 Sure.
**Colin ** 58:13 So let's run through that real quickly.
**Brooke ** 58:15 Okay.
**Colin ** 58:15 This is something pretty much everybody's gonna experience at some point in their life. I don't know of anybody that has not had to deal with leaking pipe or burst pipe at some point, even if it's not during a disaster. It's just like, sometimes it just happens because pipes get old and they break. So we talked about, you know, in the triage episode, the know where your shut offs are, and hopefully you can just run them down to the basement and shut the water to the house off, and then you have as much time as you need to deal with the broken pipe. If that doesn't happen, because you don't have a working shut off or you can't get to it, there are these brand of plumbing fittings called SharkBites which don't require any real skill to use. Sort of like, if you are capable of using a can opener and putting a cork in a bottle of wine, you can use a SharkBite fitting. Go on YouTube, there's good demonstrations of how to use them. And all you need is a set of cheap tubing cutters for cutting through the pipe, and either a valve or cap to go on the pipe after you cut it. I recommend, if you're going to keep one thing around, keep the tubing cutter and a valve. Because if you have a valve, you can use that for capping off a pipe that is under pressure. So if you can't shut the water off in your house, and you have a leaking pipe, you're gonna have a mess on your hands. But what you can do is cut through the pipe, open it all the way up. Now you have a pipe spraying water everywhere, and if you try to put a cap on that, you're fighting against the pressure and you can't do it. But if you've a valve, you can put the valve onto the pipe in the open position. So the water just flows through the valve and you close the valve and the water stops.
**Brooke ** 1:00:10 But that's—that whole set's only going to be true if you have like a PVC or PEX pipe, right? If you have—
**Colin ** 1:00:17 No, they work against copper too.
**Brooke ** 1:00:20 Okay, but you need a different tool to cut—well I have like galvanized steel I think it is or, you know, much older pipes than that that are metal.
**Colin ** 1:00:29 Cast iron.
**Brooke ** 1:00:30 Yeah.
**Colin ** 1:00:31 That's a different story. But if you have PEX or copper or PVC, the little cheap tubing cutters that will kind of like a C clamp with a little blade, and you just clamp it down and spin it in the circle until the blade cuts through, one of those and a 90 degree shut off valve is going to get you through a lot of problems because it works against pipes that have pressure in them. And again, there's demonstrations of how to do this on YouTube. It's kind of hard to explain an audio format. But once you see it, you're like, oh, yeah, that's really easy.
**Brooke ** 1:01:02 Yeah, I'm visualizing it really well, only because I've built water systems with PEX pipe, and I've used shark bites and all of that. So it's clear to me, but no sense of if it translates if you don't know that. But um, yeah, okay, that's really great. But just the caveat, it doesn't work on all types of pipes. Most types, apparently, I didn't realize the copper also. So that's pretty great.
**Colin ** 1:01:24 No, so yeah, it's—watch the videos, familiarize yourself with how you do it beforehand so that you know what to do. But it's really, really simple. And it'll buy you plenty of time until the plumbers can come out and fix the right way.
**Brooke ** 1:01:38 Cool, great. And again, that's only if you can't get to the shutoff valve because that would be your first choice in handling that, is to get to the shutoff valve rather than trying to cap the pipe off flowing.
**Colin ** 1:01:49 Yeah, cutting into your plumbing is the last resort. Hopefully you can just turn it off, but...
**Brooke ** 1:01:54 [Laughing] Just wanted to make sure we say that one twice.
**Colin ** 1:01:59 [Laughing] Yeah, that should be the last resort, not the first resort. Excellent point.
**Brooke ** 1:02:04 Thanks. All right. Colin, thank you so much for joining us today. I have learned a bunch of stuff and I've had a really great conversation with you. And I'm so happy that you're willing to do this with us again. Do you have anything that you want to plug or promote or otherwise share in closing?
**Colin ** 1:02:22 Nope, that's it.
**Brooke ** 1:02:27 Okay, that's it, folks. To our listeners, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoy our podcast, please share it. Feel free to drop a comment on any of our social media pages or Patreon account. We do read all of your comments and we talk about them collectively. And personally, I love engaging on these subjects further with you all when you reach out to me. I can be found on Mastodon @OgemakweBrooke, that's Brooke with an E. This podcast is produced by the anarchists publishing collective, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. We are on Twitter @tangledwild and also on Instagram. Plus, we have a rad website at tangledwilderness.org where you can find our extensive list of projects and publications. This podcast and much of the work of Strangers is made possible by our Patreon supporters. If you want to become a supporter, check out patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. There are cool benefits at various support tiers on Patreon. For instance, if you support the collective at just $5 a month, we mail you a monthly zine. There are special Patreon supporters that support us at $20 or more a month and we give them a shout out and all of our podcasts and publications. So I want to say thanks to Eric, Julia, Patoli, Staro, Theo, Boise Mutual Aid, Princess Miranda, Jenipher, Micaiah, Dana, Buck, David, Janice & O’dell, Thunder, Percival, Lord Harken, Marm, Hunter, Milissia, Kirk, SJ, Anonymous, Chris, Nicole, Carson, Paige, Aly, CatGut, Trixter, Chelsea, paparouna, BenBen, and an always, Hoss the Dog.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret and Tyler from Dark Winter Concepts talk about homesteading, preparedness, prepper culture, and focus on inclusion of marginalized communities within these spaces.
Tyler (he/him) can be found on Instagram @Darkwinterconcepts
Margaret (she/they) can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Tyler on Dark Winter Concepts
**Margaret ** 00:14 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today, Margaret Killjoy, and today I have a guest on that I'm excited about. You might have been noticing that I haven't been hosting as much and that's because I burned out really hard. And not on this subject, but just in general. But I'm trying to get back into it. And part of the reason I'm getting back into it, I've been really excited to have Tyler on, who we're going to be talking to in a minute, because I'm really excited about what's going on in the preparedness space. And it's rare that I get to bring someone on who's just also in the preparedness space and has similar ideas. I think you all will be really excited. And so--well I was gonna say, "Without further ado," but there is more ado. This following ado is that we're a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on that network.
**Margaret ** 01:42 Okay, and we're back. So if you could introduce yourself with your your name, your pronouns. And then I guess just a little quick introduction to what you do.
**Tyler ** 01:51 Yeah, so my name is Tyler. I am started a company called Dark Winter Concepts. Pronouns are he/him. Basically, what I have started doing is I noticed there was a huge void in the prepping homesteading space when it came to making it accessible to newcomers or anyone who's just in a marginalized community. And it's really just so, so important for me to take all the stuff that is natural to me, just from my upbringing, and just make it accessible to people who actually need it, the people who are under pressure in society already.
**Margaret ** 02:27 Hell yeah. Do you want to talk about. . . I have this question here of like, "What got you into it?" But you've already said it's how you grew up. But do you want to talk about that a little bit more? Like what got you into preparedness and homesteading.
**Tyler ** 02:41 It's kind of a funny story/full circle with the name. So I grew up in very rural Pennsylvania and grew up on a farm, but moved around a lot afterwards, working and all that sort of stuff. But then I was kind of coming into wanting to be able to use all the skills that I learned growing up. And then I had a weird gateway experience playing the video game The Division, where the idea of a personified trained individual could use their skills beyond just like, you know, tactical combat--all this sort of stuff--that could use all these technical engineering and other skills to maintain stability in communities after a disaster. And that checked a lot of boxes for me that a lot of other games of that type just really don't. And so that kind of triggered an interest as kind of exploring, "Well, where, where could I be applying these skills? Like how could I be doing this?" And as time went on, I started to explore it more. And once we got out to West Virginia, where--I mean, losing access to resources is pretty common here anyways--it kind of just became a part of life. And then obviously, COVID happened, which, I mean, thankfully, we had kind of already started because that made it a good wake up call, but we were much less affected than a lot of folks were. But after that, we got serious about it and, you know, started developing those skills, had space to practice them and decided that, you know, someone with the privilege to have that space to practice skills, to try out things, that I should be using that privilege to share and to share that learning experience and failures--because there's been plenty of those. But I just felt like with with the privilege that I had, it was really my responsibility to share as much knowledge of my own journey as I could.
**Margaret ** 04:36 Okay, so I find this really interesting. I really like...you know, framing it around as "having the privilege to have the space to try out these things," and it's interesting to me because--I mean, obviously in preparedness space living rurally is generally looked positively upon. I actually don't think there's an intrinsic. . . It's not necessarily better in rural or suburban or urban. I think they all have advantages and disadvantages. I clearly like rural. But the idea. . . I hadn't heard of this phrasing before, thinking about it like "the privilege of the space to try things out," like, you mean in terms of how you can actually be like, "Oh, I want to try and build a thing. Well, no one's gonna yell at me if I build this. I don't have to go do it in the parking lot behind my apartment building." Is that kind of what you mean?
**Tyler ** 05:24 Oh, yeah, that, and then I mean, when you get down to things like learning fire starting, I can literally step outside my house and start a fire if I want. And that's not. . . I don't have to worry about a cop driving by. I don't have to worry about upsetting neighbors. Like, I can just go do that. I can go walk out of my house and go into the woods and learn to forage and learn about the plants that are in my space. Just. . . Yeah, the ability to have space where I don't have to plan a camping trip to go be outside in nature--which, I mean, is obviously part of my prepping, being in nature because this is where I'm located--but to have space to try out survivalist skills, to try construction skills, to, you know, do more defensively minded capabilities and practices on my own time and not have to arrange a range day or anything like that, it's a privilege to have this much space. And it's something that I've been trying to make the most of.
**Margaret ** 06:21 Now that makes sense. I think about. . . I sometimes get. . . I think everyone knows this. I'm also in West Virginia. It was actually part of why I was really excited to talk to you. But I tend to think about like what I currently don't have access to, right? Like, I have access to space. And it's really nice. And I actually need to remember to focus on that. I think about how I don't have to plan to go learn camping things, I have to plan to buy anything I can't get at Walmart, you know? [Tyler affirms] That's the main downside I've run across. I mean, that said, I mean, I know where to buy gravel near me and if I lived in the city, I might not know where to buy gravel, but I wouldn't need to buy gravel if I lived in a city, so. . .
**Tyler ** 07:09 Yeah. And I think that comes down to...like, when you live rurrally, yes, you do have space and space to cultivate your own resources, but you do have to really plan where you're getting other resources from. And I mean, one of the biggest things for me is you have space but it's harder to find people to connect with as a community. And that's something that you have to be really diligent about because it is really easy to just stay out here in the woods and not go anywhere ever. But it is something obviously, as long term prepping plans, needs to involve other people at some point. So it is something you have to be really intentional about it. It's not just going to happen very naturally.
**Margaret ** 07:54 You ever seen...you ever seen that show, is it called Doomsday Preppers or Preppers or Doomsday? That fucking reality TV show? Do you know I'm talking about?
**Tyler ** 08:03 Yeah, yeah.
**Margaret ** 08:05 There's this thing that they always have in it--I mean, it's basically a how to guide about how not to prep. At least the--I've watched like three episodes--but they all live in the suburbs of the city. And they're all like, "This is my bugout plan. This is the property I've gone and bought in the backwoods," or whatever, you know? And it's interesting to me, because I think about it--you mentioned the community thing--and I just think about how my current crisis plan involves leaving my rural space to go to a specific place to connect with specific people. And then, depending on the situation, come back here. Right? But it's like, I have a get out of the rural area plan, you know? Because it's like...well, I care about people, right?
**Tyler ** 08:56 Right. Yeah. And that's, something we've talked about as well. Like, our main plan is for other people to come to us. Because I mean, even if we run out of space in the house, we have space for tents. We have space for people to sleep in their cars. Like that's. . . We can can accommodate a lot of people. But there is absolutely contingencies for someone who may not be able to get out. Maybe we need to go and collect someone and their stuff and their pets or whatever. And that's a huge consideration that you can't leave for last minute. You don't have to have a plan for it that everyone's aware of.
**Margaret ** 09:34 Yeah. Okay, one of the things I wanted to ask you about: one of the one of the pieces of feedback I get or things that people are nervous about is people of different marginalizations talking about a fear of rural areas and rural living. And I actually think West Virginia has a particular reputation around this. Which is funny because from my point of view West Virginia is specifically the better Virginia in that it did not fight for the Confederacy, and that's why West Virginia exists. But it's not a utopian place in a lot of ways. And I can speak about gender, you know, and I can speak about my situation. But I have. . . You know, when my friends who are people of color, and especially a Black folks, are nervous around rural areas, I don't know what to tell them. Because anything I say, is like, well, there's, you know, Black people in the town nearby, but actually, where I live for example, a lot of Black people live in town and not as many Black people live out in the hills around the town, you know? And I wanted to ask you about your experience, both your experience living where you do and like what you would say to someone who--not be like, everything's fine--I'm just like, genuinely curious how things are and like what you would say to other folks who are racially marginalized about rural areas and rural living?
**Tyler ** 11:02 Oh, yeah. My experience. . . I mean, there's a few things that I would recommend. If, by some situation, you are moving out and you do... like, you find a place rurally and you go out and you're someone who is just not white, one thing that I found that--and one thing that I prioritize really early on--was just like meeting my neighbors, and introducing them, like, "Hey, I am supposed to be here. I'm supposed to...like, I live right over there." [Margaret chuckles] Like, because I mean, at any point I might be out on the backside of our property in the back of the woods and, you know, be seen by a neighbor who wouldn't see me coming out to the mail--like completely different areas. And so making sure that the people that are around you kind of like know that you live there, as much as it might feel kind of dehumanizing to have to do so. Prioritizing your own safety is really important and not focusing on the, you know, how it should be. So making sure that the people around you know that you moved in, that you're supposed to be here, that you live there. And then past that, my biggest experiences have been primarily positive. My biggest thing, I think, for people moving, if you're moving to a rural area for the first time, and you're a person of color, the biggest thing I think that will potentially trigger a negative response is more so about how you behave than how you look. And that is to say, not that people should kill a part of themselves and hide and like that sort of thing, it's more so--especially if you in West Virginia--do you act like you're from the city? Are you pushy with customer service people? Are you really fast paced and, from a rural perspective, do you feel impatient and pushy? You know, because how you would act in the deli line in Manhattan is going to be way different than how you should act in Tudors Biscuits in West Virginia. You're gonna have very, very different experiences, depending on how your...how your rhythm meshes with the people around you, basically. Because I mean, even being out here, for where I am I'm very--far as I can tell very much the only person of color on my road for sure. But like, there's a Black guy that works at my Tractor Supply. And like, everyone loves him because he's super charismatic. You can tell he probably grew up reasonably well around here. But that's kind of the big thing is that, you are not--probably not--going to get too negative of an experience because of how you look, if you're a person of color, as opposed to how people perceive your behavior, which, again, is in many ways unfair because if you're just from a more vibrant culture than rural West Virginia and that vibrance is part of who you are--I certainly don't want to encourage people to like, you know, hide themselves--but just to be kind of self aware as to how their behavior may affect other people and how it may draw a reaction from them and just understand that that could be a possibility. But I think overall, my experience has not been bad. Like I have not had really any bad experiences related to race out here. Growing up, I definitely did. But since being out here, really nothing overly negative to speak of. You know, overall, I think West Virginia, especially. . . Like there are obviously a lot of remnants of the people who are, as you said, West Virginia didn't fight for the South but there are a lot of people who are kind of resentful of that fact, like people who wish that they had.
**Margaret ** 11:04 Yeah. Like
**Tyler ** 11:27 Those people definitely exist. But I think like a lot of seemingly emboldened racists, transphobes, a lot of folks are very different in person than they want to be perceived online, which is where we perceive them, especially if you don't live in a rural area. Like you see like the Facebook post, the TikToks of how people are projecting their hatred, right? It's been my experience that, most of all around here, like people just want you to kind of go about your business and let them go about theirs. Like, they're polite, they'll, you know, chat with you if you're sitting at the local coffee shop. Yeah, like, I really don't have any overly negative things to say other than just, I mean, you just need to be careful, you know? Because there is the possibility that the person that you meet at the bar, and maybe divulge a little bit too much about where you live to, there's the possibility that that person is a bad actor or knows someone who is and is willing to share that information. So being a little bit more guarded about--I mean, similar to how you act online. Like, you don't give out the street that you live on or that sort of information.
**Margaret ** 16:23 Right. Cause both of us actually live in Southeast Ohio, but we're pretending like we live in West Virginia to throw people off.
**Tyler ** 16:29 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's just being aware and guarded, it's being just aware of how your behavior here will be received differently than how it is in a major city where there's obviously just so many people from so many different backgrounds and everything that there's no like one that stands out or that people react poorly to in that sense, where cities are more of a melting pot. It's just being aware, it's being a little bit more alert than maybe normal or event is maybe fair to be.
**Margaret ** 17:05 Yeah, no, that's actually...that's interesting to me how much it maps to my experience as a queer, white person living here where it's a very similar thing, where I'm more guarded in a lot of ways living here. I'm more careful about. . . Yeah, I don't necessarily tell people exactly where I live or I often don't tell people exactly who I am, right? About half of the people around here I'm specifically out to as trans and, but I'm, you know, to the people I'm not out as trans, I'm walking around with bangs and braids, but I'm also walking around with bangs and braids, and a Carhartt coat, but I'm also wearing a fucking mask. And that's not normal around here. You know? And it's like. . . And my experience has been that--I've probably talked about this on the show before--but my experience has been that once people got the sense that I wasn't trying to change the neighborhood culturally, like I. . . You know, they're like, "Okay, well, that weird, queer person has guns and a pickup truck and isn't trying to tell us that we can't have those things." you know? [Tyler affrims] Like, it's been more okay since then, you know? And. . . No, it's interesting. It makes sense to me. Okay, then my other, I remember I was reading...I was reading Reddit about this issue, and someone was like, "Hey, we're a mixed race couple. And we're thinking about moving to West Virginia from California," you know, because of some family thing and a house or whatever. "Are we going to get shit for that?" And everyone in the Reddit comments in R/West Virginia or whatever was like, "No, you're fine. Oh my god! Wait, you need to change your license plates. Change your license plates as soon as possible."
**Tyler ** 18:59 That is the absolute first thing I thought of was like they're gonna get a way worse reaction to the license plate than anything else.
**Margaret ** 19:07 Yeah. Okay, well I want to transition. . . Okay, I want to also talk about another space that you are in is that you're in the prepper space and you're in the prepper space in kind of a--at least in my observation of it--in the kind of homesteading, tactical corner of prepper space. But from this point of view of specifically, being someone who's inviting people of marginalization and or people who are just new to that space, like being the opposite of a gatekeeper, being an usher into that space. And I'm wondering, kind of what brought you into that space in particular, because that space is the...it's the like forbidden zone of prepper land, right? It's the one that we think as the most right-wing.
**Tyler ** 20:02 Yeah. Honestly, it kind of happened naturally. So basically, I kind of started--I mean, everything kind of started--on Instagram with an account there, which I really just created to try and just like meet more people, just connect and network with people because I was living in relative isolation, sort of. . . was moving my way politically left at the time and was just moving kind of further into isolation in that way as well, and just trying to find people to connect with over guns that weren't, you know, going to bring their like laser engraved Trump revolver or anything like that. [Margaret laughs] I really just started looking to connect with people and then the more that I shared about what I. . . like what life is actually like here, stuff that I was doing, projects I was working on. Like I just. . . it was. . . I guess, again, kind of from a point of privilege where like, all that stuff is just like completely unremarkable, and part of natural life to me, but people were really interested in it. Like they wanted to learn, like, "Oh, Where'd you learn how to do that? I'd love to do something like that someday." And just kind of the thing I just started realizing that a lot of these people who are asking are people who are in marginalized communities, especially marginalized and impoverished communities, so people who are looking for ways to build things because they can't just go out and buy the ready made version, right? They can't just go out and buy the $800 chicken coop from Tractor Supply. Like they want to learn how to build something on their own. And kind of the more I started connecting with people and just realizing that there's all these people with so many good intentions, like so much they want to do in their neighborhood and in their community and they just don't know how yet. And it just seems, to me, is something that's so natural and easy. But I can see that there's this huge knowledge gap for people between what they want to accomplish and what they know how to accomplish. And the only real difference was just access to the resources to learn how. Because it's something that I've. . . that's something that I've been really driven about is making sure that I'm not trying to create a centralized like, "Oh, you need to come to me to learn this." Like I'd much rather be like, "Oh, here's this YouTube channel that you can learn everything you need to learn about woodworking from here. You can learn everything you need to know about like blacksmithing from here," and sharing the resources that I've been learning from because I mean I'm very much a. . . Like, if I'm finding a project difficult and I seem to like learn how to do a thing, I'm still the type of person to pull up a YouTube video and watch it one to one and do the thing. But it could be as easy as just sharing that instead of making everyone go on that same journey of finding the resource to learn from. And yeah, so it kind of grew from there until it kind of. . . people started to start asking about the more prepper things in which case I kind of tied it into like, you know, prepping for me is a way of life where it's just a continual, small, marginal process. Like it's not a big going out and spending thousands of dollars to get stuff. It's something you can develop into just your weekly budget, your monthly budget, whenever, and just building out a plan that's as approachable as you need it to be, even if it's only picking up....spending four extra dollars when you go to the grocery store and getting four cans of beans to stick away in your pantry. Like that's something. That's something that week over week compounds. And getting people connected to that mindset, I think, makes prepping seem much less crazy, much less like crazy hoarders. And this shows like, you know, there's something that everyone can do. You don't need to be someone in the woods with a bunch of space and property. There's little things that anyone can undertake to just be a little bit more secure. And for me, the people who need that the most are marginalized communities who are really regularly either directly pushed away from people who are sharing this content or are indirectly pushed away just by the rhetoric that that person uses in their YouTube videos or whatever. Like everyone deserves a safe space to learn. That should be like the most basic thing in society.
**Margaret ** 24:36 No, I really like. . . It's been a while since I've seen someone making content in this space--there's a lot of good people making content in this space--but I just specifically like right away was really impressed by your attitude around this stuff. And I'm saying this partly to anyone who's listening if you haven't already checked out. Dark Winter Concepts on whatever platform you, you really should. I think the first stuff that I ran across from you--I'm not 100% certain how I first started writing across you--I think it was through Yellow Peril Tactical, who's been on the show before too. But you had a bunch of posts that were slideshows of, "Hey, instead of buying another redundant gun..." And do you want to talk about that series? And I am really curious about, one, the kind of ideas behind that, and maybe say that to the audience, so the audience can learn it too, but also how people have like, reacted to that content?
**Tyler ** 25:36 So that content was. . . I mean, that was the kind of the transformative content for my channel. Like that was what really kind of took off and what I saw huge interest in. And so what we did, and this is, honestly, because of Yellow Peril Tactical, because they post so much about like, "don't buy redundant guns. Buy training. Buy--or don't spend your money. Just train and get good with one that you have." And so I kind of took the next step and decided, you know, what are some other things within--I mean, some of the items are a little higher--but within the range of what you would spend for, you know, the latest optic or whatever tactical thing you want, like, "Here are nine things you could buy to better enhance your food preps," or "Here are nine things you could buy to better enhance your ability to conserve and filter water," or first aid supplies or tech upgrades that you can make that just will upgrade your life more or make your life a little bit better and provide more value to you and your community than to just buy another gun or to buy another level up better optic or, you know, the stuff that, if you're getting into guns, then you know that it can be an absolute money pit of continual upgrades and the coolest thing that you need to get. It's just like, once you get a setup, stop dumping money into it, learn how to use it, and spend that money on things that provide more value in the long term. Then we kind of just...I kind of just push that idea out till I kind of ran out of topics to suggest people spend their money in. But I mean, there's definitely been a few more. There will probably be some more series like that coming out. Or extensions on them. Because I mean, when you get into medical gear, there's so many things that are better...or good to just keep collecting and building up. There's so many more items that people could discuss. So there may just be part twos to every original series.
**Margaret ** 27:41 Okay. Yeah, the money pit of the gun... Recently, I wanted to change the stock on one of my rifles. And I didn't...it wasn't a fancy thing. I just wanted to--it was actually in many ways a cheaper stock, right? And I was like, okay, I got this thing. And then I was like, oh, in order to get this thing, I now need to get a new sling mount. And in order to get this new sling mount, I need another different sling mount for this sling mount to attach to. And people always refer to like the AR as like the "Lego rifle." But it's like if the Lego blocks were made out of solid gold, because the sling mount is $15. It's a nut. That's what it is. It is a nut and a bolt. And it is $15. And that's not high end, right? I don't have high-end equipment. I'm not, you know. . . I. . . Firearms aren't my primary interest. They're something I got into because Nazis told me where I lived and that they wanted to kill me. You know? And, yeah, it's a money pit. That's just all I want to say about that.
**Tyler ** 28:48 Yeah, I mean, it absolutely is. I mean, then you get into like. . . Like, I got my first suppressor for one last year, which was already a big enough.
**Margaret ** 28:59 Congrats. Like a
**Tyler ** 29:01 Thank you. So excited. Like, obviously that's already a big enough expenditure. And then from there, I was like, oh, yeah, now I need to get a muzzle device that takes suppressor. And I was like, oh, man, I got the suppressor because I have two ARs of the same caliber of like different setups. And now I need a muzzle device for both of them. And then it just, it just spirals. Everything just has so many supporting assets. And it's something you really have to plan out, which that's actually another series that I'm hoping to do, which is like if you're buying a gun for the first time, like don't just look at the sticker price of the thing that you're looking at at the store. Here all these other things that you should be budgeting for as well because as soon as you get this thing, everyone's going to tell you you also need a red dot on it and all this other stuff. Just provide a little bit of a price, like like if you're planning to invest in this, here's kind of what you should be budgeting for long term at least.
**Margaret ** 30:00 I think that some of that stuff is like. . . I think overall most of the people who are sort of first into this kind of space, like, you know, Lefty community. . . or defense. Community and individual defense type people, right? The people who are excited to do it right now when it's not specifically a crisis will tend to be people who enjoy figuring all the different pieces out. But then there's also people who are doing it because they're like, "Well, you know, Nazis with rifles keep coming to the drag show, and I need to be a non-Nazi with a rifle outside the drag show before someone dies," you know? And then it's annoying, because like, let's say you want to be that girl but you don't want to spend the next six months of your life learning the names of clips that go on your plate carrier to attach the--I don't even remember what it's called--the thing on the front of your plate carrier to the plate carrier itself. You know, I had that specific problem, right? I was like, "Oh, I need this thing. And I don't even know what it is. Does this exist?" you know? And I had to go track down this like clip. And I actually think there's a really good role, and I think it's something that you do really well--this whole episode is just basically me talking about how great your stuff is and how everyone should check it out--but I think about how we need quartermasters. We need sometimes people to say, "Here is a basic loadout--" I actually think Yellow Peril Tactical does a really good job of this too--where you're like, if you are choosing to build an IFAK, an individual first-aid kit, instead of like, everyone having to watch 16 YouTube videos and figure out exactly what to do, it's nice to just be like, "Here are the eight things that you need in your IFAK," or even, "Here's an IFAK," you know? And the same obviously with like. . . I mean, I think it's true for rifles and armor and these, you know, these sorts of things. but it's also true for water filters and other really basic things.
**Tyler ** 32:13 Yeah, absolutely.
**Margaret ** 32:17 I don't know what the name of those clips were. And if I needed them again, I'd be a shit out of luck.
**Tyler ** 32:21 Yeah, it's um. . . I mean, that's. . . I think that is one of the. . . like, beyond firearms and all the accessories and all that stuff, I think getting into nylon gear is an even bigger--I mean, it's not as high of a spend--but it is more excess of a spend because you get something and there's nowhere you can go to try it on. Unless you have friends who already have them. Like there's nowhere you can go to like pick it up like at Cabela's or whatever where you can feel a handgun and see how it feels, you just order a plate carrier from somewhere, try it out, and it does not feel good, or you give it a good go and it like doesn't feel good. Then you try out some new pouches and the balance doesn't feel right. You set it up just like that YouTuber that you watch and it doesn't work for you. And now suddenly, you just have all these pouches. And they don't work. And you see another pouch that and it's like, "Oh, that one's a little bit smaller, and that one would work, but it's like 35 bucks.
**Tyler ** 32:21 What a steal. [Sarcastically]
**Tyler ** 32:23 Yeah [laughing]. And it's really complex. . . It's such a complex and not very talked about thing unless you know the people to go to who are already talking about it, like people at Yellow Peril Tactical and a few other accounts.
**Margaret ** 33:39 Yeah.
**Tyler ** 33:40 I think the more more people with that can talk about that stuff in detail in different communities--like I have a different audience then Yellow Peril Tactical does because I have more of the homesteader side and people who are looking to do community gardening and that sort of stuff. And so to be able to talk a little bit more about like my own setup. I posted that the other day. Judge it. Tell me what's wrong with it because I've had it in isolation for too long. But also an opportunity for people to ask like, "What is like that pouch under your arm? Like what is like this and that?" And it's an opportunity to kind of talk people through and show in detail how it is actually set up, is something I think isn't done enough.
**Margaret ** 34:22 Well, okay, talking about having a slightly different audience than say, for example, Yellow Peril, I want to ask about that. I remember at one point you posted something about carry Narcan and how Narcan is an important part of everyday carry. And I think that this is true, I can get kind of slack on it myself. But now I keep it in my vehicle--though if you keep it in your vehicle, you have to refresh it way more often because it doesn't like temperature extremes. Like think about it like if you travel with condoms. Think about it like condoms. You have to change them out if they're in places that are not climate controlled. And you said that you got a lot of pushback or like at least some people were like piping up. . . Like you clearly. . . Yellow Peril Tactical antagonizes the right wing and speaks very clearly to the anti-authoritarian left, right, because they also antagonize the--this is part of why I love them--they also antagonize the authoritarian left. And your content is more broadly faced. And I actually really like that about it. But I'm curious how...like how much pushback you get when you even say things like--because it's like, it's like secretly a leftist thing to say "Carry Narcan. It shouldn't be, right? It shouldn't be a political statement to say like, "Hey, you call yourself a fucking sheep dog. That sheep is overdosing. What are you doing?" You know? Anyway, I'm just curious how navigating that space is going for you, being in a more wider-facing audience?
**Tyler ** 36:04 It's been, I mean, overall really positive. There's definitely a little bit of pushback on. . . I mean, Narcan was the like most pushback I've ever gotten on anything I've ever said on social media. Like people just jumped into the comments like, one, people saying that they should ban production Narcan because it just enables the "druggies," and just all of the most just heinous unempathetic shit that people say because they have been so dehumanized. I mean, people who struggle with addiction have been so dehumanized for this entire political area, that people view them as disposable. And I mean, thankfully, I mean, there are a couple of people that I jumped in on, but then there are other people who came into the comments who are like. . . yeah, kind of did the work for me, which is great. Like, I love to be able to like, "Yes. Fight, Get them." Yeah, it's kind of just good relief of like, okay, I'm not completely alone out here. But overall, it has been really intentional to keep it open ended, where I don't...I don't put labels on my beliefs. I've pretty rarely verbally defined myself as a leftist, just for the sense that I think most of the people that we have the opportunity to pull more left are people who up to this point have been, you know, they have lived comfortably, liberal or kind of actual--I say centrist as being like someone who's in between just being a Democrat or a Republican. I know, that's still well right of center. But kind of people in that area, like they're not. . . they haven't fallen off the far-right cliff, but people who are starting to wake up to the fact that the world is not in a great spot, that society isn't invulnerable, that their position of comfort is not invulnerable, and they're starting to just reach out for answers. And I see it as a huge opportunity, which I mean, one, being in a leftist space and not verbalizing that I don't come off as a radical or anything. I try not to be putting off in that way. And just like bringing people into the ideas, because, I mean, it's one of those things where if you, if you describe anarchists, like their actual beliefs to someone, like in a lot of cases they're like, "Oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense." But then as soon as you tell them that you're an anarchist, they're like, "Oh well, I could never," like you know, it's the label that scares them. And so, keeping it a little bit more open, getting people just into the ideas, into the topics when they reach out is huge for me, because, I mean, you've probably seen it on the other side of the prepping community. It's like a whole meme about like, laughing when someone says that they're going to come to your house when shit hits the fan. Like, that's why I'm. . . that's why I'm prepping, so that people know they can come to my house when shit hits the fan. Like, that is my biggest motivation is to be able to help people who weren't as prepared, who didn't have the privilege to be as prepared as I am. And so it's an opportunity where the right is pushing people away, and we can welcome them with open arms and, you know, actual education and be as welcoming as possible and through that kind of sprinkle in some ideas of community involvement and some general kind of anarchist overtones, autonomous collectives of community and being responsible for our own resources. And people can usually get on board with a lot of those things and it just sprinkles in. . . It plants the seed. And then if they stick around, if they find other people that I follow and other stuff that I share, it just starts the process of radicalization.
**Margaret ** 39:58 No, no, yeah. I think about my place within that funnel all of the time. And I, I think about it in some ways positively. And I also think about it cynically, right, because I'm not. . . I don't. . . I'm not like. . . I don't wake up in the morning being, like, "Time to do my propaganda," right? You know, like. . . I think about how my goal is to, like, help people survive things and take care of each other, you know? And, and I think it's useful to bring people towards. . . You know, it means less like about bringing people towards, for me, anarchism, right? And it's more about breaking the conceptions that people have about what must be involved in being a leftist. You know? Like, in some ways, my like, "No, I don't fuck with authoritarianism" is the more important part of my politics when I'm talking to people. You know, I think about how around here, the way I would describe myself to most people is that I'm just like, "Look, one of the reasons I like living where I live is that overall, the vibe around here is you leave each other alone and you take care of each other. And I know it sounds contradictory, but everyone I know who lives out here, this is not a contradictory thing. Like, we by and large stay out of each other's business, but my neighbor noticed when I was out of town and there was a big windstorm. "Hey, do you want me to go check to make sure no tree fell on your house?" you know? And like, that person doesn't have a political label and if they do, it probably wouldn't agree with mine. But like, yeah, I don't know. But the the basic ideas of "take care of each other and leave each other alone" I mean, like, to me that's what I like about anarchism is that you're like, "Oh, well, the individual and the community" and what you're saying about [long pause]. When I found that thing, the joke's in the right-wing prepper space about like, "Oh, anyone who comes over to my house is getting shot," you know, imagine how. . . I feel sad for them because their entire social community is people saying "We're only friends until the buzzer starts," you know? It's like, they're all trying to play Hunger Games and they're being buddy buddy with everyone else who signed up to play Hunger Games. And like, what a terrible and sad thing. I don' t know.
**Tyler ** 42:29 Yeah. It lets you know, kind of, how lonely a lot of people really are, like how little they actually care about other people. Which I mean, is its own form of loneliness beyond like, you know, spending time with people, blah, blah, blah. But if your first instinct for a disaster is to lock the doors board up the windows and, you know, sit there with your can of beans in the corner and, you know, shoot anyone who knocks on the door, then what does that mean for like the rest of your life? You've literally built no connections with other people that you value beyond your own immediate needs. Yeah, yeah. It's very sad.
**Margaret ** 43:20 Have you noticed. . . [trails off] And maybe it's just because some of the bigger online spaces like the Reddit R/prepper or R/preppers, or whatever it is, the main one, have been more community focused lately? I've been noticing this thing where I actually think that the prepping community is now no longer right wing. Or rather, no longer far right and values. both individual and community preparedness. Like it feels like that's a fight we're winning culturally. Like I have no interest in making prepper share my politics. I have interest in people realizing that community preparedness is a big part of preparedness. And it seems like we're kind of winning there, maybe?
**Tyler ** 44:09 Yeah, I think that that has come with prepping becoming so much more mainstream. I mean, the response, even with the movie "Leave the World Behind"
**Margaret ** 44:16 Is that the Obama one?Yeah,
**Tyler ** 44:16 Yeah.
**Margaret ** 44:16 I like that one. Which if
**Tyler ** 44:25 Which if you watch it, I thought it was really well done in the way of just like the absolute hopelessness of people who in no way prepared or even conceive that something could go wrong. And there were a lot of people who were like, "So I just watched this movie. What do I need to buy? I need to go bag. I need like. . . " like they just kind of woke up to like, even in like the early part [of the movie] before all the crazy stuff happened, like the invasion or whatever, like just the disaster of like two days without cell phones and people are realizing that like, "Yeah, that's like kind of happened to some people yesterday, literally." You know, that's something that is waking a lot of people up and waking them up to the idea that prepping doesn't have to be Doomsday Preppers reality show, right? It can just be having a radio, it can just be having extra food. And so people were looking out and expanding. One of my--and I honestly just found it-- a Reddit thread, R/2xpreppers, which is a prepping community that prioritizes the voices of women. And it's so wild how drastic the concerns are, like drastically different. Where the biggest conversations are around like, how do you prep when you have kids? Like how do you prep. . . Like, what's your go bag look like when you have to like, also bring their stuff? Like actual like family-oriented things rather than like rugged individualism. Like I found that the conversations over there have been so much more based in reality than a lot of other ones. It has been really cool. And again, cool to see that like, again, from a community standpoint, people are connecting, people are looking for other people who know things. People are looking for people to help. And they're realizing that they can't do it alone.
**Margaret ** 46:29 I admit. . . Okay, so the name to 2xprepping makes me sad, but not not sad as in they inherently hate trans women. I would guess--I've never really looked at this subreddit, I've only heard about it very recently--I would guess that it is not a group of people who's like taking a stance against trans women as much as like, cis women organizing and the overwhelming majority of women identify as having 2x chromosomes. No one's actually looked at their chromosomes, but like, you know, karyotyping does not does not happen to kids. But--and then I get sad when I think about it, partly because I'm like, "Oh, that conversation will be very hard. It'll be very hard to have that conversation in a way that won't make those women defensive." Or not necessary all of them. I'm sure some of them will be. . . You know, I don't know, whatever. I just get. . . But that's a separate topic about how currently sad about the slow creep over from England of anti-trans rhetoric within feminist spaces. [Tyler affrimitively groans]. But like--and I'm not making any--like, again, it sounds like an amazing resource. And just they picked a name that absolutely made sense to them. And then I'm like, "Oh, this is gonna be awkward. It's gonna be one of those conversations that's hard and annoying to have."
**Tyler ** 47:55 Yeah, I will say, it very much seems that they made the community like, whenever you open it up, there's the note that you read before you like go down the thing and it's like, "Men, read this first." And is just basically guidelines like "Don't come in and like talk over the people who are talking here." Basically, don't act the way that the stereotypical right-wing prepper man acts in the prepper space. And it's really good guidelines for like, basically allow people to talk and discover and discuss and don't try to be the dominant voice in this channel.
**Margaret ** 48:28 Yeah, no, that's cool. Okay, wait, what were the other things I wanted to ask you about? Okay. So, we've talked separately and unrelatedly to anything else about how we both play video games and that's not. . . and then when you were mentioning about how you plan to help people, like you plan to prep in order to take people in, you hope that people come over. I'm curious. I just want to run something past you basically. One of the things that has made me realize that--I mean, I've never had a particularly strong bunker mentality, it's never been my approach to anything-but one of the things that's like really reinforced my belief in community preparedness is the lesson of I play strategy games all the time. And in strategy games, you like, you want more. . It's okay to have more resources, but what you want is more things that generate resources. right? And that's people. So I can't imagine. . . Like, small countries don't have as high gross domestic product as big countries because people are what make things. Like the idea that I alone or with my immediate family, that that's a useful unit to approach the apocalypse, it doesn't make any sense to me. And I don't know. Where am I going with this? It's like, people think of, "Oh, you want to let people in and eat your stockpiles. That's you showing weakness. And they're gonna see your weakness and take advantage of it." But everything I've ever learned about strategy says that it's actually a strategic plan. I mean, it's also basic empathy. But like, I don't know. I just want to run that idea past you if you have any thoughts on it.
**Tyler ** 50:32 Yeah, yeah. This is something I actually talked about really recently, which was that, one, in most scenarios, the right wing has painted the idea of a leftist prepper as like walking down the street throwing food to the masses, like just giving away all your stuff. And that's not the plan at all. I mean, with being able to bring people here, it's because. . . I mean, currently, I have way more space than I could ever reasonably cultivate food on. And I can certainly cultivate a lot. But if people were to show up and, you know, need food, and need a place to stay, that is, again, like you said, a strategic--like a strategy game--is like recruiting people to your town to put to tasks and to be able to exchange, you know, your resources that you've been collecting in exchange for some of their time, and if they're going to be staying there and just like to contribute to the community as a whole. Because when it comes down to it, I mean, if you're going even down the rabbit hole of defense, I think a lot of people have talked about how you need more than your immediate family to just keep watch. Like, you need someone who can like keep watch at night while the other people sleep. But, you know, it's like the more people you have, the more. . . it's a force multiplier I think. It's a force multiplier because you can just generate so much more, so many more resources, build your infrastructure up so much faster with those additional people.
**Margaret ** 50:32 Yeah, no, totally, and it like. . . And then I think the other thing that I run across a lot is that a lot of people don't think that they have anything to offer. And I actually think that one of the things that behooves us in our process of like anti-gatekeeping is helping people realize what they have to offer, which might not be physical labor, right? Like some people for various reasons can't do physical labor, right? But there's like. . . It seems like the overwhelming majority of people have something that they can offer. And then if there's every now and then people who don't have anything to offer, well, you know what, that's fine. Like, okay. Like, if one person out of 50 can't contribute anything, well, great. You can still stick around, because overall, bringing people in. . . Because it's like less about like, oh, you come in and now you're going to be like you slot into this role and now you're the person who goes and gardens all day. Or I play enough video games where I'm like you're not the person who carries the thing from the garden to the kitchen or whatever, right? But instead, you know, people always. . . like the right wing always talks about how like, "Oh, well, hungry people will do anything to fix that problem." You're like, yeah, one of the things that they'll do is productive labor. One of the things that you can do is you can all wake up in the morning and be like, "These are the problems we're facing. How can we confront them?" And get people to volunteer to do the things because that works, because if people know that it's that or go hungry, they will do it. And not because you're going to make them starve but because. . . I don't know. Whatever.
**Tyler ** 53:46 Yeah, that is something that I actually feel really, really strongly about with making people feel included in communities--not making people feel included--finding ways to include people. It's not about making them just feel good, but giving them actual, an actual place within your community, even if it's not, like, quote/unquote, "productive" or labor. Like, there's always something that someone can do to help, whatever that may be. Or if they are someone who, you know, their primary role, you know, if there's someone who just has an extreme disability, you know, like physically they cannot like, quote/unquote "contribute" having people around or having people who are around who are different from you is incredibly valuable. I always look at it from a perspective of even if my neighbor has no construction skills, no like...no hands-on skills, like no labor potential. You know, they are disabled, but they work as a remote project manager. Like, being a project manager when it comes to organizing a bunch of people on to tasks, like that's wildly useful. Or if you are just like, oh, I work in communications, learning how to like communicate ideas that like. . . I'm really good at coming up with ideas. It's much harder for me to distill them down into verbiage that someone who doesn't have extreme ADHD can understand--
**Margaret ** 55:24 Shout out to everyone listening to this at 2x speed. Sorry, go ahead.
**Tyler ** 55:30 No yeah. Like that's really it. Also if you're not. . . like you don't know what role you're in, you don't know what role you can do, you don't have to look at it from the perspective of "you need to have a function." Like maybe your function is just to help other people do their function. You know, maybe it is just bringing water to people who are laboring outside. Maybe it's just kind of reading the recipe to someone who's cooking for everyone else. Like there's always something that can make other people role easier. And again, like you said, for the people that they just can't. They can't contribute in that way. That's also fine. Those are the people that the rest of us need to be contributing to take care of. There are people who just need support. They need help. And that's what community should be all about. It's not about meritocracy.
**Margaret ** 56:25 Absolutely. Well, I want to have you on to talk about so much more. But for now, is there anything that, you know, questions you wished I had asked or final thoughts around these particular topics or even if you just want to talk a little bit about something you have coming up with [interupts self]. Oh, also, where's the name Dark Winter Concepts come from? I have no idea. You mentioned some game maybe. So that and then any other final thoughts.
**Tyler ** 56:54 So the name Dark Winter Concepts is related to The Division. But it is something that happened in the real world. Operation Dark Winter was a simulation that the United States government ran in partnership with John Hopkins to simulate a bio weapon attack in, I think, Oklahoma City in 2001. Basically, to run a simulation like this happened. This is how it's spreading. I think they used smallpox as the example. And then use John Hopkins as hospital response, medical response, like emergency to show how do we respond to this in real time, basically. And we failed, like really bad. Like, it fell apart really, really fast. And as we saw 20 years later, we learned nothing from that failure as we once again we're faced with a viral incident. And as a nation--or as a national response, not as the people within--the National Response fell flat, you know a day late and a buck short. And so I wanted to pull on that with the concepts, which is really just about providing the ideas and information that people can then take to help bridge that gap. You know, to help bridge the gap between, you know, when things go wrong, when there's a disaster, you have to kind of expect to be your first responder, you know, expect to self-rescue or whatever. But basically, you can't rely on an immediate government response to help. You need to be able to cover that two or three days or a week until, you know, the National Guard can come in or FEMA is there or whatever. Just to stay alive and keep other people around you alive long enough to get the help that will hopefully come. Hopefully. And so that's kind of where the, the motivation for for the name came, which was just recognition of like, we're still not going to learn anything, even after 2020 and everything else I would fully expect the same thing to happen next time. It's all. . . all of our systems are going to be run bare minimum. They're not able to. . . The specific note from Operation Dark Winter was the Healthcare System's inability to scale to meet the need, was like the big failing point. Hospitals were not able to scale because they are all chronically understaffed. They are all chronically underfunded. They do not have. . . Excess medicine isn't just being made because it's the right thing to do. Like, that's not something that has been fixed and doesn't seem to be a priority to be fixed.
**Margaret ** 59:30 And that's. . . You know, when I talk about how individual community preparedness are not in opposition but directly related and synergize. I never use the word synergize. But I'm gonna use it right now. That to me, is such a clear example of it, right? Like the expect to self-rescue, the expect. . . Like, I'm not a hospital, right? I am a squeamish person who drags myself into medical workshops kicking and screaming, but I still do it every now and then, right, because I'm like the more diffused this knowledge is, the more that the super specialized people can focus on that. I talk a lot with one of my friends who's a medical professional, a a physician's assistant, and he talks about how he-- oh, now I'm combining a couple different in my head, a couple of my different medical profession friends--and they talk about how like, now that they like work in hospitals, they're less likely to do street medic stuff, partly because they're like the part of their brain that is used to helping people gets used up when they're like sawing people's legs off and like doing this higher level of care work where walking around and giving people sunscreen and reminding people to drink water and maybe being around to like flush someone's eyes out is--don't get me wrong, like shout out to all the nurses and doctors who still do street medic stuff--but the more people can pick up that slack so that the people who specialize in the thing can do the higher level of care thing. And then my squeamish self can still handle most level of wounds that I can do to myself, you know? Like, I'm sure. . . If I chain saw deep enough into my leg, I need a higher level of care. But overall, the average wound that I do to myself in the course of my life as doing woodworking, or whatever, I can handle because I learned this stuff. And so I'm just rambling about the. . . No, I really liked this. I like the. . . I like what you're talking about. Okay, well, how can people find you if they want to learn more? Is there any like specific kinds of support you're looking for? Anything like that. So
**Tyler ** 1:01:49 I am just Dark Winter Concepts on Instagram and Tiktok primarily Tiktok a little bit more heavily just due to engagement over there right now. But any platform. Over on YouTube as well but not as much. There will also be a website that by the time this airs should be live as well, darkwinterconcepts.com My day job is a brand designer. So the ability to actually like design show that I care about was just an opportunity, but it's also something that like. . . I don't want people to buy a shirt that they don't like just because they want to support me. But there will be some cool original shirts and mugs and flags and stuff that's just all my own designs, or just all my own stuff. If people want to promote what I'm doing, if people want to support through the shop or just come and engage on any social media platform that is by far the most rewarding thing if people just drop into an Instagram post and leave a comment, ask a question. Answering the individual questions is the most rewarding part of any of this. So Dark Winter Concepts on Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube, Facebook even. Yeah, all around.
**Margaret ** 1:03:03 Hell yeah. Well, thanks so much. And we'll talk to you soon. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, go check out Dark Winter Concepts. And also if you want to support this podcast, you can do so by supporting us on Patreon. Or you know, telling people about it is really good too. But you can support us on Patreon through our publisher, which is Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. We put out a lot of different stuff, including two other podcasts you might want to check out. One is called The Spectacle. We renamed Anarcho Geek Power Hour to The Spectacle, which is probably a better name, I'm willing to admit, even though. . .whatever. And also the podcast Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which is we put out a new zine every month, and if you want that zine--and ends up on the podcast--but if you want that zine in the mail, you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Oh, and then anyone who supports that the $20 a month level, not only will I read out your name, but I'll also read out kind of whatever you tell me to within some limits. And so often we are going to be shouting out a couple projects that support us. And so yeah, that's a thing that you can do. We want to thank Amber, Ephemoral, Appalachian [pronounces it App-a-lay-shun". Appalachian [App-a-latch-un]. They specifically made a note about how you can't say App-a-lay-shun. And I was like, I would never do that. I didn't grow up saying that. But I was looking at that note when I started reading it. I'm so terribly sorry. Appalachian Liberation Library. Portland's Hedron Hackerspace, Boldfield, E, Patoli, Eric, Buck, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, anonymous, Funder, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica. Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, S.J., Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Mic Aiah, and of course, the immortal Hoss the dog. Alright, I will talk to you all soon and I hope you all are doing as well as you can with everything that's happening.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret and Dean continue to talk about the ways that mutual aid helps communities prepare for disasters that are already here and disasters that have yet to come. They talk about what things like hope and success can look like even as the world crumbles around us.
Dean Spade is an American lawyer, writer, trans activist, and associate professor of law at Seattle University School of Law. You can find Dean's work at Deanspade.net, and you can read the article that Margaret and Dean talk about, "Climate Disaster is Here--And the State Will Never Save Us" on inthesetimes.com. You can also find Dean on Twitter @deanspade or on IG @spade.dean.
Margaret (she/they) can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Dean Spade on Mutual Aid as Preparedness pt. II
**Margaret ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and this is part two of a conversation with Dean Spade. So I should probably listen to part one, but I'm not your boss. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, and here's a jingle from another show on the network.
**Margaret ** 00:42 Okay, I have a kind of final-ish question, I think. And it can be "ish" on the final part. But at the beginning of this, you said that your politics have been moving towards anti-statism, or, you know, possibly anarchism, or whatever. And I'm wondering if you want to talk about that. In some ways, I feel like you've implied a lot of maybe what has drawn you more towards those politics, but I'm really curious about the kind of route you took--not like where you've landed, and what labels you want to throw on things--but what has led you towards those politics?
**Dean ** 01:56 I just talked with somebody yesterday who I know from the anti-Zionist Jewish world who was talking about the. . . about how he feels like people haven't thought. . . that he hasn't thought a lot about anti-State or anarchist politics, and he was like, "Why do you think some people haven't and some people haven't?" and I was like, "Oh, I think people just come to our politics. Like, we just kind of stumble into them." It's like, if somebody stumbled into a punk scene in 1999, they probably found anarchism sooner than me. I stumbled into all this queer, anti-police stuff, and we were doing a lot of identity-based work, and people weren't talking about political tendencies in the same way--in part also, because it had been really divisive, at certain points, in our movements where people had gotten so obsessed with their ideology that they'd been able to work together and got really insular. So there was a lot of, I think, push away for some people from that. I think, also, we have lived in times for the last, at least 100 years, that are so deeply reactive anti-anarchist, in particular, because of the history of anarchism in the US and elsewhere. There's a really great piece by William C. Anderson that came out a while--like not that long ago--after the Atlanta indictment about how policing in the United States itself developed through policing anarchism, that I highly recommend. But anyway, I think a lot of us also just haven't gotten. . . Like, it's like you were told, "Anarchists are just people who want chaos and who are dirty white people," or whatever. There's a lot of things that erase the contributions of anti-colonial anarchists and anarchists who aren't white in all these things. Anyway, Or, anti-State tendencies that aren't anarchism in the European sense. But for me, I think what happened is that I've been in movements that have been benefiting from a range of genealogies, including women of color feminism--specifically Black feminism--and other political knowledges and methods that have been anti-institutional, in really great ways have had critiques of the borders and the cops and the military have also had a focus on practices of collectivity and horizontality with us, you know, inside our movements, which are very. . . You know, that really parallel with a lot of anarchist methodologies like "Let's not have a boss in this group," you know? And so all of those things really dovetail with anarchism, but I wasn't ever studying anarchism itself. Some people who were in groups I was in maybe identified as anarchists, but it didn't seem like an essential thing for me to study for a number of years. And I didn't think a lot about whether or not that was my position, because also I just had the same caricatures in my mind that other people did. And I also was like, "Do anarchists think that people shouldn't get welfare?" I don't know. I had some of my own, you know. As somebody who grew up on welfare, I had some questions about that, that I didn't have resolutions to. And then over time, especially doing abolitionist work, it just was so clear to me more and more not only that everything I was already doing dovetailed with anarchism: my interest in mutual aid, my interest in horizontal tactics inside our groups, and building group culture where we learned how to share with each other, and not boss each other around, and all that stuff. But also, the ways in which, I think, abolitionist frameworks are just. . . like, they're so deeply anti-State. It's like, 'Yeah, don't build a better cop. Don't build a better jail. Don't build a better prison. Don't build a better social services framework that's actually still a cop," or you know. And, that you can't have a country without cops, borders, and military. That's what a country is made of, you know? You can't have a Capitalist economy without a boot on everybody's neck making us participate in it. So I just came to realize like, I'm not only--I always knew I was against the United States settler colonial slavery project--but I was like, "Oh, my God, I'm against countries. I'm against that." And then I did start actually reading about this stuff and I was like, "Oh, my God, they're a recent invention. They don't need to be able to organize themselves. That's not how people have always organized themselves." And I also started to see how it actually makes a difference in our tactics about what we're going to do today, if we know this about ourselves, right? Like how we're going to get basically co-opted by projects of "Oh, let's let's do a let's do a million local elections and try to take over a city council 'thing.'" A lot of that work steals the oxygen out of local movements really intensely. And I'm not gonna say it should never ever be done, but I just feel like so much of it actually has a lack of a conversation about what can happen in those spaces behind it and then is incredibly resource intensive and doesn't lead to the things I think people hope it will lead to, like, "Oh, we're gonna have an abolitionist prosecutor and abolitionist city council person or mayor and it's gonna change everything," right? And then not seeing that happen. I think we've seen that it's played out. Or the, you know, I think this is even sharpened for me with the period of the "Defund [the police]" work--which I care a lot about, trying to defund the police--and seeing the fights inside city councils and how deeply impenetrable--like even when you supposedly, in 2020, get the whole city council saying we want to defund the police and there's so much effort on that side--it's like our cities are run by real estate developers, chambers of commerce, and police departments. And the entire apparatus of the city councils--which is in some ways more accessible than any other level of government, of course--is still unmovable. Like you can't. . . you can be right all day long. You can do every kind of research. You can show you can turn up with all the people every single time. And as soon as they can turn around and reestablish their nonstop march to constantly increase the police budget, that's what they'll do. And that is what they have done since 2020 after all this amazing work by so many people. So I think I'm just continually evaluating "Wow, where are there still parts of my own approach to politics that are assuming we can convince governments of things?"--even while I want to get rid of those kinds of governments--and why do I ever think they will voluntarily put down their weapons? And why do I think about getting any different people inside there, inside that machine? I don't believe that about the military. I'm not like, "Well, maybe if Margaret Killjoy was the general, it would all be fine." I know, that's not true. So why do I, and where have I still. . . And I, you know, I forgive myself and all of us. We're all just trying shit our whole lives. And there's so many things I've been involved in that I think were not that generative, but you know, we couldn't have known that. Or, where there was a backlash so that the thing that was generative for a while stopped or, you know, was turned on us in a way that undermined our hopes. But I think that for me it's just an ongoing deepening with different anti-State frameworks, an ongoing deepening of reading history, and understanding why different revolutionary projects that then took on State forms became authoritarian, trying to understand what this kind of insight--which is very hard, because it's about letting go of a lot of hope and a lot of tactics that people are putting a lot of effort into--like, what it directs us to do to most immediately support people's well being, and take down the apparatuses that are hurting us that are, honestly, just like continuing to grow. Like they're all. . . Like the level of surveillance we are under right now compared to five years ago. Like, the capacity for political repression that the State has right now compared to five years ago. I don't know if you saw this, but like-- maybe it was this week--Georgia is going to outlaw bail funds, is going to criminalize bail funds. Tennessee's trying to do the same thing. Like, tiny things we have in our movements to try to support people facing repression, even those they are directly going after. So, yeah, it's really hard to face these conditions. And also, I see a lot of people working really hard on the ground blaming themselves for the effects of the conditions like "Oh, why can't we? Why can't we do a better job stopping these homeless sweeps in our city?" It's like it's not because you're not doing a really good job trying to. There are a lot of really bad conditions. And I think that it goes back to this humility, like, "Okay, wow, things are so dire. What if I let myself know this so that I could talk with my friends about what's possible--given how things actually are--and let go of some of the fantasies?" I think I talked to you briefly before we started the podcast but I recently rewatched those two videos that Naomi Klein and Molly Crabapple--both of whom I really, really respect--made a few years back. They're both videos about what the world could be like after the Green New Deal and after many wonderful uprisings. And they feel so, so misleading to me, watching them right now. Like they imagine a world in which people just protest a lot. And then everyone has things that are better. And also, we still have countries and jobs. It very weirdly doesn't get rid of Capitalism or the nation state. But it's like, there's a kind of like. . . I think that it's very dangerous, those fantasies, that we can do certain kinds of tactics and our opponents will just turn over. And I think those are inside a lot of people's--a lot of very wise people's--messages. And I just increasingly, when I encounter them, feel much more concerned about what they teach us and how they mislead us.
**Margaret ** 11:00 I just think that we have to always look clear-headedly at what our actual threats are, at what's actually happening, and then make our decisions based on how to actually address that, rather than being like, "I want to become just like this person I read about in history, so I'm going to do whatever they did." And this could be true of, "I want to be a principled pacifist and get arrested just like Gandhi," or whatever, right? You know, it could also be, "I want to be just like the following anarchist in the 1880s who decided it was time to start shooting people," you know? We just need to actually look at what's happening and make our decisions based on that. And it's hard, because what we're facing is different from what anyone else has ever faced in history. Not necessarily worse--although the overall ecosystem is worse than anything minus whenever all the. . . you know, before humans evolved, and various other mass die offs that have happened or whatever. But it's different and it's bad. And we just need to look at it and then come up with solutions. Or even some of this is, "How do we solve this problem?" And some of it is like, "How do we live with this?" Not accept it but accept that it's going to have consequences on us and that fighting it isn't going to be easy and we might not win. But what are the best tools by which we can fight it, and/or what are the best tools that we can use to live meaningful lives in the process? You know, so that when we inevitably die, at 103 or 33, we can be proud of who we were. You know, and obviously, there's theological or metaphysical considerations into exactly what that process looks like that'll be different for different people. But, you know, I think that that's what to do.
**Dean ** 13:06 It's also about not trying to feel better. I think there's just something so intense about how people are like, you know, "If you talk about collapse, it makes me feel bad." And there's an assumption that that will demobilize me. And it's like, actually, Capitalism is like, either feel bad or feel good, you know? And that's not how life is. Life is like, fuck. . . For example, you have a terrible loss and you live with grief. And you also still enjoy this beautiful meal. And you're still grieving. And you're in pain. And being willing. . . or--I see a lot of my students--they're like, "Oh, my God, the things I'm learning in your class, I'm so worried about these terrible things in the world that I didn't know we're going on. This is so awful." And they want to instantly know what to do to feel better. And I'm like, I can't make. . . I don't want you to do things feel better. I want you to do things to try to be part of something and you'll never know if they worked or not. Because that's the nature of it. You don't know what our opposition's next countermove is or whether we'll regret some parts of it, but it's the trying stuff, it's the listening to feedback about what didn't go well or how it hurts somebody else. The goal is connection and belonging with each other and experimentation. And, you know, it doesn't always feel good to receive negative feedback, but often it's like incredibly growthful. It's like feeling good can't be the goal. Feeling, Yes. And sometimes feeling good. And pursuing pleasure, absolutely. But not like, "I want to have a pat" happiness where I don't have to worry or be concerned or be critical. Like of course nobody who sees themselves as radical should be wanting that, but I still think that craving--when it comes to conversations about collapse--where it's like I want the one thing that will make me feel better. Or, people feel that about Gaza. Like, "Oh my God, I just found about about this horrible genocide that's happening. I've not known about this before. I want to be able to go to one action and feel I did something and to then be better and post it on Instagram. And it's like, A) love them for waking up to what's happening in Gaza. I love, love any moment where people become more interested in the wellbeing of all people and stopping violence, and we have to be willing to take in how overwhelming this is, how unmovable the war machine feels, and still take action against it, but not because we're guaranteed that what we did today works, or something. You know what I mean? Like that feels--that simplicity--really cheats us of the really complex position we're actually in, that if we can let ourselves be in it, might allow discernment towards better action, hopefully, you know?
**Margaret ** 15:30 No, and I like how you tie that to the way that capitalism makes us think that happiness is the goal. Like, I like happiness. But my goal in life is not specifically to lead a happy life; it's to have a meaningful life and to have as complete of a life as--I mean, every life is complete. And, you know, when you look at. . . Anyone who's ever known a child who's died has had to come to terms with the fact that every life is complete, you know, is a thing that I've been dealing with because of some stuff. And, you know. . . Yeah, the idea that you're just supposed to be happy is some fucking McDonald's shit. You know? And don't get me wrong, seek happiness. Do it. It's great. You know? But yeah, sometimes you just need to accept. . . Like, I want to live a beautiful life and I think that is a different thing, you know? And maybe because I'm like a goth, or whatever, I find a lot of different things beautiful than some other people. But. . . No, I. . . I like that. And it does. It helps get people beyond the like, "Oh, good, I can sleep at night because I went to one protest," you know? And instead, like learning to sit with the discomfort of all these things happening and understanding where we do and don't have agency and. . . Imean, don't get me wrong, people should be going to these protests. You know, if nothing else that are good ways to find the other people who care.
**Dean ** 17:04 Yeah, meet other people and try stuff. I mean, I want to live in reality. I want to know that. . . I want to. . . If I've been working on a strategy for 10 years and it has actually not been helping, it's been hurting people, I want to know. I don't want to keep doing it just because my ego is attached to it, or my paycheck. I've seen that a lot in the dilemmas with the [uninterpretable] movements, you know, where I want to. . . Yeah, absolutely, I'm like, be promiscuous about the stuff you try. Go to all the protests. Go to anything. Try anything. But it's that willingness to keep open the possibility that I'm going to get feedback or learn that. . . learn the impacts, or learn my position on the world, or learn how the clothes I'm wearing impact people who made them, or what. . . I just like, I just want to be in reality, and that includes the reality of how unbearably beautiful being alive is, how the entire... how my entire body was structured to receive pleasure from this incredible landscape. That reality too, which is Capitalism also shuts down and tells me to only be entertained by video games and chips, or whatever. You know, I want to live fully in the reality of how beautiful and abundant and gorgeous this life is and how heartbreaking and devastating these systems are, and how little control I have over them. And then, the moments when I do feel a connection, or am of service to something in my community, like how that is--like all of that, you know? But not through the filter of liberalism, that's just like, "I need to find out that I'm a good person. TM [trademarked]," you know?
**Dean ** 17:04 Okay, so in that vein, to bring it back to kind of some of the preparedness stuff that you've been writing more about and engaging with more, I was wondering if you want to talk about, like, what do you what is preparedness looking like for you right now? Or, you know, how is it affecting you as much as you feel like talking about anything personal? Like, how is it affecting the kind of decisions that you're making about how you want to live or how you prepare?
**Dean ** 18:55 That's such a good question. I mean, in general, my study of collapse is affecting a lot of things for me. I'm thinking a lot about the ethics of the fact that I travel on planes and how to reduce that or eliminate it. And also I don't want to get stuck somewhere really far away from my people when things are bad. So I've been thinking a lot about shifting and changes around that. I've been thinking a lot about how much I want to work a job. What are the other options here? You know what I mean? Just like when will I know that I don't want to do that? Or whatever. I've been writing a book for 10 years that's kind of like a relationships self-help book for radicals, you know, kind of thing, because I've spent so much time in our movements watching people, you know, tear each other in our groups apart with our own unexamined relational patterns that are very, you know, the pattern across the culture. So, I've been writing a book about that. And part of me is like, "At this point, I just need to recognize I'm writing this for pleasure. Like, I don't know that there's time for this to be of any use to anyone," you know what I mean? That's an interesting move to shift from thinking the, you know, probably totally ridiculous fantasy any of us have when we write anything, that people will read this and it will help them do something, and be like, "Or not?" Or I'm just really working on a book for 10 years, just for me...because that's what I did with those 10 years of my life. Okay. Like, that's an interesting move to let go of outcomes even more than ever. And I don't think I ever thought that I would have been terribly impacted by even the little hope of that.
**Dean ** 18:55 Yeah, I think just to. . .just to gas you up really quick. I've seen your cultural impact for years now, and it's always been positive. So I appreciate it. But please continue.
**Dean ** 20:44 I mean, I think about whether I want to live in the country, whether the cities will be the hardest places to be. And I have friends who have moved to rural places and like really cultivated deep relationships with people, even across political differences in the places they're living. And I'm like, "Huh." And then I think about some really, some really, you know, detailed specific things. Like, if I'm going to live in the country, in the Pacific Northwest where I live, how can I live less near all of the scariest...you know, right-wing neo-Nazis and closer instead to some of the rural people who are a little more like fruits and nuts, you know? So I asked myself that question. I think about what that would look like, you know, off grid? You know, I'm not somebody who can like buy a vacation house or something. So like what kind of off-grid small sort of thing can I do with anybody I know who already has a land project. I think about that. I think about. . .I think I've been thinking a lot about--I think maybe I mentioned this to you--of thinking a lot about doing something like go bag parties even in subcultural scenes in my own town. Like doing things to get more people to talk about disaster and collapse, you know? And if they want to think about it as an earthquake go bag, awesome. That's a danger in Seattle for sure. If they want to think about it like that. You know, like, having people just, I was thinking about, like, how do you make those parties fun? Like, you know, having there be giveaways, having there be like. . . having people bring. . . You know, is it also a clothing exchange? Like, is it a sex toy exchange? Like, I've been just imagining different, you know, what would that look like for my queer-er friends versus what will it look like for people on my block, versus what would it look like with my students? Like, just kind of what would be different. . . what would help different people try it and then also think they could put one on, you know? Like, just how to really--especially because I feel like this podcast is very user-friendly in that way, so I've been really inspired by some of your episodes to think about what are the ways I could take what I love about mutual aid organizing, how I love meeting people, and I love making an event happen, making it welcoming, having people make new friends, and how can that be oriented towards people thinking about preparedness? And how much--some of the questions I've asked myself are--how much would there be any talking and programming at such an event or how much would it just be like, "come and grab this stuff. And here's some printouts of things you could have in your go bag. And here's a pile of bags. And there's a pile of, you know, emergency blankets. And here's a pile of whatever," right? So I've had those kinds of questions about how to do. . . I think that's what's next for me is to actually try on some of that organizing with some people that are actually interested in that.
**Margaret ** 23:10 When you do that, can you come back on and talk about how it went? I feel like people will learn from that a lot.
**Dean ** 23:15 Yeah, and I'd love to, if other people have tried it--I'm curious--please reach out to me. Curious to hear their experiences.
**Margaret ** 23:21 Me and one of my friends who does this kind of work too, we put on a day of preparedness. We did a, you know, where you get. . . There were a bunch of different talks by different people who lived in that area who came and they talked about the projects they're working on. There was someone who was like, "Oh, I'm really into mesh networks." And someone else is like, "Oh, I'm doing things like water collection and rainwater and things like that." And there were multiple. . . There were, I think, a total of maybe about six events at. . . So you could pick between two at any given point, like the way that conferences work, or whatever. And it was, you know, a local food. . . a local food distro did lunch that was free for everyone. But then dinner was a giant potluck. And I've actually never seen a giant potluck work so well as the one that I went to. It was cool. And then there was a big talk that was everyone and it was more in the evening. Some people only came for that. And it was, you know, we used me as sort of a keynote-ish person but then it was. . . Immediately from there. It was a facilitated roundtable of the people who live in that town talking about their needs and how to meet them. And I'm now thinking maybe I talked about this before on the show. I have no idea. And then at the very end, we made a long term food bucket. You know, a mylar bag, rice, and beans thing, which is way easier to do if you buy it all in bulk. And then it was kind of fun. And it was. . . My favorite part about it was that theoretically I was organizing it. And I know how to make the bucket. But I don't know how to necessarily make the 15 people figure out how to make sure that all the food goes evenly to these different buckets or whatever. And people were like, "How do we do that?" and I was like, "Figure it out. I don't know." And then everyone's self organized it and it worked perfectly fine. And then like everyone felt more invested, because they were...everyone was in charge and figuring things out together. And it was like a nice little microcosm of those, those nice moments in so many ways. And, you know, and then it was. . . I would say a good third of the people didn't have any money--and so didn't pay for their buckets--and a good third of the people were like, "I can easily pay twice as much as what this bucket cost," you know, because those buckets, if you make your own are only like 20 bucks. If you buy them at a prepper store--if you buy them at a reasonable prepper store, they're 50 bucks--if you buy them from Alex Jones and all that shit, then they're not very good and they're way more than that. And so that worked, that model works really well. And we're hoping to replicate it. And so, but I really like the way that you're talking about it. I really like the idea of like, yeah, how would it be different? How would the go bag party be different for your block versus your students versus your queer friend group, but I'm fascinated. I want to hear how it goes.
**Dean ** 26:07 Yeah, I love what you said about people having to figure things out. I noticed this a lot when we had that police free zone in Seattle during the 2020 uprising, how many people who showed up who'd never done anything political in their life. they've never, ever, ever, and they like to come to it. Like they're coming to the movement. And they arrived at the field, at Cal Anderson Park, and they wanted something to do, you know? They wanted to do part of an art build, or they. . . Like people don't want to just sit and watch, you know? And then once you are a part of doing something, you're helping move a barricade--whatever--then you're like, it's like a transformative. Like, "I was there and I was part of it. And I was important to it." It lets you have it be your...it's your identity, instead of "I went and watched the movement," you know? Whatever it is, I just thought that moment, when you said--"agency" is the word you use earlier--I feel like that you can. . . that can happen anywhere. But part of the way it happens is not like overly babying, you know, everybody. You know, yes, making things accessible and trying to make it really welcoming, but also putting people to work if they're up for it helping coordinate, you know?
**Margaret ** 27:11 This actually goes full circle to something we were talking about at the beginning. We were talking about how we talk about disasters with people, right? And the note, the words that I wrote down in my notes that I take while I'm interviewing people, is I wrote down "disaster fatigue," because that's the. . . like the way that I think about it, you know, the. . . The way that I. . . A long time ago, I did forest defense and I would go sit in trees and fight against clearcutting and stuff like that. But I, I actually avoided going to West Virginia and fighting mountaintop removal for a long time, even though I knew it was happening, because it was too much of a problem. A clearcut is something that is a horrible crisis. And you can wrap your head around it even as people kill ancient trees. The Appalachians are like older than air, or something. I don't even know. They're old as shit. They are some of the oldest mountains in the world, right? And, the fact that people were clearcutting the mountain, like blowing up the mountain, was just too much. I couldn't wrap my head around it. And so I just didn't think about it. And I think that overall, that's what people do with climate change. There's big, major things that are happening, that are really big. And I'm not trying to say that other crises that are happening aren't really big. Climate change is the mother of all crises. You know? It is the most existential threat to all life on Earth that has existed since there was sentient life. And I'm not just including humans in that, you know? And, so people don't want to think about it. And I think that makes sense. And I think that the people who put in the work to be like, "Hey, come to Mountain Justice Summer Camp, or Spring Break Camp or whatever, and made these spaces where people could show up and learn about what was happening and get engaged. I think that maybe climate change. . . Yeah, it's the. . . Have people show up and give them something to do or tell them that work needs doing and that they can figure out what to do, you know? But we kind of, as a movement, a little bit too much are like, "I don't know, just figure it out." Because then the current people who like making. . . There's actually some people doing amazing work. There's a lot of people fighting pipelines and there’s people fighting extraction. And I'm not even like mad at the people who like throw food at paintings or whatever, but it's not something that invites a lot of people in--from my perspective. I'm not. . . Honestly, I try not to talk shit on tactics. I try to be like...I try to do the "more stuff" model of critique where instead of talking shit on their tactic, I should do a different tactic. And what am I doing? I mean, whenever. I'm running around trying to help people get prepared. I actually think I'm doing a lot. But anyway. I just got excited about what you were saying.
**Dean ** 30:11 Yeah, that thing. I mean, it's like. . . I think a lot about how the Young Lords said--you know, who are. . . they're fighting Puerto Rican liberation in the 1970s and modeled themselves after the Black Panthers. And they said in their early texts, you know, that they believed that their own people seeing their people fight in the streets with the cops would radicalize people. So that like having escalated tactics--and this is similar to the Ireland story you told--escalated tactics, confrontational tactics, liberals will tell us we're going to alienate people. . . What did you say?
**Margaret ** 30:44 Setting fire to trash on the streets. I really like the Young Lords.
**Dean ** 30:47 Yeah, like, escalated tactics don't alienate people, they bring a lot of people in. And the people who think they're alienated from them might feel scared of them and stuff, but the cultural shift and change that they produce still brings people along. In the end, they're like, "Oh, no, no, I'm not racist," or whatever, you know? It's like it moves everyone. It moves the needle. And so I think we need escalated tactics and we need invitations and inroads. And for a long time, I've said I think mutual aid is one of the best on ramps, and historically has been one the best onramps for movements.
**Margaret ** 31:16 Absolutely.
**Dean ** 31:17 Most people get involved in movements through trying to immediately help somebody, you know, because that's what. . . when you're fired up, that's what you want, or because they got help through a mutual aid project of some kind and that's what politicized them. They're like, "Who are these people who are giving away this thing that I need that I can't get anywhere else," you know, "Who are not mean to me and who tell me it's not my fault, and that, actually, the system's fucked, huh? What are they saying? And they're right," you know? So that, I believe deeply in the mutual aid onramp. And I also think that moments like riots and stuff can be an onramp when people are like, "I'm joining in. And now I'm burning a cop car," and that feeling that kind of power. And then, "I want to learn more about who these people were, who I met in the streets," or whatever. And for some people, the on ramp is that they first encounter. . . I mean, I have a friend who's a really incredible anarchist organizer who does really massive mutual aid projects, and is just so brilliant, and told me that they're. . . they first were like. . . they joined the Bernie campaign. And then we're really involved in the Bernie Sanders campaign and then we're like, "Wait, I don't know if this is really working," you know? But like, everyone comes in somehow, you know? And so part of it too, is that we should be in all those places trying to encourage people to learn more about movement history or horizontal tactics or bold tactics that are. . . I just went to an amazing event at an anarchist space in Seattle called Pipsqueak. The event was surrounding. . . they had collected all these accounts of kind of sabotage and vandalisms and shut-down types of actions related to opposing the genocide in Gaza. So many stories I hadn't heard, you know? They collected this huge amount. They had this really wonderful hour of like, you could come and read this zine they'd printed out with all this stuff and think it through, and then a really, really well facilitated discussion for an hour and a half. And I was like, that's like. . . Like, making sure people can find out about the rad stuff that's happening, that's not going to be reported in the news. That's so cool. And also then people got to discuss all their dilemmas about tactics. Like, "Oh, my gosh, I've been going to all these kind of more, you know, media spectacle events about Gaza. I thought these things about that. What's it like to learn about these other things people are doing?" You know, people get to have those juicy conversations about what they think about the tactics they're using.
**Margaret ** 33:28 I love it. And we talked about twice as long as we thought we were going to and now this is two episodes. So you all listening had to wait an extra week to hear the other half of the conversation. Do you have any kind of last thoughts on preparedness, mutual aid, how your thinking has shifted, all the topics that we've been talking about today?
**Dean ** 33:50 Well, the thing that's spurred us having this conversation was that I wrote that piece for In These Times that was about my experience of reading two sci-fi--cli-fi novels--one is "Ministry of the Future," and one was "The Deluge." And I encourage people to read that piece if you want to hear my thoughts on those books. But one of the things that happened from reading those books and then writing about what I thought was a failure of different aspects of those books was how now--I did think about this because you are an amazing fiction writer--like how part of what happens to me now when I read almost any speculative book, any book, that's fiction that takes place somewhat in the future, is I am like, it feels instantly conservative because it never includes collapse, right? Because inevitably they've got us 50 years ahead and there's some AI. Or there's been some disruption from climate stuff. Like, it's never as bad as it actually is. And that is fascinating to me, you know? And they always have all this intense tech development in such books in ways that I like--I really recommend people actually listen to Kelly Hayes podcast episodes about AI. Really useful for me in trying to understand the hubris of the tech sector, and the way they talk about AI and the way they're making people afraid of or hopeful about AI, and how off base it is, and kind of what the deal really is. But anyway, I just want to say that I have historically found speculative fiction to be a vital place for trying to help myself think about crisis and collapse and also now I feel so strongly because I--I think I may have mentioned this to you, once--I've been very moved by this person Jem Bendell, who's like this. . . in many ways, he does not share all of our values. And it's coming from a very different place. But he's this academic kind of whistleblower about how bad climate stuff really is. And he. . . I find myself often like, I find myself going into my own denial about what's happening and retreating from what I know and then I listened to the introduction to his book, "Breaking Together," again to remind myself about the stakes of what I'm living through. And I feel like in some ways I used to use--and I still somewhat use speculative fiction in that way--but I'm just increasingly like. . . even most speculative fiction is telling us the wrong message about how long the systems we live under are going to last and how much they're going to flourish with the technologies that I just don't think is real.
**Margaret ** 36:12 You know, what's funny, some of this--a little bit of it--is baked into a problem of writing fiction where if you. . . I've actually gotten--not in trouble with--but I've had editors take out dates in my writing before, right? Because I'll write a short story about a sort of collapse-y world or whatever and I'll be like, "After 2022, when the. . ." because I wrote this in like 2018, or whatever, because I was trying to write on a realistic timeline where I was like, "Oh, the world's not gonna be the same in 2022." And I feel like I was pretty accurate about that, right? But they have to future proof their magazine, right? And so, you know, you don't want to make certain types of claims about the next three years because you want your story to be...to have a shelf life of that long. And so some of it is baked in as a problem in publishing and in science fiction writing. And that said, I think most people. . . Did you ever read that book "Desert," the green nihilist book. . .
**Dean ** 37:12 Yeah, I've read like half of it.
**Margaret ** 37:15 I haven't read it in a long time. I remember reading it and being like, "Well, this is naively optimistic." [Laughing]
**Dean ** 37:23 That's the one where they're like, "7/8ths of people are gonna die."
**Margaret ** 37:27 Yeah, I can't even remember exactly.
**Margaret ** 37:28 But yeah, it was like climate change isn't going to be stopped, and we have to re-address how things work on a fundamental level. And because where I've been at. . . I don' t know. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm with you on. . . like, when I read stuff about the future, where it's like, "And then it'll all work." I actually still really like "Ministry for the Future," and maybe actually should have you on just specifically to talk about "Ministry of the Future" at a different point. But it. . . you know, because it's a complicated. . . It's a caveated, "I like this book," you know?
**Dean ** 37:28 It's intense.
**Dean ** 38:02 That's how I feel about "The Deluge." It's like, I like "Deluge" even though I think it also has the same problem.
**Margaret ** 38:06 I haven't read "Deluge" yet.
**Margaret ** 38:08 Oh, there's no character development in "Ministry."
**Dean ** 38:08 I think it's really worth reading. I think it's way better character development than "Ministry." It's way better.
**Dean ** 38:14 Oh god, yeah. "Ministry" is so dry.
**Margaret ** 38:17 Kim Stanley Robinson does not write people. Kim Stanley Robinson writes ecosystems.
**Dean ** 38:21 Yeah, and "Deluge" really ropes in a lot more of rise in fascism with climate crisis and has characters that are more different class, race, gender than "Ministry" and is just like. . . it's way more compelling, unfolding, even though in the end it still imagined that states will turn around and like fix things.
**Margaret ** 38:47 Well, I think there's plenty more we could talk about. And I hope we get to talk about it soon at some point. But in the meantime, how can people find you or your work? Or what would you like people to. . . or if you want to shout out any specific projects that you want to draw attention towards whether they're yours or other people's.
**Dean ** 39:07 Mostly everything I do I put on--I mean, I'm kind of bad at it--but I'll put a lot of things at deanspade.net, which is my website where I collect the things I write and the videos and the many things. So that's a pretty good source for the backlog.
**Margaret ** 39:23 If people want to read the specific article that we've been talking about, if you just. . . it's called "Climate Disaster is Here and the State Will Never Save Us." But also if you type in--the way I found it just now while we're...when I was trying to come up with the title--I just typed in "Dean Spade, Kim Stanley Robinson," personally, and it came up, you know. But, okay. Anything else?
**Dean ** 39:47 Thanks for having me.
**Margaret ** 39:48 Thank you.
**Margaret ** 39:54 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, then you should run around screaming that the sky is. . . No, don't do that. You should make bug out bags for your friends or do whatever you want. You should think about. . . Whatever we already told you what we think. But you can also support this show. And if you want to support the show, you can do so by telling people about it. And you can support the show by supporting us financially on Patreon. Do not feel obliged to do it. This is a free show. However, we're incredibly grateful because people's donations are how we manage to pay our transcriptionist, which is very important to us the show is transcribed, and then also our audio engineer. And one day--I keep promising this but we don't know when this day will come--one day, it'll pay the hosts or the guests. But for now it doesn't. And that's okay because, you know, the world works the way it works. You can support us on Patreon by supporting our publisher, which is Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And in particular, we would like to thank Ephemeral. Oh, there's new names on here. That's really exciting. Ephemeral. Appalachian Liberal Liberation Library. And they wanted to specifically point--I would never make this--but they specifically pointed out it's Appalachian [App-a-latch-un], not Appalachian [App-a-lay-shun]. That's in the description of how we're going to read this. Portland's Hedron Hackerspace. Boldfield, E, Patoli, Eric, Buck, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, Funder, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, S. J., Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Mic Aiah, and, as always, the immortal, Hoss the dog. And when you support Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, you're supporting this show and you're also supporting a show called The Spectacle. We renamed Anarcho Geek Power Hour to The Spectacle. And you're also supporting the podcast called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness and a whole bunch of other projects. So that's that thing where I do the outro and I hope you all are doing as well as you can, and we'll talk to you soon.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret and Dean talk about the ways that mutual aid helps communities prepare for disasters that are already here and disasters that have yet to come.
Dean Spade is an American lawyer, writer, trans activist, and associate professor of law at Seattle University School of Law. You can find Dean's work at Deanspade.net, and you can read the article that Margaret and Dean talk about, "Climate Disaster is Here--And the State Will Never Save Us" on inthesetimes.com. You can also find Dean on Twitter @deanspade or on IG @spade.dean.
Margaret (she/they) can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Dean Spade on Mutual Aid as Preparedness
**Margaret ** 00:24 Hello and welcome to Live Live the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today Margaret Killjoy. And today, I'm gonna be talking to Dean Spade, and we're gonna talk about so much stuff. We're gonna talk about so much stuff that this is going to be a two parter. So you can hear me talk with Dean this week and you can hear me talk with Dean next week. Or, if you're listening to this in some far-flung future, you can listen to it both at once in between dodging laser guns from mutants that have come out of the scrap yards, riding dinosaurs. I hope that's the future, or at least it wouldn't be boring. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, and here's a jingle from another show on the network.
**Margaret ** 01:53 Okay, we're back. So if you could introduce yourself with I guess your name, your pronouns, and then maybe a little bit about how you ended up doing the kind of work that led you to be on this show talking about mutual aid and collapse and preparedness?
**Dean ** 02:10 Totally. Yeah, I'm Dean, I use he/him. And we could start anywhere. I became politicized primarily, like in the late 90s, living in New York City. You know, Rudy Giuliani was mayor/ There was a really vibrant, like very multi-issue, cross-class, multiracial kind of resistance happening to his range of anti-poor pro-police politics happening in the city; people, you know, in the fight around immigrant rights, in the fight around labor, sex workers being zoned out of Time Square. You know, there was just. . .it was a real moment. And I was part of queer nightlife. And people were experiencing a lot of intense policing. And a lot of us were part of work related to, you know, things that had spun off of Act Up, like a lot of direct support to people who were living with HIV and AIDS and trying to get through the New York City welfare processes, and dealing with housing. So a lot of mutual aid in that work from the get, and a lot of work related to that overlap between criminalization and poverty, from a queer, trans, feminist perspective. And that work was also tied into like, very, you know. . . a broader perspective. Like a lot of people were tied to the liberation of Puerto Rico, and the fight against the US Navy bombing Vieques, people were tied into the fight around Palestine. So it was very local--hyperlocal--New York City work, but it was very international because New York City is a very international place, and those politics were very international. So that really shaped me in a lot of ways. And I went from there to becoming a poverty lawyer and focusing on doing Poverty Law for trans people, you know, really focused on people in jails and prisons and welfare systems and immigration proceedings and foster care and stuff like that; homeless shelters. I did that for a number of years, and then increasingly felt like I. . . I just felt the real limits of doing that work as a lawyer and really prefer unpaid organizing and not being do not doing that to kind of the nonprofit and sort of like social services, legal services frame. And so my job, for now 15 years, has been that I'm a law professor. It's like a really great job that's not like. . . you know, it's not a nine to five, and that's wonderful. You don't have a boss really, and things like that. And so I teach to kind of pay my bills and what my life is really about is, you know, a lot of. . . it's been a lot of local abolitionist stuff. Like, you know, site fights around different jails and other facilities or police stations or whatever and mutual aid work and, you know, tied in for years with various aspects of like Palestine movement, especially around trying to push back against pinkwashing. And like writing stuff and making media and collaborating with artists and and, yeah. So, that's like that's that same. . .I've always think I've stayed the same, but also, I think my ideas have changed a lot over time. I've gravitated more towards anarchist or anti-state thought. And thinking a lot more in recent years about the ecological crisis and collapse and just kind of like what that means for the tactics and strategies we're all engaged in kind of all these different movements spaces.
**Margaret ** 05:41 I think that that's probably--that last point--is kind of the core of what I want to ask you about and talk to you about, because while you were talking, I was thinking about how like, you know, all of these things that you're talking about--the activism you're doing in New York, for example==I mean, it's all preparedness, right? Like us, helping each other out is being. . . like, aware of actual threats and working to mitigate them? And that's what preparedness is for me, right? And, I actually think activism is a very good, solid place to come from for preparedness, right? I'd rather have a bunch of activists and organizers around me than specifically people who like, know how to skin squirrels. I like people who can do both to be honest, but you know, as compared to the traditional assumption of what a prepper or someone who's involved in preparedness, what their background would be. But I also. . .okay, so it's like I want one, I kind of wanna talk about the activist-preparedness pipeline. But the thing that I'm really excited to talk to you about is kind of the opposite, is the thing that you just brought up. What does awareness of ecological crisis do to our activism? What does it do to how we make decisions around what to prioritize? How to live? Like, for me, the thing that started this show was that I was like, "I'm very aware of this coming ecological crisis. I feel a little bit distant from other people because I feel a little bit like I'm running around screaming, 'the sky is falling.' Because I could see it and I don't understand why no one else can see it," you know? And it was basically like, how does this inform the decisions we make? Right? Which is where the title sort of literally comes from. But I think you've done a lot of work around this, around how awareness of ecological crisis impacts how we choose to be activists. And I'm wondering if you could talk about how it's impacted you or how you've learned to help communicate this to people. Right, because that's one of the biggest scary things is how do we not Chicken Little while needing to Chicken Little? You know, we need a little bit of Chicken Little--a little. Yeah, okay. I'm done.
**Dean ** 08:05 I want to come back to the pipeline later. Let's remember to do that. But one thing that your question brings up for me also is just, I just want to talk--and I'm curious about your experiences of this--I want to be real about how much denial there is like. And I think this is really interesting. Like, I find an extreme amount of denial about the level of the crisis, even amongst people I know who are incredibly radical and spent their lives trying to end denial around other things they care about. Like we spent our lives trying to be like, "Look what's happening in prisons and jails in our society," or "Look at what poverty is," or "Look at what the war machine is." But then when it comes to like, "Hey, y'all, I think that, like, collapse is nigh, and that might affect our strategies." People are like, "I don't want to hear about that." Literally, "Don't talk to me about that," because it's so scary, and there's so much stress. And then I get like a certain set of like really common denial reactions like, "Well, the world has ended before." And it's like, yes, every time colonialism is happening a world, a way of life, a way people have been together is ending. Absolutely. And there is something unique and specific about this particular mass extinction event. And it's okay to say. . . it doesn't mean that those things didn't happen or aren't happening. But they're. . .but that feels to me like sometimes a phrase people use that's just like, "I don't want to think about this anymore." I'm like, let's think about that and this because actually, they're all happening together. Right? Like, obviously, colonization is ongoing and it determines who is feeling the heat fastest, you know? That, I get that one a lot or I get like, "Well, humans are bad and maybe the world should just end," kind of thing. Like, let's hasten it, or like, you know, maybe not, "Let's hasten it," but like, you know, that feels really messed up to me. That feels like skipping over and denying how much meaningful suffering we want to acknowledge and recognize and also try to prevent, and it ignores the fact that not all humans have made this happen. Actually, most humans who ever existed have fought against extraction and states and wars, and it's like just elites running state formations that have made this happen. Like that feels really not right and unjust, that kind of frame. I just get a lot of autopilot denial statements from people when I try to talk about this, that are from people like who I love and who really share my other values. And I'm just like, what's going on? How can I get people to talk with me about this in a way that's not--I'm not trying to just kick up fear and terror. And also, it's probably reasonable to feel fear and try to hold that with each other, because that's a reasonable response to the fact that I'm. . .I feel very certain that my life will end earlier than it likely would have ended because of the collapse of systems that I rely on--all of which are like terrible systems of extraction that I wish I didn't rely on to live, but I do. Like, I want to talk about that with people I love. And, you know, I think it makes such a big difference in our political movements because we're so often in conversations that are about unrealistic timelines of change by trying to persuade people, trying to. . . you know, let's persuade Congress, let's persuade. . . like, I don't know, these are kind of moral persuasion, long-term frameworks for transformative change that are dubious on many levels but also are just really unrealistic with what we're staring down the barrel of. So to me, potentially, awareness of the level of crisis that's happening, would allow us to be very humble and pragmatic about immediate needs and preparation, as opposed to being invested in.... One other thing I'll say about denial is I think one of the things that produces so much of this denial is there's so much fake good news about climate. It's like "This person is developing this cool thing to put in the ocean," or it's all tech-based and it's like tech is gonna save us somehow. And it's those kinds of, "I feel good because I read one good thing about how one species is on the rebound." That is a whole news machine telling us not to be worried and also that experts have an under control, and someone else is going to fix it. And don't look around at the actual overwhelming evidence of, again, living through another hottest year on record, you know? And so I guess I'm just--I'm sorry I'm all over the place--but I just, I really feel strongly about what would it take for the people in our communities who are so. . .who dedicate our lives to reducing suffering of all living beings, to let ourselves know more about what's happening, and see how that would restructure some of our approaches to what we want to do with this next five years, you know?
**Margaret ** 12:50 I think that that's such a. . .it's such a good point because one of the things that we. . .one of the mainstream narratives around climate change--you know, I mean, obviously, the right-wing narrative is that it's not happening--and then the liberal narrative--and it's the narrative that we easily fall into, even as radicals and progressives and anarchists an ect--Is that, "Hey, did you know that we're in trouble by 2050?" You know, and we're like, "We better get our shit together in the next 30 years." And I'm like, "I'm gonna be dead 30 years from now and not of old age." You know? And, I, maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong. I'm often wrong about this kind of thing, right? But I need to take into consideration the very likely possibility that that is going to happen. And I need to--and there's certain things that I can do to like mitigate the dangers that I'm facing--but overall, it's the same thing that you do by being born, where you're like, "Well, I'm going to die," right? And so you're like, I need to make decisions based on the fact that I'm gonna die one day. And so I need to choose what's important to me and, like, do my YOLO shit. I don't think anyone says YOLO anymore. But, you know, I need to, act like I know that I might die at any moment and make my decisions based on that. And people are like, "Yeah, by 2045 It's gonna be so much trouble." And I'm like, "2030." You know, this year, last year, two years ago, COVID," you know? And we just need to take it into consideration. All of these things that you're bringing up is a really interesting me. I took a bunch of different notes. I'm going to talk--I'm going to also kind of scattershot it. And one of the things that came up recently, we do a This Month in the Apocalypse and we do a This Year in the Apocalypse or "last year in the apocalypse," and the last year we did Last Year of the Apocalypse-- whatever the episode we did recently about last year--you know, we got some feedback where people were like, "Y'all were a little bit more cynical and doom and gloom than you usually manage," and it's true. And I try actually fairly hard with the show, because if you're completely doom and gloom all of the time, it's pretty natural to just shut down and eat cookies and wait for the end or whatever, right? And that's like, not what I want to promote. But on some level, I'm reaching the point where I'm like, "Yeah, no, this is. . . it's bad. The asteroid's right there. We can see it. It's coming. We need to act like that's happening, you know? And there's only so many times and ways you can say that. But the thing I.... Okay, one of the things I really like about what you brought up, is what that timeline does. In some ways it disrupts--including radical projects, right--like, one of my projects is social change and cultural change and one of my projects is to help people--and especially next generations of people--operate in a more egalitarian way, you know, in my mind a more anarchic way but whatever. I honestly don't give all that much of a shit about labels with this, you know? And that's like, a lot of my work, right? And then I'm like, I wonder how much that matters? You know, right now. And I wonder how much--and I think it does in kind of an.... I think this comes from the Quran, "If the world were ending tomorrow, I would plant a tree today." You know? I always saw it as like the cool activist slogan. And then eventually, it was like, "Oh, that, I think that's a Quranic slogan." And that's cool. And so as an anarchist that influences my thinking, right? About like,, okay, this slow cultural work has a point but isn't necessarily what we're going to do to save us--as much as "saving" happens. But it also really disrupts--and I think this is what you kind of mentioned--it's really interesting how much it disrupts the liberal perspective of this. And I remember having this conversation--I don't want to out this person as a liberal, [a person] that I love dearly [and is] an important part of my life, is very much a liberal--and when we're talking about, "Oh, I wish we would have a green New Deal, but it just, it won't happen. There's no way it'll get through Congress." And so at that, this person throws up their hands, they're like, "Well, what would save us is a green New Deal and it's not going to happen. So okay." And it's just, to me, it's like, well then what? You know? And you get into this place. And I think overall, I think anarchists and some other folks have been kind of aware of this for a while, where revolution is actually less of a long shot than electoral change on something that has a timeline, like mitigating the worst effects of climate change. And revolution is a shit fucking record, just an absolute garbage record. But it happens faster--but electoral change also as a garbage record and is slow as shit.
**Dean ** 18:04 Yeah, and also, if everything's falling apart.... So like, I think that the systems that we live under, like the food system and the energy system in particular, are, you know, I think we saw this with COVID, the supply chains breaking down really quickly. Like the whole global supply chain is already like a shoe-strung, ramshackle, broken, messy, really violent thing and it falls apart--it's barely patched together--and it falls apart quickly when it's disrupted. And there's no reason to think we wouldn't have more pandemics soon. And there's no reason to think we won't have other major disasters, both resulting from political stuff and from ecological stuff and from economic access. So, if we know that the things we live under are falling apart, it's not like. . . It's like it's not even like a revolution like some people topple something. It's like things are just cracking, toppling unevenly across space and time across regions. And how do we want to be thinking about our lives? I like that you brought up that "YOLO," sharpens your own priorities, like who do I want to be near? What do I want? Who do I want to be with? How do I? What kind of person...skills would I like to have when that comes up? This relates to the kind of activist-prepper pipeline thing. Like, learning how to facilitate a meeting with a lot of people who are different from each other is really useful. Like my beloved, beloved, dear friend lived through Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. She lived in a really big apartment building that's part of a complex of two really big apartment buildings. And she was like, "The thing I really wish I'd known how to do would be to facilitate a great meeting for that many people--even if everyone didn't come." People were already supporting elders in the building, trying to help each other in every way possible, but she wished there had been big meetings to help facilitate that more. So those kinds of skills, knowing how to help people share stuff, knowing how to help deescalate conflict, knowing how to...what to do when intense men are trying to take things over, you know, and knowing how to organize around that. These are things that a lot of activists who are in any number of movements know how to do. So like knowing those skills and then also knowing it's going to actually be really...like it's going to be really local. There's going to be a level of just like, "Do people have stored water on my block? How much? What stored water do we have to share? If I get more people on my block to store more water now, then when the water stops flowing we'll have more water on the block." I think a lot about something you said in one of your episodes about how it's more important to have a tourniquet than a gun. Like just things that you can share. Partly, it's like, if more people are carrying tourniquets or Narcan or any of the things we know are about how I'm then a person who doesn't need that and I'm a person who could share it. So just that aspect of preparation, that's already what works. You know, we already live in a bunch of crises. Like, lots of our community members are in prison, people are living outside. Like, we live with so much crisis. We already kind of--if you're working on those things, you know a bit about what that's like, what you want to have in your bag, what kind of things would prepare you for the fight that's likely to break out or emotional crisis people are likely to be about to fall into or whatever. So I feel like that kind of thinking, it's like when we get to this level of awareness about the crises we live in and we're like, "It's not 2050. It's already happening/it's the next pandemic, which could be much a worse pandemic and start any day now. Or it's the next storm coming to where I live or fire or smoke," or whatever. Like when we accept that more, which is like this whole difficult process about accepting our own mortality, accepting that things change, accepting. . . ridding ourselves of like, nationalism that tells us the United States is forever and will always be like this, you know, all these illusions are like so deep in us, like when we do that, it just clarifies what this short, precious life is about. You know what I mean? It gives us a chance--and there's a lot of heartbreak. It's like, wow, I won't be with all the people I love who live all over the country or all over the world when this happens. I don't know when this is happening. I don't know how it's gonna unfold. There's so much powerlessness. And, what are the immediate things I want to do about appreciating my life right now and setting things up as to the extent that I can--I mean I can't prepare to prevent it--but I can be like, "Yeah, I'm gonna store some water," or "Yeah, I would rather live closer to this person," or whatever it is, you know? I feel like people deserve a chance to ask those questions of ourselves and then, politically, to stop doing tactics that are based on a lie, that things are going to stay this way forever or even for a while. Because that feels like. . . I'm like, I want to stop wasting our beloved, precious time, you know, on shit that's too. . . It's on a timeline that's not real. You know?
**Margaret ** 22:45 I wonder if it's like. . .To me--I don't talk much about my romantic life on the podcast, but I'm polyamorous--and one of the things that distinguishes a partner versus a sweetie is that I make my life plans incorporating partners, you know? Not necessarily like, oh, we're gonna live together or whatever. But they're like, these are the people that I like, from a romantic point of view, and being like, I am going to make my decisions absolutely, including these people. It's like we need to date the apocalypse. We need to just accept that the apocalypse is our partner. Like, we need to make our decisions incorporating the uncertainty and. . . the uncertainty about what's to happen, and the likelihood that what is coming is very different than what is currently--or certainly than what was 10 years ago. I mean, even like. . . I don't know, talking to my friends who I've been friends with for 10-20 years, I'm like, we'll talk about 10 years ago and we'll be like, "That was a different world politically," right? It was just a completely fundamentally different world. And, you know, the future is going to be really different. And that is, you know.... For me, the biggest decision I made was around preparedness--and everyone has a different relationship with their families--I moved a lot closer to my family. I moved within one tank of gas to my family and back. And, you know, that is the single biggest step that I took in terms of my preparedness, and you know, that's far more important to me than the, probably, about nine months' worth of food, my basement. But, you know, I live in the mountains and have a lot of storage.
**Dean ** 24:41 Yeah, I think there's a piece of this about getting to divest. Like, I mean, so much of what liberalism is and what nationalism is, is it tells us that if you're mad about what's happening, where you live, you should appeal to the people who govern you and you should further invest in their system and show up and participate in it. And maybe you should even run for office. It's all about going towards, because that thing is going to deliver you what you want or not depending on how well you appeal to it. And when we're like "That thing," you know, "first of all is rotten and is never going to deliver us anything but war and destruction and that's what it was made for. That's what it does." But also, like, even those of us who know that, even though those were like, "Yeah, I hate the United States. I'm not trying to improve it or fix it or make it into a wonderful.... Even those, we still, you know, we're still very invested. Like, you know, I have a really mainstream job or there's people I know, who want to own a home, all these things that we've been told will make us safe, it turns out they won't? It turns out already they didn't and haven't for lots of people for lots of reasons for lots of times, you know? See 2008 crash, see, you know, hurricanes did taking out all-Black property and displace Black people. All the things. All the uneven, horrible, terrible violences of Capitalism and crisis. But it's really a dead end. You know, when people ask me all the time about going to grad school and I'm like, "I don't know, do you want to spend the last--possibly the last-- few years of your life doing that? Will you enjoy it? Like will it let you do art and activism and whatever else you want or will it be a slog that you're just putting in this time because you think in 10 years, you'll have the job you want? In which case, no. Like for me that kind of invitation to divest from things that I don't really want or believe in any way or to really be like, ?Why am I saying yes to this? Why am I saying no to that?" is one of the liberating aspects of accepting how dire things are that I want people to get to have. Because it's about letting go of stuff that doesn't work and that was never going to work, but like really, really, really. . . Like the Green New Deal. Like if I dedicate my life to passing and Green New Deal and Medicare for all in this political climate with this time, like, it's not gonna happen, you know? And even I think many people who are liberals know that, but it's like, what would happen? Like, do I really? Do I want to produce my own abortion drugs and hormones for my community out of my basement? Do I want to. . . Like, what do I want to do that is immediate support to people I love and care about instead of deferred, you know, wellness, "hopefully,"--if we can convince elites?
**Margaret ** 27:19 I like that idea. And I'm going to think about that more. I really liked the perspective of just specifically divesting, and I even. . . It's one of the things I sometimes try to convince the liberals in my life is that the way that incremental change happens isn't from people asking for incremental change, it happens when you're like, "Oh, we don't need you anymore. We've created our own thing," then the State is like, "Shit, shit, shit. No, we can do it too. We promise!" You know? And make them rush to catch up with us. And to compare it to something with my own life, when I when people ask for professional advice in a creative field, one of the reasons I like pushing DIY as a good intro--and even as someone who, you know, I do the show, which isn't quite DIY, it's collectively produced, but I'm one of the collective members, but started off DIY--and then I also have a corporate podcast, right, where, I get my salary from doing a podcast. And the way that you do things is you do things so well that the people who gatekeep look for you to invite you in, rather than going to them and begging for access. You declare that you're too cool to go to the club, and then the club asks you to come in, you know? And in order to do that, you have to genuinely be too cool for the club. But then sometimes when people give you salaries, it's fine and you can use it to fill your basement with food and give it to people and shit. And I think about that even with the Green New Deal stuff, it's like, well, that's not going to happen--probably at all--but it would need to be them co-opting a successfully organized wide-scale, decentralized movement, you know?
**Dean ** 29:11 And the Green New Deal is like the prior New Deal, it's a deal to try to save Capitalism and extraction. It's very drastically inadequate for anything that would. . . I mean, so much of what's happened environmentally is not preventable at this point anyway, you know--in terms of what's already been set in motion--much less the idea that something. . . I mean, it's all based on the idea of maintaining a Capitalist job framework. I mean, it's just, it's really, really, really, really, really, really inadequate. And the United States is the world's biggest polluter ever and has. . . The US military is the most polluting thing ever for reasons. It's not just gonna be like, "Oh, you know what, those people those hippies were right, let's stop." You know what I mean? Like, the idea that our opponents are gonna just change their minds because we tell them enough. You know? It's just so. . . It's like, we've been told. . . And it's so like. . . We've just we've been given that message so relentlessly that if we're just loud enough, if there's just enough of us in the streets. And I think a lot of people saw Occupy and saw 2020 and see like, "Wow, this is so. . ." you know, Standing Rock, see these moments where people really, really show up and put everything on the line and are incredibly disruptive. And our opponents just right the ship and suggests that we don't live in a democracy--and we never have. They're not persuadable. Like, it's not going to happen through those kinds of frameworks. And yet, I think that the kind of like brainwashing or the fiction version of the Civil Rights Movement that we've been given is so powerful. Like people really are like, "If I go to a march then. . ." I guess one of my questions at this point in life, too, is how can we bring new people into our movement, because more more people are like unsatisfied, miserable, terrified for good reasons, wonderful mobilizable. How do we bring people in and have ways that we engage in action together that help people move towards a perspective that isn't liberal? So help people move away from love, just thinking they need to get their voice heard to like, "Oh, no, we actually have to materially create the things we want for each other." We have to directly attack our opponents' infrastructure. And we have to have solidarity with everybody else who's doing that instead of getting divided into good protesters and bad protestors, and all that stuff that you see happening, you know, every day. That to me, that question, like, what's the pedagogy. . . What's a pedagogical way of organizing that helps people move out of those assumptions, which are so powerful and are really in all of our heads. It's just a matter of degree. Like, I feel like it's a lifelong process of like trying to strip liberalism out of our hearts and minds, so to say. As they say. As liberals say.
**Margaret ** 31:55 I really liked that way of framing it. I think about how one of my friends always talks about the way to judge the success of actions--and I don't think that this is the only way. I think that sometimes, like "Did you accomplish your goals?" is a very good way. But I think that one of them is, "Does this tend to give the participants agency? Because I think that agency is--I mean, it's addictive--but it's in the same way that air and water are addictive, you know? The more you experience agency--and especially collectively produced agency--the more I think that people will tend to stay in the movement, even as their ability to express that agency, like even when the movement ebbs, right, people who learned. . . You know, there's this thing that I think about with 2020, and 2020 has been memory hold completely, but on some level, everyone in 2020 who had never before seen a cop car on fire or never before seen the police retreat, I remember really clearly the first time in my life I saw the police retreat, because it never seemed like it was a thing that could happen. I've been doing direct action protesting for like eight years before I saw that police retreat, because the way that US tactics tended to work in protest didn't tend to do things that made the police retreat. And that protest where I saw the police retreat, we did not win our strategic goals, right? But it's part of why I am still in this movement is because I can't forget that feeling. And so, yeah, I think that for we people are systematically stripped of agency, learning to invite people into space to collectively create agency is really important. But that said, I do think that actually--especially sort of anti-State leftism, which tends to be less structured, which I actually don't think is inherently a positive or negative thing about it--is that I think one of our biggest stumbling blocks is we're bad at bringing people in.
**Dean ** 34:13 Yeah, the insularity of some of the more insurrectionary work is, I think that is exactly it. It's like yes, you can have your little cell that's going to go into an amazing sabotage action or an incredible, you know, deface something or, you know, make something about the more machinery of the prison system or something harder, but how do people join? How are people? And also how to take those steps from like, "Wait, I'm really mad at what's happening in Gaza," or "I'm really pissed about what's happening with the environment," or "I'm really scared about how the police are," or whatever, to finding what's most available to find, which will often be organizations or groups that are doing a good job recruiting new people but maybe using not very bold tactics. How do we have those groups also be in better. . . You know, I was just reading Klee Benally's book and one of the things Klee talked about is de-siloing the above ground from the underground, like having there be more solidarity is something I've been very concerned about, especially since the recent indictment of the forest defenders and in Atlanta. How do we not have people be like, "Well, the ones who were just flyering are just good protesters, and the ones who, you know, did sabotage and lived in the forest are bad." How do we build such a strong solidarity muscle--which means we have to break ties with like the pacifism narrative--how to build the strong solidarity muscle so that people can get recruited into our movements wherever they get recruited, whatever interests them, whatever tactic they first stumble upon, and then can take bolder action and take more autonomous action, cause there's also kind of passivity in our culture. Like, wait for the experts to tell you. Wait for the people at the nonprofit to tell you. Wait for the group that organizes protests to tell you when to go home, instead of like, "What do me and my friends want to do? What do I want to do? Where it's my idea to go, go off and do something else that's potentially very disruptive to our opponents?" So how to have people get what you're calling agency, or what I might call a feeling of autonomous power and inventiveness and creativity and initiative that isn't just "I'm waiting to be called to come to the march once a year," or once a month, or whatever. But instead, like, "Yeah, I might go to that, and I also then met some people there, and they're going to do this wild thing, and I'm gonna do that," and then how good it feels the first few times you break the law with other people and don't get caught. Like having those joyful feelings--people talk about the joy of looting a lot and after 2020 there were a lot of great references to that--you know, those feelings of like, "Oh, my God, this entire system is fake. I can break the rules in here with others, and we can keep each other safe, maybe. And we can see that we don't have to abide by this rigid place we've been fixed," you know? All of that, I think does--like you were saying--it keeps people in the movement or it feeds us. Given how difficult. . . I mean, you know, it's not like anybody's doing something where they're like, "Yeah, this is totally working." So you need a lot of. . . You gotta get your morale from some kind of collaborative moments of pleasure and of disobedience that can like. . . You know, including hating our opponents and hating what they're doing to all life, you know?
**Margaret ** 37:22 I really like the way that you talk about these things. I'm really. . . There's like, so much more I'm gonna like to keep thinking about as I go through this, but one of the things that makes me think of is, you know, what does it take to take ourselves seriously, right, as a political force? I think that there's this. . . Either, some people take themselves too seriously, but are not actually providing any real threat. Right? I would say that the sort of--don't get me wrong, I've worked for nonprofits before and I don't think nonprofits are actually inherently bad--but like the nonprofit, activisty, professional activism world, right, will often take themselves very seriously, but not present any fundamental threat or accomplish systemic change. And some of the people who actually do present a real threat, don't take themselves seriously. They're like, "Oh, we're just kids acting out," kind of attitude. You know, I mean, like, well you're 30, what are you doing? You know and they're like, "We're kids acting out," and like I'm like, okay, whatever you can, you can call yourself kids as long as you want. I remember one time I was hitchhiking when I was 26 and I was like, "Oh, yeah, we use the word 'kids' instead of like, the word 'punks.'" You know? It's like, "I'm gonna meet up with these other kids." And the woman who gave me a ride hitchhiking was like, "You're an adult." And I was really offended. I was like...I'm an adult, that's true.
**Dean ** 38:36 I'm not a square. I'm not a square.
**Margaret ** 38:38 Exactly. And one of the things that I think about, I remember. . . Okay, there's two stories about it. One was I was I was in Greece 10 years ago or 12 years ago, shortly after a lot of the uprisings that were happening in Greece, and after that kid, Alex, I believe his name was was. . . a like 16 year old anarchists kid was killed by the police, and then half the nation, you know, rioted around it. And I remember talking to this older anarchist about it, and he was saying that there were people who did studies and they were saying that the average person in Greece basically believed that the police and the anarchists were equally legitimate social forces. Like not like each. . . I think some people were not even like they're both. . .they're all the same. We hate them both. But instead, people being like, "Oh, well, the anarchists, that's a perfectly legitimate thing that these people are trying to do, right, as a legitimate social force. And usually when people use the word "legitimacy" they mean squareness and operating within the system, and I'm not trying to use it that way. I haven't come up with a better word for this. But I think about that a lot. And then because of the history research I do, I, you know, spent a lot of time reading about the Easter Rising in the early Irish Revolutionary Movement. And, you know, I haven't gotten to read Klee Benally's book yet. I got to start it. Someone had a copy of it. But it was sold out for obvious reasons. Although, by the time you all are listening to this Klee Benally's book, which is--what's it called? Sorry.
**Dean ** 40:16 "No Spiritual Surrender"
**Margaret ** 40:17 "No Spiritual Surrender" should be back in print from Detritus books. And anyone who's listening, we talked about it before, but Klee Benally was a indigenous anarchist who recently died and had been doing movement work for a very long time. Might have actually hated the word "movement work," I'm not entirely certain. But, you know, the de-siloing of the above ground and the underground, I think that the more successful movements do that. And I think that, you know, the Easter Rising, one of the things that was really interesting about this thing in 1916, or whatever--you can listen to me talk about for literally, four hours if you want because it's a four part episode--but one of the things that happened with it, that I didn't realize, it gets presented most of the time in history as like, "Oh, well, there was a big. . . Everyone agreed that we should have this revolution." That is absolutely not the case. Absolutely the--I think it was called Redmond-ism, or something. There was like a guy and he was basically the liberal-centrist and vaguely wanted some a little bit of more freedom from England. And that was absolutely the political position of the average person in Ireland at that time. And then these crazy radicals, some of them nationalists and some of them socialists and some of them complicated other things, threw an uprising. And they threw that uprising, and it just fundamentally changed. . . That political position, that centrist position ceased to exist almost overnight. And I'm not suggesting that that is the way it will always work. But there is a way in which you say, "We are not embarrassed. . ." like sometimes you have to do things underground because you don't want to get caught, right? But instead of being like, "Oh, well, I know this is unpopular," instead being like "I'm doing this, and it should be popular, because that makes so much sense." You know, and I actually think that the Atlanta folks in the US are some of the people who have been doing the most work about doing above ground and underground work in a movement that is like. . . These are all the same movements. Sorry, that was a long rant.
**Dean ** 42:24 I thought it was great. It made me think about how--and I really will listen to those episodes. I love that you're doing history. It made me think about how sometimes I feel tension--I'm going to be overly simplistic right now--but between the parts of. . . In all the movements I'm in, there's a part that's more nonprofitized, and where people, I think, don't know whether they're interested in taking over the State or not, but because they are not sure and I'm not thought about anti-State politics there, they tend to actually accidentally be statist or some of them are more explicitly really trying take over the State or believe in that fantasy. And so that set of people, when you when you have a belief like that shaping what you're going to do and you imagine yourself and you're like "We're going to run the FDA, or we're going to run. . ." you know, when you imagine the scale of the nation and then you think about your people trying to get it, even though you know your people have never had it and aren't anywhere near getting it, and maybe want to get rid of some parts of it altogether. Like maybe you want to get rid of the Border, get rid of the cops or something, that is not a non-humble framing. And it often includes a distrust of ordinary people and a sense that they still need to be managed. And those I think are like subtextual beliefs inside the work that is often happening at the more legitimized nonprofit side of our movements. And then more scrappy, you know, sometimes anarchist or less institutionalized parts of our movements are often much more humble. Like, could we stop one of these sweeps? Could we feed a hundred people in the park tonight? Could we. . . They're very like, it has less of a like, "We're going to take over and make a utopia out of this whole joint," which I think is a very unrealistic and also dangerous framework for a number of reasons, including to look at who else has tried that, you know? I think the idea of running other people in that massive way is just very dangerous and leads to different kinds of authoritarianism, honestly. But also, I think, for me, what happens when I really take into account the crises we're living in and that are mounting and the unknown intense kinds of collapse that are coming soon, it really points me to that kind of humility. Like what's doable here and now with what's going on now? And what would I do if that were my focus? And it really leads to things like direct attacks, like sabotaging, like direct attacks on our opponents, like making their jobs harder. It leads to immediate mutual aid efforts to support people's well being and preparation for things we know are about to happen. Like, what would make this less dangerous when this thing is about to happen? Like, that's the stuff. Yes, it makes sense to just have masks now because more pandemics are coming, and the current one is so bad. You know, it makes sense to have certain things around or it makes sense to build certain skills and not to be overwhelmed. I think some people get really overwhelmed by the idea of, "Oh my God, I'm such a turn my whole life around, become a hunter, become someone who can farm tons of food," I know that's not gonna happen for me. I'm not going to become an expert farmer and hunter. I'm not going to have the skills of somebody from the 1800s in the next few years. It's not what I built my life to do. My body wouldn't be good at it. But what is within reach that's. . . How does it reorient me towards these very humble things that are both humble and that have a little more faith in other people? Like a little more faith that if we stored more water on my block--I don't need everyone on my block to become interested in this--but if a few more people in my neighborhood were interested in this, we could store some more water. And if it feels. . . I just need to find some people who are interested. I don't need to have every single person be interested. And I don't need to convince everyone this is happening. But I also shouldn't just do it by myself. Like somewhere in the middle. And this relates also to the pipeline question, like why are people who've been involved in organizing and activism often good at prep? One of the things is like--as I think your podcast does a great job showing--prep should be collective and not individualist. It shouldn't be about "How can I have the biggest gun to protect my horde?" And instead, it's like, how do I care about people even if I don't like them. And that is something that our movements are about. It's like, how do I care about people, even if they're annoying, even if they don't speak all the same kinds of terms, even if they don't have my exact identities? How do I care about people because they're around me and they're thirsty? And that skill, that's also going to be about "Who do I want to be in the end times?" Like, I'm living through a very, very hard time in human history, what kind of person do I want to be? I hope I'm generous. I hope I'm thoughtful. I hope I am oriented towards attacking things that hurt life and caring for life. And it's not easy to do those things in this society. And so what would I want to change about what I've learned and what I know how to do to get a little closer to that. I'm going to die either way. Like we're all gonna die even if we're totally wrong and there's no collapse and everything's great. We're all going to. So these questions aren't bad to ask even if things turn out totally fine.
**Margaret ** 47:28 No, I, I really liked this, this way of framing it. And it is. . . One of the things I've been thinking about a lot lately is I've been thinking about my own cynicism. And I don't feel like. . . I feel like misanthropy is not the right word, because everyone I know who's like a misanthrope is kind of an asshole about it. You know? But it's like, once you realize that everyone is disappointing, you no longer have to judge the disappointing people as much, because then you realize that you're disappointing, right? You know? And I'm like, "Oh, everyone kind of sucks." And then you're like, "That includes me. I'm not better than everyone else. So now I should look after these people who kind of suck." And like, all of a sudden, I no longer have this thing where I'm like, oh, queers or anarchists or queer anarchists are the enlightened people and all the cis people are terrible and all the straight people are terrible. And I'm like, look, there are systems that privilege people of certain identities over certain other identities, right? But there's nothing about being a lady who likes other ladies that makes me a better person than someone else, you know? And like, and so then I'm like, okay, well now I care about everyone because I dislike everybody. This is not what I actually advocate for other people to do. But this is kind of where I'm at a little bit personally. I really like this idea of pointing out how we care about people that we don't necessarily like? And this is the thing that's always felt strongly about communities. Community is the people who you're doing a thing with or like to live near or, you know, whatever, rather than the people where you all agree about the current way to define the following word. And that said, I mean, there's people who are like, "Well I might live near them, but they're a racist who wants to hurt my friends." You know? But then again, I've also seen people--I know it's controversial--but I've seen the people do the work of be like, "Hey, white person to white person, don't be such a fucking racist. What the fuck is wrong with you?" And I've seen that work. Or, I've been part of a queer land project in a rural area where the neighbor starts off a little bit like, "What? What's a pronoun?" you know? And then it's like, "I don't really get it, but you can use my tractor." And I'm like, "Great!" Now we're on the same side in terms of certain important decisions, like should we all starve to death when the food system collapses.
**Dean ** 50:00 And safety can include--I think we see this a lot with people who've been working around domestic violence and intimate violence in our communities--where you're like, "Yeah, there's a guy who lives down the block and he has a lot of guns and he's really, really reactive and he's someone we all need to be aware of." It's like not everyone is gonna move towards us. And so preparedness can also be about how we are currently supporting anybody who's living with him? And how are we preparing to support us all in regard to him if that need be? Like that kind of just frankness, you know? Like just being clear with ourselves about. . . But that's different. I do think that one of the downsides of social media has been--for me--like doing activism for many years before it started and then how it exists now, because it gives us a feeling that we could reach anyone--which of course, isn't true. Most of us just reach people that are in our own little silos or a lot of nobody looks at it at all. It's like there's a fantasy that I could find my real people and I could have a real set of people who really understand me as opposed to just these jokers I've been stuck with on this block or in this school or in this job or whatever and actually who we are stuck with. That fantasy that we have. . . It's true that it's beautiful when we find people to share ideas with and that some of that happens over the internet, and I love all that. But ultimately, nobody gets to live in a little world of people who perfectly understand them. And when you think you've found those people and then you actually hang out with them, it always ends up that there's actually tons of still intragroup differences and struggles and patterns. And so moving away from hoping to find the right people or climb to the right space where people will be truly radical--not that we don't stop looking for our people everywhere--but also just be like, "Well, who's here now? And what would it be like to learn how to care for those people? And also protect myself from them--to the extent that I need to. And also try to make them more into what I want by showing them the cool ideas and hoping they come along?" You know, all of that, but not being in a fantasy that if I could just get these other people, then I would be happy. Like, that's Capitalism just telling us to claim everything, you know?
**Margaret ** 52:00 I like that sometimes you'll say the thing and I'm like, "No, I just agree with you. That makes a lot of sense. And I got to think about that." And like, I like it. Okay, I've got kind of a final question, I think. . .
**Bursts ** 52:15 [Interrupting] But oh dear listeners, it was far from her last question. Stay tuned for the hair-raising conclusion of Mutual Aid with Dean Spade next week, on Live Like the World is Dying.
**Margaret ** 52:40 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, you should tell people about it. And all of the things that I always tell you to do, like hack the algorithms by leaving me. . . I hate anything that I say that involves me making that voice. I'm terribly sorry. I will never do it again. However, leaving reviews does tell machines to tell other people's machines to listen to this. And that has some positive impact on the world that is falling apart. And I need to tell you that that's what I do all day, is I tell you about the world falling apart. But you can support us as we try to alleviate it. We are saving the world, and if you don't support us, it is your fault when people will die. That's what I'm trying to say. That's "not" what I'm trying to say. Put your money towards whatever you think is best. If what you think is best is putting it towards Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness so we can continue to produce this podcast, pay for our audio editor, pay a transcriptionist, and one day pay the hosts, then you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. That supports all of our shows and all of our different projects. And in particular, we want to thank Amber, Ephemeral, Appalachian Liberation Library, Portland's Hedron Hackerspace, Boldfield, E, Patolli, Eric, Buck, Julia, Catgut Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, Ben Ben, anonymous, Funder, Janice & Odell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo Hunter, SJ, Paige, Nicole, David. Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Mic Aiah, and Hoss the Dog. Alright. That's it. I'm done recording. I'm gonna go play with my dog and I hope that you can do whatever makes you happy between now and the end of all things which might be a long time from now. Maybe. Talk to you soon.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Colin talks to Brooke about how to asses damage to structures after disasters, what you can do when you're stuck in a building after a disaster, and ways to make your situation easier and safer.
Colin (he/him) is a carpenter, industrial electrician, and backpacker.
Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Colin on Structural Triage After a Disaster
**Brooke ** 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for it feels like the end times. I'm Brooke Jackson, your host for this episode. Today I'll be talking with Colin, an experienced construction and trade worker, about how to prepare for and perform structural triage after disasters. But first we'd like to celebrate being a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts by playing a little jingle from one of the other podcasts on the network. Doo doo doo, doo doo.
**Brooke ** 00:48 And we're back. Colin, thank you for joining us today to talk about structural triage after disasters. Would you introduce yourself? Let us know your pronouns, where you're from if you want, maybe some of your background in the construction industry.
**Colin ** 01:19 Yeah, I'm Colin, he/him. Lived in around Western Pennsylvania pretty much my entire life—mostly in the Pittsburgh area. I picked up carpentry right after college just as a way to earn some money. Been in and out that for a while. I worked as an industrial electrician in the power industry for about seven years, and then decided I'd had enough of that and went back to doing carpentry.
**Brooke ** 02:10 Okay, so is your—is your background in those trades the reason that you're interested in this topic, or was there something else that sparked you or made you kind of get into learning about it?
**Colin ** 02:23 Actually, the impetus for this was a little over—actually, seems like ages ago, but actually less than a year ago, a friend had an apartment fire right after Christmas last year. And it's still that big cold snap. And fortunately, we managed to get them recovered from that, but it was only due to the fairly heroic efforts of a lot of friends. And after that I started thinking about, you know, like, what are the ways that, you know, if you don't have people looking out for you and willing to come bail you out, what can you do if you're stuck in a damaged building for a few days while you're waiting for utilities to come back online, first responders to work through a backlog? Just, how can you make things easier in the immediate few days after disaster?
**Brooke ** 03:14 Nice. So is this something that you then have you had to put into practice, or other people around you have put into practice? Or are we mostly theoretical at this point and haven't tested all these things—not that we don't trust your experience here.
**Colin ** 03:31 Yeah, no, I have done some of these things more in the context of camping and backpacking, just like, there are things you can do that will make the situation easier and safer. Also, a lot of my background in working in power plants involved constant safety trainings about how do you do things safely? What do you have to look out for? What are, you know, things that you just need to be aware of when you're in dangerous situations? And I'm continually surprised at how many of those applied to everyday life, and how much of that stuff we just don't have to think about when we're living in a house that has already been designed to be safe. But when you have a disaster, obviously things break. And suddenly, things that are—things that normally have the engineering and safety built into them no longer work the way they're supposed to, and suddenly, you have to take care of all of that on your own. It's not that hard to do, or even that expensive. You just have to do the planning and preparation before it happens. Because once you find yourself in that situation, it's too late.
**Brooke ** 04:46 Yeah, that makes sense. And we're gonna get into those details in a second. But for the listener, I just wanted to share that Colin had reached out to us with this really great list of different things we could explore on this topic. And as I said to him, the the part that stood out most to me was he was talking about how to shelter in place in a compromised building and how to do structural triage and first aid that can make the eventual recovery easier. So we may get into a lot more than that today, we may have a second episode at some point to talk about other things because Colin has a lot of great info to share. But that was the part that really struck me and the areas that I wanted to focus on. And so right before we get into the details, another question I wanted to ask you was, how broadly is this applicable? Like, you know, there's all kinds of different disaster situations, right? We've got floods, fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, unnatural disasters. Do you have different tips for different scenarios that we're going to talk about, or is a lot of this like works across multiple possibilities?
**Colin ** 05:50 It's some of both. A lot of the things you need to be concerned with sheltering in place, or just being aware of what are the things that change when systems go offline. So when you don't have power anymore and you're relying on batteries or a generator, or you lose your gas, now, suddenly, you're relying on kerosene heaters or lamps. All of these things change how you have to think about your safety in a house. Obviously, people have been living with fireplaces and wood stoves and oil lamps for a very, very long time. It's not that hard to do. But if you're used to being able to flip a switch and have the lights come on, you're going to have to make some changes. And if you don't do those things, you can cause yourself serious problems.
**Brooke ** 06:38 Okay, so let's talk about the first part of that where work. Let's say we're in a situation where we've just had a disaster, we're in a compromised building—whether it be like—I guess mostly we're talking about homes, or maybe your apartment complex too, not necessarily, like, work structures. So let's say we're in that in that situation, we're in this compromised building right after a disaster, what's one of the first things that we need to do?
**Colin ** 07:01 So the very first thing is always keep yourself safe, because there's no disaster that you can't make worse by getting injured. And this is especially true—
**Brooke ** 07:12 [Laughing] That's a good line, yeah!
**Colin ** 07:12 That's especially true when you have, you know, something like the ERCOT disaster down in Texas and 2021, and you have an entire city that is struggling, and your first responders are overwhelmed.
**Brooke ** 07:28 Was that when they lost power?
**Colin ** 07:30 Yeah, they lost power for I want to say a week or two? I don't think it was continuous. I think it went off, and then it came back on, and then it went off again. The estimated death toll from that was like somewhere between 250 and 700 people, which is—that's like 10 times the number of people that die from an average hurricane season. And most of it was due to things like hyperthermia and carbon monoxide poisoning. Just because people were trying to stay warm and making bad decisions either because they didn't know any better, or they didn't have the tools they needed. Most of it could have been avoided. But obviously that was a terrible situation, and Texas is still recovering from that. So yeah, you've got to keep yourself safe. Couple parts of that. The easiest thing is the personal protective equipment side. Because that's just a matter of throwing a little bit of money at the problem, and it doesn't even take very much money. This is stuff like have worked gloves around so that you can protect your hands. Keep safety glasses around, because getting an eye injury will make life real bad and real tough right now. Earplugs. Disasters are often loud, and even if they're not, things are going to sound different. So having earplugs can help you sleep better. These are, like, not—things that do not cost a whole lot of money. But the most important thing is just to look at the situation and take a beat and figure out what has changed and what you need to do to stop the problem from getting worse. So the first part of this is anything that is broken or not working the way it is supposed to needs to be shut down. So like, do you need to get the power turned off? Do you need to get the gas turned off? Do you need to get the water turned off so your pipes don't freeze and burst? These are things that the average homeowner can do: turning off the power, as long as you have access to the circuit breaker, it's a matter of flipping a switch. Water should just be a matter of closing a valve. The problem is a lot of times the shutoff valves for water don't work the way they're supposed to because they haven't been maintained. I have run into that a few times. And—
**Brooke ** 09:42 I know I know at my own house, shutting off the water is a much bigger deal than it should be.
**Colin ** 09:48 Right and most of the time that's fine, until you have pipes that are actively spraying water, and suddenly it's not fine. Getting the gas shut off. Usually, again, just matter of going outside with a wrench and turning the valve at the meter. But you have to have the right size wrench and you have to know where that valve is.
**Brooke ** 10:09 Okay, so here's a neat—sorry to interrupt you. But I've had—for a long time I've had—I don't know if this is good, so you tell me. I got a wrench that's like specifically for shutting off your gas, it's this bright red one, and you zip tie it next to your gas main. And then if there's a disaster, you should have to go cut the zip tie and use that wrench.
**Colin ** 10:32 Yeah, that is a fantastic idea.
**Brooke ** 10:34 Okay.
**Colin ** 10:35 I would suggest maybe string or something that you can just yank to break it loose, because having zip tie on there that you have to cut, that's one more tool you have to find before you can get to the wrench. Zipties are fantastic because they are very secure. Sometimes so secure that you can't get them off.
**Brooke ** 10:50 So I might have to replace the string once in a while, but string would be better.
**Colin ** 10:53 Or, the meters normally magnetic, you can put it on a magnet, you can just have it—
**Brooke ** 10:58 Oh, yeah!
**Colin ** 10:59 —duct taped to the side of it. Something you can get off without tools. And it's always there. And then periodically, every six months, just check and make sure it's there. And, you know, a raccoon hasn't stolen it. But no, that's a fantastic idea.
**Brooke ** 11:13 Okay, so that's a good planning ahead. But if you haven't planned ahead, then, you know trying to find a wrench is generally the tool you're going to need, right, to shut that off if you have gas?
**Colin ** 11:22 Yeah yeah. Then if you live in an apartment building, usually you will have access to your electrical panel, but not always. You may not have access to the main water shut offs for your apartment. You can probably find out where in the building those are. You're not going to be able to tell if they're working the way they're supposed to before something happens. But have a plan for how to get into whatever room the shut offs are in. If you have to go through a door, this may mean keeping a sledge hammer or pry bar around so that you can get through to the shut offs in the case of an emergency. And yeah, your landlord is probably going to be unhappy and you may lose your security deposit, but it's better than having your apartment burn down.
**Brooke ** 12:12 Yeah, seems like it.
**Colin ** 12:13 Yeah.
**Brooke ** 12:14 Okay, so step one is, like right after the disaster, donning some protective gear and then going around to shut off compromised utilities.
**Colin ** 12:24 Right, anything's not working, get it turned off so that the situation stops getting worse. Once everything's shut down, then you can take your time and figure out how to make things livable until systems start to come back online. The other thing to do with preparation is make sure all your smoke alarms are working, and make sure you have fire extinguishers. Because, again, fire when you don't have first responders available is very, very bad. So hopefully everyone has these things to begin with. But if you don't, I highly recommend going out and getting some as soon as possible.
**Brooke ** 13:01 Okay.
**Colin ** 13:02 So you now have everything turned off, you have your fire extinguishers, you've dealt with the immediate problem. Now you're faced with, how do I make the structure minimally safe for the next few days? If you have broken windows, damaged roof from storms, things like that.
**Brooke ** 13:25 Okay, so it's assuming your residence is still some amount of livable and/or you just don't have anywhere else to go and you kind of have to stay.
**Colin ** 13:35 Yeah, as long as you have a roof and three walls, you're gonna be fine most of the time.
**Brooke ** 13:44 What about—what about the fourth wall? Why don't we get a fourth wall here, Collin?
**Colin ** 13:48 I mean, four walls is great. Three walls is enough to keep the roof up.
**Brooke ** 13:55 That's a really good point though, no, genuinely.
**Colin ** 13:58 If a tree comes through the front of your house, you can still deal with that. It's gonna suck, but it's not the end of the world. And the things that you need to make the situation better than it would be? Not that complicated. It basically boils down a lot of times to having some plastic sheeting or tarps and a staple gun. If you can get something over your openings to keep the wind and the water from entering the house, that's going to buy you a lot of time. If you've ever been driving through, you know, the back roads and rural counties and you see the houses that have the plastic tarps over their roofs that have obviously been there for many years, those houses are still functional. They're still standing. A lot of times people are still living quite comfortably inside those houses. Doesn't look very good, but it's gonna work for a while. And oftentimes, that's all you need.
**Brooke ** 14:50 Yeah, that's one of the reasons you see tarps up there for so long is that they're doing what they need to do and they don't need to do more than that. For folks that don't have that kind of stuff sitting around, I imagined that maybe grabbing some sheets or blankets or something and throwing those over the opening would still be better than just leaving it open?
**Colin ** 15:10 Yeah, even the bed sheet over the window is going to stop rain from blowing in and my dogs barking in the background. I apologize.
**Brooke ** 15:19 That's okay. We are a puppy-friendly podcast.
**Colin ** 15:25 A staple gun is something that you should definitely own if you don't, because that's the easiest and fastest way of getting any kind of sheet, whether it's cloth, or a tarp, or trash bags with plastic sheeting attached to walls really fast. A staple gun will set you back maybe $20 tops, and makes life a whole lot easier when it comes to covering openings. If you don't, if you don't have that, duct tape will also work. However, it doesn't work as well as you would expect, especially when the weather is cold or if surfaces are wet.
**Brooke ** 16:01 Sure. Yeah. Thumb tacks if you have those sitting around.
**Colin ** 16:06 Thumb tacks. Hammer and nails.
**Brooke ** 16:08 Yeah.
**Colin ** 16:09 Anything to do to secure a sheet. At that point, you're not really worried about damaging the house because the damage has already been done, and fixing a few nail holes is peanuts compared to trying to fix, you know, several hundred gallons of water that have been blown in by high winds.
**Brooke ** 16:25 Okay, so we close our openings to protect from water, from cold temperatures, probably from other elements too, right, if—blocking the sun?
**Colin ** 16:36 Yeah, sun. If you're in a hot area—this is a totally different topic on its own. But trying to keep the sun out of your house, if you're in a hot situation is just as important as trying to keep the heat inside the house if you're in a cold situation. If you lose power and you're relying on air conditioning to keep your house livable, the best thing you can do is get all of your windows covered as soon as you possibly can. Because solar gain through glass will drive up the interior temperature really quickly. Doesn't matter what you have. Again, plastic bags will work. Anything, just block the amount of light that's coming through the glass. Cardboard, sheets, blinds, you name it?
**Brooke ** 17:24 All right. So we've covered up our holes. What do we need to do next?
**Colin ** 17:30 Covered up the holes. Things are shut down, turned off. Now you have to start worrying about how am I going to actually get back to living inside this damaged structure for as long as I need to until help can arrive and start doing major repairs that need to happen? And a couple of things you want to look at, the—obviously we're coming up on winter. So the first thing to talk about is how do you stay warm? Hopefully you have blankets and sleeping bags and things that will keep you warm overnight. But you can also look at how you can take a single room and the house and make that one room more pleasant for the duration. So like, if you are struggling to keep your house warm because either you've totally lost power or your furnace can't keep up with the temperatures, shut everything down except for one room—preferably a room that has water and power in it. So you have all of your basic necessities in one spot. If you have a bathroom basement—or a bathroom in the basement is ideal because it's usually going to be interior walls, you've got water, you've got power, and if you throw, you know, a pad down the floor you can even sleep in there. You've got all your necessities in one spot.
**Brooke ** 18:56 Now are basements fairly safe places in the face of most natural disasters? Are there times when you wouldn't want to hang out in the basement?
**Colin ** 19:03 It depends on the disaster.
**Brooke ** 19:04 Okay.
**Colin ** 19:06 Obviously if you're dealing with a flood, the basements not where you want to be.
**Brooke ** 19:10 [Laughs] Sure. What about if there's been fire damage to like the upstairs of your house?
**Colin ** 19:20 That depends on how stable the structure is. If there's fire damage, usually you don't want to be directly over or directly under the damaged section.
**Brooke ** 19:31 Hm. Okay.
**Colin ** 19:32 So that if it collapses, it doesn't land on you and you don't go through the floor.
**Brooke ** 19:37 Okay. Makes sense.
**Colin ** 19:38 So fire—like talking about a fire damaged structure is probably beyond the scope of what I'm qualified to do, and beyond the scope of most of the people listening to the podcast because it requires you to be able to look at the damaged structural members and evaluate, you know, how compromised are these? Is this floor burned but otherwise stable, or is this going to collapse in the next five minutes? And that's a skill set entirely on its own.
**Brooke ** 20:11 That's a good point.
**Colin ** 20:12 If something looks burned and unsafe, just don't go near it.
**Brooke ** 20:18 Yeah, and of course, you know, burned structures and objects can be very carcinogenic too.
**Colin ** 20:26 That's also true.
**Brooke ** 20:27 They can really impact your health. So that's a really good point that a lot of this maybe is really not applicable to the situation of having been in a fire.
**Colin ** 20:35 Now, that said, if you've lost half of your house to fire, and you have a few rooms that are still relatively untouched on one side of the house, and you can seal off the burned section of the house, again, using plastic, just so you don't have the smell of the burned material getting into the living area as much as possible, you're still better off inside the house in that situation overall, if you don't have anywhere else to go, then you are trying to, say, camp out in the backyard. Because solid walls and a solid roof offer you more protection and better insulation, even when they're damaged.
**Brooke ** 21:16 Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. If you have a really bad kitchen fire and lose your kitchen, that doesn't mean you have to move out of the whole house necessarily. Okay.
**Colin ** 21:24 Correct. Yeah. And obviously, the best thing to do is leave and go someplace else if you can. But this is: your stocking place because the roads are impassable, or you literally have nowhere else to go.
**Brooke ** 21:37 Yeah. Okay. All right. So moving into the basement, a good idea if you can, but in general is secluding yourself in part of the house. And to throw in a personal anecdote, we had this ice storm here in Kalapuya territory in Oregon—it was almost three years ago now. And most of the town lost power. And it was one, two, three days, a week, seven days, ten days for some folks—long time. And, I kind of without knowing any of this, just sort of instinctively moved us into the living room where a fireplace was because we had lost power and we lost it for a week. And we all just camped out, you know, slept, ate, played in the living room, because the only source of heat was the fireplace. So that's what we gravitated to. Anyway.
**Colin ** 22:27 Yeah. And if you have a fireplace, if you have a room that's already set up for that kind of thing, like a living room, that's fantastic. I mean, there's no reason to hide out in the bathroom, if you have a place with a working fireplace. Yeah, good, go for the fireplace room.
**Brooke ** 22:42 Yeah. On the downside, we had to pass into the, you know, 40 degree, 30 degree weather in the rest of the house to get to the bathroom. One in the back of the house. But, you know, for everything else, we were cozied up and warm in our one little room. Which, you know, we drove each other crazy. I will say that too being trapped in the one room together. But it was the only place that we be worn for that week.
**Colin ** 23:06 Yeah, like having just a contained place that you can keep as warm and comfortable or as cool and comfortable as possible is your best option. Don't worry about trying to keep your entire house up to temperature, whether that be warm or cold. Because that takes a lot of energy to do and it's just probably not gonna be possible in most situations.
**Brooke ** 23:28 Okay, here's a scenario question for you: Let's say same set of circumstances, like, that I went through, but something crashed through my big living room window, and we have to tarp over it. Is it? Is it? Is it better? Like, if I have to stay in my house at that point, is it better to still be in the living room with the fire in the tarped up window, or should I try and move to a different room and figure out some other heating source?
**Colin ** 23:54 I would probably still stay in the living room. If your concern is keeping yourself warm and you have a fireplace, that's going to be your best option.
**Brooke ** 24:06 Okay.
**Colin ** 24:06 The issue of the window being broken and the tarp—the one problem with tarps is in high winds, they tend to flap a lot and they're just kind of annoying. The easy solution to that is back it up with cardboard. Cardboard does not like to get wet, but as long as it stays dry, it's a fairly good insulator and it's solid. And it's cheap. You can—everybody has a pile of cardboard boxes and their front hall from Amazon waiting to go out in the recycling. So take some of those boxes—
**Brooke ** 24:37 I'm just gonna close this door behind me...
**Colin ** 24:41 Take some of these boxes, break them down, put a few layers of cardboard on the inside just as a backup to the tarp so that your plastic is keeping the water out, but your cardboard is blocking more of the wind and keeping the plastic from flapping quite so much.
**Brooke ** 24:57 Okay got it. So staying close to that the best heat source is still the way to go.
**Colin ** 25:03 Yeah, it's always gonna be a judgment call as to what that is. But if you have a fire, and you are comfortable using it, and you have a good wood supply, that's almost always going to be your best bet.
**Brooke ** 25:16 Okay? Makes sense. All right, so let's see, where are we even at not in our to do list here?
**Colin ** 25:24 Okay, so we have a warm place to stay. And, assuming you have a fireplace, we've got that taken care of. The trickier situation is when you lose power and suddenly you'd have no heat at all. And even if you're relying—if you use natural gas for your heat, pretty much every furnace these days has an electric blower unless you have one of the, like, direct vent wall mounted furnace units that are basically just a gas flame that's passively heating. But if you're using forced air, it's using gas for the heat source, but you need electricity to move that warm air through the house. So if you lose your electricity, you lose your heat, even though you still have a fuel source. And that's something that a lot of people don't think about, especially in winter, they're like, oh, it's not a problem. If you lose electricity, big deal, I have gas. Well, that's not going to help you.
**Brooke ** 26:25 That was my circumstance. Gas furnace, but needed the electricity and we didn't have that.
**Colin ** 26:30 Yeah. So if you can get yourself down to a fairly small room, a bathroom, a small bedroom, even a large walk-,in closet, it doesn't take a whole lot of energy to keep one of those spaces warm. You can get the small, portable, like, propane heaters, little buddy heaters. They don't cost a whole lot, but then you have the issue of combustion in a confined space, which is a good way to end up with carbon monoxide poisoning or asphyxiation or, yeah. It can be a very bad scene. So if you're going to do that, be sure you have a portable carbon dioxide alarm. Just go to Home Depot or wherever, pick up another one of the nine volt battery powered smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, and keep that in whatever space you're running that portable heater. It doesn't matter if you have smoke alarms and carbon monoxide heaters or detectors throughout the house. Those aren't going to help you if you have sealed yourself off from those alarms so that you can try to keep the space warm.
**Brooke ** 26:41 Makes sense.
**Colin ** 27:22 And actually, my recommendation, even more than one of the small portable heaters, is a kerosene lamp or propane lamp of some kind. A lot of the old ice fishers for heating their ice fishing huts in the winter just used Coleman lanterns. One of the propane Coleman lanterns will put out almost the same amount of heat as a 1500 watt electric space heater.
**Brooke ** 28:11 Oh wow!
**Colin ** 28:12 They are very, very warm. Now also, it's still combustion. So you have to be aware of that. And they do get very hot. So you need to have a place to hang it to keep it away from fabric and other things that can catch on fire. But they will make a room surprisingly warm on their own. And then that also gives you light source, which is another thing that you're going to need if your power is off.
**Brooke ** 28:39 Now, what if—what if it's a reverse circumstance. You've lost power and it's very warm climate. You're in, you know, hot temperatures. Are you still trying to stay in one room? What tools do you have to get cold?
**Colin ** 28:55 That is a much more difficult situation. There are some things you can do, but it's going to require more tools and more planning. If you've ever seen the giant black tubes coming out of pit toilets, usually like a national parks, what those are doing is pulling a draft on the underground part of the toilet by using a thermal chimney. That black tube gets hot in the sun and hot air rises, you're pulling the hot stinky air up from out of your bathroom, and pulling fresh air in. So you can do the exact same thing with a house by having some kind of large black chimney. You can do this out of pipe or even black cardboard if you live in a very dry area. But this is something you're going to have to know how to build and plan for in advance. It can be done, but it's probably going to be on—be beyond the scope of what most people can do in an emergency. So really, in the situation where hat is issue, the best thing you can do is stay out of the sun and try to move as little as possible. Outside if you can, like wherever you can get fresh air, any kind of breeze, air movement, is going to keep you cooler than sitting inside.
**Brooke ** 30:24 Yeah. If you know how to make like a swamp cooler kind of thing—let's say your water, you can still get coolish water coming out and you've got—well I guess you need electricity for the fan. Damn.
**Colin ** 30:36 You can use the swamp cooler, you can build a passive swamp cooler. Again, it relies on that thermal chimney to create the draft. But those do work, assuming that you're in an area that is dry enough that you have evaporation. I live in western Pennsylvania, and usually in the summer if it's hot enough to need air conditioning, it's also about 95% humidity and swamp coolers do not work.
**Brooke ** 31:02 And I think they can even be dangerous, right? Making it—because they can make it too humid—unsafely humid?
**Colin ** 31:09 Yes.
**Brooke ** 31:12 Sorry, you're getting outside your realm.
**Colin ** 31:17 No, no. So the swamp cooler, you know, for listeners who are not aware of what this is, it's a—basically the same thing as a wet rag that the moisture on the—in the cooler evaporates and evaporation requires energy. So you're pulling heat out of the air and using that to evaporate water. And what you end up with is air that is cooler than it was before, but also more humid. So obviously, before that can work, you need to have air that is dry enough that it can absorb some amount of moisture. If you already have close to as much moisture in the air as it can possibly handle, you're not going to change the temperature significantly by evaporation.
**Brooke ** 32:03 Okay. Make sense. All right, so we we've gotten ourselves down to one room, we figured out a way to heat ourselves, and we're hunkered in and it's gonna be a few days that we're in this situation. So what now and what next?
**Colin ** 32:22 So now you have to think about, you know, the basics of survival. You need food and water. Food, hopefully you have some stores around. If not, you know, at least in the United States, getting food is not that difficult most of the time, it may not be good. But you're probably not going to starve if you're in your house.
**Brooke ** 32:52 Even if you're iced in and can't—can't literally get out of your house, you probably have something in your pantry, it might not be what you want to eat, but there is calories available.
**Colin ** 33:02 Yeah. You have calories. They're maybe not the best calories, but their calories. Water is trickier. Hopefully, you have at least a little bit of a stockpile, but not always. And if you have lost your water supply, or if there is damage to the mains—like again, using Texas as an example. Once your water mains freeze and the pressure in those pipes drop, you start having issues with groundwater making its way into the water mains, and that results in a boil order. So it's entirely possible to be in a situation where your taps still work, water comes out, but you can't drink it. And now you're faced with a problem of, like, how do you make this water supply drinkable again? And if you have a small water filter like the Sawyer Mini, it's popular with a lot of backpackers, a LifeStraw, anything like that, those are great. If you don't have one of those, the reason it's called a boil order is because you can always boil the water. Again, assuming that you have a heat source with which you can get the water hot. If you have a gas stove, most of the time natural gas is not disrupted by natural disasters with the exception of earthquakes. But if you're relying on electricity, if you're cooking like a lot of people do and you lose electricity, now you're kind of out of luck. So you need to have some kind of way of boiling water. If you have that Coleman lantern or a kerosene lantern, a lot of those get hot enough that you actually can boil water in a small container over one of those lanterns. It's not ideal. My recommendation is actually just one of the old school Coleman propane two burner backpacking stoves. They are absolute workhorses, indestructible. My brother just inherited the one of my parents, which I think is pushing 50 years old and still works just fine. You cannot kill those things, and you can pick one up off eBay for somewhere between $20 and $50, depending on what kind of condition it's in. And the other great thing about propane is that it has an indefinite shelf life. So if you have one of those stoves sitting around and you have one of the green one pound cylinders of propane, that you inherited from your grandparents, plug that in. It doesn't matter if it is twice as old as you are, it's still going to work just fine. Same is not true of gasoline and a lot of the other fuels. They're hard to store, they smell, they have other issues. But propane is fantastic. So you can buy it, you can stash in your basement, you can forget about it, and it'll be there when you need it.
**Brooke ** 36:01 Now a complicating factor to be aware of ahead of time, of course, is that you can have a big propane tank like you might use for your barbecue, and then you can have those little green ones. And they're not—they don't necessarily all hook up into the same canisters, you know, the camp stoves versus barbecues, right, so you might not have the right size of—like if you're—if you have a camp stove and you're like, I can hook my barbecue propane tank up to it, that's not going to work with what you normally have, right?
**Colin ** 36:31 With what you normally have. There are adaptor hoses that are designed to do exactly that. And a lot of times if you have outdoor events, they will use those two burner stoves but they will hook them up to the barbecue tanks because the little one pound cylinders get expensive if you're relying on those for a large amount of propane. You also can't refill them like you can with a barbecue tanks.
**Brooke ** 36:54 Right. So it's so frustrating.
**Colin ** 36:55 Yeah. So if you have a bar—if you have a barbecue grill already, then, you know, there's your heat source. You have to go outside to use it, but you can put a pot of water on your barbeque grill and bring it to a boil, it'll work just fine. Or if you have one of the little two burner backpacking/camping stoves, they make the hoses to go from the barbecue tank to that kind of stove. And now you can bring your propane tank inside as you need. Again, under normal circumstances don't do this. But in a disaster you can. And run the propane inside.
**Brooke ** 37:35 Check your venting, check your C02 levels...
**Colin ** 37:38 Again, there's a very good reason that they tell you not to do this. And if you're cooking inside with a stove that has not been designed to do this, you need to have your fire extinguisher, you need to have your carbon monoxide alarm, and as soon as you're done with it, get that fuel back out of the house, because obviously propane is flammable.
**Brooke ** 38:00 Alright, so we've got a way to get some water, hopefully, and to warm up some food or cook some food if we need to. So we've got those basic elements that we can survive and subsist for however long we're gonna be stuck in this compromised building in this disaster.
**Colin ** 38:18 Yeah, so the next part is, don't get sick. This means how to have a way to keep yourself clean. [Everyone dissolves into a fit of giggles] Hot tip! Don't get sick. Life is better when you're not sick.
**Brooke ** 38:21 [Laughing] Yes.
**Colin ** 38:40 Keeping up with sanitation when you don't have running water, especially when you don't have hot running water, is hard. If you don't have water, you also probably don't have a functioning toilet anymore. And that's going to be a problem sooner than—real quick. Takes about 24 hours, possibly less, and suddenly it's unpleasant. So have a way of dealing with all that when you don't have running water. The easiest solution is a five gallon bucket and something for urine. You want to try to keep those things separate because you're in, you know, you can take it outside, you can dump it in the grass, it'll be fine. The same is not true of feces. You need to at the very least compost that. You can get fancy composting toilets that will set you back several thousand dollars.
**Brooke ** 39:41 Yeah
**Colin ** 39:42 They worked really well. They have fans and tumblers and everything else. But for the van that I use for camping, my solution is a five gallon bucket with a gasketed lid and plastic bag full of chopped straw, and it works just fine. It doesn't smell that great when you open it. But honestly, it's not terrible. As long as you keep the feces covered with a layer of either chopped straw or peat moss or something else that will absorb all the excess nitrogen is really what you're after. You're fine.
**Brooke ** 40:21 A brief segue as we talk to Colin's husband/wife/romantic partner. How do they feel about the shit bucket?
**Colin ** 40:30 Not a fan. On the other hand, given a choice between the shit bucket, and going outside, when it's pouring down rain in the middle of the winter, and we're camping? [Laughing] The bucket is better. It's not ideal, but when you need it, you're really glad that you have it. And it's something that you can keep around, it'll set—it'll cost you maybe $10, and throw it in the basement. Hopefully you never need it. But if you do, it's there, and it will get you out of a bad situation. And it doesn't require you to put a whole lot of thought or effort into dealing with it. And then once everything is back online, and you have trash collection, again, if nothing else, seal the bucket up, put it in the trash can, and let the whole thing go to the landfill. Composting it is great, that's what I do. But if you just don't want to deal with it, put the entire bucket in the trash.
**Brooke ** 41:28 Or an even poor man's version of this, you can put a plastic bag in a trash can and put your business in there and then tie up your plastic bag, set it outside. And repeat, if you forgot to get a bucket ahead of time.
**Colin ** 41:43 Yes, that also works just fine. The nice thing about the bucket is then you have a sealed lid so it keeps the odor inside, and you can keep it in the house where it's warm and dry. Because there's nothing worse than having to poop in the middle of the night when it is sleeping and five degrees outside.
**Brooke ** 42:03 Yeah, that's pretty awful.
**Colin ** 42:05 Food waste and trash are two other big things. Trash collection, we take for granted. But if you've ever had a couple bags of trash sitting in your garage for a week because you forgot to put them out on trash day, they get real unpleasant real fast. So again, if you're in a situation where you know you're going to have to be living with this stuff for an extended period of time, try to keep your food waste separate from your trash that doesn't stink. So plastic bags, solid stuff that will be dry and relatively odorless in one bag. Food waste, again, can go in a sealed bucket, or in a smaller bag, you can keep further away from the house. If you're familiar with Bokashi, I think that came up on one of the episodes about composting. It's not, it's not composting in and of itself, it's a bit more like fermenting—kind of like making sauerkraut, but with food scraps—and basically does the same thing. You just get a bucket with a sealed lid, put your food in there, let it sit and it will slowly ferment on its own. And it can take pretty much anything. Even things that normal compost can't. So it can handle small amounts of meat and protein, cooked food, things like that. We have a bucket of that just under our sink that all the food scraps go into. And it probably gets emptied maybe once every two weeks, so that we don't have to have any food going into the trash. And yeah, it's—it's funny, like I will occasionally go to people's houses now that are just using trash cans the way people do where everything goes in the trash can. And I walk into the kitchen. I'm like, why am I smelling, like, food waste? Like I smell rotten food. What's wrong? It's like oh, right, it's because you're putting in the trash can where it sits and rots. So if you can just keep those two things separate. It will make the situation a lot more pleasant. That's a great tip. And yeah, just, you know, as much as you can, wash your hands and do all the things you are supposed to do. Brush your teeth, floss, things like that nature. Just take care of yourself and try to keep yourself together for as long as you possibly can. The situation will improve if you can just avoid making it worse. Human body is amazingly tough. All you have to do is sit and wait and most situations disaster-wise will improve on their own because the pressure on first response yours and utilities will ease up and things will start to come back online, as long as you can make it through that first critical period.
**Brooke ** 45:08 Okay, do you mind now if we shift to talking about structural triage and things that we do to our actual residences, dwellings, things to look out for and know in disasters, and sort of that aspect of it?
**Colin ** 45:28 Yeah, definitely. Did you have anything in mind in particular, where you wanted to start, or?
**Brooke ** 45:32 Well, we talked about, you know, turning things off, of course. And then closing up holes. There's lots of other things in the house that can get damaged, in, you know, different scenarios, earthquakes and tornadoes and floods. So I'm curious, like, if there are other structural indicators or things to look for, you know, that, you know, from sort of your construction perspective that, like, oh, that's a sign of this thing is unstable, that you might not know just as a normal person.
**Colin ** 46:09 Yes, generally when you get into questions of structural stability, like is this house going to fall down? If you have any doubt, the best thing to do is vacate the structure. Because actually looking at structures from an engineering standpoint, and determining when something is safe and when it's not, is beyond the scope of most people, myself included. I know what structures are supposed to look like and I can tell you when something is damaged, but I can't necessarily tell you how close it is to falling down. But the big things to look for are just like, do you see cracks in the foundation that weren't there yesterday?
**Brooke ** 46:54 Okay,
**Colin ** 46:55 You're probably familiar with, with how your house looks. If you see something that looks unfamiliar. investigate further, as much as you possibly can. This is kind of the best advice that I can give.
**Brooke ** 47:08 Okay, what about things like crack new cracks in the wall? Like, is that is the wall crack itself a sign? Or was that—would that be like, okay, now and go look at the foundation and see.
**Colin ** 47:18 If you're talking about cracks in interior plaster walls, those are not necessarily an issue by themselves. Because buildings can have a fair amount of flex to them before they fall down. Like you look at the number of houses that have an alarming lean to them and have been standing for two hundred years. Like, structures are remarkably resilient until they're not.
**Brooke ** 47:45 Okay.
**Colin ** 47:45 But if you have any doubt, the best thing is, get yourself out of the structure.
**Brooke ** 47:50 Okay. I guess I'm also thinking about it from, like, the opposite perspective of something you might see and worry about and think you need to leave, but then actually it's okay and you could stay. So that's, you know, like the wall cracks, that might not actually be a big issue if you've suddenly had a crack on the wall.
**Colin ** 48:10 Yeah, so the best thing you can do is try to get yourself into part of the house where you have as little as possible above you and as little as possible below you. So if you have a three story house, you don't necessarily want to be on that second floor for any reason. Because that's kind of the worst of both worlds, because you could go through the floor or the roof could come down on you. The best thing you can do, again, is get yourself into a small space where the only thing above you is the roof and maybe some insulation, and the only thing below you is concrete slab. Still not a guarantee that you're safe.
**Brooke ** 48:54 Sure, yeah.
**Colin ** 48:55 But you're gonna be better off there than in a multistory structure.
**Brooke ** 48:59 Right. Yeah. We talked about how, you know, things might come through the windows or the walls, but as long as you've got your three walls in your roof, you're okay. What if you have four walls and a hole in the roof? Like things come through the roof.
**Colin ** 49:13 Yeah, if you have a damaged roof, the best thing to do is get up on the roof and patch it from the outside. But that's not always possible. Especially if you have a multistory house and you don't have an extension ladder that can get you up to the roof, which is true for a lot of people. So then you're stuck with, how do I deal with this hole in my roof from the inside? Sometimes, assuming you have access to the attic, you can get into the attic and if you have, you know, a gaping hole where say a meteor came through your roof and punched a big hole in it. [Laughing] You can feed things in from the outside and then pull them back down against the roof. So you can build your patch and feed it through and pieces. Reach up from the inside, lay it down on the outside. And it's not gonna be a perfect seal, but it will keep at least some of the water and weather from getting into the house. Usually when you have that big of a hole, if you can't patch it from the outside, things are going to end up leaking and you're gonna be faced with situation where you have to try to catch the water once it comes into the house and get it back outside the house where it belongs. Again, the key for this is a staple gun, and some plastic sheet. So just, if you can hang plastic underneath the area that is leaking, or tarp to catch the drips, and then divert that water to a collection point, whether that is a bucket if it's a very slow leak, or a improvised funnel if it's a faster leak. It's not hard to make a funnel, if you have a garden hose and a two liter bottle, the garden hose thread is close enough to the spread on two liter bottles, that you can literally just screw the bottle onto the garden hose. And if you cut at an angle, cut the bottle at an angle, you can make something that is big enough that you can make a channel in your tarp, they will direct that into your two liter bottle funnel into your garden hose which you can then, you know, run down out of your attic and out of window.
**Brooke ** 51:35 That's really cool, I might need to do something like that—not for disaster reasons, but just for gardening stuff this summer.
**Colin ** 51:44 The two liter bottle to the hose connection will probably leak a little bit.
**Brooke ** 51:49 Shhhhhh, kill my dreams.
**Colin ** 51:51 Duct tape will fix that. Or if you have any of that self-fusing silicone tape they sell for emergency plumbing repairs, that works too. But honestly, as long as the water that's flowing through the bottle and into the hose is not under any pressure, the leak is probably going to be slow enough that it's not gonna be an issue.
**Brooke ** 52:14 So roof damage is not necessarily something to run away from.
**Colin ** 52:19 Roof damage is not the end of the world. It's bad, especially if you can't get up on the roof to fix it. But there are things you can do to keep it from totally destroying the house, the first thing to do is just figure out how you're going to keep the water from getting in. And if you can't do that, figure out how you're gonna get the water that's inside the house, back outside the house.
**Brooke ** 52:44 And is that one of the biggest risks in the in any kind of natural disasters is water damage?
**Colin ** 52:49 Water Damage is the hardest and the most insidious, because once water gets into the house and things get wet, now you have issues of mold to deal with. Once you have mold that can render a structure uninhabitable in a matter of days. As long as things are dry, they can last a very, very long time. But once they get wet, you're in trouble.
**Brooke ** 53:15 Okay, what about the opposite side? Fire damage. We talked about that a little bit. But you know, let's say you had a kitchen fire destroyed the kitchen. Is there anything you can do in the aftermath of a fire that's going to do anything to help you save structures or objects and make the recovery easier?
**Colin ** 53:36 Assuming that the fire was put out with water, you've got the same issue.
**Brooke ** 53:41 That's a really good point! [Laughing] No, I didn't think about that. That's a really good point.
**Colin ** 53:45 Dried back out. If you put the fire out yourself, you probably use a dry chemical fire extinguisher. So you have a giant mess to clean up, but it's not soaking wet. If the Fire Company had to come and put it out with hoses, not only do you have the fire damage, everything you own in that immediate area is now soaking wet and covered with soot and just generally filthy. That was the situation that we had with the friend that I talked about earlier with having the apartment fire, that it was kind of a blessing that it happened in the middle of winter because we were able to just go over there and get everything out of the apartment and throw it in our backyard and it just stayed frozen for a week until we were ready to deal with it.
**Brooke ** 54:32 Ah, right. Because your winters are snowy and icy, not rainy, like here.
**Colin ** 54:35 Yeah, it is generally rainy her. But it just happened to be in the middle of cold snap. So it was in the 20s for the most part, dropping down to single digits for about that entire week. So we just had bags and bags of wet clothing, wet furniture, sitting in the backyard under plastic so they stayed frozen and didn't grow mold. Because once things are wet, you're in trouble. So if it's not frozen, the best thing you can do is get fans on it, keep that air moving, and try to get it dried back out as soon as you can.
**Brooke ** 55:11 That makes sense. I guess I've never thought about this, but it makes sense. The fire department, if they come in and they take a host of things, they don't come back and dry it out for you. Right, you're left to handle that part on your own.
**Colin ** 55:24 You'll have to handle that part. And usually, they have broken windows in the process, because that's how they get the hoses in and that's how they control the flow of the smoke and the fire through the structure, is making holes in walls. Generally, once you have a fire, you also have other structural damage to deal with.
**Brooke ** 55:43 Yeah. Okay. We're kind of get down to our last few minutes. I know there's a lot more that we could talk about and go over with all of this. But I want to make some space here for any other sort of critical things that you really want to talk about, teach and share with this episode.
**Colin ** 56:01 I think we've covered most of the critical things. Again, the biggest one is just keep yourself safe and don't make the situation worse. No matter how bad it seems, take a minute, breathe, look at it, and think. I know, again, other episodes of the podcast, they've talked about the, like the threat onion from the military, which is the same basic idea as the layers of safety that they talk about in industrial design. And all these things say step one is your design and your engineering controls that make it safe. So the good analogy for that is things like antilock brakes in the car. You don't have to do anything for those to work. They're just there. They don't require any thought. Seatbelts and airbags are also great. Seatbelts, you have to remember to use them, and they only help—they only help after the accident has already occurred.
**Brooke ** 57:06 Right.
**Colin ** 57:07 A seatbelt does not prevent an accident. So when you're in a bad situation, look at what you're about to do, think about the situation, figure out which of those engineering safety controls have gone out the window as a result of the disaster. So you had a fire in the kitchen, you've lost your stove, you're gonna have to rely on your little tiny Coleman backpacking stove. That's great, it'll work. But you no longer have that automatic ignition, you're going to have to use lighter to light the stove. You don't have the combustion controls to make sure that the flame has a pilot light, that the pilot light turns off when the gas goes out. So you can have the gas from one of their stoves leaking if you fail to turn the valve off all the way when you're done with it. All these things that are part of normal everyday life that you just don't think about, no longer work the way they're supposed to in a disaster. So just look at what you're doing, and see what you've lost, and figure out how you can get that safety back on your own.
**Brooke ** 58:22 Okay, that is really great. And I am wishing we had more time because I just feel like there's so much more that we could say and get into. But I think this has been a really, really great, you know, just kind of primer and information that would help people get through, you know, the first two or three days after a disaster for sure. So, I really appreciate that you joined us today on the podcast and share this info with us. Is there anything else that you want to plug or promote or share?
**Colin ** 58:56 No, I think that was pretty much it.
**Brooke ** 58:58 Okay, well, thanks again for being here.
**Colin ** 59:00 Thank you very much.
**Brooke ** 59:05 To our listeners. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoy our podcast, please give it a like, drop a comment, or review. Subscribe to us if you haven't already. These things make the algorithms that rule our world offer our show to more people. This podcast is produced by the anarchist publishing collective, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. You can connect with us on Twitter @tangledwild and also on Instagram. Or check out our website at tangledwilderness.org where you can find our extensive lists of projects and publications. This podcast and much of the work of Strangers is made possible by our Patreon supporters. If you want to become a supporter, check out our Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. They are cool benefits various support tiers on Patreon. For instance, if you support the collective at just $5 a month, then we will mail you a monthly zine. Those contain essays, stories, poems, art, all kinds of great stuff. We'd like to give a specific shout out to some of our most supportive Patreon supporters. Thanks to Aly, Paige, Jenipher, Eric, David, Staro, Patoli, Chris, theo, Kirk, Princess Miranda, Milica, Marm, Catgut, Janice & O'Dell, Dana, Carson, Buck, Lord Harken, Nicole, paparouna, Funder, Perceval, BenBen, Mic Aiah, anonymous, S.J., Trixter, Hunter, Chelsea, Julia, Boise Mutual Aid, and as always, Hoss the dog.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Brooke, Margaret, and Inmn talk about the environment, how a Boeing whistle blower died suspiciously, Abbot's newest attempt to make Texas a mini fief, and remember the lives of 3 teens. They also talk about hope and some nice things that happened for a change.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: This Month in the Apocalypse: March 2024
**Margaret ** 00:15 Hello and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff your podcast. . . I did the wrong. . . Did I do the wrong one? Should we keep it?
**Brooke ** 00:23 [All laughing] I love you so much.
**Margaret ** 00:26 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, the other podcast that I'm one of the three hosts of. I'm Margaret killjoy, and with me is
**Brooke ** 00:37 Brooke. Hi.
**Inmn ** 00:38 And Inmn, who can't tell if this was a bit or not,
**Margaret ** 00:41 Let's pretend it was a bit. [Sarcastically] I have functional memory. I'm not on podcast recording number five for the week. I don't know what you're talking about. And this is Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. And welcome back. We've been on a break because we were all a little burned out and we wanted to catch up because we didn't want to. . . We thought through our options, we could either have gone off a weekly schedule, but we're like, "Well, we like having a weekly schedule." So we took a break. And I don't remember whether we told you about that break, but it's over. Don't worry. It'll never. . . It'll totally happen again. And whatever, you like watching TV shows that have season breaks, you can. . . I'm sure you all figured it out. Anyway, it's This Month in the Apocalypse, only this time, we're going to be a little bit messy because it's been a little bit. So it's like this month and a half in the apocalypse. So you get an extra. It's like 1.5 as much apocalypse as usual. Y'all are so lucky. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcast and here's a jingle from another show on the network.
**Brooke ** 01:14 Okay, so it just occurred to me that if we're doing half of March, we're at some point going to have to do half of March. So we're either going to have to have half a month in Apocalypse or do half of March and April, and then there'll be another month and a half. So maybe we should call this 45 Days in the Apocalypse? I'm just saying.
**Margaret ** 02:52 I'll just continue to messily not exactly keep track of "Oh, that happened on this date instead of this state, so it can't come in." But I'm open to it. I can be convinced. So I want to talk about some stuff. One of the things I want to talk about is how I would never say Boeing assassinated a man. But I would say that everyone who pays attention to the following news story comes to the inevitable conclusion that the private company Boeing, which manufactures an awful lot of the planes in this country, has been having a lot of problems lately. A lot of people think they assassinated a man. There was a man named John Barnett. He was a Boeing whistleblower and he was found dead on March 10th. And the news can't say, quote, "he was assassinated." So instead, they're dancing around it, doing things like putting "self-inflicted," in quotes, when they talk about the gunshot wounds that this man had to his head. I honestly. . . like this one, it's like, it's like one of those things where it didn't surprise me, but it still surprised me. I don't know how to describe this. It's a very common feeling these days were something absolutely horrible happens, where you're like, "Oh, of course that happened." But you're still a little bit like, "I can't believe that happened." John Barnett was a quality control manager at a Boeing plant in South Carolina. He worked on the 787 Dreamliners. And he had been pretty upset about a lot of the quality control that was going on. There's been a lot of conversation recently about Boeing and its lack of quality control, because their planes are literally falling apart in the air. And of course, there were two crashes a couple years ago that killed hundreds of people, that had to do with some faulty technology that caused the planes to go into nosedives that the pilots couldn't correct.
**Brooke ** 04:52 And John Oliver just did a longer piece on Boeing too. So that brought it out in conversations.
**Margaret ** 04:57 Yeah, well, and then the main thing that brought it up I think is that in the US it actually happens to US people. So people noticed. An airplane had the plug in the side of the plane blow out. And it was before it had gotten up to cruising altitude and it would have gone a lot worse if it had happened a little bit later. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured and the plane was able to land. And from there, it's just been this cascading thing. I really recommend John Oliver's The Last Week Tonight about Boeing and what's been going on with the planes. Anyway, John Barnett, quality control manager, and he was in Charleston to give a deposition against Boeing because he was suing them for retaliation because of his whistleblowing, and then they were like, "Hey, how come he didn't show up in court?" And so they went to his hotel and they found him dead in his pickup truck, having a quote unquote, "self-inflicted" gunshot wound. He was 62 years old. And rest in peace. And I have yet to meet anyone who has heard this news and not been like, "Yep, Boeing killed a man."
**Brooke ** 06:15 Sure seems like it.
**Inmn ** 06:16 That's what reasonable people would come to the conclusion of because it's what's happened in the past.
**Margaret ** 06:27 And, you know, I mean, there's also. . . Sure there's technically a version of the world where he was like, "I'm just so sad about. . ." No, he was. . .whatever. Anyway, Okay, so then I'm gonna talk about environmental news.
**Brooke ** 06:42 Do that.
**Margaret ** 06:44 Don't worry, it's worse.
**Inmn ** 06:46 Oh, no.
**Margaret ** 06:48 So let's see. This was the warmest February in Earth's history. This is the ninth month in a row that we have been in the warmest of this following month on record. The time we beat this time, for February warmest, was 2016 was the previous warmest month of February in history. And charts are literally being recalibrated to show the excessive heat. If you look at a lot of these charts, the lines from this year don't even touch previous years, you know? Next, there's the warmest winter on record in the United States. This month, the average global sea surface temperature was the highest it's ever been in the recorded history of the Earth for any month at all. The average global sea surface temperature was 69.96 degrees Fahrenheit. And we're very likely to have a very active hurricane season this year in the Atlantic because of the fact that. . . We actually might not have a hotter year this year than last year because the--I get El Nino and La Nina mixed up--but overall we've been--I'm pretty sure it's like El Nino is the thing we've been in and it's the thing that makes it warmer and La Nina cools things down a little bit. And so that's like, cool, right? We're like, "Oh, all right, we could definitely use some cooling things down a little bit." However, people have guessed. . . "Guessed" is the wrong word. Scientists who study this shit have looked and been like--you know, or climatologists have looked--and been like "Well, this slight cooling coming at this particular way that all this heat is working we're very likely to have a very active hurricane season."
**Brooke ** 08:27 Do you know what that starts?
**Brooke ** 08:31 I don't live in a hurricane zone, so I. . . Like I know it's always summer and early fall that it's crazy, active , busy and the worst of it, but I feel like I don't know when that season quote unquote, "starts."
**Margaret ** 08:31 No, I don't.
**Margaret ** 08:43 I can't remember that I don't live in that area anymore. But speaking of seasons not being what they used to be, there was a study that showed that--it's not just in your head--spring is indeed on average 13 days earlier in the United States than it was in 1981 There's a chart up you can look at--the Washington Post actually has a pretty good article about it--that shows, it's kind of a U shape of the country, is having way earlier springs, whereas some parts of the the Upper Midwest are a little bit later springs than usual, although not this year. But--and especially on mountain ranges--Spring is remarkably earlier, which made sense as I was walking my dog today in the middle of March and looking at the flowers blooming and thinking to myself, "Ah, yes, April showers will bring those flowers to me in May." [sardonic]
**Inmn ** 09:42 It's early.
**Margaret ** 09:43 Yeah, so that's not just in your head. It's a thing that's happening. Texas saw an incredibly destructive wildfire in the past month or so. It's the most destructive in Texas history, is the Smoke House Creek Fire. It burned more than a million In acres. And Texas is primed for more fires. That, actually, that fire came earlier than the usual fire season, which is March and April. In the panhandle of Texas there's a lot of basically dry grasses. And there's specifically ways where it's like when it comes out of freezing, it is more primed for these fires--I think the way that the grass breaks or something in the freezing. And so that is part of why the. . . You know, obviously, it's like things are getting warmer on average, but we're also seeing all these crazy weird cold spikes, you know? And this fire killed at least 3600 animals. I believe that it means cows in this case, and the fire was started by power lines. However, it's unlikely to affect your beef prices this year, so don't worry. However, the meat that you will have trouble getting this year for a reasonable price is crawfish. The crawfish population is dropping rapidly in Louisiana, and it's fucking up the harvest like wildly. I actually care more about the ecosystem than the harvest of crawfish, personally. But I also recognize the importance of crawfish to traditional dishes and things like that. And, you know, in Louisiana, a combination of drought heat and saltwater intrusion up the Mississippi followed by a hard freeze has fucked up the harvest enormously. It is an estimated $140 million in losses. And crawfish meat has gone from $3-5 a pound to $10-12 a pound. And a critically endangered fish called the Small-tooth Sawfish has been washing up dead in Florida. And it's funny because it's like 20 or 30 of them have washed up, but this is a very endangered fish. So when one of them shows up, it's a big deal. And scientists are trying to figure it out. And they're ruling out all of these different, you know, bacterial causes. But the sort of fish going crazy and then dying is a thing that is happening. We've talked about more on the show before. I think Inmn talked about it. Almost positive environmental news, there is a plan in place from the Biden administration to limit drilling and cattle grazing on a fuck ton of BLM land. And as part of a plan to save the Greater Sage Grouse, adding restrictions to 67 million acres on drilling, adding drilling restrictions to about 67 million acres across 10 states. And this seems really good. And it is really good. It is. . . What actually happened, Obama passed a law limiting a bunch of drilling, and then Trump was like, "Nah, we don't need that. Drill, baby, drill." That's a slogan from the 80s. And so that got reversed. So Biden is like, "Well, what if I half reversed it?"
**Brooke ** 12:52 So reinstating some of it?
**Margaret ** 12:54 Yeah, bringing back some of it. It's not as strong of a bill as the Biden [meant to say Obama] administration did, which sort of shows the like, constant rightward drift of American politics.
**Brooke ** 13:07 As soon as you said that the Biden administration had passed a bill, I was like, there's a caveat coming into this. I was also like, I wonder if someone else is the President next, are they just going to undo the whole thing?
**Margaret ** 13:20 Well, considering the next president will almost certainly be Trump. I continue to hold by my theory that the next President will be Donald Trump unless Donald Trump or Biden dies a natural death. If any of them die--well, and obviously if Trump dies an unnatural death, he won't be the next either--but if Biden dies an unnatural death then Trump is the next president, and if. . .anyway. Whereas if anyone else runs--this is my theory. Okay. Anyway, so it's sort of actually positive. . . Well, I guess we're gonna save the positive stuff for the end. I'll save this positive thing for the end. That's my environmental news. And the one other thing that I wanted to talk about before I pass it off, is I want to just sort of. . . I suspect that a lot of people already have been following what happened when an anarchist and active duty service personnel person named Aaron Bushnell killed himself by setting himself on fire while saying, "Free Palestine." I think that's something that people are already aware of. And so I don't want to go into it too much. But I just feel like that is a thing that needs to be on our mind that happened on February 25th this year, and, I don't know, "Never let them say that you curse the darkness instead of lighting a candle," Aaron Bushnell. Inmn, what do you got?
**Inmn ** 14:51 Only happy things.
**Margaret ** 14:55 You're lying.
**Inmn ** 14:56 I'm lying. You know, it's like, to kind of put it in perspective. . . I mean, this is a perspective that we and I'm sure all our listeners already have, about just the severity of what is happening in Gaza. And this is not a new thing, but it is a thing that is taking particular note right now in Gaza, we had something that people are calling the Flour Massacre in the last like month or two. And the Flour Massacre occurred when an aid convoy was announced in Gaza City. And so you know, thousands of people showed up to receive food, receive aid, and Israeli forces used it as an opportunity to kill 118 people. Literally just shot into the crowd as people were scrambling to get flour, bread, you know, basic stuff to stay alive. And these are people who have been experiencing very long periods of malnutrition-- because Israel cut off most aid from coming into Gaza--and these are super basic things that are keeping people alive. Since then, there have been another string like this. Like this big one happened and then it's been a repeated tactic by Israel over the last month or two is attacking aid convoys, or using aid convoys as a way to gather and then attack a lot of people all at once, people who think that they're showing up to receive food and instead are getting killed. I think of like, right now, they're like. . . A couple days ago, there was another instance of this where like 20 people were killed, who had shown up to a supply convoy. And like another 150 or so were injured. And to make things worse, I have a story kind of about--well, it's three. It's three stories. It's three very different but similar stories about three teens who died in the last month or so. And the first one is connected to Palestine as well. We have Rami Al Halhouli, who was a 12 year old Palestinian boy who was killed by Israeli border guards in the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem on the third night of Ramadan. Rami was out in the street playing with fireworks with his friends. And they were just shooting fireworks up in the sky and a Israeli border guard--whatever the fuck they're calling them--shot Rami three or four times. And the way that--one of the disturbing things about this is the way that it's being talked about in some media sources--and especially by Israel--is that if you read the Israeli reports, you might imagine a night of rioting, you might imagine a wall of people encroaching upon the border guards--whatever they're called--and you might imagine people throwing Molotov cocktails at lines of soldiers. And you might imagine Rami standing out in front of them shooting a bottle rocket at border guards. This is the media narrative that Israel, and you know, consistently conservative news sources, want people to believe. In actuality, there's video footage leading up to Rami getting shot and it shows like three or four kids playing in a vacant street and next to them, you see, like 100 feet away or something, you see the giant border wall and you see watch towers in the distance. You see a line of parked cars and you see no people in sight. And that is the scene that we have for Rami and his friends playing with fireworks on the third night of Ramadan, and Israeli forces just rolling up and shooting them for playing with fireworks. And so they're. . . It's like. . . They're, you know, there's all these, there's all this media narrative build of "There were riots. There were disturbances--" as they're being called. But there's no, there's no proof of any of that happening. And there's literal video footage showing a few kids playing on a secluded street with fireworks. One of the security Prime Ministers of Israel was then. . . People were following him around being like, "Yeah, what the fuck? Like, what happened?" And he's. . . there's all this video footage of him congratulating the soldiers who shot Rami. And he then like, eventually, he eventually makes a statement, where he condemns the child as a terrorist and praises his soldiers who he's calling warriors for killing a "terrorist." Basically being like, you know, calling for the extermination of an entire people based on this myth of terrorism. And it's just, it's just supremely fucked up. I had a quote prepared for something that this Prime Minister--whose name I can't remember or find and I truly hope is lost to time, and that no one remembers him ever. And I'm not gonna say it because it's just, it's just too fucked up. And we can all kind of imagine what it sounds like. But it reminded me of a similar story from the Southwest United States where in 2012, Lonnie Swartz, a border patrol agent shot Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, who Swartz said threw a rock at him through the border wall. Jose was on the Nogales, Mexico side of the border wall and was just throwing rocks at the like 60 foot wall, you know, and Lonnie Swartz shot at him 30 times through the wall. Swartz was later acquitted of all charges and Jose's family was blocked from suing him.
**Margaret ** 22:56 It's pretty cool that you can just kill people in other countries.
**Inmn ** 23:00 Yeah, yeah, it's pretty. . . I can't even make this joke.
**Margaret ** 23:08 Okay.
**Inmn ** 23:08 So yeah, that is a story of one teen who was killed for playing with fireworks. Next, we're moving back to the United States and I want to talk about Ryan Gainer. Ryan Gainer was a 15 year old black, autistic teen living in Apple Valley California. And, Ryan--this is the report that I've read--Ryan was having a dispute with his family that turned destructive and. . . Because people experiencing different realities, different needs, were having a destructive outburst and a family member called 911 for help because they didn't know what to do for someone having this experience of a very--like a fairly mild thing turning into a destructive outburst. And police, instead of psychiatric services or something, showed up and within 30 seconds of the police showing up, they had shot Ryan three times. The officers say that Ryan, when they found Ryan, Ryan was wielding a garden hoe and the officer ran from him and shot him while running from him or something. And family members who, you know, were immediately, they were like, "Oh my God, wait, you shot my kid?" had maybe been expecting officers to come and--or you know anyone--to come and just like help them calm their son down. And instead the police shot him within 30 seconds of being there.
**Brooke ** 25:20 This is why we don't call the cops. This, among other reasons, but it's a good. . . It's not good reminder. It's a terrible reminder.
**Inmn ** 25:31 Yeah, it is a grim, grim reminder that any one who believes that calling 911 will help someone, especially people experiencing either like a break in reality or just having different communication needs, the police will not help you. And they will most likely harm your loved one. And this is not me throwing any kind of blame on Ryan's family. Yeah, but it is a grim reminder. The last person that I want to talk about is Nex Benedict.
**Brooke ** 26:20 This one hits real hard.
**Inmn ** 26:22 Yeah, it's a hard one. Nex Benedict was a 16 year old nonbinary Choctaw teen living in Owasso, Oklahoma. Nex loved nature, drawing, reading, and inventing new recipes. On February 17th, Nex was involved in a fight at school in a bathroom and Nex was very badly beaten up by three older teens. And, so much so, that Nex had like, you know, raccoon eyes. Meaning like visible contusions around the eyes from head trauma, from having like--I'm actually not going to describe it. And Nex, I believe, went to the hospital after that and then the next day, Nex collapsed at home and was brought to the hospital and pronounced dead. And there's kind of these two waves of media around this. One was right when Nex died, and one was just within the last few days when a medical examiner ruled Nex's death as a suicide because of a like blood toxicology report. And it's like, the way that the media is kind of spinning this is like, "Oh, Nex. . ." Like, people are exacerbating what happened, like "Nex wasn't beaten to death. Nex. . ."
**Margaret ** 28:10 Was just beaten into suicide.
**Inmn ** 28:12 Was just beaten into suicide.
**Margaret ** 28:14 That's totally different and better, somehow. [sarcastically]
**Inmn ** 28:17 Yeah. And that's a lot of the media going around is like it's trying to absolve blame from the people who bullied and beat Nex up so badly that they killed themself. Or, they took a lot of drugs and either meaning to or not, died as a result.
**Brooke ** 28:47 And the lack of care and support. It was after Nex went home and talked to the family that the family took Nex to the hospital. The administration, the school teachers, counselors, looked at what happened and didn't call in medical professionals to help at the school.
**Inmn ** 29:10 Yeah. And it kind of raises this point of like you know, suicide in the queer community that if people are living in such like desperate and violent measures that people are driven to self harm or driven to like any of these things, whether intentional or non intentional death, like that is the fault of society. And yeah, if you bully someone so badly, that they self harm and die as a result, you killed that person.
**Brooke ** 29:51 Yeah. And I don't know why I found this particular detail so disturbing, but I read that it was three teenage girls that had beat Nex in the bathroom. And I don't know why the fact that it was girls that, you know, caused this that was so. . .It was just like an extra layer for me. You know? Like, I guess I did not expect, but when you talk about bullies and physical violence--maybe it's just from my own childhood or life experience--you expect that to come more from men, boys. Like they're the ones trained to have more physical altercations. So the fact that it was three girls was just, I don't know, it's extra weird to me.
**Inmn ** 30:43 Yeah, this one hit especially hard for me and just being someone who was like, you know. . .Like, I didn't know I was queer when I was a teen, but it seems pretty obvious now. And like the things that I was heavily bullied for were things that, looking back, I'm like, "Oh, yes, I was bullied because I was queer. Like, this is pretty, pretty obvious to me." And it's like, the amount of stress that you can experience from like, the daily reminder and like daily fear of being bullied is horrifying.
**Brooke ** 31:23 And yeah, well, you know, there's someone else out there who's a real big bully and has a lot of power. . .
**Inmn ** 31:31 Before we segue, I just want to wrap this into like, that these are, these are three very different and very similar stories at the same time of teens who were killed for being Palestinian, for being autistic, for being queer. And like, they all happened in the same month. And I don't know. I think. . . Obviously, these are systemic problems and systemic and individual and personal problems in our society of like people, not knowing how to. . . not knowing how to and being aggressive towards these identities. And I don't know. That's just bad. And some more bad things. So, I've been talking on the show for a little bit now about how Abbott has kind of turned Texas into like a little mini fief via these like. . . like testing of power with the power of the Texas governor and the power of the federal government. And in the newest series of that, we have Texas, SB4. Texas SB4 is a law that was passed last year, which would allow Texas law enforcement to detain, arrest, and prosecute suspected migrants. And this is in. . . so if this seems like what normally happens, the difference between this and what normally happens is that Border Patrol is the agency that arrests people. And this would allow any Texas law enforcement to detain suspected migrants, arrest them, and prosecute them under Texas law, not under federal law.
**Inmn ** 33:15 This is like, you know, you can stop every brown person and check their papers law, right?
**Inmn ** 33:47 Yeah. Or, sort of. Yeah,
**Margaret ** 33:51 Well the, "suspected migrant" I assumed, made it specifically around some racial indicators.
**Inmn ** 33:57 Yes, yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it's that one. And the sentences that people could have from it, for the first time, it would be a misdemeanor, and you could get six months. And for repeated prosecutions, it would be a felony carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years. And this is what's interesting is like, this is the exact same sentence sentencing procedure for Operation Streamline, which is the court that does this at a federal level. So it's like, it is the same sentencing that already exists. This would just grant Texas the power to do it as a State rather than at a federal level. And it is specifically aimed at circumventing asylum procedure. Yeah, so that people who are presenting for asylum can just be arrested by Texas law enforcement and prosecuted for illegal entry instead of going into asylum proceedings, and that is one of the bigger deals about this bill. And it is a bill that passed, but the Supreme Court has put a pause on it. And that pause has been recently increased until like March 18th, or something. But it seems like the Supreme Court is probably going to shut this law down.
**Margaret ** 35:28 You all listeners know, and we don't know.
**Inmn ** 35:32 Yeah, yeah. And another legislation aimed at migrants and people seeking asylum, the Castle Doctrine in Arizona is trying to be expanded. And this is around like, you know, home defense with HB 2843. And this bill would expand the Castle Doctrine to not only include the use of lethal force to protect your home--someone from trying to break into your home--but for merely trespassing on the land that you own.
**Margaret ** 36:13 Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah.
**Inmn ** 36:16 It doesn't suspend any need for there to be the presentation of fear of your life, you know. It just kind of expands the area. And it's like, caused this thing, which I think is really indicative of politics right now, which is politicians bickering with each other over like, I don't know how to say it, like schoolyard antics, where, the Republicans are like, "Democrats are blowing this out of proportion. And they're spreading misinformation that this law means that anyone can just shoot anyone for trespassing on their land. And that's going to get...that's going to get good people prosecuted for murder, because Democrats are spreading misinformation about the harm of this bill."
**Margaret ** 37:10 Oh, okay, because they're like. . . I have a feeling that no good person will shoot someone just for being on their property. I have to admit that like, I mean, I'm a gun rights supporter, right? And, overall, like the concept of Castle Doctrine, I'm not inherently opposed to Stand Your Ground laws and all those things. Like, obviously, they're used, like every law, in horrible, racist and classist ways. But I am like, you know, if someone...if I'm out walking my dog on my property, and someone's like. . . Well, I guess like, it's so weird, right? Because then it's like, well, what's the difference? Because if I'm walking my dog anywhere, and someone pulls a gun on me and tries to kill me, I'm allowed to shoot, unless it's his property or something, I guess. I am allowed to defend myself, right, from the threat of lethal force. And like, I guess it's like. . .No, it's just interesting. Because people shouldn't be able to shoot people just for being on their property. And same as you shouldn't be able to shoot someone just for taking your TV. But there's also like...it's fairly understandable that someone breaking into your house, in the middle of the night, can be perceived as a threat to your life. To me, the problem here is not the gun rights of the house owner. To me, the problem is the systemic poverty that has led someone to a life of stealing TVs, you know, and I don't know, I need to learn more about this one. And I'm sure it's being used in horrible ways and stuff, but. . . I don't know.
**Inmn ** 38:48 Yeah. Because it's like, it's just an expansion of protecting people who are defending themselves, you know, right? And it's like, in the goodest sense, in the goodest situation, it protects people. But the intent that it's being crafted for, is to provide more protection for ranchers and farmers to shoot migrants for trespassing on their property.
**Margaret ** 39:20 Yeah, yeah, I see what you're seeing.
**Inmn ** 39:22 That is the intent with which the bill is being explored.
**Margaret ** 39:26 No, I believe you. Yeah, that makes sense.
**Inmn ** 39:30 Yeah. That's...that's all I've got.
**Margaret ** 39:36 Well, that means it's time for good news. Good news with Brooke
**Brooke ** 39:43 Are you two ready for some good news? Ready to cleanse our palates and feel joy again?
**Margaret ** 39:49 I'm sure I'll come up with some way where the good news is not actually all that good.
**Brooke ** 39:53 Whatever, you're our Pollyanna. Madam positivity. Margaret, we look to you for hope.
**Margaret ** 40:04 Yeah. Okay, what do you got?
**Brooke ** 40:06 Alright, good things that have happened. Okay, so in February, the country of Greece legalized same sex marriage,
**Margaret ** 40:17 And they invented democracy. [Sarcastically]
**Brooke ** 40:20 That's right. By a pretty good margin as well, much more than two thirds majority. So that's cool. That's wonderful. And then, kind of related, although, wow, maybe it's not, but it's like related in my mind, because, you know, leftist stuff. France became the first country in the world to put abortion rights into its constitution.
**Margaret ** 40:52 Okay, so they probably did it because they looked over across the ocean, and we're like, "Oh, God, we should probably enshrine this."
**Brooke ** 41:04 Right, which it's been legal in the country since the 70s. But they, you know, putting it into their constitution is the thing, but yeah, first, and I mean, you know, France has written and rewritten their constitution more than once.
**Margaret ** 41:20 They're pretty prone to revolution, traditionally,
**Brooke ** 41:23 Right? And like, willing to fucking edit the Constitution, like "What we can do that?"
**Inmn ** 41:29 Wait, you can decide that something wasn't a great idea and then change it? You're not beholden to things that happened. . .
**Margaret ** 41:37 I hate defending the US legal system, but we have amendments. We have a system for this. It's happened. How dare you put me in a position of defending the US government.
**Brooke ** 41:55 But we act as a society like it doesn't happen. Like that's what we do.
**Margaret ** 41:59 It's true. And there's that word like necrocracy, like ruled by the dead. And, and what's funny is you're like, "Ah, ha, ha, that's like a fantasy thing." We're a necrocracy, like, we're ruled by laws made by dead people every single day. The Constitution was written by people who have been dead for a very long time.
**Brooke ** 42:22 Okay, I see you trying to ruin this good news, but you're not going to do it, Margaret. No, no.
**Margaret ** 42:29 I have nothing negative to say about them enshrining abortion in their constitution. Great.
**Brooke ** 42:34 That's great. So all the rest of the world, let's go ahead and follow suit there. Thanks, as a woman and a queer. Good news coming out of Europe. Another bill that France is working on passed half of its legislative body, and they're working on trying to curb fast fashion. Which I don't know if y'all are familiar with fast fashion. Right. So yeah, you know, basically, that's what it sounds like. It's very wasteful and polluting. And the slightly sad part about it is that France is looking at doing this, so working on it, because they want to protect their high fashion industries from the influences of the fast fashion world. But as a fashion leader, the choices that they're making here are, you know, have impacts on the fashion world in general. And it's, you know, it's an important statement to make too, and is ultimately good for the environment. If they can move that forward and slow that trend. That's good. Yeah. So always look on. . . [singing]
**Margaret ** 43:46 No, so that is actually the perfect song to sing. And that's because that song is most famously sung by people who have nails through their hands attached to boards of wood and are going to die. At the end of the Life of Brian, when they're all being crucified, they sing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life." This is not a visual medium, but the face that Inmn is making right now is truly for the history books.
**Inmn ** 44:13 I've never seen Life of Brian so I was like, "What the fuck are they talking about?"
**Margaret ** 44:19 Yeah, like one of the other crucified people is like, you know, "Just got to kind of think about it, just think about different ways," which is really just cognitive behavioral therapy in a nutshell, you know?
**Brooke ** 44:29 Find that YouTube clip of that. It'll be the really highest bright side at the end of this episode.
**Margaret ** 44:37 Alright, anything else?
**Brooke ** 44:39 Yeah. Two more happy things in the world.
**Margaret ** 44:42 And then I got something to stick on at the end too.
**Brooke ** 44:44 Yeah, you do. Okay, Japan has a program for child care support that has existed for a while and prioritizes, currently, the children of working parents, but starting in April, they're expanding that program to a large portion of the country for childcare access for all, basically, kids that are between six months and two years having free childcare options available. It's limited in the number of hours that people can get with free childcare. But it is open to working and non-working parents. And the long term goal is to, over the next couple of years, actually roll that out to the whole country. And long term, also expand the number of hours that people can access that. So as a parent who formerly had a small child and knows what a nightmare child care is, I am very happy to hear that they're working on this. Thank you. Thank you, Japan for that program and for where you're going with it. And in broader news, just an overall fun note about millennial parents, specifically dads, millennial dads doing a better job than previous generations, in many ways, like changing more diapers than ever before, taking more paternity leave. . .
**Margaret ** 46:13 Doing the dishes without being explicitly asked to. That's a really major one, right?
**Brooke ** 46:19 I don't know about that. I was reading about parenting, but hey, that's also...that's great. That's wonderful. And of course the, you know, the highest portion of stay at home male parents in modern history amongst millennial parents. So, millennial dads, thanks for stepping up and doing a good job. Yay, families.
**Margaret ** 46:50 Okay. So, Elon Musk has this Gigafactory in Berlin. I'm going with something positive here.
**Brooke ** 46:58 I know, but then you say, "Elon Musk!" No, but then.
**Margaret ** 47:01 But bad things are about to happen to him.
**Inmn ** 47:03 Yeah, it's a cool thing.
**Brooke ** 47:04 Speaking of bad dads.
**Margaret ** 47:08 Well, he's not amillennial. But he acts like. . .No, he doesn't.
**Brooke ** 47:12 But his partners are.
**Margaret ** 47:14 Yeah, that's true. Okay, so, Elon Musk has this Gigafactory five kilometers outside of Berlin in a forest. And it is for building Tesla's, and people don't like it. And it builds most of the Tesla's...or more Tesla's than anywhere else in Europe. And people don't like it for a lot of reasons. One, Elon Musk is at war against labor unions in Europe and keeps running across that Europe actually has some decent labor union culture built into it right. And on March 5th, the entire Gigafactory was shut down for several days by an arson that targeted its electrical grid substation. Basically, someone burned an electrical pylon that connected it to the grid. The arson was claimed by the eco-anarchists group, Vulkangruppe, or volcano group, which has been doing eco-sabotage attacks since 2011. And their statement said, "Our fire stands against the lie of the green automobile. And it's funny because like most of the news articles are like, "Well, that must be confusing because the automobile that's green is the green one. It's painted green. It has lithium batteries. Don't pay attention to where the lithium batteries come from." But people in Europe, more than in the US, there's obviously still a culture of cars there, but more people are kind of aware of that, like, actually, you can get around with trains and stuff really well. And that the idea of greening the automobile in the way that we'll all get around is by having these individual multi-ton machines that take us places is not what's gonna lead us into the future. Well, it is, but it's gonna lead us into the bad future. But if we were imagining a good future, it would not be built around cars. Whether or not it would have cars is a totally separate question, but it would not be built around it. So this stopped work for several days, this fire, but also the next morning the stock price of Tesla dropped 4.5%, which is an awful lot of financial damage. Elon Musk himself flew out there and then made snarky comments on Twitter about things like "Oh, they are clearly mistaken because actually I care about the environment." And also there's an occupation in the nearby forest that the Gigafactory is set to expand into and you can read an interview with those people on Crimethinc.com. If you go there you'll find a discussion around the Gigafactory and resistance to it. And I also just want to kind of shout out that in the United States, or anyone listening to this, my default advice to people. . . When my friends are like "I don't really know what to do with my life right now." Like, my default advice isn't: go back and try and get another degree or a degree at all. My advice is go to the forest and join a forest defense camp, because eco-defense when you do--I'm not talking about volcano group stuff, I am talking about going and joining like thee sets and stuff--you join a community that needs volunteers and you join a community where you become empowered to make decisions and advance a thing as part of a collective process. And, and it's kind of an all-consuming thing. It's actually hard to dabble in sometimes, right? Because often people just go and live there. And there are a bunch of different action camps that I couldn't immediately come up with, in the 10 minutes that it occurred to me right before we recorded that I should do this particular shout out, that are happening across the US at any given time.
**Brooke ** 50:40 There's one in Alabama.
**Margaret ** 50:45 And there's also a lot of resistance to the Mountain Valley Pipeline, the MVP. And a lot of people are doing really amazing blockades where people are climbing into the pipelines. Inmn's laughing. Did I get something wrong?
**Inmn ** 50:57 No, sorry. Just MVP. Most Valuable. . .Pipeline. Sorry.
**Margaret ** 51:03 No, that's okay. The other day on a different podcast, I said MVP, and then I was like, I think kids these days say, "GOAT", but then I didn't say that in the podcast. That would be embarrassing to say a "kids these days thing," so I don't worry. I didn't. Totally didn't say it now. Anyway. Okay. So my other big piece of good news is something that I've been watching happen, and was like thinking, oh, I think this is happening. And then I read a news article that was like, "Yes, this is happening." Prepper culture has reached a tipping point. Like we did it, y'all. Like not us three. But like, everyone listening. We did it. Prepper culture is no longer an overwhelmingly right-wing phenomenon. There's a an article from Routers. Routers? From the news. Writers. [Pronouncing it differently] Reuters. And it says that the number of preppers has doubled since 2017. People who self-identify this way are up to about 20 million people in the United States. And much of that growth is coming from marginalized communities and progressives and leftists. And so there's like, you know, it's obviously not like, "Oh, hooray, everyone who's listening. And if you're marginalized, you can go to the prepper thing, and no one is going to be weird." Like, I can't promise you that, right. But I can promise you that there are other people who are experiencing similar marginalization or have similar values as you. And for example, the subreddit, R/preppers. . . So Reddit is not like, where I immediately think, like, oh, everyone here is gonna be like, really not weird. But that subreddit, it's great. I mean, it's not totally lined up with everything I specifically believe and, you know, whatever. But it talks extensively about community preparedness. And it often kind of makes fun of the people who are like, "I can't wait to have my bunker full of beans and bullets," or whatever, you know. And so that's my favorite, final little good thing is that, compared to where this podcast started--as I say, three years ago, but it's been four years, I just lost track of time--I wouldn't have expected that to happen. And it is happening and the number of people who have bags and are like. . . You know, like my whole big thing is that, if you're just starting, you should have a go bag, you should have about a five gallon container of water, depending how many people you live with, you get about about a bucket of food that lasts a really long time, and then slowly kind of build out your pantry a little. The number of people who do that basic stuff has just gone up so much. And it makes such a massive difference. Okay, I have one more. It's the Margaret rants time of the podcast, apparently. I've been watching what's happening in a lot of places that are in more immediate crises like Gaza, right? I mean, think about all the journalists who have been killed. There's, you know, more journalists killed in Gaza than all of World War II, or whatever the fuck that statistic is, right. And you reach the point where you're like, you could just go through your whole life and be like, I'm a doctor and learned all these doctor skills, but then you don't even have a chance to use it. Because if the crisis kills 80%...or 20% of the people that you're around, it could kill you. And then you're like, "Oh, I spent all this time getting prepared. And then I died. So what good does that do?" Right? And that's when I realized, individual preparedness almost isn't good for the individual. The thing that individual preparedness is good for is [stress on "is"] community preparedness. Because, you know, a lot of people they're like, "Well, I don't want to get prepared because if I fill my house full of beans and bullets, and then the world ends and I'm alone, I don't really care and that sucks and I don't really want to go on anyway." Or, you know, "Oh, well, I'm just gonna die when the nuclear blast hits," or whatever it is, right? But when we think to ourselves, "I am part of a community, so me having basic medical skills means that if everyone is doing that, everyone is individually prepping, and I am hurt, someone around me is going to have basic medical skills. And so by getting myself individually prepared...I don't know, I don't quite know how to frame all of this yet. But this is this kind of epiphany where I've been like, "Oh, this is why individual preparedness doesn't make sense to people, is because it's not good for the individual." So if you're hating on individual preparedness, it's because you're secretly being individualistic. And the best thing that you can do for the community is get your shit together. And that's, that's my final rant for the month.
**Inmn ** 55:50 Okay. Do you want to hear a really cool little story about some people who got their shit together and prepared their community?
**Margaret ** 55:59 They built a house out of brick instead of straw. But they didn't let their friends get eaten by the Big Bad Wolf, because they actually hung out in the brick house because they're like, "Yo, wolves coming, and the guy wasn't like, "Well, you gotta stay in the fucking house that's made out..." Oh, you're telling a story and I'm ranting. Go ahead.
**Inmn ** 56:15 I loved it. Proverbial tale. So I couldn't. . . So I challenged everyone to come up with a good thing, because I think we should be talking about cool things that happened too, instead of all the doom and gloom, and then I failed to find a cool thing that happened over the last month. Not because a cool thing didn't happen but because I just couldn't find something that spoke to me. But I did come across this little blurb about this really amazing group that I didn't know about, and it feels very, very relevant to stuff we talk about on the show. Y'all ever heard of the Chrysanthemum Flower? Like the group? Not the flower.
**Margaret ** 57:02 Wait, it sounds familiar. But no, let's just go with no.
**Inmn ** 57:07 So the Chrysanthemum Flower was a secret feminist organization in Palestine that resisted Israeli occupation in Jaffa before the 1948 Nakba. The organization was started as a community mutual aid group, which was formed by two sisters, Mohiba and Nariman Khusid. And what they did was they started this secret feminist organization whose goal was to organize their community. They bought weapons and relief supplies for their community. It transformed into an armed organization, when Mohiba watched a child get killed by a British sniper, and she's quoted as saying, "That day I returned home and decided to take revenge." Nariman, at one point, led an attack at night where after, you know, a lot male squadrons were like, "No, don't go do this attack." She was like, "We're going to do this fucking attack." And she led an attack where they rolled up on this Israeli Zionist force squadron and she shot the commander, killed him with one shot, and then the entire squadron just threw down their weapons and surrendered to this group of armed women. It's so fucking cool. They, the Chrysanthemum Flower, defended Jaffa when it was being invaded. And the group unfortunately ended when the city fell and the ethnic cleansing of that part of Palestine began. Mohiba was literally driven to the sea. But she eventually escaped to Egypt, where she settled and returned to teaching. And she died of natural causes in 2000. And yeah, a shout out to the Chrysanthemum Flower for preparing their community for devastation. And yeah, I don't know, everyone go out and do that.
**Margaret ** 59:26 Yeah, or whatever. And shout "Wolverines!" while you do it, because the real Red Dawn was the Nakba.
**Margaret ** 59:41 Well, that about does it for This Month in the Apocalypse. Catch us next month when we talk about. . . the apocalypse. And in the meantime, catch us every week where we talk about how to live with the apocalypse with all of our usual content. And if you want to support this Podcast, you can do it by supporting Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which is our publisher. We put out a bunch of different stuff, including a bunch of other podcasts, including a podcast called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. It comes out once a month and includes our featured zine that we've put up on our Patreon. As well as The Spectacle. it used to be called Anarcho Geek Power Hour, but then people were like, "But The Spectacle is better." And then it changed because that's the kind of. . . because we didn't have to amend our constitution to do it. You like that callback? And if you like nerd stuff and dislike the Constabulary, then it's possible that The Spectacle is for you. And you can support us on Patreon. You can support us on patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. We pay our transcribers and we pay our audio engineers. And we all hold out the long held dream of getting paid as hosts. But we're not there yet. But, your support makes so much possible. And if you don't have any money to support us there, just don't. That's fine. Just keep listening to our shit. Tell people about it. Or don't. Do whatever you want. But in particular, we would like to thank Amber, Ephemeral, and Appalachian Liberation Library. Portland's Hedron Hackerspace, Boldfield, E, Patolli, Eric, Buck, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, Ben Ben, Anonymous, Funder, Janice & Odell, Aly, paparouna, Milica. Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, S.J., Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Mic Aiah, and the immortal, the deity, Hoss the dog. That's it and hope you all are doing as well as you can with everything that's happening.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This time on This Month in the Apocalypse, Brooke and Inmn talk about volcanoes, fires in Chile, rivers in the sky, storms of new magnitudes, the war in Ukraine, the ICJ ruling on Israel's genocide, how the immigration bill is confusing and bad, God's Army descending on Eagle's Pass, and how charitable bail funds are under attack. Live Like the World is Dying will be taking a break until sometime in March! Stay tuned!
Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Ben and Brooke talk about communication systems during a disaster. They cover basic communication infrastructure and equipment as well as what kind of information is vital to be able to communicate when cell phone towers go down. They also cover just how awesome amateur radio is.
Ben Kuo (he/him) is an amateur radio operator. Ben can be found on Mastodon @ai6yrr@m.ai6yr.org
Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Ben on Communicating After a Disaster
**Brooke ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm Brooke Jackson, your host for this episode. Today I'll be talking with Ben about communication and sharing information after disasters. But first, we'd like to celebrate being a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts by playing a little jingle from one of the other podcasts on the network. Jingle, Jingle jingle goes here.
**The Ex-Worker Podcast ** 00:45 The border is not just a wall. It's not just a line on a map. It's a power structure, a system of control. The border does not divide one world from another. There is only one world and the border is tearing it apart. The Ex-Worker Podcast presents "No Wall They Can Build: a guide to borders and migration across North America" A serialized audio book in 11 chapters released every Wednesday. tune in at crimethinc.com/podcast.
**Brooke ** 01:29 And we're back. Ben, thank you so much for joining us today to talk about communication and information sharing after a disaster. We'd love to know a little bit more about you if you're willing to share your pronouns and where you hail from and anything else that you want to say to introduce yourself?
**Ben ** 01:49 Sure. My name is Ben Kuo, and I am in Ventura County, California. My pronouns are he and him. And my background in disasters is I have been very involved in responding to disasters, providing information on social media, and making sure that people, you know, get the information they need to stay safe and stay healthy and help other people.
**Brooke ** 02:17 Nice. Was this something that you got into because of a disaster that happened? Or was it something you were interested in before...before it became useful in this context? If that makes sense?
**Ben ** 02:28 It's interesting. I really got involved in this in 20--I believe it's 2018--when Hurricane Maria hit, and hurricane Maria was a category five hurricane, and I am...one of my hobbies--and I have many hobbies-- but one of them is amateur radio. And for folks who have never heard of amateur radio, what it is, is a hobby where you learn how to use the radio and to communicate with people. And that is locally, you know, with people in your area, that is internationally. And you can talk to people all across the globe using just a radio, a power supply, a battery, and an antenna without any of the world being up. So that's no internet, no telephone, no power supply, no power grid. And you can communicate with people all over the world. And it's fun. And I started because it was a lot of fun. But it ends up being very, very, very useful nowadays with the increasing pace of disasters. And so I became an amateur radio operator partially because of the emergency aspect of it. There's a big community around it. But also just because it's a lot of fun for the technology and playing with the technology. So the big story of how I got into the disaster is Hurricane Maria was bearing down on the Caribbean. And it is...I don't know if you've seen the trend in recent years but hurricanes have been spinning up much faster and much more intensely. And it's called rapid intensification. And because of that you don't have quite the warning that you used to with hurricanes. And so people go, "Oh, we can watch this. And we can react." or "Oh, it's gonna be coming in a week." And that's not happening as much anymore. So what happens is someone says, "Hey, it's a tropical storm. We don't have to worry too much." And all of a sudden, it goes from a tropical storm to category five hurricane. This actually happened only a few months ago in Mexico. A tropical storm, everyone says, "Oh, it's just going to be a tropical storm." Even the expert of the National Weather Service said, "Oh, it's just gonna be a tropical storm." And it went from a tropical storm to category five hurricane. And it totally decimated a resort area in Mexico.
**Brooke ** 05:16 I had no idea. And it's interesting because I feel like I seem to hear about them going the other direction so often. Like, oh, there's a hurricane off the coast and it, you know--especially on our coast here on the West Coast--and then it dissipates into, you know, just a tropical storm or what have you. So I wasn't aware that we're seeing an increase of them going from tropical storm to hurricane. That's really interesting.
**Ben ** 05:40 Yeah, I think the scientists say, you know, it's an outgrowth of warmer oceans and with the climate crisis and all that, you have more energy. So it hits a warm spot in the ocean and all sudden, you know, it becomes quite crazy. So how I got involved is--I was not involved very much with emergencies and disasters, until hurricane Maria--and I was, you know, monitoring things here and there. And I learned that amateur radio was the only way to get to the...there's a little island nation called Dominica, it's not affiliated with any large country. It's kind of its own country. And they were cut off from the world by hurricane Maria. So they had, I guess they lost 90% of the roofs. They lost...they had no power system. They lost their telephones. And interestingly enough, everyone thought they were okay, because they didn't hear any messages from Dominica. They were like, "Oh, category five, it should be fine." And no one called for help. [Brooke exclaims incredulity] I got on--the amateur radio operators had already been active. There's an active Amateur Radio Group on the island. And I stumbled upon them and discovered they were in big trouble. And they were just begging for help. And so I stumbled in here--I'm all the way in California--and using the magic of amateur radio was actually talking to these folks in the Caribbean. And actually also using the internet kind of to bridge some of the parts of it. It's interesting, all the technology aspects. But the important thing ended up being that they were in a lot of trouble. There's no one to help, and they just needed to get information about what was going on. And I started relaying information to the amateur radio operators there in the region on what was going on, what help was on the way or not on the way. In the meantime, they actually had...the amatory operators actually arranged a rescue of the Prime Minister of the country. And that's like, you know, rescuing the President of the United States. Yeah, they rescued the president of Dominica, the Prime Minister. And they had...they were laying information back and forth like, "Oh, we need this. There's a problem here. People here need dialysis. How can we get help from these people? These people are trapped." At one point, I relayed information from them about someone who had been...who was able to--I guess there's limited cell phone coverage within the country--where they were able to tell somebody else that they were stuck underneath the house. And that got relayed by amateur radio operators out of the country, and I got it and it went back into the country elsewhere. And I rescued somebody. And in fact, I ended up relaying information from the US Embassy. And they actually were sending in...they actually sent in an entire warship, the USS Wasp. It's an amphibious carrier. And they were airlifting US citizens out of the country. And they would actually go in and, you know, drop people off and pull them out of the, you know, whatever vacation villa they're staying at and have them evacuate. It was a big operation. No one...no one really heard about it here. But that was kind of my introduction to the fact that amateur radio was very, very useful in really, you know, like a worst case scenario. And I learned a lot of lessons there, for sure, about how to deal with it. And eventually after Hurricane Maria hit Dominica, it actually hit Puerto Rico.
**Brooke ** 09:37 What year was this by the way?
**Ben ** 09:39 It was September of 2017. And it first hit Dominica, but then the hurricane curved up and it hit Puerto Rico. And I was involved in that. There's a huge...Puerto Rico also had no communications. And the only communications was amateur radio for a good two days I believe. And I was really relaying information back and forth there. And how this ties into social media is I was collecting all this information, relaying it back and forth. And I said, "Hey, I'm listening to all this, I can see what's going on and I might as well post it up on Twitter." And I did that. And I also put up a YouTube stream of all the radio communications that were happening....
**Brooke ** 10:25 Back when Twitter was good and useful and we loved it.
**Ben ** 10:29 Yeah, back when it was a cause for good as opposed to what it is now.
**Brooke ** 10:33 Sorry, go on. Mourning the loss of Twitter.
**Ben ** 10:38 Yeah, exactly. It's actually quite a thing. So interesting...that would have been it for me. I was going to delete my account. But shortly after that, there was a fire in my own county. And it's actually between Ventura and Santa Barbara County, the Thomas fire. And I said, "Oh, I've got a social media account." And one of the things about amateur radio is you learn how to listen to what's on the radio. And not...this is not broadcast radio. But this is police and fire channels, official agencies, people talking back and forth about what's going on the ground on the scanners. And I was relaying what I heard there. And my followers went from, I think, you know, a few thousand to, you know, 50,000 people because information was so useful to know. So, you know, if you think about what you see on network TV, you'll see the same, you know, Hillside burning the whole newscast, no context. Where is it? What's going on? And when you listen to the Police and Fire Radio, you can say, "Hey, I know that that is in this neighborhood. The fire is moving in this direction. We need to get people out and to safety." And, "Oh, hey, we heard that there's an evacuation here." And it takes...it takes, you know, a couple hours sometimes for the firefighters on the ground to say, "We need to evacuate this neighborhood," to actually, you know, you getting that on your phone or the press picking up on it. So that's kind of how I got into the disasters. And, you know, it kind of has kept on going because, as I mentioned, you know, I think the pace of disasters has increased. I think they just saw...there's just a report this week that said we had the largest amount of billion dollar disasters in the US in 2023 on record.
**Brooke ** 12:40 Wow. Like the largest total dollar value amount or like the largest number of disasters?
**Ben ** 12:48 Yes. Total dollar amount.Yeah, and so, you know, it's just an ongoing, increasing need in the world.
**Brooke ** 12:55 Alright, interesting. So I want to talk about what we can do to prepare before a disaster but I think it would help if we talk about, really quickly, what you lose communication wise in the beginning of a disaster because I think that's going to help make it clear why you need to prepare, if that makes sense.
**Ben ** 13:16 Yeah, you know, I mentioned, you know, we are so used to having a smartphone with us. We have a phone with us all the time. It is our way of getting information. It's our way of communicating with people. We text people back and forth. We may use Snapchat or Instagram or whatever your social media is. And people don't realize how much we rely on that today. And what happens during a disaster is the first thing that goes down is the cell phone network, right? Your cell phone network goes down. The cell towers only have so much battery before they fail. And then all of a sudden you don't have a way to say "Hey, is my you know Aunt Marge, okay or not?" right? It's, "What's going on? Where should I go? What should I do? Where can I go?" This was brought home really.... A really terrible example of how we are depending on this and what goes wrong when it fails is Lahaina Hawaii.
**Brooke ** 14:22 And I don't know if you listened to it, we released, just a couple weeks ago as we're recording this, I did an episode about Lahaina and kind of reviewing what happened and where they are right now.
**Ben ** 14:39 Yeah, and so you're familiar with the fact that, you know, the warnings went out too late. And then the cell towers went down. So no one knew what was going on. And so you were down to, I believe there's a video of some guy without a shirt, you know, bicycling down the street yelling at people to get out. You know, that is your early warning system because your phones don't work. And, you know, if the cell phone network goes down, you know, that cell phone that you're holding is, you know, as good as a rock. You could throw it at something I guess, but it's not going to do much good.
**Brooke ** 15:20 Yep. Yep. That's right.
**Ben ** 15:22 Yeah. And, you know, I don't think most people think about how much we depend on communications for all the things we do, especially in a safety situation, you know. Should I be evacuating? Where's the disaster? Where's help? Where should I not be going? That is all information that when you lose communications, you've lost, and it can be fatal. So that's why, you know, as much as people often say, "Hey, well, you know why are you doing this amateur radio stuff? You know, we have cell phones now. We have the internet. Why do we need this, you know, old fashioned stuff?" It's not really old fashioned. But, you know, that is the struggle that I often have with people thinking about disasters. And the other problem that we have is--and not obviously listeners of your podcast--but we live in a world where everyone thinks that it will never happen to them. And people don't want to prepare. They say, "Hey, I, you know, this is never going to happen to me. I don't want to think about bad things." And if you don't do that, then you're in a much worse spot when it does happen.
**Brooke ** 16:33 For sure, for sure. Okay, so when it happens, you know, we lose...we lose our phones. That's one of the biggest things and basically all of the ways that we're used to communicating. So what do we do before a disaster to get ready for that scenario? What kind of things do we need to have on hand or need to know how to do? Please teach me?
**Ben ** 16:57 Yeah, so. So some basic things you should do is have an alternate communication plan, or at very least someplace you can meet people. So say you don't have, you know, a radio or anything like that, you say "Hey, if we have a disaster, here's the plan," right? "This is where we go if there's a fire or a flood or whatever it is. What are we going to do?" Okay, and that doesn't require you to have communications. It just means you have to pre-plan what you're doing. But, you know, the first level up--and this, you know, there's kind of levels of how much you want to invest in communications--but, you know, you can buy off the shelf radios at sporting goods stores, which, you know, they're called FRS radios or GMRS radios.
**Brooke ** 17:47 Is that a special radio then? Or is it like the old school radios we grew up with?
**Ben ** 17:50 Yeah, so it's different. So, a lot of people are familiar with CB radio. And that's an old technology. And people still use it. But it's not really used a lot for this kind of thing, mainly because it doesn't have very long range. You can't go very far. But FRS and GMRS radios do have a little bit of range. And in radio, the key is something called line of sight, which is how far you can see. So if you are standing on top of a mountain, you can talk a very long distance. If you are in the bottom of the valley then you're not going to get very far. And so most of those handheld radios that you can buy don't require a license, you just have to pay your money and get them. You know, their range is probably--they say 20 miles--but really, practically, it's about two--five miles. And those are great for your family group. Or if you've got a group of folks that are in your neighborhood and you want to communicate then that is kind of the first step and you have now.... Now, you can say instead of all of sudden everyone's lost their phones, no one knows what's going on, everyone can turn their radio on--as long as it keeps it charged and knows how to use it--they can go "Hey, Jill, you're down the street. How are you? You know, are you okay?" "Oh, yeah, we're okay. You know, there's an earthquake. Oh, yeah. Everyone's okay. We're outside, right." So, you know, that's something that's very easy to do. It's off the shelf there. They're actually sold in blister packs at the sporting goods store. And it's a level one. It's like, oh, do you have a plan to at least communicate with your family and people in your neighborhood?
**Brooke ** 19:40 Okay, that sounds so much like walkie talkies that we had as a kid but like a higher end farther distance thing.
**Ben ** 19:48 Essentially, it is a walkie talkie. And that is what they are and, you know, they sell them as kids toys, but it's a first level of basic communications that you may want to consider, especially for your family. It's like, even if you look at some of the...if you see people fleeing from fires and from disasters, you know, see these videos of people, they can't talk to someone else in another car when your cell phone network goes down. And you can with a little walkie talkie. So that's, you know, you may have two people, one person in one car, another person in another car, and you can at least talk and say, "Hey, you know, this is what we're doing. This is where we're going."
**Brooke ** 20:26 Do those--I'm getting into the weeds here but I'm just so curious to those--like, if you buy a set from the store and somebody else buys a set from the store, I'm assuming those must like cross traffic with each other?
**Ben ** 20:41 Yeah, as long as you buy the ones that are licensed in the US. It's called FRS and GMRS. radios. GMRS actually requires a license, which is I think it's $25 for 10 years. But no one's checking on those. It's kind of the Wild West. I would advise getting a license, but they saw them everywhere. And a lot of people don't.
**Brooke ** 21:04 Okay, so if you get those planning to use them to communicate with loved ones and neighbors you may have other people using theirs that you'll have cross cross talk.
**Ben ** 21:16 Yeah, for sure. For sure. And those are the same frequencies that, you know, the kids down the street. So you'll turn it on and go, "Oh, there's little kids playing cops and robbers." They are shared frequencies. Yeah, so your next level up is--and I advocate for this because I am an amateur radio operator--is to actually get a license. And in all the countries around the world, you can get an entry level, amateur radio license and you can use a lot more frequencies and much better gear even at a very basic level. And in the US, there's, I think it's a 25-30 question test. And all the answers are pre published. So you can actually go and, you know, cram for this thing and get it in a week if you're...if you so desire. And so that actually can get you much, much farther. And so in the US it's called a technician license and you can actually.... With those, I've talked to someone 50 miles away direct. So that is, you know, nothing in between. And there's also things that are called repeaters that sit on top of hills, and you can talk to people hundreds and hundreds of miles away because they're all linked together. And there's actually...and there's an interesting tradition among the amateur radio community, which is they have groups that work on doing communications and they focus on, you know, those kind of bands on VHF, UHF, those things are all local. So you have a group of people.... In our area, they actually have people, you know, you're on a list, and they say, "Hey, who's on the list?" They're all licensed. And this is licensing in the US by the FCC. And they actually check to say, "Who's here? Who's not?" And it's a practice, right, to see whether or not. So it's a good thing to do, at least in our area. And I'm in California. It is, you know, men and women and kids and that sort of...anyone who can get a license, and, um, it's definitely something to think about.
**Brooke ** 23:46 Okay, so anything else kind of on that part of things you can do before the disaster to help get ready with communication and information sharing?
**Ben ** 23:58 Yeah, so the, you know, the other thing to do is I found that you need to know who is out there in the community that you are going to communicate with. And I think too many people do not think about it. You need to know who you're talking to and whether you trust them or not, and have your resources lined up. And I saw this in hurricane Maria where people were asking for help, but no one had ever met the folks, didn't know them, didn't trust them. And so, it was a very different thing, right? You're.... When you're talking to someone, communicating with someone, you need to have a pre-existing relationship with them. And, you know, I think in this world, you know, you're asking for some kind of mutual aid but you kind of want to have an idea of who it is or what group it is or do you trust them or not? And it's good to have that stuff kind of thought of, to, you know, think of think of that stuff beforehand, right? Who are the resources In our area if we had a disaster? Hey, you know, the folks in the next city, we've got to...you know, we're okay here. Do we need to bring some of them in? Do they have, you know, the resources? And would they help us if there's a problem? There's a lot of stuff that needs to be, you know, thought about, which is beyond the communication but more the organization.
**Brooke ** 25:20 Yeah. Is it devastating if you haven't built out those networks yet prior to?
**Ben ** 25:26 It's not. It's just hard. I think it's just harder.
**Brooke ** 25:29 Yeah. Makes sense. Alright. Other things to prepare before your disaster hits?
**Ben ** 25:38 Yeah, the other piece of it that I run across is because the communications folks tend to be very good at communications if they don't cover the basics, right? So you need to think about all the basic disaster stuff first, before the communications, which is, "Hey, do I have the basic food and water kind of things? Have I got, you know, all the safety stuff for myself, my family. And, you know, for yourself first, before you even think about, "Oh, do I even have a way to communicate?"
**Brooke ** 26:10 Yeah, okay. That makes sense.
**Ben ** 26:13 You're not useful in that role of communicating if you, yourself are no longer able to help. You know what I mean.
**Brooke ** 26:25 Alright, okay. Alright, shall we move into talking about, you know, you're in the aftermath of a disaster and you need to communicate and share information?
**Ben ** 26:36 Yeah, yeah. So, you know, the things that happen after a disaster is people are looking for ways to get information to family and friends. And the number one thing I find is people either have to ask for help, because there's a medical issue or they need to be rescued or something like that, or the other big thing is people...I don't think people understand how much people miss knowing what's going on. Right? So if there's a disaster, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people who go all sudden, "Hey, is my grandmother okay? Is my grandfather okay? Is my friend okay? What's going on?" right? And it is.... A lot of times people say, "Hey, if I call somebody in such and such an area, maybe they can go find, you know, whoever is missing, or whatever, or something like that, right? So this...we saw this during the Lahaina, right? There's people, you know, thousands of relatives going, "Oh no, I know somebody in Lahaina. Are they okay?" And the lessons I've learned from so many disasters is there's no way to get information into a disaster zone. Not very efficiently.
**Brooke ** 27:55 That's a really good point.
**Ben ** 27:56 Yeah, so information can come out of a disaster zone, but it doesn't go into a disaster. And so, if you...so for example, if you're an amateur radio operator, generally, you could get a message out saying, you know, "Help me. I've got a problem." Or you can say, "Hey, I'm okay. Let someone know that I'm okay." If you are just someone with a smartphone, and no communications, you are just out of luck, unless you can find someone who can lay that information. And there's a lot of these systems, and I hate to...I hate to criticize some of the nonprofits that exist in the world for these things, but they have "Oh, hey, check in safety." It's like, they say, "Yo, check in on Facebook that you're okay." It's like, well, you have no way to get on Facebook. There's no internet, there's no power. How are you supposed to do that, right? Yeah, and even even the case, there's a system by a big aid organization that has a red symbol and it says, "Oh, it's a safe and well if you need to know someone's okay." And two things. One is, if you try to ask for someone's information, they say, 'What was their phone number and their last address?" And you go, "Well, how am I supposed to know that? You know, I just know that they're in this town," and whatever. There's a lot of stuff like that that's like, "Oh, do you have their social security numbers?" It's like "No, I don't have their social security." So there's a lot of stuff in the way of that. And it's a lot easier, and I found all these disasters, if someone's able to get out themselves. So like I said, the amateur radio operators can relay information to other people. So if you've got a neighbor who's an amateur radio operator, they can go "Oh, hey, I'm gonna call somebody up." This happened actually after--famously after Katrina--Katrina. Hurricane Katrina took down took down communications and there was a lot of communication out by people relaying information to other amateur radio operators they knew. So they said, "Hey, you know, this is where the Smith family is. We're at this street. Can you let somebody know at our family that we're okay." And they would pass on a phone number to call or someone to text or something like that. I did that a lot in Puerto Rico. So a lot of people who are in Puerto Rico, they have family somewhere else, they have no way to tell them that they're okay and they really don't need anything, but people are worried, right? Imagine your family is in the middle of a hurricane or something like that, or wildfire, and how do you let people know you're okay.
**Brooke ** 30:45 Yeah, that makes sense. With the amateur radio networks and whatnot, you know, I know you just mentioned a few times about how you can relay information through those. And I'm curious if they're sort of existing networks of communication at all. I mean, obviously, there are folks that know each other. But do you guys have any kind of, I don't know, pre existing.... Like, do you already know where some of your people that you talk to live? Like if you had to get information to, I don't know, Montana--random example.
**Ben ** 31:27 Yeah, there's an established network to do that. I have my own opinions on how effective it is or not, but they do have a.... It's actually one of the reasons amateur radio exists in the US. It was very early in the 1900s when there were disasters, radio was the only way to get out information. And so they actually started doing that back in the days of Morse code, believe it or not, when they were relaying it. And that's part of the reason why the hobby has such a strong tradition in the communications and emergency area. And so, you know, I mentioned I was doing a lot of stuff online about, you know, wildfires and hurricanes on Twitter and what's going on. And a lot of what I do and have done is stuff that the hobby, as a whole, has been doing since its beginnings.
**Brooke ** 32:22 I didn't think about how deep those roots are. But that's kind of cool to think about going all the way back to, you know, using Morse code to relay the information.
**Ben ** 32:32 Yeah, well, in fact, you know, if you think about it, you know, everyone knows SOS in Morse code, right? Did, did, did. Dot, dot, dot [making noises like someone speaking in Morse code] All that came from--an amateur radio started around the same time as all that kind of communication was going on, you know, like the Titanic or whatever else like that. So, that is, you know, a long standing tradition. And before the internet, before we had phone networks, we had radio networks. So that's kind of the long tradition there.
**Brooke ** 33:06 Yeah, that makes sense. So you said you have some opinions about the efficacy of the system of relay that they have now and it sounds like maybe you're not entirely happy with the way that works. I'm curious to know what you think there are and why? So, you know, if there's a limitation that we need to understand.
**Ben ** 33:29 Yeah. So they have a very regimented way of sending messages. And they try to pass messages...they try to do it the old fashioned way, which is you get a message, you know, here and then you pass it. Say I want to send something to Boston. Well, they may send it to somewhere in between. And then it goes through the neighborhood and then eventually, at some point, it gets there. And nowadays, I think it's more effective to just get out of your disaster zone and get the message there. And so, you know, for me, what happens is during the hurricane issues that I had, trying to use that network didn't work because I said, "Hey, I just need...I have a real disaster here. This is not pretend. This is not a simulation. I have people who need to know that their family's okay." I had a text on my phone from people--it was actually relayed from a boat after a hurricane--saying, you know, "We're docked here. We are okay. We just want to let someone know. And so this is the boat name. This is our location. And here's the neighborhood. Here's our relative. We need to let them know that we're okay. They don't need to send the Coast Guard." and trying to send that through a network which is used to passing it by hand, it's like can someone just call them? Like, we don't need to do this. It's great practice. But when it comes to a real disaster, why are we doing all this stuff when we can just call them up? The first person who's on a cell phone network can call them up and say, "Your relatives are okay."
**Brooke ** 35:04 That's a good point. And, you know, the children's game of telephone that you're practically doing with passing it from one place to the next place to the next, you know, is not ideal, as we all know, for many reasons.
**Ben ** 35:22 And I think that's their legacy is they don't use it as much as they ought to. And maybe they're using it more now with the disasters we have. But there's a lot of experts in the world who've never applied their knowledge. I find that also the case in just disaster preparedness in general. You have a lot of people who are disaster preparedness experts and they've never had to deal with a disaster. And the worst is that people sometimes they'll say, "Hey, you're a prepper. Blah, blah, blah," and I go, "No, the preppers don't have any concept of actually reacting to a real problem." The pandemic was the big one that I saw. All these folks who said, "Hey, watch out for the zombie apocalypse, we need to, you know, stock our homes with guns and MREs." And then when there's an actual, you know, pandemic, they go, "We're not wearing masks. We aren't gonna get vaccinated." You're going, "Oh, my gosh," you know? So there's, you know, there was a miss, a complete miss, because they're just not...you know, they call themselves one thing, but they don't have...they didn't have the experience or the right mindset going into it.
**Brooke ** 36:40 So I'm curious about the types of information that we need to share. You know, we talked about after a disaster, you know, being able to relay that, you know, this person is okay, you know, finding so-called missing or unknown people and figuring out what's going on with them. But what else...like what other kinds of things do people need to relay that this network could be useful for after a disaster?
**Ben ** 37:08 Yeah, help. Help is number one. So life threatening information. So if somebody is trapped or needs help, medical help. And, obviously, you have to know where to get it to. But in most cases, if you can get that information to the authorities, somebody is going to come and help you. And they just need to know it, right? So your local fire department, right? Or, maybe it's a search and rescue team or something like that. You need to be able to get that information to them. And so that's definitely a big one with communications. I don't know if you've ever seen that 911 systems go down in the US all too often.
**Brooke ** 37:53 I have heard.
**Ben ** 37:54 And if you don't have 911, you have to be able to call for help, right? And so we haven't seen that a ton where people have used radio to do that. But it is one thing. So if our 911 system here goes down, I know that I can call somebody else who can get to, you know, fire and rescue or whatever it is. So, help for sure. And the other part of it, the communications, is for your community, is helping out in the community, is knowing more situational--it's something called situational awareness--what's going on? Where are the issues? What's happening? And, you know, that's not just for you to communicate. It's another thing to listen. So, you know, the nice thing about radio is you can both listen and also communicate. And being able to listen to know what's going on is a huge piece of it. So you'll find that even if you're not somebody who's on the air communicating after a disaster, you can at least listen and hear what's going on and know what to watch out for. Like, hey the freeways shut down, so don't go that way. Or, you know, the fire is in this area. Or, you know, in hurricanes, hey, you know, this is where the aid center is, or whatever it is, or this is where someone's distributing food, you know? So there's all that information. It is really helpful as a part of a disaster plan is how do you know what's going on and where things are happening. In the amateur radio community, which is something that everyone should do, you know, they actually share information. So there's people all around town and they go, "Hey, no one said this on the news. There's no information about this. But you guys can't go there. The bridge is down."
**Brooke ** 39:42 That makes sense. So, escape route, maybe for lack of a better word, but just like, you know, communicating infrastructure issues. That's really interesting. Other things that you can think of that are, you know, types of information that people need that can be useful in sharing, if any? If not, that's okay.
**Ben ** 40:09 Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I think it's the general awareness. And this is a tool, you know, the radio stuff I talk about is just a tool for what's going on. And, what I'm sharing on social media, it's not just the radio stuff, although it's a big part of it, but it's things like, you know, where do you get information about evacuation zones, right? Where is--during fires we can see maps of where the fires are. You can look up... You can look up evacuation centers. You can get maps of flooded areas. There's a lot of information sources. And I think on the communication side, even if you're not cut off, there's a lot of things that just letting people know about--and that's what I do--is what is this situation? Where are the issues? What's going on? I mean, today, I've been sending out messages about flooding. And I don't know if you know, but there's huge waves off the coast of California right now. And they're parts of Santa Cruz, there's parts of the Pacific Coast Highway that are underwater because of these big waves. And just knowing about that stuff is useful in that general awareness. And this whole area of communications, you know, the situational awareness is something that in disasters, you know, it really does make a difference. And I've had people say, "Hey, you know, we knew, because you were paying attention to what's going on with the fire, that we needed to get...we needed to take our horses and get them evacuated," And it takes a while to evacuate horses, right? And, "Oh, our house, we knew that our house was in a threat area. We needed to get...we needed to get our aunt, you know, to safety." And it's just that time, that information, you know, you don't want to be the last person to know that something's happening in your neighborhood. And this whole part of the aspect of listening to the radio helps with that in just the general situational awareness.
**Brooke ** 42:11 There's, you know, kind of a component after the radio, because not everyone's going to have the radio, you know, if then, you know, if you are the one who gets the information via the radio, then how you go out and disseminate it. But that's maybe kind of another topic, unless you want to get into it. But, you know, do you put up posters? Like, you know, letting other people know, "Oh, I found out that such and such bridge is down. How do I communicate that to folks that don't have a radio? How do we spread that wider?
**Ben ** 42:41 Yeah. And that...I don't think we've solved that problem in general, you know, just how do you get the information faster. I, you know, I talk about the rate just because that puts you on the knowing side of things versus the not-knowing side of things. And it's just...it's just one of those things in disasters, having that awareness--even if you can't communicate out--knowing what's going on gives you an advantage to you know, safety and health and all that. It is really helpful.
**Brooke ** 43:12 Yeah, okay, I've got one last question for you, I think. I think, unless something sparks in my brain here. But is this useful in all types of disasters, natural disasters, emergencies, whatnot? Or are there ones that this tool would not be useful or effective for?
**Ben ** 43:34 Yeah, that's a good question. Um, I think it's actually useful in most cases. It's very used during hurricanes. It's used a lot during wildfires. It is used a lot in earthquakes. Most of the folks that I know who are licensed here in my area, who are older than me, are, were licensed because of the Northridge earthquake. They all said, "Hey, we..." you know, the typical problem was, "Oh, I was at work. And my wife was one place and my kids were somewhere else and we could not communicate." And they said, "How do we fix that problem?" And so they said, "We're gonna get licensed as an amateur radio operator." And so earthquakes are a huge driver in California. But I think in general, I found it useful in all sorts of situations, whether it's an emergency. So yeah, and even interesting enough--and maybe it's more of a social thing, because there's a social group built in--but even with the pandemic, we we had a group who started out on the radio. And it's...maybe you could have done this on Zoom or on the phone, but there's a bunch of folks on radio who started talking every day. And you knew what's going on and you were able to trade information. Even today, now I go, "Oh, hey, there's a big outbreak of COVID," because, you know, three of the people on the net--we call them net like, it's like a round table or networ and people check in--and someone goes, "Oh, you know what, our whole family just caught COVID." And you go, "Oh, you know, I haven't heard that for a while. So maybe something's going on." You know? It is interesting. It's just another way of getting information about what's going on. And it gives you a little bit of a network. And that network also operates.... You know, the nice thing about what we do is that operates when all the power goes. In California, they've been shutting down power during high-wind events. And that often takes down cell towers. They're supposed to.... They've got some laws in now and they're supposed to put them back up, but it's not there yet. And so they shut things down. No one knows what's going on. They hop on the radio, they go, "Hey, I got a blackout here. What's going on?" Somebody who's outside of the blackout looks it up and says, "Hey, they shut down your whole part of town because of the wind danger," or whatever it is. So, it is useful.
**Brooke ** 45:57 Yeah. And going back to our Lahaina example, that's a thing that would have been helpful in preventing some of those fires, if they had shut down power lines with what was coming in. And that is, unfortunately, because of the age of our power system and the lack of maintenance we've done on a lot of our infrastructure. Shutting off the power is one of the things that power companies are doing more often as a safety measure.
**Ben ** 46:29 Yeah. And you know, some of that is...is liability, because of the number of fires that have happened and all that. And some of it, interestingly enough--and this is a climate issue--is some of that damage is just happening much more often than it used to. And, you know, some of the things I didn't talk about, but, you know, part of what we do as amateur operators is you don't just have the radio, but you also have to consider how am I going to charge it? How am I going to do that? Do I have a battery bank that works? Do I have a solar panel? There's a lot that goes into that, you know? It's kind of a general resiliency thing, which is...is very relevant in that case, right? Your power goes out and your cell phone tower is now down, how do you know what's going on? Most likely, somebody who's an amateur radio operator has a battery-backed up radio and knows what's going on. Because you know, and it doesn't matter. I can talk to Brazil when none of my neighborhood has power just for fun because it's there and running.
**Brooke ** 47:42 Yeah. And before anybody asks me about it, I am not trying to say that the power company shutting down the power is a good thing or a bad thing, only observing that it is a thing that is happening and it has benefits and costs to it.
**Ben ** 47:59 Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And it makes sense. I mean, most of the...many wildfires here have been caused by power lines. So, you know, the converse thing is when they shut down the power the, you know, like I said, the cell phone tower doesn't work anymore. And that's what happened in Lahaina, the power stopped working and you lost the cell phone towers and then all of a sudden you're in trouble.
**Brooke ** 48:21 Yep, yep. Alright, I think that brings us to a conclusion on this topic for today. So Ben, I want to thank you so much for reaching out and offering to have this conversation with us and making the time to sit with me and talk about it. I have learned some things today and I'm excited about that. Is there anything else that you would like to say? Anything that you would like to plug, social medias, charity groups, anything like that?
**Ben ** 48:51 Yep. So um, I am nowadays on Mastodon. So if you want to follow my disaster emergencies and random musings on life, I am ai6yrr@m.ai6yr.org. So that's my...that's actually my callsign, my radio callsign, ai6yrr@m.ai6yrr.org. And, you know, as much as I talked about the disaster part of the hobby is there's a lot of fun stuff too. We can talk to astronauts in space. We have our own satellites. There's all sorts of science stuff you can do. And it is really quite a...it's not just for disasters and emergencies. It just happens to be a useful part of it.
**Brooke ** 49:43 Well, thanks for putting that in. I appreciate it. You can also find me on Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke, that's Brooke with an E. And Ben again, I just really want to thank you for coming on today and talking with us. Yeah,
**Ben ** 50:00 Hopefully someone learned something. So thanks a lot.
**Brooke ** 50:06 And to our listeners, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoy our podcast, please give it a like, drop a comment, or review. Subscribe to us if you haven't already. These things make the algorithms that rule our world offer a show to more people. This podcast is produced by the anarchist publishing collective Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. You can connect with us on Twitter @Tangled_Wild and also on Instagram. Or check out our website at tangledwilderness.org where you can find our extensive list of projects and publications. This podcast and much of the work of Strangers is made possible by our Patreon supporters. If you want to become a supporter, check out patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. There are cool benefits at various support tiers on Patreon. For instance, if you support the collective at just $10 a month, we will mail you a monthly zine. We'd like to give a specific shout out to some of our most supportive Patreon supporters. Thanks to Aly, anonymous BenBen, Boise Mutual Aid, Buck, Carson, Catgut, Chelsea, Chris, Dana, David, Eric, Funder, Hunter, Janice & O'dell, Jenipher, Julia, Kirk, Lord Harken, Marm, Mic Aiah, Milica, Nicole, Paige, paparouna, Patoli, Perceval, Princess Miranda, S.J., Staro, theo, Trixter, and Hoss the Dog.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Zena and Brooke talk about parenting.
Zena Sharman (she/her), PhD is a writer and consultant whose body of work pivots around the questions “How do we create change?” and “How do we care for each other?” She’s the author of three books, including The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021) and the Lambda Literary award-winning anthology The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016). Her next book, a memoir, is forthcoming from Arsenal Pulp Press in 2025. She’s an engaging speaker who regularly gives virtual and in-person talks and workshops to audiences across North America. You can learn more about Zena and her work at https://zenasharman.com/
Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Zena on Parenting
**Brooke ** 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Brooke Jackson, and today I have with me Zena Sharman, and we're going to talk about collective parenting. But before we get that, we want to celebrate being a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts by giving a little shout out to one of the other wonderful podcasts on our network. Insert jingle here!
**Brooke ** 01:31 And we're back. Zena, thanks for being on the podcast with me today to talk about collective parenting. I'm really excited to discuss this topic more with you. But first, let's, I want—I want to get to know you a little more. Let the listeners get to know you a little bit more. So, would you introduce yourself? Tell me name, preferred pronouns, other things you want to share?
**Zena ** 01:54 Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for the invitation to be here. I'm a really big fan of the podcast and hopefully will have some useful things to share with the community of listeners. So I'm Zena Sharman, I use she/her pronouns, and you can find me on unseeded Cowichan territories—so colonially known as Vancouver Island up in Canada. And I come into our conversation as a queer femme. I'm in my mid 40s, which feels salient to how I'm moving through the world as a parent, and I am a parent to three kids. And I'm raising them collectively with three other queer people. And outside of the work that I do—the care work that I do as a parent, I am also our writer, I have done a lot of queer and trans health advocacy and systems change work over the years, and then have a growing practice in my communities as a death doula and a hospice volunteer. So thinking about many facets of how do we care for one another?
**Brooke ** 02:51 That's really great. We recently did an episode with a death doula and talked about a little bit of that subject. But—
**Zena ** 03:00 You know I listened to that one.
**Brooke ** 03:03 I'm glad. But we're gonna talk about the other end of the life spectrum, and the the little ones, and how we care for them. So you mentioned that you collectively parent, and of course I've mentioned that that's our subject for today. So I'm curious what that phrase means to you, how you define it, and what it looks like in practice.
**Zena ** 03:29 I think practice is the operative word, in the sense that I'm definitely not coming into this conversation as someone who claims any kind of expertise or definitive take on how to do this. And what I can say is I'm coming into the conversation sharing some of the things I've learned, and I'm still in a process of learning now, having been in this experience for more than five years, almost six years. So I wouldn't say that I use collective parenting necessarily, kind of, consciously in my day to day life. And I do think it's actually a really nice way to describe what it is that I do. And I mean, I think if I had to give the most distilled down definition, collective parenting would be parenting together, including with more than two parents are multiple kinds of caregivers and whatever that family or caregiving formation looks like. And I think it's useful to think about how there are many ways in which different kinds of ways of taking care of children are collective. Though there's definitely variation in maybe the shape or intensity of the collectivity kind of inherent in that. And I mentioned that because I think about the ways that family structures continue to change, right, like if we think about the dominant norm of the nuclear family, which is such a structuring shape in the context of settler colonialism, in the context of the ways in which the state seeks to legislate family. Yet many kinds of communities are creating family in different kinds of ways, you know, even down to kids with multiple parents because of having blended families, you know, maybe with divorce, for example.
**Brooke ** 05:01 Right.
**Zena ** 05:01 So I think it's useful to think about that bigger picture piece, but also think about like, what does it mean to make an intentional choice to parent together outside of the nuclear family form? And that's the particular kind of collective parenting that I'm practicing.
**Brooke ** 05:18 Very interesting. Did you—I'm really curious, did you start doing that when your your first child joined the family? Or is that something you discovered, sort of after they, you know, after you became a parent?
**Zena ** 05:34 Yeah, it started even before that, actually.
**Brooke ** 05:36 Okay, cool.
**Zena ** 05:38 I'll give you that the micro genesis of our family. So many years ago—so our—I should maybe you kind of bring us into the present for a moment and say that there's four adults in our family, there's three kids. So we have a five year old and we have 20 month old twins. We're busy. And among the adults, we have two romantic couples who are coparenting together, we all live together in one big house, and at the core of that, as well is a platonic coparenting dyad. So two of my coparents many years ago, as friends, said you know, we keep dating people who don't want to have kids, but we really want to have kids. What if we committed to co parenting together as friends? You know, we're queers. We do what we want. And so that I think was really cool origin story was them basically saying, look, we know we want to become parents, we don't want to have to wait to find, you know, quote, unquote, like the one, you know, the romantic partner who is going to be your like perfect coparent. And then eventually, you know, my other coparent, like, dated her way into this family system. And then I kind of laugh because my agenesis was actually initially, like, what was very much supposed to be a casual hookup with my now-partner. So I hooked up my way into this family. And the process of becoming a parent, you know, it took longer than that. But actually, by the time my partner and I really very first got together, they were already in the process of trying to become pregnant, and were already committed to coparenting with these other two folks. And so, as our relationship became more serious, as they were still in that ongoing process of trying to become pregnant, you know, then I became essentially folded into this family through a lot of conversation between us. So it started on purpose before our first child was born. So that's where we've been at this for nearly six years. So that's where it is—an everyday practice in my life, and one that I'm still learning from.
**Brooke ** 07:42 That's a really great origin story. I love that so much.
**Zena ** 07:47 Yeah, like it wasn't—it wasn't through any kind of, you know, there's different kinds of apps I think now that some people are using to find coparents. This was definitely born thorugh the classic queer practice of hooking up.
**Brooke ** 07:59 [Laughing] Yeah, well, as a as a polyamorous person who is very—I purposely call myself slut positive, because that word to me is a compliment that I use about myself—I can identify, especially being part of a polyamorous community and watching the fluid dynamics of so many of those relationships, and that do sometimes lead to coparenting situations. Which is I think—not to say that you have to be, of course, polyamorous or even queer, to do collective parenting at all. It's just interesting how that ends up intersecting a lot of the time, it seems like.
**Zena ** 08:38 Yeah, I mean, I think certainly something that I think about in the context of our family system is, like, what are the lineages were part of. And for me there is that aspect of, by parenting in this way, we are connected to lineages of queerness, you know, thinking about historical movements for gay liberation, for children's liberation, you know, and that there are these really interesting kind of entanglements and histories that I think, you know, feel important for me to be able to lean into, like, as a queer person doing it in this way. But I think also recognizing that these kinds of family formations exist in so many historical and cultural and geographic contexts, you know, and that, you know, they're very deeply tied into particular kinds of communities. You know, thinking about many Indigenous communities, for example, or Black communities and all of these different ways of practicing forming family, and what does it look like to actually be in a conscious or intentional practice of pushing against the kind of narrow family forms that the state—and again, through processes of settler colonialism and white supremacy—tries to impose, often violently, you know, on particular communities and particularly in people and families.
**Brooke ** 09:50 Yeah, I was gonna say, as an Indigenous woman, you know, that was a rich part of our history, you know, before colonialism came along was the more collective parenting and, you know, grandparents, if they were still around, were always very involved in taking care of children—and not just their, you know, biological grandchildren, but the children in the tribe. So that collectivism was there for a long time and was—it worked very well. And it was a very healthy and functioned for the better of the community. So it's unfortunate, for many reasons, that we don't have that now. And really inspiring and uplifting that folks like yourself are putting that into deliberate practice and helping teach others about, you know, collective parenting and ways to do that, because I think it, it does strengthen our communities and, you know, helps us all as individuals, and parents, as well, you know. As a single mother now, it's nice when I've had friends, or when family lived nearby that I could have more shoulders to lean on. Anyway, we can get into more of that. It's just, uh, yeah, I'm just really touched by that.
**Zena ** 11:15 Well, and it feels like an important point of connection for me as someone who is the only child of a single mother, you know, and I think so much about how the image of parenting I had growing up, you know, was certainly of seeing a mother parenting in a lot of isolation because of the really important survival-driven choices my mother made around purposely moving us away from her family of origin as a way to break cycles of intergenerational trauma—which was really necessary for our survival, and also was something that did cause different kinds of severing from kinship, right? And so I think a lot about, like, what does it mean to be parenting the way that I am now? And how is that teaching me really important lessons, and simultaneously allowing me to do a lot of unlearning, I think, about maybe narratives of independence or isolation that I think I internalized really deeply as a young person. And that, I think for many years, gave me the idea that I couldn't want—couldn't becme and didn't want to be a parent because it felt overwhelming to contemplate the idea of doing it on my own or doing with a single person, a partner. And it was really only through this family formation that I realized, oh wait, you can do this. And I know—I now know, of course, it's so possible, but those possibilities hadn't been modeled for me until my late 30s, was how I came into this.
**Brooke ** 12:37 Wow.
**Zena ** 12:38 Yeah. And I wonder too, I know that, given I think particularly the focus of this show, I wonder if it would be helpful for me to talk a little bit more about maybe some of the practicalities or structural aspects of our collective parenting, because I think it's—I think it's maybe sometimes useful to sort of turn it inside out a little bit. And the specific things I'm thinking about are, so domestically, you know, we are a family that, we live in a house together, we share our resources and financially share all of our resources on a sliding scale basis that shifts according to what any person's income is at a given time. So there's, I think that experience of, like, what does it mean to be dwelling together. But we also have different parenting roles. So we have to lead parents, you know, those platonic coparents at the center.
**Brooke ** 13:30 Ah, okay.
**Zena ** 13:30 And then to vice parents, so me and my other coparents. So we kind of made up our own name.
**Brooke ** 13:35 Yeah, I like it.
**Zena ** 13:36 I think that that maybe is useful to talk about, too, because I like the idea that parenting—or parent—isn't a monolith. Like, it also gets to be something where there's that opportunity to really think about, okay well, what does this look like in practice. And I mean, in our family what that's looked like is the lead parents are the people who, you know, individually, each were pregnant and carried our kids, they nursed them, you know, we're really fortunate to be in Canada where more people have access to extended parental leave from work. So they were ones that took longer periods of leave to care for our children when they were really young. And they also, I would say, kind of carry a heavier, heavier mental load of parenting, you know, which is I think a big part of the work of parenting is just—
**Brooke ** 14:20 Yes!
**Zena ** 14:21 —holding it all in your head. And for me, as an early morning person and recovering Insomniac, I'm also grateful that I don't do nights in the same way that the lead parents do. So that's a real win for me and I think can also be, you know, for some people, you know, thinking about parenting through the lens of accessibility, like, what possibilities might collective parenting create in terms of thinking about, like, how can we each show up as parents in ways where we can both meet the needs of the family system and have our needs met? And as vice parents, you know, we're very, very actively involved in the everyday work of parenting, you know, getting the kids ready for school, making lunches, giving baths, taking them to school and daycare, putting them to bed at night, all of those kinds of things—particularly because of living together and having three small kids. But I think it's useful maybe to think about some of those practicalities, and I'm happy to answer questions if there are specific things you're curious about.
**Brooke ** 15:18 Yeah. When you when you say vice parents, you know, I just inherently hear a word that makes me think there's a hierarchy to it. But then, of course, what you just said, there's, you're very actively involved in all these other aspects of their life. So I am quite curious about whether there is any sort of hierarchical structure in your collective parenting situation. And also noting—this is a very random question, I'm sorry—but, you know, sometimes when you fill out school forms for a kid, there has to be like the medical decision maker who they contact and, you know, gives permission if there's an emergency. There's some of that kind of stuff, which isn't necessarily hierarchical, but it is like, you almost have to decide, okay, whose name is gonna go on, you know, this part of the form. So, that's a two or three part question, if you want to try and tackle that.
**Zena ** 16:17 I like it. I feel like it's an inherently polyamory-inflected question. Like, is there a relationship hierarchy? And I would say, you know, yes and no, in the sense of the hierarchical nature, like, one of the things I think is really interesting in the context of our family system is to see how attachment operates. And like—
**Brooke ** 16:35 Oh, yeah.
**Zena ** 16:36 Our kids are all attached to all of us. And it is true that the children in our family, at this time anyways—and they're all pretty little still—have particularly strong attachments to the parent who birthed and nursed them, right, and was their primary caregiver through the first year of life. So I think that's an aspect of it. And I think we run very democratically in terms of how we show up in our family and how we make decisions together. And there's also the both explicit and implicit understanding that, by virtue of the roles that we have, we get to participate in different ways. I would say, for me, as a vice parent, the way that I would describe it is maybe I have a little more freedom and flexibility to tap in and out of parenting, which is helpful for me as someone who has a full time job, a writing practice, you know, thinking about the other ways that I'm spreading my time and attention across all of the things that I do. So I think that's a—that's a piece. And one of the things that I think is a really crucial, honestly, tool for our family is we have a weekly schedule, and every weekend we sit down and have a meeting called Week In Review. And we look at the schedule for the week and we say, okay, who's doing bedtime for which kid? Who's doing school drop off? Who's doing daycare drop off? Who's doing daycare pickup? Who's doing school pickup? Who's cooking dinner? What are you cooking dinner? Who has a massage appointment? Who has a volunteer shift? When is our friend coming to visit?
**Brooke ** 18:04 You do that every week, once a week? Wow.
**Zena ** 18:05 Yeah, and it takes like half an hour, you know, because we—we're so practiced at it, right? It's very straightforward, because we also have places where we try to have a regular cadence of, you know, this is the bedtime rhythm we work with, this is the school drop off and pickup rhythm, that kind of thing. And it creates predictability for the kids to which is helpful for them. But I also find it—it takes, I think, maybe the decision fatigue out of having to do it on an everyday basis—
**Brooke ** 18:32 Yes.
**Zena ** 18:32 Because we just have it mapped out for the week.
**Brooke ** 18:34 Oh, yeah sure.
**Zena ** 18:35 And then—and then we flow and flex, of course, as things come up. So—
**Brooke ** 18:39 Are there—
**Zena ** 18:40 Yeah?
**Brooke ** 18:41 Are there—are there defaults at all in the schedule? Like so-and-so usually is able to do Tuesdays and, you know, person Q is able to do Wednesdays, or anything like that, that you can kind of start from a place of predictability, or—because it almost sounds like every week you're reinventing—not reinventing the wheel, but like, figuring out who goes into all the slots. But I'm hoping—I'm guessing that there's a little more that's maybe already built in normally that you can work from.
**Zena ** 19:10 Definitely.
**Zena ** 19:11 Yeah, there's definitely some predictability, like we have a standard bedtime rotation, and we just go basically in alphabetical order. And so—and then it's also really helpful because it means that the couples, we get two date nights a week.
**Brooke ** 19:11 Okay. [Laughing]
**Brooke ** 19:26 Nice.
**Zena ** 19:27 Because we are not on a kid bedtime those nights. And so even just being able to have more time off, right, than would be afforded if we were doing this, you know, if there were just two of us, or if it was one of us doing it on our own. So I think that's also something that's been really helpful to build in. And I know you asked a question, too, about what I would think of maybe more around, like, how have we chosen—what are the decisions we've made around legally formalizing our roles. And I would say, we're in a space of evolution around that. So we made a very intentional choice, including after talking with, you know, radical queer lawyers who've done a lot of work in this area, to think about, you know, what do and don't we want to have legally or state-sanctioned around the family relationships that we have. And the choice we had made was to have the coparenting dyad be the two people on the birth certificate for all of our kids. There's some greater degree of flexibility where we live in Canada because of the legal advocacy of people with different kinds of family structures. But we still would be limited. We couldn't actually put all four of us on the birth certificate, it isn't allowed, given the nature of the relationships that we have.
**Brooke ** 20:37 Yeah.
**Zena ** 20:38 And that's been fine up until this point. But now that our older kid is in public school, we're actually now in a process of realizing that it is really necessary for the two parents who are not on the birth certificate to go through a process of formally—we're choosing to do a legal guardianship of our kids rather than going through becoming kind of a full legal parent. And again, that's through consultation with other radical queer lawyers. And I say that because I think this is one of the tricky things about, like, what would be most values are politically aligned around, I don't want the state to sanction my relationships. Like that, that feels values misaligned for me.
**Brooke ** 21:17 Right, oh yeah.
**Zena ** 21:17 And simultaneously, like, what does it mean when, you know, we and our children become implicated with these institutions in different kinds of ways, and when does it become a barrier around things like getting to be recognized as a parent by the school, getting to be a healthcare decision maker in the event of an emergency, that kind of thing.
**Brooke ** 21:34 Right.
**Zena ** 21:34 So we're in a space of having to make some different choices now. And that's complicated, because it involves the courts, it involves getting criminal record checks, like, things that are highly inaccessible to many people in many communities. And that we're muddling our way through.
**Brooke ** 21:49 Yeah, that's quite the—that's quite the journey, for sure. And I'm sure very—a very interesting process to go through and figure out and—
**Zena ** 21:59 My learning is: don't casually mention to the lady at the police station that you're doing gender open parenting. She will immediately become icy cold to you.
**Brooke ** 22:11 Okay.
**Zena ** 22:11 Why did I not predict that? So many reasons. She asked me about the gender of our children and I chose to answer honestly. It was probably the wrong choice.
**Brooke ** 22:23 Yeah, I hear ya. In our—in our pre-taping conversation, you mentioned that phrase, the gender open parenting, and this is maybe kind of an aside and not exactly collective parenting. I'm intuiting what I think you mean just from the phrasing, but I haven't actually heard anyone use that phrase before until you said it. So I'm wondering if you might be willing to go off on a little tangent here with me and teach me about that.
**Zena ** 22:50 Yeah, I mean, the maybe the simplest way is that we didn't assign a gender to the kids when they were born. And we just use they/them pronouns. Which, again, I recognize is still a choice. But in our family, we've opted to use they/them pronouns for our kids until they were big enough to say otherwise. And so with our older kid, it was very clear—just before she turned three she said, I'm she, I'm a girl. And we said, okay, and proceeded accordingly. And our other kids are still little enough that they haven't articulated that to us. And, you know, the message we always want to give to our kids over and over again is, whatever that looks like in the future, if it changes, wonderful. You know, we will celebrate and accept you exactly as you are. And that also feels really important in our family with a couple of parents who are nonbinary, all of us who are queer, you know, and really trying to create a space for our children that's really affirming of them in the fullness of who they are, and who they're in a continual process of becoming.
**Brooke ** 23:47 With your—with your older child who has now identified her own gender— and I guess, as you're doing—you're raising the younger ones too, are there—I'm thinking about, like, when I go to the toy store, right, and there's still, you know, the "girl" aisle and the "boy" aisle kind of a thing. And there's probably other scenarios of that kind of, like, classic gender division, and I'm wondering how much you all had to work to, like, to avoid any of that, or if you did, or how you manage some of that while you were trying to keep this gender open parenting philosophy going on. Practice, practice.
**Zena ** 24:27 Yeah, I mean, I think gender is always present, right?
**Brooke ** 24:32 Right.
**Zena ** 24:33 In so many ways, and certainly becomes this like shaping and structuring thing in our society.
**Brooke ** 24:38 You go to a public bathroom.
**Zena ** 24:39 Yeah, absolutely.
**Brooke ** 24:40 Yeah, okay.
**Zena ** 24:41 I mean, you know, even thinking about it at the level of like children's clothing you know as a micro example, it is so fascinating to me how different the cuts are—
**Brooke ** 24:50 Yes.
**Zena ** 24:50 Which means a tshirt for a quote unquote girl and a tshirt for a quote unquote boy, identical sizing in terms of the kid clothing size, but actually, in our experience, like vastly different size, right?
**Brooke ** 25:05 Yes.
**Zena ** 25:06 And so I use that as a micro example, I think, to think about the ways in which, you know, gender shows up in so many layered ways and obviously shows up for kids in a whole bunch of kinds of ways. And I think what we try to do was just create a space of possibility, giving the kids lots of choices around the type of garments that they wear, not attaching labels around, this is a boy thing, or this is a girl thing, you know, just really saying, oh, okay, this is what you want to wear, this is what you like, Great, how can we support you in that and give you lots lots to choose from, whether it's around how they want to express themselves or what they want to do. I mean, I like it in the context of our multi parent family too, because I think about the different strengths we bring as parents, and I know that I will never be—nor do I want to be—the sports parent. As a queer femme, you know, who has been deeply immersed in femme community for 20 years, I am definitely the parent who will paint your nails.
**Brooke ** 26:04 Nice.
**Zena ** 26:05 You know, if you want your nails painted, like, my got you, you know? And so I think about that too in the different ways we can model, like, what are the gender expressions we have as adults in our family—we're very lucky to have a community of people around us with a lot of really diverse gender expressions. And so I think that's also something that's really helpful for our kids to see that there's a lot of kind of ways to be,
**Brooke ** 26:27 Yeah, that's really neat. So I imagine that you, you know, probably don't even sort of approach clothing from a gendered standpoint a lot of the time. Like, you know, I need to work on my own thinking—but like, if I were to pick up a two year old size bright pink shirt, my brain immediately would go, oh, you know, girl, or, you know, if I pick up a two year old shirt that's got, you know, big old monster trucks on it, I think, boy. And so my original question to you was—was trying to imagine like that scenario, and then what you do or don't put on the kids, but I suppose that if you're coming at it with a really non-gendered perspective, and saying, this is not a girl thing, this is not a boy thing. it doesn't matter who's wearing what. You need—you don't have to try to put them in quote, unquote, gender neutral things, either. Am I—am I right in thinking that?
**Zena ** 27:20 Yeah. And I think especially because I think sometimes what gets coded as gender neutral, you know, often is something that might look more sort of, quote, unquote, kind of masculine. And I see this, I think, probably more reflected in my observations of some of the sort of ostensively gender neutral clothing lines that have come out, like, I think often in context of queer community and being marketed at queer community. But then, multiple times I've seen femems say, hey, but is that actually neutral? Or is it—is it really kind of like repackaging something that, you know, might be coded in other contexts as more kind of masculine, right? So, I mean, again, it's sort of the malleability of all of this stuff, but also kind of the stickiness of these, these gender norms that show up in all kinds of places. And I think, you know, for our kids, like, hopefully, we can bring the same ethos we bring to our own clothing, which is like, what feels good on your bod— including from a sensory standpoint—like, what's comfortable? And then also, like, what delights you and what can you move in, you know, and the clothing that a little kid needs is different, right, that perhaps what my wardrobe looks like. Though, I also think a lot about what can I move in. Because I sure do a lot of crouching and crawling around—more than I did before I was a parent.
**Brooke ** 28:30 [Laughing] Yeah.
**Zena ** 28:31 And I think a lot more about how will this outfit hold up to all manner of bodily fluids and other weird liquids, you know, it's really—it's really a factor that I didn't used to think about in my pre parenting life.
**Brooke ** 28:43 Yeah, and my—my child was far enough, kind of, from that age, that's not really an issue. And so, you know, you say that I'm like, oh yes, I remember that phase of parenting, where that was one of the considerations. And it's funny to be on the other side of some of these things and realize some of what I forgottenthat used to be of such great concern. I want to back up though with you like three steps, because we were talking about how, when you came into the relationship, you know, it was sort of already established that there was going to be this collective parenting where that quickly developed, whatever, whatever the timeframe was. But, you know, by the time children came along, you all already knew that's how it was going to be. I'm wondering if, in that time or since that time, if you've done a lot of, I don't know, reading or researching or talking to other collective parents, or if you've done mostly kind of figuring it out, you know, with the four of you of how it works, or perhaps a mix of both techniques. But how did you learn how to collective parents, is really what I'm getting at.
**Zena ** 29:49 Yesah! Well, and I—I'm definitely learning all the time, and that's one of the things I love about it. Right? You know, I think parenting is such an ongoing learning process, whether you're doing it collectively or not.
**Zena ** 30:01 And I think, for us, there is a really—a really beautiful aspect that is about rootedness and community. And I feel grateful for that. Like, there are other people that we know who were already doing different forms of collective parenting—again, as has been done for generations. But in this case, these are maybe more immediate kind of peers of ours that are parenting kind of similar age kids in different cities, some in Canada, some in the US, that we are in relationship with. And so there absolutely are those kinds of conversations and connections that happen, which I think can feel like a real balm for us in terms of saying, oh yeah, you know, how do you navigate this particular thing? Or, oh, yes, I also have had these types of conversations. Like, it's so great to be able to talk about this with another set of coparents and see how you guys are, you know, dealing with this particular challenge you might be grappling with. Or, oh cool, you have a neat kind of hack, like, tell us what it is we want to know. And then I think, again, because we also have been more open about our family story intentionally, because I think we're mindful that—you know, certainly even thinking of my own experience, I didn't have models for this kind of parenting when I was coming up as a younger person. So as a family, we've made an intentional choice to tell our story in certain contexts. As a way, we hope to be able to open the door for other folks to contemplate what kinds of possibilities they might want to co create and the communities and relationships they're part of.
**Brooke ** 30:01 Absolutely.
**Brooke ** 31:25 Yeah!
**Zena ** 31:25 And so I think there also is that element where then people will come to us and say, we're just starting out, or we want to do this, can we talk with you? Can we learn from you? And we always try to be in that space of generosity and reciprocity. And absolutely, there's a research-based element, including for me as a writer whose work is historically-informed, like, I'm always really interested to learn about the lineages we come from. I'll never forget, you know, the the story I often think about—which is mind boggling to me when I think about it in terms of era—I read about a lesbian woman, this would have been in the late 70s, who was coparenting a baby. And she was doing it with 10 of her friends.
**Zena ** 32:05 And like in the era before cell phones, and group texts, and email and Google Calendar. Like to coparent a baby with 10 people. What an accomplishment. Right?
**Brooke ** 32:05 Wow.
**Brooke ** 32:15 Yeah.
**Zena ** 32:16 Just logistically alone, it's astonishing.
**Brooke ** 32:18 Right? Yeah, for sure. Do you find that—let me say it this way, how common is that people become parents after they've decided to collectively parent, as opposed to becoming collective parents after they've become... regular's is not the right word. But, you know, after they've become a parent, starting to do collective parenting versus pre planning for that?
**Zena ** 32:50 That's a good question. And I can't say I have an easy answer to it, because I would say it probably depends. Like I get the sense that more people are going into these kinds of parenting arrangements, like, intentionally, before there are kids on the scene. And I also think that these kinds of collective parenting relationships and arrangements emerge organically over time as well, right, as relationships change, as people situations change in the context of their family systems. So I would wager it's probably a mix. And I would guess that there might be a bit of an upward trend in terms of seeing folks maybe coming into these types of family formations with intentionality before they have kids.
**Brooke ** 33:33 Yeah, interesting.
**Zena ** 33:34 But that's, you know, that's based on literally no data whatsoever—
**Brooke ** 33:37 Oh I know.
**Zena ** 33:38 Except—except vibes and what I know about, you know, how family formations are changing in a lot of different ways.
**Brooke ** 33:45 Yeah. Well, you certainly talked to a lot more collective parents than I have. So, you know, not that's a representative sample as an economist. But certainly, there's there's some information to be gleaned from your connections there.
**Zena ** 34:01 Yeah. And I think you can maybe also think about it in relation to, you know, places where we do see like legal advocacy happening, like, often driven by folks in different kinds of poly family arrangements or, or what might be a different or kind of non normative family arrangement, like, fighting to have those family arrangements and relationships recognized by the courts. So, you know, I think that that is also a place where I have seen shifts, both in the US and Canadian context. And, you know, what that's going to look like over time. Obviously, given the regressive politics we're seeing right now, given rising fascism, and obviously the targeting of trans and queer folks and people across a lot of lines of identity. I don't have a sense of any of those advances are going to be rolled back, but I do look at the work of organizations like the Chosen Family Law Center in the US would be a great example of a place, I think, where they're doing some really interesting advocacy about, you know, how might different kinds of family formations have greater legal recognition, greater state recognition—which does have many forms of utility, right, and all it's complexity.
**Brooke ** 35:01 Right. Yeah, yeah, unfortunate, as you had said before, that you know, the state—that we sort of have to get the state involved in some of this because, you know, we don't want them in our relationships. At least I don't want them in mine, much as you said you don't want them in yours. But then, yeah, there's certain rights and privileges that are granted or denied, you know, based on—purely on biology a lot of the time. So there's the work that has to be done to, you know, move that forward. So you were just talking about, you know, our current political climate and the rise of fascism. Do you feel like collective parenting has become more important or more useful because of our current political and social climate that we're in?
**Zena ** 35:47 Yeah, as I was thinking about this conversation, I went back to the book "Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice" by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. And in that book Leah quotes their friend, Dory Midnight who says, "More care more of the time." And I love the simple potency of that phrase. And the reason I'm drawing a direct connection to the current social, political, economic climate is that I believe very strongly in the need to grow and deepen our capacity for interdependence, and to build the relationships that are necessary to enable more of us to survive. Like that, that is something I try to organize my life around in a lot of different ways. And certainly, I think, collective parenting is is one of those. And I think that, you know, certainly parenting—and I think caregiving more broadly, whether you're caring for kids or other adults in your life—can be immensely joyful, pleasurable, rewarding and fulfilling. And it also can be exhausting, depleting, and unrelenting, right? Like you're a single parent. I'm sure you have your own intense experiences of the joys and challenges of what it means to be a parent and a caregiver. And so I think a lot about, like, how might we actually grow our capacity to care for one another, you know. And I don't think it's unconnected that one of the tenets of disaster preparedness is to get to know your neighbors. Like I think about that in the sense of, like, what does it mean to build relationship, to be an interdependence? And like, what does it mean to push back against isolation, including the isolation that can come from the ways in which parenting is often organized in our societies?
**Brooke ** 37:30 Yeah.
**Zena ** 37:31 But I think also how to broaden the framing so that we're not solely thinking about the experiences of parents, but also, again, thinking more broadly about caregivers, right, and that many people are giving care to folks of different ages. And, more broadly, how do we all care for one another? You know, and thinking about what we can learn from disability justice around that, in the sense of really thinking about an active and ongoing practice of interdependence and collective care in all of its difficulties and messiness, and the transformative potential of that. And that—I don't, I don't mean that in a romanticized way, either. Like I know that, before we started recording, I was talking about, like, how many butts I wipe in my everyday life, you know. It's a butt wiping intensive phase of life, and I'm sure I will enter into other ones as I—as I and the people around me age, right, or become disabled in different ways. And so I think so much about, like, the practical, tangible hands-on aspects of this, and how that connects to the politics and values we might be bringing to this, you know. And for me, this is a form of praxis, it's a form of prefigurative world building, you know, really thinking about like what is the world I am working to build? And how am I living those values in my intimate domestic relationships? And like, it matters to me that I am doing this in my home space with the people with whom I am in the most intimate of relationships.
**Brooke ** 39:01 Yeah.
**Zena ** 39:02 But I also don't want that intimacy to stop, like, at the walls of our house either. And so how can we then continue to expand that web of interdependence out and—you know, it's interesting, I say this like as a gay divorcee, right, like I have been gay married, I got gay divorced many years ago, I came full circle there. My partner and I—my current partner and I had a DIY backyard magic ritual this summer, you know, no state sanctioning involved. And it was really important to us in that, where we intentionally spoke our commitments to one another, and we spoke our commitments to our coparents and our kids. And then we spoke our commitments to the community and family that were gathered there. And that it was really intentionally about, like, how do we create a space where we can honor the interdependence that we are part of and that holds us and holds our family and holds our relationship, and like, what does it mean to make an active commitment to that, including in the context of actually ritualizing it. And as a—as a way to demonstrate the importance of that to the people that were there bearing witness and sharing that experience with us.
**Brooke ** 40:11 Wow, that is—that is so beautiful. It really is. Thank you for sharing that. All right, so we've talked about some of the great parts of collective parenting, and the good that it brings to the children, the good that it brings to the other parents. You talked about some of the tools that you have that have made that practice more successful, like your weekly sit down on you, you know, discuss calendar things together. Are there pitfalls in collective parenting, you know, things that—lessons you've learned along the way, things that you've seen and heard in talking to others. You know, anything that sort of collective parents always try, but it never works out. So, you know, something somebody could avoid trying and inevitably failing at, because it always goes that way—or anything like that, that you might want to share.
**Zena ** 41:02 One of the things that I really appreciate about—and find consistently challenging—about this experience of collective parenting, and this particular form of, like, deeply intimate and sustained interdependence, is what it asks, I think—certainly, it asks of me in terms of building my capacity for conflict intimacy outside of romantic partnerships or professional relationships. Because I actually think that there are entire cultures and industries around how to have a better fight with your partner, and how to have a better fight with your coworker. And I think it is really interesting, and in some ways, unsurprising that there's not similar modeling in a maybe more mainstream way around how to actually move well through conflict in our friendships, our intimate relationships. And like, of course, this is a place where I think there's much to be learned from transformative justice. And—and! It is a whole thing to think about, like how to bring that into practice in your everyday life, you know, how to have a difficult conversation with someone you love and are intimate with to say, oh hey, like, that interaction we had in the kitchen, you know, was frustrating for me, here's why. While still giving us, like—one another, a lot of grace for, you know, what it means to be living in the fullness of who we are and all of our messiness and grouchiness, you know, in the way that nobody needs to be perfect or perfectly happy all the time. But I would say that that's something I've talked with my coparents about at different kinds of points is like, how do we get more practice—practiced at having those kinds of challenging conversations, including in the context of just also the fullness of our everyday lives. Like, you know, we do have a weekly kind of evening, just the adults, you know, checking in talking about parenting stuff, you know, bringing up anything that we might want to surface. And certainly we'll have one-on-one conversations when we need to work through something maybe that's kind of challenging or sticky that's come up between a couple of us. But I also am just tired a lot of the time, you know, and it's the end of the day, and I'm ready to go to bed. I don't want to be like, and now let's talk about our feelings for one hour.
**Brooke ** 43:14 Yeah.
**Zena ** 43:15 And sometimes you need to, right?
**Brooke ** 43:16 Yeah.
**Zena ** 43:17 And I think also, for me, that's a place where, you know, speaking personally, I've found it really useful to have a therapist, you know, and to be able to reach outside my family system—of course, like, through friendships and other kinds of relationships. But I mention my therapist specifically because I think so much about how so much of parenting for me is also about that process of reparenting myself. And like, looking back on my own childhood experiences, and like, appreciating the gifts that I received through those experiences, but also the ways in which there are things I need to unlearn from how I was raised, you know, and thinking about how those show up in my parenting. So big fan of Internal Family Systems, you know, and I think that that's also a really interesting therapeutic modality in relation to collective parenting, because it's like, how are we holding the fullness of all the parts that make us up as individuals? And then how are we showing up in these more expansive intimate and familial relations? So that's another pro tip: if you're into therapy, get a therapy. Just a really good advice, you know, generally. As long as you can find one and afford one. And that's also often impossible, which I recognize. But I think, you know, the other thing I would say, too is, I think it can be sometimes—it can be easy to get caught up in perfectionism, or the notion that there is any sort of getting it right, you know?
**Brooke ** 44:36 Ah, yeah.
**Zena ** 44:37 And I don't think that there is. You know, I think something I feel really grateful for in our family is that we come in with a shared set of values around parenting, and a shared set of political commitments. And that makes a difference, I think—
**Brooke ** 44:50 Absolutely.
**Zena ** 44:51 —in terms of, we're able to move from that shared foundation in ways that makes the harder stuff easier to navigate and also the places where we do things differently—like, sometimes difference is perfectly okay. Right? It doesn't have to be perfect unity on every single thing, right? But it is really understanding, where do you need to be aligned on the stuff that really matters? Right? And how can—how can those shared values be helpful in that regard?
**Brooke ** 45:16 Yeah. And I—and then I also imagine that having and practicing some amount of, you know, compassion and empathy and understanding for other people in different viewpoints—you know I, again, I'm not collected parenting, I'm a single parent. But my child's father and I are sort of opposite ends of the political spectrum almost at this point. And I try very hard to be in practice of, you know, never putting down her father, you know, that's part of who she is. And being clear that, yeah, you know, I don't agree with this thing that he said, I don't agree with his stance on this and whatnot. But never making that about who he is as a person, that never making it that he's wrong, even if I feel that way. But, you know, being able to, you know, articulate that we have this difference of opinion, in a way that holds compassion and kindness for that other parent in the situation, you know, even if I don't agree with them, even if, you know, I do think that some of their beliefs and practices are genuinely harmful to other human beings on this planet. But not putting that into my child so much, because they're going to, you know, learn that part on their own. And really, what I need to do is just be clear on what I believe, and not damage their other parenting relationship in the process. At least that's how I feel about it. And you know, I'm open to being wrong or having—learning that there's a better way to do that even than I am.
**Zena ** 47:03 Yeah, and I mean, I think about it in this sense of, like, I sometimes think about how parenting feels like the most sustained and complex form of activism that I've ever done, in the sense that it asks me to live my values in a really intimate and ongoing and everyday way. And one of the places I continue to do learning is around children's liberation, confronting adult supremacy. You know, when I think about, like, Carla Joy Bergman the anthology "Trust Kids" that came home with AK Press, that's all about confronting adult supremacy and supporting youth autonomy. You know, I know Carla uses the phrase, "solidarity begins at home," you know, and I think so much about that, too, of like, what are the ways in which many of us have both been taught and internalize the relations of domination over children? And like, what does it look like to actually try and disentangle ourselves from those, I think really often insidious tendencies, like, even in those of us who are trying to, to the best of our ability, come at this from a more liberatory kind of way. So that for me, I think, feels like a really rich site of inquiry and practice in all of this too. And definitely a place where I'm really still learning.
**Brooke ** 48:12 Yeah. So I got the chance to interview Carla—almost a year ago now, it was February of last year—on, you know, we talked about—we talked about our book, and we talked a lot about adult supremacy. So that was February 24th 2023 episode, episode #59, should any of our listeners be curious to go back and talk about that. And it's funny, because, you know, when I—when I sat down to talk with her I actually wanted to talk with her about collective parenting. And then our conversation really took us into this realm more of talking about adult supremacy. And so that really ended up being the focus of that episode—it was great and really interesting, and I think an important component of parenting in general, but also collective parenting, as well. So yeah, there's a lot that I certainly have learned about that as well. In our last couple minutes here, I'm wondering if there were any other things that you might like to talk about with collective parenting, the ways it ties to other social movements or issues going on, or, or just generally, anything else that you want to say or share about collective parenting?
**Zena ** 49:29 Yeah, I mean, I think I would want to speak to some of those bigger connections. And then, I think, end on a really practical tangible note, because it's something I really appreciate about this podcast is I feel like I always walk away with things I can do. And so, you know, something I do think is—
**Zena ** 49:45 Something I think about is, like, you know, how can these forms of parenting, you know, in this practice of deepening our capacity for interdependence—and for intergenerational solidarity, right? Like, I don't assume that every person out there wants to be a parent, you know, or wants to necessarily be someone who's in an everyday caregiving relation. And I do believe very deeply that all of us should be committed to a practice of intergenerational solidarity. That includes giving a shit about the children in our community, and seeing them as self determined people whose liberation is bound up with ours. And I have absolutely no patience for adults who think it's cool to hate kids. It's not radical to hate kids. It's not cool. It's bullshit, and it's ageism. And I just feel so strongly about that, you know, similar to the ways in which I think so much about like what might it look like to build communities where we honor and ritually welcome in older adults, you know, disabled people, like, all of the people who capitalism and white supremacy and settler colonialism and ableism and ageism and childism tell us are less valuable, you know. When in fact, they are vital members of our communities and our movements. Right?
**Brooke ** 49:45 Take it away!
**Zena ** 51:01 So I think about that. And I think about how we can also connect these practices to movements for abolition, you know, in thinking about the violence that the family policing system does to so many families, particularly Indigenous, Black, other racialized families, disabled families, you know, poor folks. And so what might be the ways in which these forms of collective parenting—and again, just deepening our capacity for interdependence and solidarity with kids in our communities and parents and families can also be a way to intervene against the violence of that kind of state surveillance, child apprehension, family separation, and just reproductive injustice, right, that is happening in so many communities today—including and not limited to the experiences of trans kids. So I want to pull in those threads. And I also want to take a moment to just to speak, maybe, to the folks that are asking themselves, like, do I want to parent in this way? And what might that look like? And so some of the things I would share would be: I think this is a place to begin by reflecting on your own wants and needs, you know. How do you imagine parenting? What would you want your role to look like? You know, if there aren't already kids in the picture, how do you imagine those kids coming on the scene? You know, would that be through a process of somebody becoming pregnant? Would it be through adoption or fostering? You know—and again, all of these things are part of this process. I think it's also really important with the folks that you might be doing this with, to really think about, like, having upfront conversations about your needs, your desires, your dreams, your visions, but also your fears and boundaries, and your desired family or coparenting structures, and how you want to distribute the care and parenting labor. Not that you're going to have all of that figured out upfront, but I think—I think it's useful to begin the conversation. And I think, also, to really understand that, like, none of this is fixed. It's going to change over time. And I would say, you know, maybe just a couple of other thoughts that I think are really pragmatic and useful are, I think, to also think about how "out" you want to be and can be about your collective or co parenting relationships. Like, are you in a position to be able to be out about this to your families of origin, to your neighbors, you know, to your kids, daycare providers, or school teachers, or health care providers, to your kids' friends and their parents? You know, like, we're really fortunate to be able to be out and well supported by our family of origin and the various caregivers and teachers and community members we have. But that is absolutely not the case for everyone, and I think is also entangled with, with the whiteness and other forms of privilege of our family that insulates us.
**Brooke ** 51:01 Yeah, mhm.
**Brooke ** 51:01 Yeah.
**Zena ** 51:02 And I think also, as we've talked about, like to think about where and how you want and need the state to sanction your family structure, you know, and that that can create a lot of barriers for folks, right, you know, including the ways in which that can disrupt people's access to disability or welfare benefits, for example, or bring the surveillance of the state onto you and your family system in ways that can be really harmful.
**Brooke ** 54:16 Yeah.
**Zena ** 54:17 But it also can be an enabling tool in the system that exists. So I think, I think to ask those kinds of questions as well. So yeah, sort of kind of toggling between the like relational and values based and care work based piece, and then also the, like, what happens when your family system is turning outward to the world that exists now, and what are the ways in which you want to be navigating that world as purposefully as possible?
**Brooke ** 54:42 Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. And I really appreciate the—that advice for folks considering the situation. It's obviously really important starting point, if you get to do that before you know children come in the family, or are something that you definitely have to think about if you're—if you're going into, like you said before, an organically forming collective parenting situation. So I appreciate that a lot. Before we say goodbye, I wanted to, again, thank you for being here with me today, talking to me, teaching me, I learned a lot today. And I—I'm really grateful for that and hope our listeners did as well. And then give you space if you have anything that you want to share, plug, endorse, etc.
**Zena ** 55:41 Yeah, really appreciate the opportunity to be in conversation with you. And hopefully, there are some useful gems, and I can also share some resources with you to put in the show notes if there are just going to be some other books or things that that I think are useful for folks maybe to check out as kind of part of their contemplations here. And I would say, for plugging, I know you and I were chatting a little bit earlier. So I'm a writer, and my most recent book came out in 2021. I have a new one coming out in 2025, but it doesn't have a title yet. But my 2021 book is called "The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health." And the simplest way I can describe it is: the queer and trans health book that loves sex workers and hates cops. So if you want to learn about that, or learn more about me and my work—and I do actually write a little bit about our family in that book as well—you can find that and more information on my website, which is just zenasharman.com.
**Brooke ** 56:35 Great. Thanks so much.
**Zena ** 56:38 Thank you.
**Brooke ** 56:43 And to our listeners, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoy our podcast, please give it a like, drop a comment, or a review. Subscribe to us if you haven't already. These things make the algorithms that rule our world offer our show to more people. This podcast is produced by the anarchist publishing collective, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. You can connect with us on Twitter @tangledwild, and also on Instagram. Or check out our website at tangledwilderness.org where you can find our extensive list of projects and publications. If you want to connect with me directly, you can find me on Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke, that's Brooke with an e. This podcast and much of the work of Strangers is made possible by our Patreon supporters. If you want to become a supporter, check out patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. There are cool benefits at various support tiers on Patreon. For instance, if you support the collective at just $5 a month, we mail you a monthly zine. We would like to give a specific shout out to some of our most supportive Patreon supporters. Thanks to Aly, Paige, Jenipher, Eric, David, Staro, Patoli, Chris, theo, Kirk, Princess Miranda, Milica, Marm, Catgut, Janice & O'Dell, Dana, Carson, Buck, Lord Harken, Nicole, paparouna, Funder, Perceval, BenBen, Mic Aiah, anonymous, S.J., Trixter, Hunter, Chelsea, Julia, Boise Mutual Aid and Hoss the Dog.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Eric King talks to Margaret about navigating and surviving prison after spending nine and half years in a federal prison after firebombing a congress person's office during the Ferguson Uprising.
Eric King (he/him) is an anarchist, a father, a poet, a brutal scrabble player, an adoring Swiftie and an undying anti-fascist. You can support Eric on IG @supportericking and @rattlingcagesbook as well as at https://supportericking.org/ Eric also co-edited the book Rattling Cages, which can be found at http://rattlingthecages.com/
Margaret (she/they) can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Eric King on Surviving Prison
**Margaret ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast where it feels like the end times. And this week—I'm really excited about this week—I get to talk to someone that I wanted to talk to you for a very long time, but I wasn't able to because he was in prison. And that's not a good place to talk to people if you don't know them. But what we're going to talk about this week is how to survive prison with Eric King, the recently released anarchist prisoner who spent way too fucking long in a cage. And so we're gonna talk about how to survive being in a cage because it's a thing that we should all be aware of, even if we try to avoid it. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero etwork of Anarchists Podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network.
**Margaret ** 01:41 Okay, we're back. So, Eric, if you could introduce yourself with your name, which I already said, and your pronouns, and then why you know something about surviving prison.
**Eric King ** 01:51 Hello, happy to be here. My name is Eric King. I go by he and him. And I spent just about nine—nine and a half years in federal prison after firebombing a congress person's office in Missouri during the Ferguson uprising.
**Margaret ** 02:10 Okay, so, which is I mean, I don't want to... It is good when people act in solidarity, I will just say that. So I think a lot of people are nervous around—I mean, I'll say I'm nervous around incarceration, right. I've only spent two nights total in lockup, and I've never been in general population. And I think it's a kind of a black box. It's sort of a mystery. And I was wondering if you had any advice for people who, whether they're, like currently facing incarceration, or whether they're making decisions based on their ethics that put them at risk of incarceration. I'm wondering if you have, like, and it was a big topic, but like, how do you get ready to go to jail?
**Margaret ** 03:01 Okay.
**Eric King ** 03:02 So I wasn't ready. I'm going to tell you that right now. Um, I got picked up on the streets, just the cops rolled up on me with their machine guns and everything like that. And so I wasn't ready one bit. I didn't have a support team ready, I didn't have funds ready. And honestly, even though I had read books and I watched documentaries, I didn't know how to behave in prison at all. Um, so when I showed up, I was—I got myself in a lot of trouble with both other prisoners and guards, because I was doing a lot of reckless shit. Um, and so if I were to tell people to get ready, my first advice would be, like, to understand where you're at. Like, you're in a county jail, most likely.
**Eric King ** 03:48 And depending on what state you're in, like, that's gonna depend on like the politics of that jail. And there's ways to survive in county jails and there's ways to survive and low security prison, medium security prison, maximum security. And you can get yourself ready for that stuff. You can be ready.
**Margaret ** 04:06 Yeah. Okay, so what kind of prisons were you in?
**Eric King ** 04:11 So I was at a—I started off in a federal pre trial place. It was a it was one ran by CCA, which was just a nightmare because that's one of the private companies. And then, I'm one of the few people ever in the feds have gone to a low, a medium, a USP, and the supermax—the ADX. So I worked my way up, yeah, I did all four custody levels. And so I've seen like how the survival, like, how you have to move and behave. It's 100% different in each one of those. So it takes time to learn to like it's weird.
**Margaret ** 04:49 So what are some of those ways—like, what are some examples of like how you behaved incorrectly when you first found yourself in lockup.
**Eric King ** 04:58 Sure. So when I first got to CCA, I'm on full insurrectionist anarchist time. And I'm refusing to play by the politics of that jail. And that meant that I sat and ate with the black bros. I let ,the gay and trans people, I always worked out with them, you can come work out with me. I watched the Mexican TV—when the Sureños and the Paisas are watching the Spanish channels, I sat with them. And those are things that I got away with because I can fight. If I wasn't ready to throw hands I got destroyed. And so I had a bunch of fights. I've fought all the time.
**Margaret ** 05:41 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 05:41 And then eventually the other races talk to me. They're like, bro, look, you're causing problems for all of us. Like, your behavior—it's cool, we appreciate the solidarity, we saw you on the news, respect. But you're gonna get us in a race war because we're letting you do things that like other people aren't allowed. So you got to cut that shit out.
**Margaret ** 06:02 Right.
**Eric King ** 06:03 Um, so I was still able to gamble with other races. And I was still able to run my boxing class. And so, like, the LGBT people could always we're still involved in the boxing class, because that's from every race. But like, once that was over, I wasn't—I couldn't sit with the black dudes anymore. I couldn't watch the Spanish channel anymore. Just simple shit like that, that people in prison would say, like, duh, duh you idiot. But like, I didn't get that early on.
**Margaret ** 06:33 That makes sense to me. One of the first friends of mine that I talked to about dealing with jail—a white anarchist who spent a bunch of time in jail, about a year or something, I guess prison more than jail. And one—and yeah, he tells me these stories about how, you know, he did the exact same thing. He went and he sat with—he was like, very consciously, he's like, I'm not hanging out with the white supremacists. You know, right? And he was like, alright, I'm gonna go sit with black folks. And, you know, and he grew up on a primarily black neighborhood, and—
**Margaret ** 07:06 And eventually he—eventually he threw this, like birthday party that had everyone come together. But then immediately afterwards, someone tried to kill him.
**Eric King ** 07:06 Same.
**Eric King ** 07:18 [Laughing]
**Margaret ** 07:21 And it was because—they were like, they were like, well, we think you're trying to unite everyone, like, under you. You know, we think you're trying to, like, form this, like, you know—
**Eric King ** 07:33 What gang are you trying to form?
**Margaret ** 07:35 Yeah, exactly. And he ended up being put in solitary, like, ostensibly for his own protection. And, you know, and I think he's spent the rest of his time in prison in solitary as a result of that. And that was like a—okay, so—but that brings up a question that I think that a lot of listeners would have, especially any white listeners, is then, how do you navigate that while still not joining the Nazi gang? And while indicating solidarity with people of other races without—even if you're, like, not trying to disrupt the structure of what's happening inside the jail?
**Eric King ** 08:18 Sure. So the people listening online can't see me. But I have the word "Antifa" tattooed on my face. I made it clear—I made it clear early on, I'm not fucking with these Nazis. I don't care about you dudes. I'm not going to be your friend, I'm not gonna play like I'm your friend. If you come talking around me with that n-word stuff, that race lover stuff, miss me. You can do whatever you want to do, but like, I'm not doing it. And so, to navigate that, you have to be—you have to be willing to fight. Once again, like, you have to show them—and this is important for people, it's important for anyone coming to prison. If you're willing to stand on your beliefs, you can have those beliefs. What they don't respect in any jail, any prison, any custody level, is talk.
**Margaret ** 09:09 Okay.
**Eric King ** 09:09 So if you if you show up in jail, and you're like, trans people are equal, don't be mean to them. But then you watch them bully a trans person. You're a bitch now, like, your word means nothing.
**Margaret ** 09:23 Oh, interesting.
**Eric King ** 09:24 So you don't get to have an opinion anymore.
**Margaret ** 09:26 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 09:26 But if instead, like a Florence Medium for example, we had a person in their name Crazy Pete. That's what—that was what she chose to go by. And some of the wannabe tough guys tried to bulldog her and saying like, oh, you can't—
**Margaret ** 09:43 What's bulldoging?
**Eric King ** 09:44 Oh, I'm sorry. They tried to—
**Margaret ** 09:47 No it's okay. You can use that slang, but you're gonna have to explain it to me.
**Eric King ** 09:50 Okay. Yeah. So they uh—their agenda was to force her out of the unit or to rob her, one of the two. And I said no. Absolutely not. You're not doing this. Ah, my wife and I had already raised money to essentially buy a gay guy out of debt so they wouldn't be sold by the—by some of the other races. And so people already knew like, this is what EK is standing on.
**Margaret ** 10:17 Right.
**Eric King ** 10:18 Um, and so when it came time for the Crazy Pete shit, like, you just show up, and you show up with your weapons, and you show up with your hands, and you stand on it and you say this is not happening.
**Margaret ** 10:29 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 10:30 We can do whatever you guys want to do. And when you take that stand and they know you're serious, it can defuse the entire situation. Um, but if I just spoke from my little chair, no, don't do it be nice...
**Margaret ** 10:45 Right.
**Eric King ** 10:46 Pete would have got fucked up, and I would have got fucked up.
**Margaret ** 10:49 Right.
**Eric King ** 10:50 So that's, that's the first like, I don't want to make prisons seem like it's only violence, but the first way to get people to understand, like, what you're about is to show them what you're about.
**Margaret ** 11:04 Right.
**Eric King ** 11:04 And sometimes that means, like, just telling like some racist dude next to you, like, man cut that shit out. Cut it out. I'm not trying to hear that shit.
**Margaret ** 11:12 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 11:13 Or like, I would not let people say the f-word around me—like the homosexual slur.
**Margaret ** 11:19 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 11:20 You couldn't say it around. If you said around me, I'm calling you out or we're fighting.
**Margaret ** 11:23 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 11:24 And that was, like, these are stances I took. And sometimes you put me in harm's way and sometimes I had to pay the price for that for real.
**Margaret ** 11:32 Right.
**Eric King ** 11:32 But a lot of times it just let me live as me as, oh that's Eric, he's fucking weird. But, you know, he's not a punk. That sort of stuff. If that makes sense.
**Margaret ** 11:44 No, that—that does make sense. The whole kind of, like, so you need to basically not be weak. You need to be—like you need to like—So. Okay, so—
**Eric King ** 11:59 This isn't about winning the fights either just so you know. It's not about, like, being tough. It's about being brave more than anything.
**Margaret ** 12:06 Okay. Okay.
**Eric King ** 12:07 You have to show up on your—on what you believe in. Not other people's, but what you believe in.
**Margaret ** 12:14 How much does, for example, being antifascist alienate you from the rest of the white population? Like are you, lik,e eating alone as a result? Like or like—
**Eric King ** 12:24 No, you can't eat alone. There is no—so like, in the feds when—if people go to federal prison, like, people very likely to catch RICO charges in the next couple of years. Like it happens.
**Margaret ** 12:33 Right.
**Eric King ** 12:34 Um, like that dude whoe just bomdb the abortion clinic in Wisconsin. He's going to the feds.
**Margaret ** 12:38 Okay..
**Eric King ** 12:39 Or not the abortion clinic, the anti-abortion clinic.
**Margaret ** 12:42 Oh, yeah, that makes okay. Yeah, uh huh.
**Eric King ** 12:44 I was like, oh my god.
**Margaret ** 12:45 Yeah, all right. Yeah,
**Eric King ** 12:49 But that dude stood on pro-women's rights stuff.
**Margaret ** 12:53 Right.
**Eric King ** 12:54 Um, and so, I'm going to pretend like he's white. So he's gonna go to the feds and he has to eat with the white guys. You either sitting with white guys, or you're gonna get fucked off the yard.
**Margaret ** 13:05 Right.
**Eric King ** 13:06 And that means—that means beat up, put in PC, and shipped to somewhere else.
**Margaret ** 13:09 Okay, what's PC?
**Eric King ** 13:10 Oh, PC means protective custody. And you can go in there if you're—if you ask to, or they understand that you're going to get hurt.
**Margaret ** 13:19 Okay, so this is what my friend was put in.
**Eric King ** 13:22 Yeah, like your friend. Like they most likely understood this dude's about to get hurt.
**Margaret ** 13:25 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 13:26 Let's get him out of there.
**Margaret ** 13:27 Okay.
**Eric King ** 13:28 And so, you're gonna sit with the white guys. And most likely, like the gang dudes will have like their own little—because whites will have their own separate tables, they'll have like five or six tables.
**Margaret ** 13:38 Okay.
**Eric King ** 13:39 And that's where you eat. And in the federal system, you eat and sit with your state. Like where—what you represent. So I'm from Kansas City, Missouri. I sat at the Missouri table. It was us, Kansas, Oklahoma, and sometimes Chicago—it's like a Midwest table, basically.
**Margaret ** 13:55 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 13:56 And the gang guys—[laughing] might as well. So the gang bros, they would say,, like they have they're like, that's the SAC section, or that's the ABT section. SAC is Soldiers of Aryan Culture. ABT is Aryan Brotherhood of Texas.
**Margaret ** 14:13 Okay.
**Eric King ** 14:13 Um, and so I don't have to fuck with those guys at all. I don't have to associate with you. But like, if they see me doing something they don't like, like for—I taught the yoga class that Florence and I allowed all racists and sexualities, you're coming to this yoga class.
**Margaret ** 14:31 Right.
**Eric King ** 14:31 So sometimes some of the—some of the dudes would come to me and be like, hey, man why do you got this n-word in your class? Or why do you got this gay dude in your class? And then you just have to tell them, like, you're not my fucking boss. Get out my face.
**Margaret ** 14:45 Right.
**Eric King ** 14:45 I don't answer to you. I'm not in your gang.
**Margaret ** 14:47 Right.
**Eric King ** 14:48 Um, and so sometimes they go to your rep. Each car has a rep.
**Margaret ** 14:55 What's a car?
**Eric King ** 14:56 Okay, yeah, my bad.
**Margaret ** 14:58 No, it's okay. Yeah, I'm just gonna say it for the audience.
**Eric King ** 15:02 I'm from Missouri, so that's called the Missouri car. It's like our group.
**Margaret ** 15:06 Okay
**Eric King ** 15:06 You're in that car.
**Margaret ** 15:07 Okay, which is separate from a gang.
**Eric King ** 15:10 Yeah. Because we're not trying to make money.
**Margaret ** 15:14 Ah, okay.
**Eric King ** 15:15 Like, if someone attacked a member of my car unprovoked, like, without us knowing about it, I could then be called to have to go and retaliate against that person.
**Margaret ** 15:25 Right.
**Eric King ** 15:25 Even though it's not a gang.
**Margaret ** 15:27 Right.
**Eric King ** 15:27 You still assaulted our group, and so—it's a group with our money making scheme.
**Margaret ** 15:33 Right, okay.
**Eric King ** 15:34 And so, I—if that gang had a problem with me, they would then have to go to the head of my car, someone who had a lot of respect, been down for a minute, and tell them like, we want EK, to shape up or we want EK off the yard. My car would then decide to either talk to me, fuck me up, or tell the gang did kick rocks. Like leave us alone.
**Margaret ** 15:56 Right.
**Eric King ** 15:57 And so, depending on how that went, depends on how far it goes. But I never got fucked off yard, so.
**Margaret ** 16:06 So it worked, but it was a it was a tricky situation to do.
**Eric King ** 16:09 It's so tricky, because one wrong move—and this is what I hope anyone going to prison in the future always understands—you have to always be respectful, even if you hate someone.
**Margaret ** 16:19 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 16:20 So if somebody with a swastika on his face comes up and tells me to do something, I can't say like, fuck you Nazi bitch—Nazi jerk.
**Margaret ** 16:28 That's fine. Yeah.
**Eric King ** 16:29 Okay, but I can't say that to them. I will get stabbed.
**Margaret ** 16:32 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 16:33 And not hypothetically, like literally.
**Margaret ** 16:35 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 16:36 So I have to say to them, like, hey, man, I understand, you have your beliefs. I get that. But I'm doing me right now, and I'd appreciate you just let me do my time. Stuff like that. That's how you have to talk, until it's done talking.
**Margaret ** 16:49 Okay, and is that kind of how you would like—okay, another anecdote that's not mine. Another one of my friends who spent about half a year in prison for a while and is—he told me that his cellmate was the tattooist for the Nazi gang in the jail.
**Eric King ** 17:06 That sucks.
**Margaret ** 17:07 Yeah. And so the Nazi kept being like, hey, you got to join us. And my friend kept being like—the way that my friend handled this, and I'm curious, your take on this. Basically, he was like, he was like, no, I can't. I'm already in a gang. I'm an anarchist.
**Eric King ** 17:23 Oh!
**Margaret ** 17:24 And it—and then the the cellmate didn't really buy it until there was a noise demo outside for my friend. And so then there's all these people with circle A's and fireworks outside. And it was just like—yeah, so now th cellmate's like, oh, I get it. You're already in a gang. They just, it's fine. And then they like stop trying to recruit him at that point and they were able to live in peace, which is an awkward—it seems like the things that we assume about how to interact with people and how to carry ourselves on the outside don't relate to how we have to do it on the inside. Is that kind of—
**Eric King ** 18:00 Hell no they don't.
**Margaret ** 18:02 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 18:03 But so your friends situation worked because it was a jail.
**Margaret ** 18:07 Yeah, uh huh.
**Eric King ** 18:09 Like in a jail—jails are so different than prison.
**Margaret ** 18:12 Okay.
**Eric King ** 18:13 Because it's short term. All custody levels are mixed in there.
**Margaret ** 18:18 Right.
**Eric King ** 18:18 There's not going to be as much racial like—the dynamics aren't as aggressive because you're all from the same place. You're all from Kansas City or New York or whatever.
**Margaret ** 18:29 Uh huh.
**Eric King ** 18:30 Um, so the—it's not split up like that. So if I was in a jail and some dude told me to join his gang, I'd probably laugh in his face.
**Margaret ** 18:38 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 18:39 Like unless he was seriously dangerous, like your friend did the right thing. Just got the attention to, look how I had this over here.
**Margaret ** 18:46 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 18:47 Because apparently that dude, that gang dude thought like, that's what you respected. He respected someone that was—that stood on something. Basically, you already stand for something.
**Margaret ** 18:55 Right.
**Eric King ** 18:56 Um, but also if you—if you go to a lower custody federal prison, like let's say you go to a low—I started out low.
**Margaret ** 19:03 Okay.
**Eric King ** 19:03 There's no gang members there. No gang is going to recruit you there.
**Margaret ** 19:07 Right.
**Eric King ** 19:07 Those dudes, they can't do anything there. So like, that—you don't have to worry about that in a lower custody level. Some dude tried to press you at a federal low, you could laugh right in their face.
**Margaret ** 19:22 Right.
**Eric King ** 19:23 You soft mother fucker. Get away from me.
**Margaret ** 19:25 Because it's not—the lows are not run by gangs as much. Is that the—or at all?
**Eric King ** 19:31 No. Yeah, they're run by sex offenders.
**Margaret ** 19:34 Oh, interesting.
**Eric King ** 19:35 Those security federal prisons, that's where they put the vast—the nonviolent sex offenders, the first time—first time nonviolent offenders, like I started low. I'm a first time offender with a college education. I'm not a threat to them. So even though I have this charge, they don't care. I go to low. Um, and so that's where, like, white collar people, they go to lows.
**Margaret ** 19:59 Right.
**Eric King ** 19:59 Um, big time rats in informants go to lows.
**Margaret ** 20:04 Okay.
**Eric King ** 20:05 So if you see a gang member there trying to push that line, or some racial dude trying to push that line with you—and push that line means trying to force his agenda on you—you can basically tell him, like, if you want to do that shit, go pop yourself up to a higher custody level.
**Margaret ** 20:19 Right.
**Eric King ** 20:20 If that's where you want to be, go be there, but I like walking outside and playing tennis. So leave me alone.
**Margaret ** 20:26 Right. Okay but then—
**Eric King ** 20:27 Lower custody levels are sweet.
**Margaret ** 20:29 Okay, so then this brings up the question, because it seems like one of the other things that one would hope to not do is have what happened to you happen, where you got escalated up.
**Eric King ** 20:38 Oh shit. It was crazy! I've never seen nothing like it since I've been in.
**Margaret ** 20:41 Was it your behavior? Or was it some decisions that they made around your politics or like what—what caused you to end up escalated?
**Eric King ** 20:47 So, and this is something that all activists and radicals, especially white ones, need to worry about. Because like, honestly, like the white guards don't really bother the other races about their politics. They just assume you have bad politics in their eyes.
**Margaret ** 21:00 Right.
**Eric King ** 21:00 But so for white guys, they see you as a race traitor.
**Eric King ** 21:04 So when I got to Englewoo I was doing fine, but the cops there would harass me relentlessly. So I'd get called to SIS almost on a daily basis. SIS is like the FBI inside the prison system. Special Investigative Services.
**Margaret ** 21:04 Okay.
**Margaret ** 21:21 Okay.
**Eric King ** 21:22 And so they had—if you're an activist, or you have one of our charges, they have to read it approve your mail, they have to live listen to your phone calls, like, they make it a burden.
**Margaret ** 21:31 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 21:31 And so these pigs would call me to their office every other day, like, what do you mean in this email, what do you mean in this email? And then I would have my books confiscated on a seemingly weekly basis, they would just coming to my cell, take all my literature, all my writing materials, keep them for a week until—until I filed to region, and then they'd give them back. Um, and so I got bumped up in custody level because one day I was in the—I had a beef with these guards at visiting because they kept harassing my kids. They kept trying to get my kids by the sex offenders.
**Margaret ** 22:06 Oh, god.
**Eric King ** 22:06 I was like, just stop it. Like, leave us alone. I don't bother you.
**Margaret ** 22:10 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 22:12 And so, well I got an argument was one of them in the bathroom, and you're not gonna believe me when I tell you this, but this officer had the gall to tell me he was gonna have his little boys beat up my daughter's in their school.
**Margaret ** 22:23 Damn.
**Eric King ** 22:24 I reported it right then. I had one of the other guards go call the lieutenant. The lieutenant remove that guard from visiting. Well, the next day, I had gone to psych because I was so angry with being in prison and they told me, like, write down your anger in a poem. Write it down in writing form.
**Margaret ** 22:26 Right.
**Eric King ** 22:26 So I did. And I mailed to my wife. Well, SIS takes that letter and accuses me of threatening staff.
**Margaret ** 22:50 All right. Yep.
**Eric King ** 22:52 So they chained me up and that day drive me to Florence medium and put me right in the SHU. That day.
**Margaret ** 22:57 Yeah. And SHU is solitary. That's one I do know.
**Eric King ** 23:00 Yeah. Yeah. Special Housing Unit is what they try to—try to call it in Orwellian speak.
**Margaret ** 23:06 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 23:06 Nothing special about it.
**Margaret ** 23:08 Yeah, well, it's—it's certainly not normal to spend all your time alone.
**Eric King ** 23:12 [Laughing] Fair enough.
**Margaret ** 23:13 And not like in a fun hermit way where, like, you're Thoreau and your mom brings you your lunch.
**Eric King ** 23:22 [Laughing] Then then I just kept progressively, like—I don't know if you know what happened me at Florence medium to where my politics pissed off food because I—Oh, go ahead. Sorry.
**Margaret ** 23:31 No, no, I'm—you should tell the story. I've—I've read a version of it, but you should tell me and the audience what is safe for you to tell?
**Margaret ** 23:40 Right.
**Eric King ** 23:40 Yeah, I was—I was politically active as hell on Florence medium. Um, like I told you I ride with Crazy Pete, do my yoga class.
**Eric King ** 23:42 Um, and I made—I had good friends there. There's people that accepted me there for me. I had tons of fights with uh, with the bigots, but that is just what happens. But so the staff there hated me. I would write articles calling them out. I would, I would put it in calling campaigns about their, how they treated vegan meals, how they treated the Muslims, how they treated the gay—the gay folks. So I beefed them all the time. And then one day I—a lieutenant got beat up. And I sent my wife an email laughing about it. Yeah, cuz I know they have to read my email. So it's not—
**Margaret ** 24:24 Yeah, it's a bad idea. But I understand—
**Eric King ** 24:26 Yeah, yeah. If you go to prison, don't do this. Don't instigate them. They will give you what you want.
**Eric King ** 24:31 They'll show you how real they are. So they call me lieutenant's office, dude throws his big hissy fit, starts calling me a terrorist and all sorts of crazy shit. I laugh in his face because it's so uncomfortable. He pushes me—punches me, and I dog walk him. A dog walking means, it means you beat someone's ass.
**Margaret ** 24:31 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 24:52 Um, so after I got punched twice by this cat, I dog walk him. And then the guards proceed to, you know, beat me half to death, strangle me, choke me, and then put me in four point restraints for seven hours. And those are when you are handcuffed on a steel bed, stretched as far as your body can go, left arm at this corner, right arm at that corner, your legs spread doing the same thing. And they leave you there. I was mostly naked, sometimes in my underwear. Um, and sometimes, like, the captain would come in and bring in a plastic shield—like a riot shield—and strangle—he put it over my face and pushed on it. So they'd choke me.
**Margaret ** 24:52 Oh my god. Uh huh.
**Margaret ** 24:52 Alright.
**Eric King ** 24:56 And other times he'd come in and just put his hand over my mouth. He'd tell me, like, we're gonna get you fucked up. We're gonna rape you. We're gonna get you raped.
**Margaret ** 25:14 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 25:15 You wanna be a tough guy.
**Margaret ** 25:26 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 25:28 So that's what got me moved up to the USP system from Florence. That's how I went from medium to high. And then when I—they prosecuted me for that. They said, I assaulted him.
**Margaret ** 25:52 Right.
**Eric King ** 25:53 So I had—I took him to trial, I refused to take a plea deal. I took it to trial. And when I won, that's when they moved me up to the supermax, the ADX were El Chapo is and the Unibomber, all those guys.
**Margaret ** 26:04 Punish—that—I mean, all of them were just punishment, but that one was like extra punishment. You got found innocent of assaulting a guard so they put you in supermax. Is that pretty much—?
**Eric King ** 26:13 So, I don't want to minimize but, like, you know,you—we just talked about noise demos.
**Margaret ** 26:18 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 26:19 A second ago—your friend, like, you know what they are?
**Margaret ** 26:21 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 26:22 Um, when I was pre trial, they held me in the Englewood SHU for two and a half years. And I was there—and this will happen other activists if you use your voice—they took away my mail, my phone, my email, my visits. I had no communication. I could only write my wife. And people I don't know, I don't know these people, but they didn't always demo New Year's for me one year, and they record it—like it was on live stream. So they had banners and bull horns and fireworks.
**Margaret ** 26:49 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 26:50 And one of them I think busted up a cop car.
**Margaret ** 26:53 All right.
**Eric King ** 26:53 And so they accused me of organizing and Antifa riot. And so I gotta rioting shot. That's one of the most serious shots you can get.
**Margaret ** 27:02 Yeah, even though what happened outside the jail and you had no—
**Eric King ** 27:04 I had nothing to do with it.
**Margaret ** 27:06 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 27:06 Um, so that noise demo was listed on my ADX referral—you have to have a referral and it has to—you have to have an interview. And under the thing it said, like, Mr. King planned and organized an Antifa protest and Antifa threats against staff. So that's what happened, like, when Trump became president. [Laughing] Things got real ugly for antifascists.
**Margaret ** 27:27 Yeah. Okay. Well—god, that brings up so many questions. So one of them is, like—
**Eric King ** 27:32 What about noise demo.
**Margaret ** 27:35 Yeah, exactly. That's kind of my question is, like, should people—there's probably not a right answer, but it's like, when do we have noise demos? Like, when is it useful to a prisoner and when does it interfere with the prisoner's ability to get by in jail?
**Eric King ** 27:53 So before this happened, if you would have asked me, EK, do you want a noise demo and people to show up at a prison and go crazy for you? My answer would have been enthusiastically yes. Because, especially a jail too, like, jails are different. Always. They do not have the same—it's not the same.
**Margaret ** 28:09 Right.
**Eric King ** 28:10 So visibility can keep people alive. That's something that supporters and you know. Like, you letting the jail know that, like, I see what you're doing to my loved one, my friend, my comrade. Ee're watching you. We're recording you...
**Margaret ** 28:22 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 28:23 That helps. I'm not kidding. That can save someone's life.
**Eric King ** 28:26 In a federal prison, um, I wouldn't recommend doing noise demos at federal prisons anymore, honestly. I don't know—I don't know the—I just think there's better ways to support federal prisoners going—this is gonna sound, you know, stupid and anti-anarchist. But like, we can pressure them using administrators, using politicians, using these people at higher institutions, higher levels of government, because like Cory—Cory Bush, like they were calling the bureau for me. The congressperson from Ferguson?
**Margaret ** 28:26 Yeah.
**Margaret ** 29:04 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 29:05 Different congresspeople from Denver, were calling from me saying, like, why are you guys doing this to this dude, what is going on?
**Margaret ** 29:13 So—go ahead, go ahead.
**Eric King ** 29:14 I was just gonna say, like, we can put pressure without putting boots on our own necks.
**Margaret ** 29:20 No, that makes sense to me. And I think that—I think that we do well when we stay tied into the larger movements that we're part of, and when w,e like, when we show—when we ask for solidarity from groups that we've been showing solidarity with, you know, like, like, because like, you were in jail for solidarity action. And so then folks calling and being like, well what the hell are you doing to him? Make sense to me, you know?
**Eric King ** 29:47 Yeah. And it worked. Like, that's the only thing that's worked for me.
**Margaret ** 29:52 Yeah. Well did you spend the rest of your time in maximum at that point?
**Eric King ** 29:55 So after doing the two and a half years in the SHU for pre trial, they, they sent me to some other prisons to do my ADX referral. Because it's a big like legal referral process. And then when I finally got accepted and approved, they flew me right back to Colorado. So I went from Virginia, all the way back to Colorado, and then I spent the last year and five months at the supermax and ADX, yeah.
**Margaret ** 30:23 Okay.
**Eric King ** 30:24 They did not like me there.
**Margaret ** 30:26 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 30:27 And those—Nazis. They are Nazis. If you look on their Facebook pages, they are full throttle white power, you know, patriot—we're patriots, they're their cry baby, like, Nazis.
**Margaret ** 30:42 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 30:43 It is stunning what they're about.
**Margaret ** 30:46 That doesn't surprise me.
**Eric King ** 30:47 [Laughing]
**Margaret ** 30:50 All right. How do you—you spent two and a half years in solitary.
**Eric King ** 30:55 I spent seven and a half years in solitary.
**Margaret ** 30:58 Oh, Jesus. Okay.
**Eric King ** 30:59 Two and a half just on this pretrial.
**Margaret ** 31:01 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 31:01 It was a part of a five and a half year stretch.
**Margaret ** 31:04 So obviously that is a very different thing to survive than general population.
**Eric King ** 31:08 Yes. It's hard.
**Margaret ** 31:10 How do you do it? I obviously since, I spent one night alone in jail, I obviously understand it completely, because I did one night, but you did seven and a half years.
**Eric King ** 31:20 You are the expert.
**Margaret ** 31:20 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But how'd you do it?
**Eric King ** 31:28 I can break it down. So I didn't realize—when I first came to jail, like when I was in the county, like pretrial the first time, I didn't nine and a half months straight because I fucked up a lieutenant. Because I thought it was, like, serving the revolution. I thought I was like being a good anarchist. And so, once again, SHU in county jail is different. Anyone can survive that. You get visits, you get phone calls, you get food you get sometimes even TV and tablet. But when you get to the feds, or probably the state too, it's different. And when you do long stretches, um, for me, it came in waves were like, I'd be doing really good for like three months, I'd be working out every day, I have a routine. You have to have a routine, do your burpees, do your push ups, do your abs and calisthenics and yoga. Make it—set a time where I'm going to write letters from this time to this time. Like make it, like, if you make a routine, it becomes an important part of your day. And then when you finish doing it, you feel like you accomplished something. Now your day wasn't worthless.
**Margaret ** 32:15 Right.
**Eric King ** 32:24 Now you have purpose to your day. But also, like for me, like, I'm not gonna lie, I went through a lot of depression—like depressive periods.
**Margaret ** 32:34 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 32:35 And when that happens, you really have to check in with yourself and you have to be vulnerable with the people that love you. If, like, my wife would write me sometimes I write or some bullshit letter and she'd have to call me out being like, dude, like, you're hurting and you're not talking about it and it's not helping.
**Margaret ** 32:52 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 32:52 Let us be there for you.
**Margaret ** 32:54 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 32:55 And when I was finally able to do that, like Josh Davidson, the guy that I wrote Rattling the Cages with, I met him in the SHU right after this happened. And because I was able to keep myself vulnerable and open s a human, I was then able to develop a real relationship with him and then work on a project. We develop that whole book from the SHU because I—I was able to do it, and he cared enough to work with me.
**Margaret ** 33:23 Okay, but wait, how are you communicating in the SHU? Is it like, like, are you like writing a little notes and sending them down the... yeah, how do you do it?
**Eric King ** 33:32 Kinda. So when I—when I got my—if you're just normally, like, let's say you stab someone and your in the SHU, or you fuck someone up and you're in the SHU, you still can write letters. You get a pad of paper, you get pens, you get stamps. You have to buy them, but you get it. When I was on my mail ban, I would have to pay the guys in the other cells. So I would shoot a kite to some bro three cells down—
**Margaret ** 33:53 Which is where you send a, like a paper football with a note on it basically, or like what's a...? Okay.
**Eric King ** 33:58 Yeah, we would make—we would make a rope, like, tearing up sheets or the elastic band in your underwear and tying—tying a rope. And then I would shoot it, I would flick it or throw it against the wall so it tried to bounce in front of the cell. And then he would shoot out his, like throw it under his door cell, and pull it—like try to connect with mine and pull it in. And when he would do it—would be like, I'd be asked him, like, hey, I got this letter. I'll give you five bucks if you write it and send it. So then that guy would have to rewrite the letter in his own handwriting and then send it out to Josh.
**Margaret ** 34:33 Oh Josh wasn't in the SHU with you. I see.
**Eric King ** 34:36 No Josh is—Josh is a free world supporter.
**Margaret ** 34:39 I see. I thought—you were saying you met him in the SHU and I thought you meant—okay.
**Eric King ** 34:42 No, my bad. Josh is a member of the Certain Days Collective and he wrote me.
**Margaret ** 34:46 Yeah, yeah. Cool. Okay.
**Eric King ** 34:47 Yeah, it's my bad. I misunderstood the whole question.
**Margaret ** 34:50 No, no, but I mean, this is still very useful. This is very useful.
**Eric King ** 34:54 So for the most part of our friendship, like, we were able to write normally, but for like two and a half years I was paying creeps to mail letters for me.
**Margaret ** 35:03 Yeah, no. Okay. All right, so many more questions. How—you know, you said that you spent a lot of time, like, standing up for LGBT folks in prison, right?
**Eric King ** 35:15 It was the main priority in my life.
**Margaret ** 35:17 And, so what did you—from being friends with folks, how did they get by? Or what was like for them? I assume it was different at different levels and things like that. But like, is it_
**Eric King ** 35:29 It's sort of just really tricky.
**Margaret ** 35:30 Yeah. Did they get outed ahead of time? Like, you know.
**Eric King ** 35:34 Ah, you're out, You're out. When you're low security for—for LGBT people—um, you are, you're not a victim at low securities from other prisoners.
**Margaret ** 35:48 Okay.
**Eric King ** 35:48 You might be from your own car, because, like, they have their own little section.
**Margaret ** 35:53 Right.
**Eric King ** 35:53 Um, and so—
**Margaret ** 35:54 Oh so there would be an LGBT car.
**Eric King ** 35:58 Basically, yeah, it might not be organized like that. But they have, they have a structure. And so they—I don't wanna say they run those prisons, but like, they control the kitchen, and rec, and like, the different jobs. And so their problem is staff. Especially for trans prisoners.
**Margaret ** 36:17 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 36:17 Because staff and medical treat these people so bad.
**Margaret ** 36:21 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 36:21 Even at low securities where, like, there's no need. There's no threat, like, but so I feel like all of them—are the ones I met were getting black and pink and stuff like that, I still don't feel as if they were supported properly. But maybe they were. Maybe I just interpreted that way. Um, but their main problem is staff. They're not going to get beat up by other prisoners that are low security unless it's a personal thing. It's not going to be because of, because of who you are.
**Margaret ** 36:48 Right.
**Eric King ** 36:49 Um, but like, I've seen people get denied medication, denied their shots, denied access to the doctor. Um, Marius is a rare example of someone who was able to, like, put enough pressure to force the change.
**Margaret ** 37:02 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 37:03 But most people do not have like that sort of visibility, or that sort of courage to constantly fight. Like it wears on you, you know, I mean—
**Eric King ** 37:12 You know. So at a medium—at most mediums, that's where you can have problems. Especially if it's an active yard, like a gang, an active gang yard. Because like, let's say you're at a medium on the east Coast. Let's say you're in New York and you fuck up and you go to Otisville or some medium out there. You're gonna have like a safe place just for queer folks, people that are gay or trans. And they're gonna be—you're gonna be isolated, basically, but you can still live in exist, you just have to exist within your own friends. The further West Coast you get, and the further south you get, the more bigoted it becomes.
**Margaret ** 37:12 Right.
**Margaret ** 37:51 ,Oh, interesting. Okay.
**Eric King ** 37:52 And so like, in the yard at let's say Florence medium, there was one table where gay people were allowed to sit and eat. That's it. If that table is full, you don't eat. You're not going to sit with anyone else, because you will get hurt. If you—if you were able to get a cell—if someone else needed it, they were gonna fight you or just kick you out. That's why I fought so hard for—yeah, like, let's say you're in my unit. I was in OA. And there's a gay person in cell 305. It's a two man cell. But then the bus—like a new transport bus comes in. And there's a—there's a decently respected duse from California, and he gets put in the unit. Well, he's taken that cell. You're not going to keep a good cell from this guy.
**Margaret ** 38:36 Okay, I see. And so then the gay folks will be the first kicked out of this given cell.
**Eric King ** 38:41 Yeah, and your options will be, check in—which is go to PC, go say you need help—fight me—which, which is a death sentence. Or go tell staff that you no longer have a house and you need to get moved to a different unit.
**Margaret ** 38:55 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 38:57 Because prisoners still have a lot of power in prison. And at the bottom of that totem pole is, is gay people and trans people.
**Margaret ** 39:03 Okay.
**Eric King ** 39:04 And then at a USP, you're not gay. You're not trans. You will be murdered.
**Margaret ** 39:08 Yeah, oka.
**Eric King ** 39:09 If they say, if they—if you're listening to this and you're gay or trans and they send you to a penitentiary you're checking in right away. You tell SIS that you cannot be—I don't care if it's considered snitching, I don't care if it's considered ratting, because if you go to that yard, you will get killed or sold.
**Margaret ** 39:28 Why would it be snitching or ratting to tell yourself as—are you saying go and be like, they're gonna murder me or whatever?
**Eric King ** 39:35 No no, you don't even—so in prison culture in the feds, it's so goddamn stupid. Um, checking in—checking in is where you go tell staff you're in danger and you need to help. If you do that, you are now considered a snitch. Even if you don't say who's gonna hurt you. And so even if staff says to you—because like let's say you get off the bus and you have to interview before you go to the yard and stuff will ask you, do you identify as gay or trans, and if you say yes, even if they offer to put you in PC—which they won't because they want to see you hurt—u,m, but even if they do and you accept, you are then now considered a snitch or a check in—
**Margaret ** 40:13 Just literally for being in PC even I haven't even met anyone yet.
**Eric King ** 40:16 Yeah. Exactly, yeah.
**Margaret ** 40:17 Okay, so you like—so then you have to stay in PC forever while you're there because you're now known as a snitch?
**Eric King ** 40:24 Well, in the feds, they have PC yards. They're called drop out yards. And so those, like—let's say you're a sex offender but you raped eight kids, you are a violent sex offender, you will go to a drop out yard for violent sex offenders. Like Tucson USP, Terre Haute USP, and Coleman 2 where Whitey Bulger was at. And so, if you're a gay or trans person who has been at a USP yard and you couldn't walk there obviously, they will either drop your custody after a certain period of time, usually a year of sitting in the SHU, they'll drop your custody and send you to a safe medium, or they'll send you to a drop out penitentiary. But you will sit in the SHU for a long time. And they will put people in there to try to scare you, they'll put rats in there to snitch on you, they will put straight prisoners in there—because that's straight prisoner, if he is put in a cell with a gay person, if he doesn't attack that gay person, he's now considered gay.
**Margaret ** 41:29 All right.
**Eric King ** 41:29 And the other white guys will attack them.
**Margaret ** 41:31 All right. Yeah.
**Eric King ** 41:33 It is so disgusting and stupid. And staff sets that up. Like that's intentional.
**Margaret ** 41:38 Yeah, I mean, that's like one of the things that—you ever hear about the whole, like, how the whole alpha wolf thing is a lie. You've heard this?
**Eric King ** 41:48 I never heard that it was a lie but I'm very interested and I trust your experience on this.
**Margaret ** 41:51 I don't have the—I don't have the guy's name in front of me. The guy who developed the concept of the alpha wolf, right? The alpha male of the wolf pack that dominates everyone else or whatever, right? He quickly learnedhe wrote a whole book about it, and then he was like, oh I was wrong. That's only true of wolves in captivity. Wolves in the wild—
**Eric King ** 42:10 Oh!
**Margaret ** 42:12 Yeah! So he has spent the—wolves in the wild don't have—they have dominance games, but it's almost entirely the oldest male in the family, right, and they have family units instead. But then, if you put them in captivity, you start getting aggressive dominance and all this violence. And wolf packs do fight each other over territory and stuff like that. It's not like a utopian thing. But he spent the rest of his career running around being like, hey, I was wrong! Alpha wolf thing, not a thing. But instead, everyone's taken it and run with this and you have all of these like fucking alpha male idiots: who are running around being like, I'm an alpha male. And it's funny to me, because every time someone says I'm an alpha male, what I hear is: you're in captivity. Right?
**Eric King ** 42:57 Oh.
**Margaret ** 42:58 Because—and I would argue—you can like make arguments, like, civilization being a form of captivity and—
**Eric King ** 43:02 Here we go, here we go.
**Margaret ** 43:04 But, so prison to me, from the outside, seems like a clear encapsulation, where it doesn't reveal human nature, it reveals what humans in captivity do. Which is entirely separate from what humans outside of captivity do, in the same way that it's true with wolves. That's my, like, general takeaway, and it—the thing that you're describing about prison, really, all of these like wild dominance games and things like that seem like—
**Eric King ** 43:36 The whole thing is a wild dominance game.
**Margaret ** 43:38 Yeah. How do you—okay, so it seems like in low you would have an easier time just kind of keeping your head down and staying and out—just fucking do what—there's like the doing your own time or whatever—
**Eric King ** 43:54 In low custody you can fly under the radar and do whatever you want.
**Margaret ** 43:57 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 43:58 I'm not—it's still prison. You can still get in trouble, there's still fights, there's still restrictions. But if you're going to be in prison, and you're an activist, you won't be in a camp, you can't go to a camp. So if you're going to be in prison as an activist, you want to be in a low.
**Margaret ** 44:13 Camp is a step lower than like—
**Eric King ** 44:15 Camps don't have like fences on them, like you can go out into the world and stuff like that. It's basically like an aggressive halfway house.
**Margaret ** 44:21 I once—the first political prisoner I ever wrote was a Catholic Worker woman named Helen Woodson who had like—
**Eric King ** 44:28 I love Helen.
**Margaret ** 44:29 Yeah, cool.
**Eric King ** 44:30 Yeah.
**Margaret ** 44:31 Yeah. And she told me about how she was, like, in a—in a low. And she didn't feel like it was right for her because she, nothing was keeping her from walking out. So she kept us like walking out of jail, you know, so that she could go like do—commit more crimes in the name of, like, Christ or whatever.
**Eric King ** 44:48 [Laughing] Yeah.
**Margaret ** 44:49 I think she's great. I'm not trying to talk shit.
**Eric King ** 44:51 Those Catholic Workers are hilareous.
**Margaret ** 44:53 Yeah, no, and it's really interesting.
**Eric King ** 44:55 In a good way.
**Margaret ** 44:56 Okay, so actually, that ties into, like, how does—like how does being a political prisoner impact how you are treated by other prisoners? And then also, how would someone like a prisoner of conscience—like, like someone who was like super Catholic Worker, someone who is like, I'm a pacifist and I'm 60 or whatever. Like, like, how would—I assume everyone's going to have a slightly different experience based on—okay, and to tie into it, I wonder whether older prisoners are given less shit. Okay, and then I wonder whether—I've heard from a lot of people that like their experience of going in and already being, like, a tattooed person who's like lived on the street some or whatever, like, is like wildly impactful. But like, how different is it if someone comes in and is like—like, how does someone who's just like, I'm a 23 year old activist who's out of college, I'm from the middle class, I'm white, I'm not tattooed, etc, etc. Like, how do they handle it? And then also how do like prisoners of conscience handle it? Sorry, it's a big question.
**Eric King ** 46:00 So I'm going to talk about the, first like, let's say you're just some college kid and you—you get picked—let's say, a Palestine protest. And you get picked up and you catch a year—you broke a cop's window, you catch a year. You need to adapt. Like, most likely, people aren't going to press—you're not going to have like a violent experience with such a year—like with such a short amount of time. But you need to... How do I say this? I want to say this in a way that—
**Margaret ** 46:28 Toughen up?
**Eric King ** 46:30 Yeah, like kind of. You, you need to understand that—and this where I failed—you are no longer on the streets. Like, what you felt about how you should hold yourself out there doesn't apply. Like, you need to, without jeopardizing your ethics as much as possible, adapt to the world around you. Like if I lived with apes in the wild and I was still trying to talk on my phone, like, it's not how it works. Like you have to adapt to them.
**Margaret ** 46:56 Right.
**Eric King ** 46:56 Um, and I'm not—oh, my god, I'm not calling prisoners apes. But like, you understand what I'm saying?
**Margaret ** 47:02 No, we were using—we're using wolves and shit like that.
**Eric King ** 47:04 Right, right.
**Margaret ** 47:05 No, we're not—
**Eric King ** 47:05 Yeah. So like, that person needs to understand that, this is where you're at. And you're around people that are not going to share your socio economic background, most likely. There's going to be lots of different races, lots of different perspectives. Most likely, people are not going to agree with you. And they don't have to. Like, I don't view the role of the political prisoner, especially a short timer, as a recruitment specialist. Like, if anything, use your time there and whatever perspective you have to learn. Like, get their stories. Figure out how you get other people.
**Margaret ** 47:40 Yeah!
**Eric King ** 47:40 Um, and so for prisoners of conscience, like most—those, those people almost always go to lower custodies. Unless you're like Dan Berrigan or whatever his name was in the 70s, or 80s. And those dudes got into USP Lee and one of his friends, I think, violently assaulted. Because that consciousness shit at the higher custody levels is dead.
**Margaret ** 48:05 Yeah, okay.
**Eric King ** 48:07 If you need to go put in violent work, if they tell you do it, you do it or you get destroyed. So there's no—there's no consciousness at that point. But if you're at a low o medium and you're there for throwing paint on a nuclear submarine or something, there's going to be a Christian car, there's going to be a Muslim car, there's going to be people that will let you be who you are as long as you're not this pedantic annoying piece of shit.
**Margaret ** 48:35 Yeah yeah.
**Eric King ** 48:36 Like, if you treat people with respect and like are kind and—kind and understanding of them while also sticking up yourself and not letting yourself be seen as weak, you can be fine. Like, you will do—you will do fine. And the cops will most likely leave you under the radar unless you're trying to organize. Um, or unless you're getting crazy support. So it's all about, you know, don't let yourself be a victim, and don't let yourself be an asshole. And I failed—there was times I failed at both those things.
**Margaret ** 49:09 [Laughing] Yeah, I mean, there's no perfect, you know.
**Eric King ** 49:13 I had a tough learning curve for a while.
**Margaret ** 49:16 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 49:17 Because I was both an asshole, and then also like, we're prisoners, we didn't want to fight each other!
**Margaret ** 49:22 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 49:22 Well, yes, we do. We hate you. You're annoying.
**Margaret ** 49:25 I talked to one guy once who—and I—I had this conversation 10–15 years ago. I don't remember where he was in jail or how long he did or what level it was—where there was, he managed to stop a race riot by—
**Eric King ** 49:43 [Laughing] Wow.
**Margaret ** 49:45 There was like a race riot that was like being planned. And he will be like stole enough—yeah, there was like, the gangs were like planning to fight each other. Right? And they were planning to have this big conflict.
**Eric King ** 49:57 Okay okay okay.
**Margaret ** 49:57 And so he like stole—he and another guy stole enough stationery to, like, make a publication about how in here the only colors that matter are —and as the colors the uniforms, I don't remember, it's like orange and blue or something like that. And then he spent the rest of his time in solitary because—
**Eric King ** 50:13 [Laughing]
**Margaret ** 50:17 But he considered it completely worth it, where he was like, well, I—I stopped a race, you know, I stopped a race riot and then went to solitary.
**Eric King ** 50:26 Right.
**Margaret ** 50:26 But I have a feeling this is a random, exceptional, you know, like—or also just a lie. I don't know. I, you know, I don't—I didn't know this guy incredibly well, you know.
**Eric King ** 50:36 Where's this at?
**Margaret ** 50:39 My money is on Colorado, but I couldn't promise.
**Eric King ** 50:44 Ah, if he's trying to say he stopped the race riot in a prison, I don't believe him. I don't believe him.
**Margaret ** 50:50 Okay. Yeah.
**Eric King ** 50:51 I really don't because like, that's—that can get you killed. And also, who's gonna listen to you? No one gives a shit about you.
**Margaret ** 50:58 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 51:00 I'm not disrespecting this person.
**Eric King ** 51:02 No, and I'm not trying to advocate people do this. And it's literally a conversation I had, like, drunk late at night once, you know.
**Margaret ** 51:09 Don't do it!
**Eric King ** 51:09 I'm telling people right now that if you're ever in prison, and you see gangs organizing in a race riot, you mind your own fucking business.
**Margaret ** 51:15 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 51:16 You don't get involved. Their business is not your business. If they want to fight each other, go ahead. If they want to sell drugs to whoever, that's their business. But we don't—we don't tell people—you don't tell other prisoners how to live, good or bad.
**Margaret ** 51:33 Yeah, yeah that makes sense.
**Eric King ** 51:34 I saw—if I saw some people organizing race riot, I'm buying coffee, I'm buying stamps, I'm going to the store, man, and I'm getting ready for the lockdown.
**Margaret ** 51:43 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 51:43 That's what's happening. I'm staying out of the way.
**Margaret ** 51:45 Yeah. No, that's that's—
**Eric King ** 51:48 Put your life on the line for some other people? You've lost your mind.
**Margaret ** 51:51 Yeah. Okay, so my last question—for now—
**Eric King ** 51:57 Aw!
**Margaret ** 51:58 Is—it's at least the last one I've written down. How did these dynamics, all the stuff we're talking about and all the stuff you witnessed You know, you talk about how like you came in kind of, um, let's say a starry eyed anarchist, right? And like—and it's like, even on the outside, I'm like, man, I don't do everything that my conscience tells me to do or I would be in prison, you know? [Laughing] And that's actually almost a problem is that I think a lot of people don't act on their conscience because we don't want to go to prison. But how has this experience, this whole fucking long, crazy shit—and also just specifically the experience of watching all these power dynamics within prison—how has it influenced your anarchism, or your philosophical outlook, or your spiritual outlook, or like, how has it influenced you personally about how you perceive the world?
**Eric King ** 52:51 Um, yes. It's came—and it's not a one—like, at one point in time in my life, like, in my prison bid, I would have had a different answer for you then like ight now. But so I, nine years and however many months later, and seven of those was in, you know, 24 hour lockdown. Um, my anarchism is tougher than ever.
**Margaret ** 53:14 Yeah, believe it.
**Eric King ** 53:15 Like, I feel like I've grown. I feel like I became more empathetic. I became more accountable to the people I love. I saw what, like—I saw a mutual aid really is. Um, when I needed help, people would help me. When I wanted to help others. I could put it, like that dude at Florence, the gay dude. We needed to buy him, basically. My wife got that money in about 22 minutes.
**Margaret ** 53:41 Fuck yeah.
**Eric King ** 53:41 She put out a request, we need to help somebody. And so, like, my job right now—my job is Bread and Roses right now—this came out of mutual aid. They wanted to help me as a person first, and then it developed into something else. So prison gave me the—I gave myself the opportunity to grow while in prison. Because you can do the opposite. You can choose to do drugs, fight, rape, stab, get involved in politics, become racist, become homophobic, fall in line with this bullshit. So prison, I chose to use it as a chance to sharpen these knives of my mind and my heart,, to be a kinder person. So when I came out, I was ready to love, man—or, friend. I was ready to dive into sympathy and dive into help.
**Margaret ** 54:31 Yeah.
**Margaret ** 54:32 Cuz I watched for the last ten years, people do the opposite and try to crush and hurt and take. And so I never want to take from someone again. I never want to hurt somebody again. But if I can help you, if I can do something to make your life just a little bit easier, that's what I want because I just spent nine years watching people go out of their way to help me. Yeah.
**Eric King ** 54:53 I didn't have shit and I'm not sure I deserve shit. But people said I did, and because of that my life got to be easier. My wife's life got to be a little easier, all due to other people loving me. So that's what—my anarchism right now is built around: how can I make someone's life easier without—without jeopardizing my ethics? How can I not be someone else's warden?
**Margaret ** 55:19 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 55:20 I never want to be someone else's guard or warden where I say: you can't do that, you shouldn't do that, you're bad, you live wrong. That's not my job. Unless you're a fascist, then it is my job and fuck you. I that makes sense.
**Margaret ** 55:35 Yeah, no, that makes total sense. Like, I—okay, wait, then the the actual last question then, eh?
**Eric King ** 55:43 I hope there's 50 more questions.
**Margaret ** 55:45 Tell me about this book, Rattling the Cages. Just for anyone who's listening, Eric has a book that he is co-editor of called Rattling the Cages that came out in December 2023 from AK Press and it's—I haven't read yet. It's sitting on my shelf.
**Eric King ** 55:50 You better read it!
**Margaret ** 55:56 It's stories from political prisoners. Is that?—I mean, like, tell—sell us on this book.
**Eric King ** 56:05 Yeah.
**Margaret ** 56:06 I mean, I'm gonna read it anyway, but. You could tell me it's the worst book ever written and I'm still gonna end up reading it.
**Margaret ** 56:09 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 56:09 Um, because I, tthat's when I was going into my empathy stage. And so I brought this idea to Josh of like, what if we just interviewed ten elders. Like just a handful of our elders. That way we get their story, their history, before they die.
**Eric King ** 56:09 Um, so this book came about, it was me and Josh Davidson, Josh and I—Josh is a long term—I told you he started writing me when I was at Leavenworth about six years ago. I was being—I was there in holdover status in the SHU when this assault first happened. And so Josh started writing me. And we, we hit it off based off of, like, our love of political prisoner history, like Sundiata, and Kuwasi and those, like, the elders, basically. And when I was—a couple of years later, I'm going through just like a really hard time. And like, me and Josh were reading different books together about political prisoners in other countries. And like it—people—like Thomas Manning also died. And like, I thought, like, all his stories, the history this man led, died with him. We don't get to know what his life was like inside prison. We know what his writings were like, and what his paintings were like, but what did he feel? What did he experience? What did he think? Like, what were his hopes?
**Margaret ** 57:31 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 57:31 Because like, Thomas Manning—Tommy dying really affected me. It made me sad. It hurt me even though I never knew him. And so then Josh, being Josh, turn into, like, well, what about instead of ten we did kike fifty? What if we did every political prisoner still alive? I was like, well, that's fuckin awesome. And then we—my wife decided, like, she helped us think it out, like, what if instead of it being a zine, it was a book.
**Margaret ** 57:58 Yeah yeah yeah.
**Eric King ** 57:59 And so then from there, like, it came down to, I wrote a bunch of questions out. Like, what would I want to know from Susan, or Linda, or Laura? What would I want to know if I got to talk to Maroon, you know what I mean?
**Margaret ** 58:13 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 58:15 Or Marius, or whoever. And so I wrote these questions out, and then Josh, god bless him, like this dude cares. And so he got to work getting a hold of essentially everybody on earth that's ever been, like, even stepped foot into a jail or prison. And he put in the time and work to interview them. And then he would mail me back edits, and we were talk about it, we'd write questions back and forth to each other. And then Josh hounded AK Press relentlessly until they finally agreed to work with us. And even then, like, I'm not taking any work away from Josh. He edited it, he did the bibliography, he did everything. And then I asked Sarah Falconer to write and ,intro, we got, ah—we got Angela Davis to write an intro—,I almost forgot her name, Jesus. But like, people, people cared because the questions were all about not—what's the revolutionary spirit inside prison. It's, how did your heart feel inside prison? What was your actual life like? Because that's what I was saying, like, these Cop City dudes are gonna go into jail, um, and like this might—they might want to know, like, that it hurts. That it makes you sad. That it's okay to cry. It's okay to not want to hurt somebody. You don't have to do this, this tough, like, posturing basically. You can if that's who you are. But like, you can be hurt too, and you can be vulnerable, and you can be—you can also be happy. You can make friends. You can get hobbies. You can fall in love with somebody. You can get a partner.
**Margaret ** 59:57 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 59:58 As long as you're not hurting someone, ah, and that includes spiritually and emotionally, there's no wrong way to do prison. Just don't become a racist bigot rat. So if you want to just sit in your cell and cry and write books, like, that's fine.
**Margaret ** 1:00:17 That's mroe or less my plan, I gotta admit,
**Eric King ** 1:00:18 [Laughing] What you do right now in your daily life is just sit and write several books a day.
**Margaret ** 1:00:24 Yeah, I'll just keep doing that. That's my plan,
**Eric King ** 1:00:27 You would do just fine.
**Margaret ** 1:00:29 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 1:00:30 But like, it's okay just to be a normal human with feelings. And it's also okay to organize your ass off, you can do both. And like, we wanted to show that, that like, the heart doesn't die in prison. Neither does the revolutionary spirit. And there's not just one—it's not a cookie cutter sheet of how to be a prisoner.
**Margaret ** 1:00:46 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 1:00:47 And if I had known that, I would have started very differently.
**Margaret ** 1:00:51 Okay, I know I keep promising last question. What would you have done differently?
**Eric King ** 1:00:55 To start with or to end with?
**Margaret ** 1:00:57 To prepare? Like, let's say you knew you were going to jail.
**Eric King ** 1:01:00 Oh okay. Yeah.
**Margaret ** 1:01:00 And you—and you're not you now where you've been to jail for ten years. You're like, you're someone who is out on bail and thinks is very likely that you're gonna go to federal prison, since that's what you've experience with what. What would you do?
**Eric King ** 1:01:15 First things first, rob a bank so you have money for commissary. [Laughing] Put that money away. But no, like, I would make sure I have funds going in. Find a way, fundraise for yourself, ask other people to fundraise for you because prison is expensive. This might not be the answer you expected, like the first thing to do. But the more you have going in, the less you have to be a burden to your community while you're there.
**Margaret ** 1:01:38 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 1:01:38 Um, and I—I regret that. People had to do like crazy fundraisers for me because I didn't have shit. I'm a dirt ball kid from the streets of Kansas City, you know what I mean? Yeah, so that's what I would do. I would also—and this might sound stupid, too. I would start building relationships. I will let the people that I love around me know, this is what I need. But also, what do you need? Like, what can I do to ensure that we maintain this friendship or this love and this connection? Because people throw throw away relationships, they get in prison and think that the world stops, that their loved ones lives stop. But like, just because we're inside doesn't mean that, like, we're not selling an asset to the people we love. We still need to be there for them.
**Margaret ** 1:02:21 Yeah. Okay. Uh huh.
**Eric King ** 1:02:22 That's important to me. And I wish I'd known that because I went through some selfish periods where, like, my world was the only world that mattered. Meanwhile, people have bills and depression and domestic abuse and shit like that. It's not all about these knives I'm carving in my cell all day.
**Margaret ** 1:02:38 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 1:02:40 I would also, I mean, real talk, I would probably learnt how to make some weapons.
**Margaret ** 1:02:44 Yeah, no, I mean—
**Eric King ** 1:02:45 I'm not joking.
**Margaret ** 1:02:46 Yeah, like, I mean, I remember having this conversation with someone years ago, where some people were considering whether or not jail was in their future or whatever. And I remember being like, I think if I was about to go jail, I would just like really focus on learning how to fight. And my friend was like, no, I would only focus on meditation and cognitive behavioral therapy. For anyone who's not, who can't see: Eric King has presented a middle finger to the ladder suggestion.
**Eric King ** 1:03:17 Take that sits somewhere else, man. You're not going to retreat.
**Margaret ** 1:03:21 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 1:03:22 And that's—like, I'm joking, of course. But—
**Margaret ** 1:03:24 I mean, it's to not lose your mind. I think it's the purpose there.
**Eric King ** 1:03:26 Yeah. So real talk, I'd learn how to make like plexiglass knives, or learn how to carve steel using fingernail clippers or something. Because you may be in that opportunity where you need that and you don't want to be without it. You don't want to have to ask someone for that resource.
**Margaret ** 1:03:42 Right.
**Eric King ** 1:03:43 Ah, and so that sucks. We're not above that, though. This is something where I failed. I thought I was above that. I'm aboveI don't need to participate in that stuff. And now I'm getting my face kicked off. I'm like, well, maybe I wish I'd known how to do that. So learn how to fight, for real. That's not stupid. Take MMA classes—not karate. But like, learn how to kick, punch, run. Ah, because like the whole—the whole point in prison, the only way you win in prison is if you leave prison.
**Margaret ** 1:04:12 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 1:04:12 If you die in prison, if these motherfuckers kill you, you lose. Like, they got you and I hate that. And so do not let yourself be a victim. That's something I would tell myself, I would tell you, I would tell anyone: never let yourself be a victim. Don't be above, don't pull this whole I'm a pacifist shit when someone's coming at you with a lock in a sock. Because that lock doesn't care that you—that you study Dan Berrigan or whoever. They don't care that you're—that you love animals.
**Margaret ** 1:04:42 Berrigan? Dan Berrigan?
**Eric King ** 1:04:43 ,Yeah, thank you. Yeah, great guy, RIP. But so, we have to be real. Like if you try to meditate with a lion, it's going to eat you.
**Margaret ** 1:04:54 Right.
**Eric King ** 1:04:54 So fight the lion, and then use your skills that you were practicing at home of calming yourself, centering yourself, meditating, you can do that as long as you're safe.
**Margaret ** 1:05:04 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 1:05:05 You're safe? Do that. And I will teach myself that—like, yoga and meditation are great. And please use them when you're safe in your cell, or when you're a rec and you don't have enemies. But know how to protect yourself. The old timers will tell you that too. That's the first thing they tell you. You know how to fight? You know how to make a knife? You have to.
**Margaret ** 1:05:26 That make sense.
**Eric King ** 1:05:27 Be safe. Be safe always.
**Margaret ** 1:05:29 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 1:05:31 If I were a gay prisoner—real quick. If I was a gay person or a trans prisoner, I'm fucking somebody up. I'm going in there. Learn how to fight. I don't care—I don't care how opposed to it or how—if you think you're weak, if you—like physically weak, not mentally. But you've never worked out before? Work out. Get yourself in shape. And the second someone calls you a name, fuck them. Get them. Hit them. Hit them hard. The cops will break it up in 20 seconds, I guarantee it. Even if you lose, set that tone right away: I will not be disrespected for who I am.
**Margaret ** 1:06:05 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 1:06:06 It's dang—if you're going too low, it doesn't matter. But anywhere else, you have to set that tone, and I wish I had done that earlier too. Because people started thinking I was this soft anarchist kid and bullying problems where I had to fight more to defend myself later. PNrotect now to be safe later. Sorry for rambling.
**Margaret ** 1:06:21 No no, it makes sense. And we're just kind of out of time, but I'm gonna probably have you on more to talk more about this stuff because I think that—I don't know, there's so much more to talk about.
**Eric King ** 1:06:33 I could've talked for another like seven hours.
**Margaret ** 1:06:35 Yeah.
**Eric King ** 1:06:36 [Laughing] For real.
**Margaret ** 1:06:38 Well, okay, so if folks want to check out your work, they can check out Rattling the Cages from AK Press. Is there anyone else—any other, like, group or anything you want to direct people towards?
**Eric King ** 1:06:48 So I—we were posting a lot of good stuff on Instagram as well and Twitter from @supportericking. Um, I always tagged my bosses Z and Erica, these people gave me a life your Bread and Roses. They gave me a career and that started with mutual aid and started with friendship. Um, Sandra Freeman, she's my civil lawyer, that started from mutual aid and friendship. And now we're fighting the system together. And then always represent Fire Ant, anarchist prisoners and anarchist journal out of Maine and Bloomington. That's by anarchist for anarchist. Just really great people involved in that. And thank you so much. This is a real blessing, real treat.
**Margaret ** 1:07:25 Yeah, thank you.
**Eric King ** 1:07:26 And I love my wife. I love my wife Rochelle.
**Margaret ** 1:07:28 Yeah, that's awesome. That'll be another thing. We'll just do a whole thing on maintaining relationships in jail at some point.
**Eric King ** 1:07:33 It is so hard, but so worth it.
**Margaret ** 1:07:35 I—I believe it. Thank you so all much for listening. If you enjoyed this content, avoid going to jail, but help—but don't do it at the expense of your ethics. Don't avoid it so hard that you never do anything. And help people who are in jail, and, I don't know, do stuff. You can also support this podcast by supporting Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness which is the publisher of this podcast. We're on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Don't feel that financial support is the only way to support us. But we do pay our audio engineer and our transcriber, because that's the most thankless work involved in podcasting. And at some point, we might pay the podcasters and our guests and that'll be cool thing too. We send out ziens every single month to our backers. And in particular, I want to thank Patoli, Eric, Perceval, Buck, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, anonymous, Funder, Janice & O'Dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, S.J., Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Mic Aiah, And, of course, we would never forget Hoss the dog, our longest standing Patron backer. I think. And I hope everyone is as well as you can with everything that's happening. And we will talk to you soon.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This month on Live Like the World is Dying, we have This Year in the Apocalypse where Margaret and Inmn go over some broad strokes of 2023, from the genocide in Palestine, to anti-trans legislation, to the state of the environment.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: This Year in the Apocalypse: 2023
**Margaret ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for it feels like the end times. I'm one of your hosts, Margaret Killjoy, and the other host is
**Inmn ** 00:22 Inmn Neruin. And we're here to talk to you about the dumpster fire that was 2023.
**Margaret ** 00:29 Oh, come on, it is generalized far beyond dumpster fire at this point. Dumpster fire is like a nice contained thing. And you can push it in front of a line of cops. And so this is our annual year in review, as compared to our usual month in review, this one is for an entire year. It is for the year 2023. And it is coming to you in 2024, which we think makes sense. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. And the reason that you haven't heard jingles for us on other shows on the network isn't because they don't like us, but because we haven't recorded a jingle in a really long time. And that's on us. And we're terribly sorry. But here's a jingle for a different show.
**Margaret ** 01:37 And we're back. Okay, so we have a lot to cover today, because we're covering an entire year. We're not going to get into every single story. If we missed your favorite story, it's because we don't care about it. And you should yell at us on Instagram. [said jokingly like she doesn't mean it] However, a lot of really fucking crazy shit happened in the past year. And I think that 2023 will stand as a...see change for society at large accepting that things are not going back to the way they were. In a lot of ways I think 2023 will stand as important of a year in history as 2020. 2020 obviously brought us COVID. But 2023 brought us: one, an ongoing genocide--I mean, unfortunately those happen quite often--but there's one happening in Palestine right now as we record this that has been...its effects are being felt all throughout the world as people try to reckon with their own governments' complicity in the ongoing genocide. Also, 2023 just destroyed every climate record. And really marked a time when we can no longer pretend like climate change not just isn't coming but isn't here, because climate change is here. And when I first started the show, it was like "Haha, what if everything went as bad as I would say." And actually things are going--well, not worse than I expected--they're going about as I expected but way worse than scientists expected. We'll talk about that later. First, we want to start with some impromptu--we didn't plan enough--in memoriam. In 2023, we lost a lot of really amazing people and we lost more people, of course, then we'll be able to give time for today but we're going to talk about four anarchists who died this year whose memories will live on. And that's one of the beautiful things about being involved in a movement is that the work that you do is felt and reverberates throughout history. I don't have a great summation of how important all of this is because it's heavy. First, on January, 18th 2023 Tortuguita was killed by the Atlanta Police Department. Tortuguita was a Venezuelan eco-anarchist who was part of the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, which I am kind of guessing everyone who's listening to this is at least somewhat aware of--we'll talk a little bit more about it later, but not really focus too much on it--and, if so, you probably remember when Tortuguita died, but we just want to remember them again. Next, August died.
**Inmn ** 05:07 Yeah. August Golden was a musician, activist, and just fucking rad person who was living in Minneapolis and on August 14th was shot at a punk show in Minneapolis. And, you know, to the best of stories that I've heard, at least, was possibly specifically targeted for having told some creepy fucking dudes to leave the show. And....
**Margaret ** 05:46 That's what I've heard too.
**Inmn ** 05:51 And, yeah. I knew August a little bit and--not very well and not in years--but every.... There's just been this really overwhelming outpour of like, like, love and celebration of that person's life since August. And yeah, we'll miss you. And then in December, we lost a pretty prolific anarchist writer.
**Margaret ** 06:24 That's right. On December 6th, 2023, Alfredo Bananno died. He was 86 years old. It's still sad when people die in their 80s but it's.... Alfredo Bananno got to do his fucking life. And he's primarily remembered as the [emphasis on "the"] insurrectionary anarchist writer. There are many, many other insurrectionary anarchist writers but in particular, his work "Armed Joy"--and a lot of other works, honestly--have been incredibly influential on anarchism in general. And I really recommend that people, even if you don't identify with insurrectionary anarchism--I don't personally identify as an insurrectionary anarchist, but I love the insurrectionary anarchists tendency as I love all of our tendencies. All of the ones that are actual tendencies, unlike those fake ass ones. I...I really highly recommend reading Bananno's work, even if it's just to challenge your own conceptions, if you're coming from a much more organizationalist perspective. And yeah, he was a Italian anarchist who just fucking did it all and just kept going for a long time. He's been arrested a bunch of times. He spent a year and a half in jail just for publishing "Armed Joy" and if you haven't read it, you should read an anarchist piece--it's short--that got someone to spend a year and a half in jail literally just for writing it. So that is him. Yeah. And then finally, we lost Klee.
**Inmn ** 08:06 Yeah, on December 31, or 30th--I've heard different things--Klee Benally joined his ancestors. Klee was a writer and land defender, musician, podcast host, and just overall incredible and amazing person. Klee was about to be doing some book talks for his book, "No Spiritual Surrender," which is out from Detritus [pronounced with a short I sound] Books, I think.
**Margaret ** 08:45 [Marget corrects with a long I sound]. Detritus.
**Inmn ** 08:47 And this is like how I can't say the word foilage [realizes they said it wrong, corrects] foliage. I can't say foliage.
**Margaret ** 08:56 I've never tried. It's never come up in my life
**Inmn ** 09:03 Sorry, Gourd. Klee was just like...I met Klee a few times. Especially when I was younger, in Arizona and like I have probably never felt like so challenged by someone and someone's writings in really good and important ways. And like I don't know. Yeah, that's what I have to say. This one hit me particularly hard because this is someone who's part of communities in Arizona that I'm peripheral to and like....
**Margaret ** 09:45 Yeah. I was really caught off guard when he died. He was 48. He was Diné and he did more visible work than anyone I can immediately point to about, not just indigenous anarchism but challenging European anarchism and anarchists who come from the European anarchist background and/or European backgrounds. And I will shout out that Klee, in one sentence, changed my perspective on everything by him challenging me. I was traveling and I was giving a talk, about 10 years ago, about my book "A Country of Ghosts" at Taala Hooghan, the indigenous anarchist infoshop in Flagstaff, Arizona, and Klee listened to my talk and then during the question and answer was like, "You know that this whole continent was destroyed by people who look like you who had utopian ideas, right?" And I don't remember the exact way that he phrased it, but it wasn't polite. No, it was polite, but it wasn't.... It wasn't afraid to be challenging. And it wasn't like handhold-ey it right? It was direct. But it wasn't to like "Fuck you," either. It was, by my read--and maybe I'm right and maybe I'm wrong--by my read, it was an invitation to be better. And I really appreciated it. And I've read some of Klee's writing and I actually don't know what of Klee's writing was and wasn't anonymous, so I don't know which pieces to talk about as being particularly influential. But we.... I don't know.
**Inmn ** 11:39 We hope that everyone just takes a moment to remember, as the year passes, these four wonderful people and the uncountable others, that we've lost this past year.
**Margaret ** 11:55 And I will say, I mean, and it's.... There are new people, you know, and we stand on the shoulders--I don't have anything inspirational to say. It just...it influences me a lot. It affects me a lot. But I think that there's.... This is the way the world works. Okay, so Stop Cop City, which Tortuguita died for, continues. And we're not going to talk too much about that. There's plenty of.... They actually do really good PR, and you can find out a lot more about Stop Cop City. But I will just say that if you're only paying attention really peripherally, it's worth noting that the protesters are getting Rico charges and domestic terrorism charges for fucking nothing. And no matter your political allegiance, it is worth paying attention to the criminalization of this kind of dissent. Basically, as everything gets crazier, the authoritarian state is trying to double down on cops and authoritarianism and we shouldn't let them. And I think that in terms of a diversity of tactics, I think Stop Cop City has a lot to teach us, but we also need to stand with them and protect them. Yeah. And then we're gonna talk about the elections.
**Inmn ** 13:21 Oh God, the.... Wait, I have a funny thing about the elections. Do you want it now or later?
**Margaret ** 13:27 Let's hear it. What do you got?
**Inmn ** 13:29 Okay, so in some...there have been these news articles popping up in my algorithm about Ron DeSantis, you know, who's running for president probably, or is?
**Margaret ** 13:43 Yeah, he's got nothing.
**Inmn ** 13:45 Yeah, who's actively trying to lie about his height? [Margaret laughs] Did you hear about this? [Marget negates] Yes, he claims to....
**Margaret ** 14:00 Is he short?
**Inmn ** 14:00 I don't know. Well, I'm short. Whatever. He's not as tall as he says he is. Yeah, he claims to be 5'11". And there's all these people, like shoe makers and stuff, who have been looking at his shoes and being like, "His shoes are weird. I think he's wearing four inch heels." And that it's like built into this weird boot that looks like a normal shoe.
**Margaret ** 14:24 That rules.
**Inmn ** 14:27 Which would make him 5' 7"or something, which would make him one of the shortest presidents, if he were elected president.
**Margaret ** 14:36 There's this awful thing that just studies...when in doubt, the taller man wins an election in this country and has since.... There's like, there's been occasional exceptions to this. I fell down a rabbit hole about this a long time ago. So we're not going to be like, "Ah, I think it's going to be this guy with this sub president." Vice President. That's...you can get that news anywhere. I wanted to talk about the elections, because I want to talk about the fact that we're in an election year and how it relates to crisis. And if you recall, 2020 was a year of crisis around the election, especially very early in 2021. But, you know, it is entirely possible that we will see a repeat of 2020, in which nothing in the end really happens, right? It's entirely possible that nothing in particular will happen. And it is entirely possible--I give it a very low percent chance, I give it a 5% chance--that this will cause a civil war in the United States. However, I would like to say that a 5% chance is a really high chance when you're talking about something like civil war, right? If I were to get in my car right now and drive to the store and I had a 5% chance of dying, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't get in my car. I'd be like, "You know what, I don't need vegetables today. I can wait till the weather's better," right? There's a lot of snow and ice where I'm at right now. And also, if you play Dungeons and Dragons, you know what a 5% chance is like. That a 1 or a 20 on the 20-sided die. So I would just say, in the year of our Lord, 2024, be aware, be careful. I used to think this election was, I was like, "Oh, Trump versus Biden again, we know how that goes. We've seen it before, right?" But Biden has completely torpedoed all of his base, his support from the base by supporting genocide in Palestine. And Trump probably will go to prison if he doesn't win the election. So he's got a lot to lose. And so it could get complicated. And I would just say, take it into account in your planning, take it into account in your decisions about where you want to be this Fall geographically. I'm not going to tell you whether or not to fucking vote. That's between you and your maker. And I don't know. That's what I gotta say about the election. It could be sketchy.
**Inmn ** 17:13 Yeah. And yeah, in thinking about how you prepare for such an event, like, I don't know.... I remember during the last election, when--and you know, there was so much other shit going on in the world--but like, more so than the horrors that Trump introduced into the government or into legislation or any of that, remember that this person has a really fanatical base, that killed a lot of people in the last eight years, or like, whatever, you know?
**Margaret ** 17:49 And we shouldn't be afraid of that. Right? Or, I mean, we shouldn't make our decisions based on that fear. And like, it is worth remembering that all of the culture war shit is actually a losing proposition for the far-right. And it has not won them a wide electoral base. And more importantly than that, it hasn't won them a wide.... So, a random, average person--I keep saying this and eventually people get mad at me at some point, I'm sure--the average random center-right person you're going to meet in a rural area isn't like, waiting to kill all the gay people. You know? And we shouldn't...we shouldn't assume...well we should...I don't know, whatever. What are all the dumb cliches everyone uses? Every time someone says, "Keep your head on a swivel." I like hate it. It's like the word "Huzzah.” I hate the word huzzah. I shouldn't. There's no reason to. I'm part of cultures that say, "Huzzah," because I'm a nerd. And I am part of leftist gun culture, whether I like really want to admit that or not. And so I'm around people who say "Stay frosty," and, "Keep your head on a swivel," unironically. But I'd rather you just said "Huzzah. " I hate all of it.
**Inmn ** 19:12 Well, you know, is trying to fuck with trans people, Margaret?
**Margaret ** 19:18 Who is this a good segue?
**Inmn ** 19:20 This is a good segue out. I mean, it's not a "good" segue. It's just...
**Margaret ** 19:25 It's good as a segue, not a segue of goodness.
**Inmn ** 19:30 So, 2023 was a pretty horrifying year for anti-trans and anti-queer legislation. We saw things like the country of Russia can just completely outline like gender-affirming care of any kind to adults or children or youth, except in the case of like "genetic anomalies," which is code for like fucking with intersex people. And then, you know, in other places we saw like England had a lot of anti-trans legislation around, specifically around the youth and gender affirming care for the youth. In the United States, there were 75 anti-queer/trans laws across 23 states stemming from 500 bills that were proposed in the year of 2023.
**Margaret ** 20:36 That does mean more than four out of five got shot down.
**Inmn ** 20:41 Yeah, it's something like 15%. And I can't do math. Yeah, but yeah, so you know, in the face of, it's a slim amount of them were passed, like, and by slim, I mean.... But yeah, there's so much energy and attention going into this that it's horrifying that there were 500 bills proposed. 21 of those are on transition-related care for minors. Some of those are outright bans. And some of them have a lot of caveats and addendums. And there's also a lot of effort going into.... I think the Right has realized that outright bans are difficult to get support for in some places. And so there have been a lot of like, instead of having outright bans, making it structurally impossible or improbable that care could be provided, even if it was technically legal.
**Margaret ** 21:48 Okay, like what they did to abortion before they overturned Roe v. Wade?
**Inmn ** 21:52 Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so there's like....
**Margaret ** 21:55 Your gender-affirming care facility can only have hallways that are 26 inches wide, whereas every other hallway for every non-gender-affirming care place can only have 27 inch wide hallways. That kind of shit. That's what they fucking did with abortion clinics anyway, sorry.
**Inmn ** 22:09 Oh, no, yeah, no, that's exactly. It's stuff like that. Like in Missouri, for example, there was a...there was this new ban on gender-affirming care for minors. But people who were already receiving transitional care, like hormones and stuff, were kind of grandfathered in to continue to receive care. But they also passed a legislation that made it so that current or former patients who are minors were allowed to sue their providers for 36 years or something. Which means that a lot of parents are going to be suing their providers either because their parents are like horrifying bigots or because they're trying to get money out of their providers. And so, like, pretty universally, hospitals and stuff that we're providing gender-affirming care for minors who have been grandfathered into continue to receive care, we're like, "We can't continue to provide care because of the liability." And so it's like there's not an outright ban, but they've made it just impossible for people to actually receive care.
**Margaret ** 23:31 That's cool. [Said very sarcastically]
**Inmn ** 23:33 Yeah, and you know, there were a bunch of similar bills like that in Texas for abortion access and abortion care. 10 of the laws limit classroom instruction, eight of the laws restrict restroom usage. And the rest are related to drag performances, which we all remember was a huge topic, continues to be a huge topic and was like a huge hot-button issue for the far-right over this past year. This is a...this is a newer one. I saw this in the headlines the past couple of days, but Ted Cruz has introduced a new bill to limit funding to workplaces for the purpose of using money to somehow enforce using pronouns or preferred names. Which is ironic because Ted Cruz's legal name, it's not Ted Cruz, it's Raphael so like he has crafted legislation that could be used to affect him, but obviously won't be used to affect him. Yeah, that's a lot of really bad things for queer and trans people like us this past year.
**Margaret ** 24:57 Okay, here's a weird one--everyone's gonna get mad at me for this one too--you know, a large institution that is traditionally not on the side of LGBT folks that is standing up about both Palestine and LGBTQ folks this year?
**Inmn ** 25:13 Who? [said sheepishly]
**Margaret ** 25:15 The Vatican.
**Inmn ** 25:18 Wait, really? That is news to me, actually.
**Margaret ** 25:20 Yeah, no. on both counts. So the Palestine thing is a little bit more obvious and direct. And you'll see, you know, and we'll talk about this a little bit when we talk about Palestine, but it shouldn't be the main issue. But, you know, I don't know, I was talking to someone the other day where they were someone who doesn't like the Catholic Church, but who was like, it is the largest institution in the world that is speaking up about Palestine because no fucking government is besides like.... Well, some governments are right, and some governments are doing a lot.
**Inmn ** 25:53 Sorry, I just want to counter that. There are some governments that are doing a lot and it's really fucking cool.
**Margaret ** 25:58 Yeah. No, that's what we're gonna talk about in a bit. But, yeah, the Pope is outspoken about the Palestine issue and not being in favor of what's happening there. But also, there's this thing--this is a complete minor thing that I just find really interesting--all of these right-wing folks who come from evangelical backgrounds, who are like Christian nationalists, were like, "Well, we like authority, fascisty things, right? What kind of looks like that and is super Christian? The Catholic Church. So we're all going to join. We're all going to become trad Catholic. We're all going to stop being evangelical Protestants and start becoming Catholics," right? And then they realize that the Catholic Church is not--the Catholic Church has fucking problems--it's not a racist organization on the level that they want it to be, right? Like it is a fundamentally racially diverse group. And so they're all freaking out. And then also, specifically, the Pope dismissed a conservative U.S. Bishop named Strickland because basically, he was like--I'm not fucking getting into the politics of that shit too much right now--but basically, the church is trying to be like, "Hey, we don't actually hate gay people, even though we kind of aren't like really cool with gay sex. But that's only because we're kind of not cool with any sex because like, we're weird Catholics." And then all of these right-wingers are like, "What? What do you mean? I thought this was about killing everyone," and so then they're all getting kicked out of the Catholic Church. And then they're all freaking out about it. It is the funniest thing for me and for probably no one who's listening is like watching.... You can like go on to Twitter and see all these Trad Caths be like, "I'm starting to think that this is a bad organization for us to have joined." Anyway, there's been all this shit where a lot of religious communities are stepping up their defense of LGBT folks. And I just want to.... Like, the culture war, even in the like terms of large, weird institutions, is a complicated one. That's what I got. It's just fun to read about.
**Inmn ** 28:10 Yeah. And it's like...as much as bad, you know, horrifying legislation that's being passed, there's also...there's a ton of resistance. And there's a ton of people who are not trying to see the United States specifically turn into a more polarized bigoted hell-world for queer and trans people, despite the fact that the UN declared a state of emergency in the United States for queer and trans people this past year.
**Margaret ** 28:12 Make sense. Christian nationalism as a fucking evil thing that is trying to take over the United States, which is funny, because the United States is already an evil country. Like, we are the--this is my attempt to transition to Palestine--we are the, the Israel to Palestine, like it's just...it just already happened. And continues to happen. But you know, it's like, we got like, 400 years on Israel in terms of being a settler-colonial state doing a bunch of genocide.
**Inmn ** 29:25 Yeah, and I don't know. I'll--actually I'm gonna segue into this a little bit later. But yeah, so Israel has been carrying out a genocide in Palestine since October 7th. I mean, they've been carrying out a genocide in Palestine for like over 75 years, but the most recent incarnation of that has been since October 7. I'm not going to go over the broad strokes of it because if you have not heard about this and have not seen a ton of news about it since October then you live in a very different world than the rest of us. Over 28,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7th. Two thirds of those are women and children. The current statistic is that a child dies every 10 minutes in Gaza, which is an utterly horrifying statistic. About 4% of the population of the Gaza Strip, which is more than 90,000 people, are now dead, wounded, or missing. This is being considered an extreme mass destabilizing, or sorry, mass disabling and mass destabilizing event. And, you know, I'm not critiquing people who put out infographics at all, like the infographics on Instagram and social media are incredibly informative and there is a lot of focus on the the death tolls and less focus on the amount of people who are...who are now becoming or have become disabled since the start of this most recent wave of genocide. About 70% of civilian infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed. This includes 318 schools, 1,612, industrial facilities, 169 health facilities, including 23 hospitals, 57 clinics, 89 ambulances, 201 mosques, 3 churches, and 169 press offices. The death toll, which is as of a few days ago, I think, is about 28,000. And that includes 12,000 children, 6,100 women, 241 health care workers, and 105 journalists.
**Margaret ** 32:15 Which is like more journalists than were killed in like World War II total or something like that. Like some it was just like, astounding, weird... It's not an accident.
**Inmn ** 32:28 Yeah. And, you know, this is something that people have been talking about for, you know, a very, very long time at this point is that Israel very specifically targets journalists in their airstrikes. And this is like.... As far as Israel has reported, I think there have been like, I think, like less than 500 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the conflict since October 7th. And there's a lot of...there's a lot of criticism about these, or there's a lot of talk, about these statistics and these numbers from a lot of sides, the right-wing is saying that these numbers are completely inflated and then, you know, people on--I don't want to say the Left--people who are thinking reasonably about the world see it as being vastly underreported because it is...because of how difficult it is to actually ascertain the amount of damage that's been done. Yeah. So that's really, really horrible. And as some things that have happened, kind of like in the United States at least, there was also this.... I think it's like part of this kind of polarizing culture war that we've all been experiencing for a while at this point, but the US Congress had a bill go into effect that kind of effectively defines anti...redefines anti-semitism as being anything that criticizes the State of Israel. Which is fucking crazy. And it was opposed by two people. Do you want to guess who those two people were? Or like, what their backgrounds were?
**Margaret ** 34:29 Palestinian...wait, we only have one Palestinian senator, right?
**Inmn ** 34:33 Yeah, it was a Palestinian. Yeah and a libertarian from Kentucky who thought that it was a little...like that the bill too broadly defined anti-semitism and I feel like probably because he was worried about his own anti-semitism coming into conflict, you know?
**Margaret ** 34:57 Maybe but libertarian--I don't know this guy. Yeah, libertarians historically...Libertarians recently have gotten worse. But libertarians historically are like--I mean, they're right-wing--but they sit outside of traditional right-left in a lot of ways, you know?
**Inmn ** 35:13 Yeah, no, that's true. That's true. I don't know this person's inclinations.
**Margaret ** 35:17 I don't know this one guy.
**Inmn ** 35:18 Yeah, I hope they're cool but probably are not. So in terms of, you know, out cry there's a lot of it. In the US people have--and all over the world--there have been these mass marches, mass mobilizations, like millions of people showing up for demonstrations, especially in areas around Palestine, which is amazing. In the US, and like, I'm just focusing on a couple things in the US, there's...people have been targeting different Israeli companies and different companies that sell things like arms and technology to Israel and doing things like...there's indigenous water protector blocs who have been going out in boats and blocking ships from being able to leave port and just a lot of really incredible stuff happening. But who kind of, I don't wanna say takes the prize, but like guess who has been showing up in an absolutely ridiculous way?
**Margaret ** 36:32 Jews.
**Inmn ** 36:33 Jews. Yeah. That is not where I was going. But yes, Jews have been showing up in really incredible ways, especially in fighting this idea that criticizing Israel is anti-semitic or that Israel has anything to do with Judaism or Jewishness.
**Margaret ** 36:53 Well, like relates to it, but it relates to it antagonistically half the time.
**Inmn ** 36:57 Yeah. But where I was going was the country of Yemen.
**Margaret ** 37:02 Oh, yeah.
**Inmn ** 37:06 So there are these trade routes that Israel uses through, you know, these like narrow, narrow waterways and Yemen controls one of them and has totally blocked Israeli ships from going through it, and which has a lot to do with shipping oil and just anything. Israel has been blocked from shipping things through the portages that make the most sense and has been forced to sail completely around Africa, which has cost them billions of dollars. Yemen has also, like they've just literally attacked Israeli ships with missiles and shit. So Yemen is...Yemen is showing the fuck up. In terms of like, a lot of like, Western countries, Ireland is really showing up, which is not surprising.
**Margaret ** 38:08 Yeah, I was about to say is like, "Why do you sound surprised?" What are you doing? Yeah.
**Inmn ** 38:11 Yeah, not surprising at all like in, especially the UN there's all these videos of Irish politicians basically being like, "What the fuck is wrong with everyone?"
**Margaret ** 38:25 Yeah.
**Inmn ** 38:27 Which is incredible. And South Africa is suing Israel in international court for genocide. Yeah. Which you know, it's interesting to me that like South Africa, a country that has...that was..."affected" is not the right word...
**Margaret ** 38:53 Well they know apartheid better than anyone else.
**Inmn ** 38:55 Yeah. Yeah. That's what I got about Palestine. Keep showing up.
**Margaret ** 39:03 Okay, my--it's hard to put a positive spin on any of this--although things like people stepping the fuck up is that one of the things that's so interesting to me about this is if you told me 20 years ago that the media consensus around Israel would be broken, I would either not believe you or be jumping for joy. Because as long as I've been involved in activism, people have been, you know, on the anarchists-left and whatever have been trying to show up for Palestine in various ways, right, and be in solidarity in various ways, but it has always been wildly a minority position. And because Israel has always successfully used the manipulation of the idea that to be anti-Israel is anti-semitic. And that's finally breaking. And I really want to say that like, I think a lot of that breaking is because of groups like--what is it called--Jewish Voices for Peace? And, like, the work of being clearly on the front line in saying, "Not in our name," and like.... Because that kind of activism, I think, matters more than it often does. Like, usually when I'm like, "Oh, like, 'not our name,' is just kind of some liberal nonsense that people will shout sometimes," right in other contexts. But in this particular context, I find it very useful, because I think breaking the media narrative and the political narrative is necessary for any chance of the American people to put pressure on lawmakers to push for a ceasefire. And or honestly, like, I have never seen such a stark division between all mainstream media outlets and the government, on one side, and everyone in the country on the other side, because I don't think it's leftists who are against the genocide in Palestine, it is like you said, it's anyone who's paying any kind of attention to what's happening. And that is really, really promising to me. That's my...I don't know. The question is whether or not it'll like, work, right? And I don't want to spread cynicism.
**Inmn ** 41:34 So yeah, but there are some not so promising things on the world's horizon.
**Margaret ** 41:44 Yeah. Oh, is this your climate transition? Yeah. Okay. So the main thing--not the main thing.... I want to talk about all the stuff that we talked about, but I started off by saying 2023 is the year where we can no longer in any way ignore climate change, right? It is the year where it really became clear to a great deal of the world that climate change is not just coming but is here. And so I'm gonna talk a little bit about some of the ways that we know that. 2023 was the hottest year on record across the world. Some of the cities in the United States that experienced their hottest ever year last year include, and these are only some of them, Albany Austin, Baltimore, Baton Rouge, Burlington, Vermont, El Paso, Houston, Jackson Key West, Lexington, Little Rock, Miami, Milwaukee, Mobile, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, Orlando, Raleigh, Richmond, San Antonio, Tampa, and Worcester. Is it Worcester [pronounced to rhyme with war-chester] The sauce is worchestershire [like war-chester]. I think the town is Worcester [first syllable as similar to "would"-ster. ] Worcester. Yeah, why? Just pick one. Okay, anyway. Well, they won't have to pick one because it's too hot to make their sauce. Phoenix, Arizona became the first major US city to average 100 degrees or higher during a month, with a July average of 102.7. November 17th, was the first time that global temperatures reached two degrees above pre-industrial levels. Overall, we hit 1.46 Celsius above global pre-industrial levels, with 1.5 being the level that the Paris Agreement was supposed to be about avoiding. The UN says that there's a 66% chance that we'll hit 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next four years. Europe is the fastest warming continent, warming twice as fast as anywhere else. I hate to be like well, it's your fault anyway. But I mean, anyway, but whatever.
**Inmn ** 43:47 Yeah, yeah.
**Margaret ** 43:51 The COP28 summit finally saw country's--like finally in 2023--countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels entirely. They're like, we'll be net zero by 2050, which is hilarious, because we're all gonna be dead by 2050. I hate to say this, but.... I'm gonna talk a little bit about ways that we might be not dead by 2050. But like... That's too late. Okay, anyway, so Florida Keys hit a water temperature of 100 degrees this year. And Arctic ice was at an all time low. The rain forest had a drought. Swiss glaciers were still melting in October. The Mediterranean floods were 50 times more likely than a usual year. And this caught climate scientists off guard. Climate scientists, like at least according to--I'm sure there's climate scientists it did not catch off guard--but even climate scientists tended to have, at least the ones who were talking to the media about these certain types of things, have like a slightly.... There's a lot of scientists, as far as I can tell who are like, "We can't really communicate everything because then we'll just have like worldwide panic," right? I don't like any of this, but I also feel vindicated. I don't feel good about feeling vindicated. But there's this thing where...I have looked at what has been communicated through the media for the past 15 years and been like, "That is wildly optimistic," and like irresponsibly optimistic is how I have felt about it. And I have tended to, even amongst my peers, not be believed about how bad I think that things are going to get. And I've probably talked about this on the show before. And in some ways the show is the reflection of that. And yet, at the end of it all, I'm not a Doomer. I think things are really bad. And they're going to be really bad. But we need to just actually notice that take a real look at what's happening. I want to--I don't know whether the episode will come out before or after this one will, but I just did an interview.... Oh, here's positive news. The anarchist prisoner Eric King, who spent almost 10 years in lockup, finally got out for a direct action that was related to the Ferguson uprisings. [Inmn yays] And, and I just had a conversation with him, that you all may or may not have already heard, and one of the, you know, it was about how to survive prison. And, you know, in some ways, whenever you ask someone how to survive prison, you're kind of looking for the like, hopeful, like, "Oh, I could just keep my head down and read books and stay out of the fights," right? You know, and, a lot of his advice was, "learn how to fight," you know? And like, because we actually just need--I don't want to say we don't need people to hold our hands. We need to hold each other's hands. But what we need to do is soberly face what appears to be happening. And what appears to be happening is the dissolution of the climate that we grew up in. And that climate change is happening faster and with more chaotic effects than we've been told. And all of the methods that we've been told that will work to stop or alleviate climate change are not effective. I want to read some Washington Post headlines. They have a...they actually have a better climate section than any other major newspaper, as far as I can tell. I actually canceled my subscription. I like to subscribe to a lot of the newspapers because I do work and need access to it. I actually finally canceled my New York Times subscription mostly over the Palestine issue because they're just propaganda for Israel. But the Washington Post is better climate reportage anyway. But even in the Washington Post, you can see the media spin. I'm just going to read you some headlines. "Indoor house plants come with a cost to the planet. Here's how to minimize it," or "How soon do you have to buy heat pumps and electric vehicles to avoid climate catastrophe?" "Renewables and electric vehicles are soaring, it's still not enough," "Companies made big climate pledges. Now they are bulking on delivering," "Companies capture a lot of CO2. Most of it is going into new oil," or "Exxon Mobil doubles down on fossil fuels with $59.5 billion Pioneer deal."
**Inmn ** 48:48 Are these Onion articles? Is this the game of whether it's an Onion article or not?
**Margaret ** 48:51 Those are literally all Washington Post from about the past month or so. They're all currently on the website. And yeah, exactly, exactly. Because the juxtaposition between "Hey, maybe you should get a heat pump and put solar on your roof and think about getting your house plants from somewhere local," like, I do literally all of those things. I swapped out my oil furnace for a heat pump. I put solar panels on my roof. I went into debt in order to do so. I actually did these as preparation things because whatever, like, you know, they don't stop climate change. Stopping fossil fuel infrastructure stops climate change. There is no other thing... There are other things that are big, like changing the way that our agriculture works, to not have factory farming and like distribution of animal products across the country. Ironically, centralizing grain production actually lowers the environment embedded greenhouse gasses as compared to like... It's complicated. But like there's stuff, but ending fossil fuel infrastructure is the only thing. And then the other thing is that it's like.... And then okay, the Doomerism is, "it's too late," right? And it is too late to not have climate change. But there's like...when you're watching a genocide, it's too late to have the genocide not happen. It's never too late to stop the genocide from happening, you know?
**Inmn ** 49:04 You can always choose to stop....
**Margaret ** 50:43 Yeah. And we need to stop climate change. It is too late to, "peace and love, everything is going to be totally fine. Everything can keep going the way it used to, " right? But there is a difference between a world in which we can survive and a world in which we can't. And like I know that I'm...I'm just going to like finish out my.... I think it is very likely that we, during our lifetimes, will need to grow all of our food underground or inside. I think that is entirely possible. I think it is entirely possible that we will be looking at mountain ranges and looking at how to put roofs between.... well, where I live where the mountain ranges are right next to each other and they are a little bit short, you know.... Like, roofing in things so that we can grow things inside and we can have some level of climate control, right, in order to have a consistent enough way to grow food. I think that it is entirely possible that everything will be different. I don't want that to be the case. Well, I do want everything to be different. But it's because I want a mutual aid utopia where we all take care of each other and etc, etc. But..
**Inmn ** 52:01 Out of the questions. [Jokingly]
**Margaret ** 52:05 So, I don't know. That's, um.... And I will say, the best sober look that I have ever read about this, is a book.... Have you read "Ministry for the Future," by any chance? I've been mostly talking to the audience and not you Inmn, but I'm switching over to talking to you.
**Inmn ** 52:23 No, I have…I have not. [laughing]
**Margaret ** 52:24 Okay, there's this book by Kim Stanley Robinson, who's like probably the most experienced climate fiction author in English that...certainly that I'm aware of, but has been writing climate fiction for a very long time. And "Ministry for the Future" is like, as far as I can tell, it's a couple years old now, his best guess at what could possibly pull us out of this tailspin. And Kim Stanley Robinson is not an anarchist but he's always been anarchists adjacent or has always been friendly to anarchists. And we've appeared sympathetically in many of his books. And oh, yeah. Yeah, like the "Mars" trilogy is about terraforming Mars and it being complicated. Has anarchist characters that are pretty explicit. And the book "Antarctica" has like eco-saboteurs and stuff like that. The book "Ministry for the Future" is about--what he does best is less the like "eco-arson" and more of the like, "you and organization tasked to fix climate change" or whatever. So it's like from that perspective. But they work hand in hand with--it's been a couple years since I read it--I think the Children of Kali or something like that, which comes out of basically--since India is one of the countries that's going to be the most affected by climate change--and they are basically a direct action group that in that book is like just blowing up airplanes and just like, absolutely being like, "Fossil fuels are done and we're gonna blow them the fuck up." And now.... And it's about the, not even the tension, but--dare I say--the dialectic between those two forces. It is about the relationship between and how they can work together between institutional radical change and direct action. I think what is happening is bigger than ideology. I think what is happening is bigger than anything that has happened in human history. And we are so blessed--I say that ironically, but in a weird way I don't--to be alive during one of the most tumultuous things that will happen in the history of the Earth. And it's our fault. But it's not our fault because you didn't buy an electric vehicle fast enough. It is the fault of a civilization that, you know...is a fault of Western civilization, but it is our responsibility to do what we can about it and/or to try and survive what's coming. That's my.... Sorry, this has been... I've been thinking about this a lot.
**Inmn ** 55:22 No, I think that makes sense. And I...just a couple days ago, I was talking to a friend about--they work outside a lot collecting plants--and she's like a plant archivist. I'm forgetting the words for these things. And, like, she was talking about, how, in 10 years, probably this is.... You know, she's a botanist and a biologist and studies this to some extent, but she thinks that in 10 years that the world will be not a comfortable place, in more places, to just exist outside in. And so she's on this quest right now to catalog as many plants as possible before they don't exist anymore and before, it becomes not...like a lot less possible to be out in the world doing that kind of work. Like, her 10 year plan is to not...somehow not work outside anymore. Yeah. Which is not going to be a reality for a lot of people. But yeah, it was very like, oh, yeah, this is not some distant thing. This is like, this is...
**Margaret ** 56:52 What happened now?
**Inmn ** 56:53 What's happening right now. Yeah. Yeah. So you know, that's not like a...that's not like a hopeful or whatever. But I don't know. I do want to, I do want to say that, like, you know, 2023 was a lot of really bad things that happened in it. And I think people are also doing a lot more about all of this stuff. And, like, I don't know, it's like.... I feel like there's this kind of joke, especially in activist or anarchist circles, that it's like, the true revolutionary spirit comes out when the most repression and horrifying shit happens. And I don't know, I hope that at least, at least, more bad things happening means that more people are doing more to stop bad things from happening. That make sense?
**Margaret ** 57:58 Yeah, I mean, what's funny is like, historically, I tend to think that it's actually not repression that brings out resistance as much as I'm like, when people are repressed for a really long time, it doesn't necessarily make them resist as much as like when things get slightly better and then that reverses really quickly...
**Inmn ** 58:16 I see.
**Margaret ** 58:17 ...is more often. But that is also part of what's happening right now. And yeah, I think that we can look at more and more people showing up for Palestine and more and more people showing up for the climate and I think that that will continue and will continue to grow. And I think that another random weird positive thing that's happened in the past couple of years, or past year in 2023, is that the prepper space is no longer a right wing space. I think. When I look at mainstream... like when you look at like prepper Reddit, right? It is like people talking about how they can take care of their communities as well as get ready for themselves. And it's like a... that is a sea change. Right. And I…that gives me hope. Okay, one other like, not actually really positive, but funny, almost positive: You know, the DC was built on a swamp?
**Inmn ** 59:11 Yeah. A lot of major cities were.
**Margaret ** 59:15 DC is built in a low-lying delta like New Orleans, but it was constructed on top of rubble fill and the Federal Triangle--which unfortunately includes a lot of museums and I like museums--is built on land reclaimed from Tiber Creek, which is occasionally.... which was eventually buried and turned into a sewer. The US Capitol is sinking. Sea level is rising. The like abandoned...the like forgotten creeks are returning and just using roads. And this will fuck up a bunch of poor people. Like DC is like--although it's gentrified, like fuck since I first lived near it--but um, it's still a city with a lot of marginalized people living in it. It's not going to just directly affect the lawmakers. So it's only symbolically beautiful that DC is sinking. Practically, it's actually a disaster and a crisis.
**Inmn ** 1:00:10 Yeah. Golly.
**Margaret ** 1:00:12 Which is a good metaphor for civilization itself. We can be like, "Hooray, civilization is collapsing." And you're like, "Oh, wait, who is that gonna affect the most? Oh shit," you know?
**Inmn ** 1:00:22 Yeah. Which I...you know, I hope everyone knows this, we are not eco fascists.
**Margaret ** 1:00:29 No.
**Inmn ** 1:00:30 Yeah, if you're getting that from this show, you're listening to the wrong show...
**Margaret ** 1:00:34 You're listening wrongly.
**Inmn ** 1:00:35 You're listening...listening wrongly. Margaret, you know what other really.... You know what kind of cool thing happened in 2023?
**Margaret ** 1:00:44 What?
**Inmn ** 1:00:46 Um, this podcast, which you are maybe familiar with, I think, Live Like the World is Dying.
**Margaret ** 1:00:54 Sounds familiar.
**Inmn ** 1:00:55 Yeah, we hit 100 episodes.
**Margaret ** 1:00:58 Oh, shit.
**Inmn ** 1:00:59 In 2023. And...
**Margaret ** 1:01:00 We hit any other milestones?
**Inmn ** 1:01:02 Yeah, we also hit over a million downloads.
**Margaret ** 1:01:06 Hell fucking yeah.
**Inmn ** 1:01:08 Yeah. Like, and I don't know. It's...I feel like.... Oh, and I came on as a host in 2023, which I think is pretty....
**Margaret ** 1:01:19 Was it only a year ago?
**Inmn ** 1:01:21 It was less than a year ago, actually. Well, we switched to being weekly too, which was...has made it seem a lot longer.And, you know, it's like I hope that...I hope that more people listening to the show, I hope that us doing more--even though every time I get on the air I'm like, "Wait, how do you be a person? How do you say things?" It's been really amazing to see this show be important to people and to see this show be helping people have more conversations, more conversations about COVID, more conversations about disability, more conversations about preparedness, more conversations about the dumpster--I'm gonna say dumpster fire again....
**Margaret ** 1:02:11 That is okay.
**Inmn ** 1:02:11 That is our country. But thanks everyone, for supporting the show. And thank you for listening to us rant and all of our Lord of the Rings jokes.
**Margaret ** 1:02:26 We didn't get a single one in this time.
**Inmn ** 1:02:29 It's true. We've failed you.
**Margaret ** 1:02:33 You have failed me. [Joking] Yeah, that's why we're ending the episode. Should we end the episode? Should we sign out?
**Inmn ** 1:02:39 Probably.n Do you have any like.... I feel like.... Margaret was like...I guess reflecting on all of that and having created or founded the show, I'm just wondering if you have any more reflections on 100 episodes of Live Like the World is Dying and anything that you'd like to see in the future going forward for maybe, more specifically for the show. We've kind of talked about what we would love to see people do in their lives.
**Margaret ** 1:03:12 I never expected Live Like the World is Dying to take off. I obviously started it right before the pandemic began. So that gave me a little boost right out the gate, you know, but I never expected my interest in preparedness to be more generalized. And, you know, I've been so used to feeling.... One time I lived on a land project. And I was saying, "If the following bad thing happens, don't worry, I've got about six months worth of food for everyone in the barn." And the person...one person was like, "You have salt?" And I was like, "Yeah, no, yeah, I've got a bunch of giant cans of salt." And then I realized they were joking. And, I feel less alone as a result of the success of this show. And I've heard from other people. I've heard from listeners who feel similarly. One of my favorite types of messages to get in this world is people who were sort of a political getting into preparedness and were starting to get sucked towards individualistic and right-wing preparedness and then ran across the show and felt like they were pulled back from that brink. I also sometimes hear from people who are starting to normalize, as part of anarchist and mutual aid practice, to encourage individual preparedness. And I also would say that over the 100 episodes and the, coming on, four years of the show, I've learned so much from the people that I've interviewed and from the people that you've interviewed and that Brooke has interview and it's really given me a lot more of a holistic picture of what preparedness is. It's really helped me focus my own thoughts on the matter. And, you know, I, when I say things like, "Well, we can do it." I don't mean it's going to be easy. But I mean, we can do it, you know, and one of the things that I've learned by being an anarchist and how Bonanno influences this, is that doing it is the winning, right? It's not about.... Like, you know what I have 0% chance of surviving? Life. Life kills. We all fucking die, right? Yeah. And so all we can do is live as well and as in alliance...allegiance to our own values as we can. And I think preparedness is a big part of that. And I think that preparedness has taught me responsibility. I come from a very chaotic background. I think that anarchists in general sometimes eschew responsibility a little bit too much, even though that often when crisis comes up, we're some of the more...like, our entire ethos is built on responsibility. And sometimes we forget that. And this show has helped me remember that. And a million fucking listeners...listens is a fucking lot. And that's cool as shit. That's awesome.
**Inmn ** 1:06:47 Yeah, it's like a lot more than a million now.
**Margaret ** 1:06:50 Hell yeah.
**Inmn ** 1:06:51 We didn't like just barely hit...scratch it.
**Margaret ** 1:07:01 Should I do a little close out spiel?
**Margaret ** 1:07:04 And if you want to support us, you should tell people about the show. You should tell people about it in person, you should tell people about it while organizing preparedness gatherings where people from your region get together and talk about needs and how you can help each other. And we'll probably be putting together a little bit of a like "How to do that" based on one that--I'm going to say "we" organized, but that's...I'm over emphasizing my own importance in the organization. And you can also just rate and review and do all that other algorithmic shit. I am becoming more and more of a crotchety old lady and I hate all that shit. But you can also support us on Patreon. We pay our transcriber and we pay our audio editor. And we have hopes of paying our guests and hosts at some point as well. And if you want to help make that happen, you can support us on Patreon. We're published by Strangers in a Tangle Wilderness, which puts out several other podcasts including Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which features our monthly zine, as well as The Spectacle, recently renamed from Anarcho Geek Power Hour, which talks about nerdy shit in a way that is hopefully entertaining. Well...it is entertaining. But in particular, we want to thank some of our patrons, we want to thank....
**Inmn ** 1:07:04 totally.
**Inmn ** 1:08:30 Wait. One second. I've had a new thing. I've had a new idea about these acknowledgments. So these acknowledgments that we do at the end of each episode of our podcasts are for people who are in our $20 a month Patreon tier, and maybe piggybacking off, you know, some of Margaret's other work is, you, if you sign up for this $20 a month here, we'll acknowledge something, and it could be you, it could be a mutual aid group that you work with, or dare I say it could be whatever you say that we want to acknowledge. Obviously, we're not going to do anything fucked up....
**Margaret ** 1:09:09 Like "Pee Pee Poo Poo" or something? If you want me to say "pee pee, poo poo," give me $20 a month, I'll fuckin say it.
**Inmn ** 1:09:15 Yeah. So in reframing this--and we have some other stuff coming out for $20 a month patrons, hopefully soon, some more some more stuff beyond acknowledgments--but you can get us to say funny things or thank theoretical concepts by signing up for our $20 a month Patreon tier. [Margaret laughs] And that is...that is my new plug about the acknowledgments tier.
**Margaret ** 1:09:40 That rules Okay, well, this is the list from before anyone realized that they could do that. And it is, Patoli, Eric, and Perceval, Buck, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, funder, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, S.J., Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Michaiah, and the immortal Hoss the Dog.
**Inmn ** 1:10:12 thanks everyone. Talk to you soon
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn is joined by two humanitarian-aid workers who have been providing care to asylum seekers along the Mexico-Arizona border near Sasabe where Prevention Through Deterrence policies are playing out in realtime as thousands of asylum seekers are left out in the winter desert by Border Patrol.
Groups like the ones these volunteers work with can be found at nomoredeaths.org/, www.tucsonsamaritans.org, and www.gvs-samaritans.org.
Groups in California like borderkindness.org are doing similar work.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Crisis on the Arizona Border
**Inmn ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today Inmn Neruin and today we're gonna be talking about some pretty horrible things going on in the world which, you know, of course, we never talk about horrible things on this podcast. It's always really good and wonderful things. But yeah, we're going to be talking about a crisis that has been going on on the Arizona border near the town of Sasabe. And it's gonna tie in a lot of things that we've talked about on the show before, especially from the No More Deaths interviews. So, if you haven't listened to the No More Deaths interviews, they're not...it's certainly not required. But if you do not have a...like a broad understanding of the history of border militarization or fucking dumb things that Border Patrol does, it might be helpful to go back and listen to those episodes first. But yeah, but before we get to all of that, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts and here is a jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo doo doo. [Singing a simple melody]
**Inmn ** 02:54 And we're back. Thanks you all so much for coming on the show today. Would y'all Introduce yourself with your names, pronouns, and I guess a little bit about like what you do in the world that relates to what we're going to be talking about?
**Bryce ** 03:24 Yeah, Bryce, he/him. I've been working with various desert aid organizations over the past couple of years, Tucson Samaritans, No More Deaths and some search and rescue search and recovery groups.
**Ember ** 03:42 I’m Ember, he/him, and have been working with No More Deaths around Arivaca, Arizona for the last year and a half.
**Inmn ** 03:53 Cool. So there's been a lot of stuff happening at the wall recently, which, you know, is what we're here to talk about and, yeah, I don't know, do y'all want to just tell us about what's what's going on at the wall?
Ember04:18 Yeah, I'll just preface it by saying, you know, we're very much just speaking as individuals who've been involved with wall stuff around Sasabe, Arizona, which is about an hour south of Tucson and we'll talk more about it but to just step back, this is a crisis that's happening all over the border and we're really going to be speaking primarily to the situation that's been unfolding around Sasabe in the last months and weeks and not speaking on behalf of No More Deaths or any other groups.
**Inmn ** 04:58 Cool. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like a huge, huge, huge, sprawling crisis of horrible things.
Bryce05:07 But yeah, so I think there's been a lot more media about what's happening in Jacumba or in Lukesville, where hundreds or thousands of people have been coming through the wall, not a port of entry, to seek asylum, and have been left out there in sort of makeshift camps for days or weeks at a time waiting to be apprehended by Border Patrol. And something similar has been happening east of Sasabe, which is this tiny, tiny, tiny little town, as Ember said, about an hour south of Tucson. For the past couple years, people have been doing a similar thing of coming through gaps in the border wall to seek asylum because they're blocked from presenting themselves at ports of entry. So over the past couple of years, it's mostly been like the Tucson Samaritans and Green Valley Samaritans that have been helping these people out, because pretty much the situation was that if you don't call Border Patrol to come apprehend them then Border Patrol will just never come. It's a super remote area of the desert. There's a road that goes along the border wall that you can easily drive to get to these people, but Border Patrol just won't do it because it's not really worth their time. And so at times, there would be people stuck out there for like three or four days. I ran into one group that had written SOS in rocks and had built a fire just trying to get Border Patrol's attention. And this is like two years ago before any of this was even in the news. And just...it's kind of just slowly escalated until the beginning of November. A lot of violence broke out south of Sasabe on the Mexican side. And it's just.... Between that and just other dynamics happening, it just shifted things so that we suddenly started seeing just hundreds of people there on the border wall seeking asylum. And where usually there were gaps closer to Sasabe where they could present so that Border Patrol could just show up in buses or vans and pick people up, now people were showing up much further east in more remote areas that are much more difficult to get to because of Biden's new border wall construction that blocked off access to some of these closer areas. So now the situation quickly became that Border Patrol would take a very long time to pick anybody up. And because of the high volume of people, they're now 20 kilometers, or 30 kilometers away from the actual port of entry. People are having to hike are left overnight just in the middle of nowhere, just building fires or doing whatever they can to survive the night. And, yeah, it's been about a couple of months of that now.
Ember08:20 I'm going to just reiterate that, you know, a big call of a lot of groups is to open ports of entry because this is stemming from the point that people can't claim asylum at a port of entry, people are being forced to use this bullshit CBP app and wait for insane amounts of time, if ever, to be allowed to present for asylum. And so as we kind of hear the mainstream propaganda about what's going on, there's very little emphasis on the fact that the reason people are coming through gaps in the wall in really remote areas is fundamentally because they can't claim asylum at a port of entry and because the gaps are being closed nearby and that's just really important to ground it because there's just so much misinformation about that.
**Inmn ** 09:10 For folks who don't know, why can't people claim...apply for asylum at a port of entry?
Bryce09:17 I think there's a lot of confusion and misinformation about this. A lot of people I think thought that that was going to change when Title 42 was repealed or thinking it had something to do with the MPP, the Remain in Mexico Policy, but this actually was, it was a separate policy decision that at first got some media exposure. It started with metering back in like 2017 or something--sometimes during--where they would where they would just let in a certain amount of people and then CBP agents would actually block people before they got to the port of entry and say "We can't take any more people. You have to show us your passport," all this stuff. And then that turned into during COVID, "We're just not going to take anybody." And then now with Biden, it has continued, where if you don't have a CBP One app, CBP agents will just turn you away at the port of entry. And there's been a lot of legal stuff about it. Like, I think in San Diego there were a couple big court cases where they said, "You can't continue doing this," but the Biden administration has come out saying, like, "We don't actually turn people away at the port of entry. We don't do turn-backs." But clearly on the ground, that is what's happening. And so I think people think of it as like that there's some big law that needs to be changed or that, you know, people are trying to do something sketchy by coming between ports of entry, or at the port of entry, or that there is a legal pathway through the CBP One app and people just aren't doing it. But really, the CBP One app forces people.... It's essentially the remain in Mexico Policy but without the Remain in Mexico Policy. And then if people try to present themselves at the port of entry, which they should be allowed to do, they're just turned away. And there's not some...there's not some big thing causing this to happen. It's just pure policy that could be changed very, very soon if they actually had the desire to do it.
**Inmn ** 10:29 Yeah. So it's like with this app, people are being asked to download an app to apply for asylum through and then they just wait for a notification?
Bryce11:48 Yeah. And then once the.... This should all be.... Nobody should take my word for this because I'm not like a fucking asylum lawyer or something. This is just from talking to people, my understanding of it. So definitely don't.... Don't take it too seriously. But from what I understand, people are...people download the app and once they get the notification that they have an appointment then they have to get to the port of entry where that appointment is within 24 hours or something. And then just get to it. But there's no like.... The people will wait, you know, a couple months, six months, a year, and they just are sort of in limbo until they get their appointment.
**Inmn ** 12:35 Golly, it sounds like.... This sounds like a sick joke of like people like.... Wait, I'm not even gonna make the comparison. This sounds like a sick fucking joke. But um...and so this has been happening for quite some time. But very recently, things kind of got a lot worse in Arizona, or like around Sasabe.
Bryce13:05 Yeah, I mean, and it definitely seems like a big part of it is...whatever fighting between rival factions of the cartel south of the border. It's hard to really say exactly, but at the same time, that.... People started coming in higher numbers in the last two months. People also started coming through the San Miguel gate on the Tohono O'odham Nation in even higher numbers than here. And over there, there's not nearly as much.... Border Patrol was promising to, you know, set up structures and give water and all that stuff, but in the end, there's just really not a lot of support over there like, you know, what we have here. There's been a lot of community committee support and donations coming in, which has been great, but over at San Miguel, there's not even that which is already inadequate.
**Inmn ** 14:08 Yeah, yeah. And maybe this is sort of me asking a question that I've had about all of this: I've heard that the town of Sasabe is like.... I've heard it referred to as a ghost town right now?
Bryce14:27 Yeah, I mean, I think there's like 20 residents left or something like that. I have...a couple of friends of mine went down there recently to visit a friend who's still living there and she runs a migrant outreach center in the town, which hasn't really had people in it, but it's doing fine. The garden is still going. [Inmn "Hell yeahs"] I do know people are definitely interested in coming back if and when things calm down.
**Inmn ** 15:00 Do...I guess do you want to talk about what y'all have been experiencing in kind of like the last week, I guess?
Ember15:08 Yeah, I mean, pretty much as Bryce was saying, there's been folks responding to this, primarily the Samaritans as a formal group from Tucson and Green Valley, who have been responding to this for much longer. But folks involved with No More Deaths really got involved more significantly about a month ago because of the massive increase in the numbers of people out there and people being pushed further out into the desert. And that response has grown quite a bit. It kind of started with a few people from No More Deaths who were getting involved and then has exponentially increased in the last week. It was a situation that was really, really challenging in terms of the amount of resources and supplies needed for stuff. Like, basically hundreds of people, primarily a lot of children and babies and families and elders, stuck out in the increasingly becoming winter temperatures with completely inadequate supplies, most people who expected to be picked up immediately and we're instead waiting for up to three or four days in the winter conditions in very remote areas of the desert. The border wall outside of this area goes just right through very, very mountainous terrain. And so the border wall, you know, there's a road on the border wall, but it's basically, as you get far out, just being completely out in the middle of the desert. It's an insane road. It just goes straight up and down mountains. And so people are stuck out there for, at times, up to multiple days and may have been waiting on the other side for some days before they crossed. And so a lot of the original response as our group started to get involved was just primarily supply distro and medical care and medical triage. And I mean, just to give a context of how many people were out there, I think we originally had an emergency request for $10,000 and we used that money in about a week.
**Inmn ** 17:41 Oh my god.
Ember17:42 So that's primarily for food, water, blankets, you know, over the counter meds, and gas for the trucks, and things like that. Things really came to a head. I mean, it was a very untenable situation or unsustainable situation in terms of people going out there regularly and being like, "People are going to die out here. This is a really fucked up situation." People tried to pressure and call Border Patrol to pick people up, which they were slow to do. So sometimes they would do it regularly. Sometimes they would take a lot longer. But last Friday, there was a massive rainstorm. And we had...those of us who had been involved in organizing support around it had already started to put out larger calls for support, realizing this was way out of the depths of just what our group could respond to. And so we were putting out larger calls for support from the Tucson community, from Arivaca, which is a town about 15 miles from Sasabe, and we were preparing a little bit for the rain in terms of...the day before we set up some tarp structures at some of the places people were waiting. But what happened on Friday, I think really expanded the calls to mobilize and got way more people involved. And yeah, I'll leave it to Bryce if you want to talk a little bit about what happened on Friday.
Bryce19:25 Sure. Yeah. I mean, I guess some other context would be that, increasingly, we had to do a lot of advocacy for emergency situations because, like Ember said, it was really just, you know, kids, infants, people that were not prepared to be out, you know, 30 mile...30 kilometers from a road, coming just with the clothes on their backs or maybe a little day pack or something but really kind of expecting to be picked up by Border Patrol immediately. And there's a lot of people that had started out with very serious medical conditions even. There's at least a few cases that I was personally involved in of people coming to the United States specifically to seek medical care for their children. So, it'd be like a kid with kidney disease or, you know, needing some kind of medicine daily that hadn't had it for multiple days are really serious things, you know, or some woman who is nine months pregnant and having medical issues. I mean, really serious things where somebody should just not be out in the middle of the desert. And the kind of advocacy we had to do for on 911 [calls] was just really obscene. Like, we call 911, say, there's somebody out here with some particular medical emergency, they'd ask the nationality of the person, whether they were entering the United States illegally, things like that, and then transfer us to Border Patrol. And Border Patrol would either drop the call or say, "Okay, we're sending somebody." and then we sit there for six hours and, of course, nobody comes. There were times when Border Patrol would actually come out. They'd check out like two or three 911 calls, say, "Okay, this person is not going to die today," and then leave. And then we eventually were able to convince some ambulances to occasionally come out for very, very serious cases. But even then, they started getting upset with us for, quote-unquote, "Crying wolf." And just the amount of advocacy that we had to do even to get that response was just...I mean, it was...it would just be hours of calling everybody we knew with connections to be able to get an ambulance down there. And then, even then, we would get threatened with arrest by Border Patrol for transporting people to the highway to rendezvous with an ambulance, even with permission of the ambulance. And so when the rainstorm came, it was this sort of perfect storm where we had a system in place where we were sort of prepared to medivac the most serious patients out of there and just sort of keep everybody else alive until Border Patrol came to pick people up because.... And then we would advocate for, "Okay, these people really need to be taken first. You need to take these people first." Which in itself is a really compromising position to be in just because we're acting as an intermediary between people and their physical safety and the asylum process. It's like this weird.... Like, we're not the government, but we're fulfilling this weird government role. And, yeah, it's a very weird thing. But when the rain storm happened, we were not prepared for the reality of Border Patrol just not showing up at all. They had been pretty consistently, even if we don't see them all day, they eventually show up at like five or six, especially if we call a million times and advocate and call 911, and all that. And so, the roads were muddy, but we were doing it in our janky little trucks, we were driving back and forth just fine. And somewhere around like two or three, it started...we started to realize that just nobody was coming. And they were.... Like, I don't know why, after everything we've all been through, that anybody would have had any faith in Border Patrol to avoid, to want to avoid a mass casualty incident. But here they were, seemingly, just like willingly causing one. Just to give an example of what the scene looked like, we showed up, things were already pretty bad. Like people were in good spirits, just because, you know, they've been traveling so long, they're glad to finally be there. And having a good sense of humor about things is kind of the only way to survive something horrible like that. People were still kind of in that space when we showed up. We handed out food and water. Most people, even though we had built some really rudimentary tarps structures, people generally opted to just keep walking because they didn't want to just be stuck out there in the cold and rain. And every time we drove back and forth along the wall, we just noticed people getting increasingly more desperate as they realized that they're just stuck out in the middle of the desert in this rain. And to the point where there was just no way to properly triage. There would just be.... We were just sort of bouncing.... Or, instead of actually helping people out, we were just bouncing around from emergency to emergency Yeah, we would be on our way to an emergency and then just see somebody laying in a puddle of water, just in agonizing pain--because even, you know, somebody gets a muscle cramp and can't stand anymore and then they're just laying in the cold and rain. And they don't have warm gear, they don't have anything waterproof. They're just laying there and it becomes a medical emergency just because they're stuck out in the elements in this rainstorm. And so we'd be on our way to some medical emergency and have to drop two people off to go deal with another one and then just hope that another of our trucks would come back to get people. And yeah, we started just having to treat it as--I mean, Ember could speak more to the medical stuff as an EMT--but there were...we had nurses with us and other medical people who essentially just started treating the triage as if it was...as if it was going to be a mass casualty incident.
Ember25:55 Yeah, I mean, Friday set historic rainfall records. In Tucson, there was an inch of rain. And there was probably almost that much where we were and we're talking about, you know, winter desert rain. So you know, 4000', almost 4000', elevation, like freezing...almost freezing temperatures and dumping, dumping rain, including large amounts of thunder and lightning. And with the lightning, keep in mind that everybody who's there is against this 30' metal border wall. And so, just a really, really scary situation. And it very quickly became obvious, as Bryce said, that we were...it was going to be way overwhelming for the capacity of the amount of people who are out there to respond to. It kind of started in the morning, there were a few Samaritans', a group out of Tucson and Green Valley, a few Samaritans' vehicles out there and then a few No More Deaths trucks came out. But one of the first things we did when we really understood the scope of the situation was just put out a massive call for more support, which was really inspiring to see really come out that night. But obviously, it takes time for people to mobilize. So we really tried, those of us who were on the ground there really realized, "Okay, this really has the potential to be a really horrific mass casualty situation." And I want to say, I have no illusions about Border Patrol, no illusions about the State giving a shit about people seeking asylum dying in the desert, but I was surprised, based on my experiences in the few weeks prior, I was genuinely surprised that Border Patrol completely refused to come out at all. And once that became clear, I think our plans really changed, because those of us who were responding that day, our plans for the rain were really to try to build, you know, to have some some shelters but fundamentally to keep people okay until they can get picked up by Border Patrol and brought to an actual place to be warm and dry. And as it became clear that Border Patrol was absolutely not going to come that day--and we had Border Patrol liaisons on the phone with them--and they were being pretty explicit about, "Yeah, we can't come. It's raining." Obviously, they can. They have trucks way better than our trucks. And they chose not to at all. And once that became clear, I think our mission really changed quite drastically too, to where, "Okay, we need to get as many people to these shelters and we need to build more shelters, but, fundamentally, we need to get people off the wall, just from a medical perspective." I mean, I was rolling out in the morning with my friend who's a nurse who has been in a lot of disaster contexts and situations and he was like, "Holy shit, this is one of the worst things I've ever seen."
**Bryce ** 29:01 I think he said, "This is [emphasis on "is"] the worst thing I've seen."
Ember29:03 He said, "This is the worst thing I've seen," and equated it to when he was in Haiti after the earthquake. It was where I think those of us out there were.... Once we realized the extent of the situation and thought that we are going to see a lot of children die today. A lot. You know? It was--and I will preface this by saying that, as we know of, nobody did die that day. And I think that was because of generally just choices of people responding on the ground, people taking care of each other who were out there on the wall, and pure luck of breaks in the rain are the reasons for that. I think it was a situation that could have.... A lot of people absolutely could have and would have died. But, you know, before the rain storm, there had been a lot of conversations about, you know, "Should we be driving people to the substation?" which is, you know, where people can be processed by Border Patrol--that has a certain capacity limit--in the town of Sasabe. And there were a lot of these conversations about the legal risks of that and the potential dangers to people seeking asylum because, to keep in mind, like most people, when we've been out there for the time any of us had been out of the wall, most people wanted rides to the substation. That was, you know, a big thing people wanted and needed. That's where they were trying to get to. And there were all these conversations about the potential dangers of that legal risk. And what we encountered on Friday in the rainstorm was a situation where there was simply no choice. I mean, we were able to have some janky makeshift shelters at two camps along the wall that people, some people, did stay in, and we're trying to treat and warm and dry and triage those people, but there were about 150 people--there was over 300 people out in the wall that day and there was about 150 people who were walking past the last camp the 12 to 15 miles between the camp. And by camp, I mean a very shitty janky tarp structure setup. I don't mean a real camp. But there are about 150 people walking between the town of Sasabe that like 12 to 15 miles from the camp. Those people were out in the rain with no protection whatsoever. And so after we did some triage and made sure that, you know, the people further back on the wall were at one of these makeshift camps, we made the decision--that was not even really a choice--but just fundamentally that like people are going to die if we don't drive everyone to the substation. So we made a choice to evacuate everyone on the road in multiple caravans of trucks and shuttles to the substation while calling Border Patrol, telling them what we were doing, making it clear that it wasn't really a choice, that people people are going to die if they don't get to get to the station. And we weren't really sure how they would react to that. They, Border Patrol, did process everybody that was brought to the station. They got buses down from Tucson. And at the same time, they were being pretty hostile with volunteers that were evacuating people there, including a lot of threats of arrest, that people would be arrested and to "Not be doing this." But no volunteers were arrested. And everybody who was evacuated to the substation was processed within the next chunk of hours. And so, yeah, that kind of changes the whole dynamic in a sense. And the other thing that changed the dynamic is just this massive call for mobilization and support. So a lot of people from Tucson and Arivaca came down to support that evening and we were really in a triage situation all day and night of evacuating the most vulnerable and medically unwell people to the Border Patrol station and trying to do our best to make the makeshift camps slightly safer. But fundamentally, they were extremely inadequate shelters for people in the conditions that we were in.
**Inmn ** 33:34 Dang, yeah, that sounds harrowing and just fucking terrible. I I don't have a real emotional response to it because it's just...it's just fucked. But I don't know, it's like this thing where it feels like things we've talked about on the show before with Sophie and Parker from No More Deaths talking to us about Border Patrol's kind of...their tendency to create a humanitarian crisis that they then refuse to respond to. But they, at the same time, you know, they claim to...like, they claim all the time to rescue people from the desert. Or, like, framing themselves as these humanitarian actors when they're the ones who are creating these crises and then completely not responding to them or like.... I don't know, like, hearing more confirmation of discrimination of medical dispatchers and stuff to respond to calls or to pass that off to Border Patrol who then just doesn't respond. I don't know. It's just terrible. And it's like... Like Border Patrol's perfectly capable of responding to these crises, right?
**Bryce ** 35:24 Oh, totally and even in this case with the same.... Because eventually they do get everybody. So if they just...they're basically making the choice, in addition to like border wall, asylum, all that stuff, even with the current situation as it is, they're making the choice to leave people out there versus if they just went and got everybody. They say their issue is capacity for processing people. But why not have them wait in Sasabe or near the station or somewhere where they're not in the middle of the desert? They could just go get everybody, bring them to the station, and have them wait where an ambulance can arrive, where people can easily show up and give them help, where they're not just.... I mean, there's vigilantes along the wall, there's like gun battles. For many days, we were hearing automatic gunfire just south of where people were waiting for asylum. Like it's very much even outside of the danger of the desert itself. It is not a good place to be waiting. These people are freaking terrified. But the benefit of them being there for Border Patrol is that they're totally invisible. So they're just sort of hiding what...a thing that should be happening in public view in front of the Border Patrol station, in the middle of the desert where there's just extreme danger. If they wanted to, they could bring everybody to a safer place. It would be bad for PR, because then we'd have a bunch of news articles about like, "All these people are like being kept in an open air detention facility," or whatever. But they're essentially doing the same thing. But because it's far enough away from the public eye and from their own facilities, it just becomes invisible in a way, the same as, you know, Border Patrol's nonsense that they get up to with other kinds of people crossing the border with Prevention Through Deterrence, all of that policy; the suffering really is the point. I think they're hoping that people will tell stories back home that they, "Showed up and things were really bad and we almost died and there was this rainstorm," or whatever, "Don't do it this way." And the same way that their narratives kind of push things on the quote-unquote "smugglers" as being these predatory people that--which they are--but as being like, "It's them that's doing this. They're the ones that are causing this," and just really outsourcing any blame of anything on to on to other people.
**Inmn ** 38:05 This situation makes me wonder if Border Patrol is making this conscious choice to, where with open air detention facilities they're--in Arizona at least--are just like, "Oh, we don't want to deal with that." or, "We don't want to deal with the PR. We just don't want to deal with it so we're gonna do this other thing to push people further out or to really invisiblize it," like you're talking about? I mean, that seems like a very Border Patrol thing to do. Which is horrible to laugh about but.... I guess you talked a little bit about Border Patrol's responses to what's going on, or to interventions that people are taking, and I'm just wondering if there's any more, anything more to say about how Border Patrol is reacting to how people are intervening in the situation?
**Ember ** 39:09 There's been significant threats of arrest to people as we've continued to evacuate people to the substation, and to people that are just walking to the makeshift camps. There have been continual threats of arrest. Some volunteers had their IDs taken and said they were coming back for them to arrest them. Fundamentally, we feel extremely strongly that, obviously, we would be doing it even if it wasn't legal because it's the right thing to do, because we're not going to...we're going to do what we can to keep people from dying. But fundamentally, we feel very strongly that it is completely legal what we're doing and we will not back down from threats from Border Patrol and have been pretty explicit with them about that,
**Bryce ** 40:00 Yeah. Also, after one of those threats of arrest, they did go up to the further camp, which usually is a lot of women and children, and they picked up just a few people. They could have picked up way more. They just picked up a few people and said, "Wait in three lines. We're coming back for the rest." The people all--it was, I think, like, maybe 100 people or so--they all waited in lines. Border Patrol left and then just never came back. And so people ended up standing in lines for hours, thinking that they were going to miss their place in line or mess up if they left the lines. And [it was] just this really cruel display of--and this is right after we got some media attention for the thing that happened during the rain, so maybe [Border Patrol was] punishing them for what we were up to or, you know, who knows how those people think? But that was one thing that we saw. Another thing is, we've actually been caught by Border Patrol while transporting people. And they stopped and essentially thanked us. So there's, in addition to threats of arrest, we've also gotten that, because, I mean, if you're a Border Patrol agent, and you have an...you believe your own bullshit about like, "You're a humanitarian," and all these things, or whatever, then by those standards, hypothetically, we were actually doing your job and you should be thankful for what we're up to by moving people. And this one agent that we've run into a few different times has definitely had that attitude, which is.... Yeah, I don't know whether.... I don't even know how to think about that. But it's made it so that it's given us a little bit more confidence in what we're doing, but also has set up a weird thought of like, "Oh shit. At what point are they going to stop picking people up because they think we're gonna do it? At what point are we really just unpaid fucking Border Patrol agents?" And so I think there's a big.... And even just our role in the camps and all this stuff, like, how much of what we're actually doing to save lives is playing into the wants and needs of the Border Patrol? And so trying to figure out ways to--we have been talking a lot internally about ways to ways to push back on that and sort of change tactics of what we're doing in order to...in order to pressure them to be doing the right thing, rather than this unsustainable thing in which we're clothing, feeding, housing, and triaging hundreds of people a day, which is just like wildly unsustainable.
**Inmn ** 43:01 I mean, it seems like this thing that's become very wildly unsustainable. And I know that y'all have recently put out this big call for like, what? For like things needing to be different? Pr like, just like broader kind of community support? Just wondering if y'all wanted to talk about that a little bit?
**Ember ** 43:28 Yeah. The calls for support really started to come out of, you know, conversations after a few weeks of folks in our group responding really heavily to the situation and realizing that we needed way more support. And also, I mean, for one, supportive people autonomously responding to the situation outside of our organization, and also more like visiblization what's going on because it was very invisible. There's a few news stories about things going on in other parts of the Borderlands, similar situations, or even worse situations, but really not the attention that the extent of the situation demanded. So those calls for support went out before the rain, but the rain day really amplified it. A lot of people from larger networks in the area came out that night. And it led to huge...way more numbers of people getting involved. And part of it is us really trying to encourage a non--outside of our organization--an autonomous response from more people regionally to the situation that can obviously look a lot of different ways and I don't think any of us presume to know what the best strategy or way to go about this is, but that, you know, making it more visible and having more people being involved is is an important and good thing. And I will add to that, this is obviously a situation going on throughout the Borderlands. But I think we're in a unique position because of where we are, because of our proximity to Tucson because of networks of mutual aid and support that exists in these areas, because of the proliferation of aid groups that exist in these areas, and just generally, yeah, large networks of individuals that are down to support with something like this. I think there's a potential for us to really build a lot of mobilization and support here that hopefully can also help spread and support other places where people are trying to respond to the crisis in their areas, some of which, as Bryce was talking about are, are significantly worse than what's happening here. But it obviously also breeds enormous questions about like, what are we actually doing? What is our role here? And, yeah, and what are we doing? And I don't think, you know, anyone presumes to know the answers to all questions.
**Inmn ** 46:06 Yeah, I think in terms of what the role of aid groups is.... Just just wanting to bring up this like, kind of weird, maybe complexity of like, I don't know, it sounds, it sounds really, it sounds really weird to have to put yourself in the position of helping people get to Border Patrol or like helping people get to situations that are a potential open air detention facility or a detention facility that's as hellish as it is out in the desert. But like, I don't know, that.... It seems like a real...it seems a real mindfuck. And I don't know, this isn't really a question, just a thought.
**Bryce ** 46:58 It's fucked up.
**Inmn ** 47:01 Yeah. Yeah. I was...we talked a little off air about this, but so there has been a little bit of media attention and I know that y'all have not been exactly happy about the media, like what large media sources are saying about what's happening? I was wondering if y'all wanted to talk about what kind of media myths or narratives you see going around that don't reflect what's happening?
**Ember ** 47:44 Yeah, and I think on a personal level, just those of us that were out Friday that had been out for weeks before, you know, there have been a lot of conversations about the role of media and our general hesitation with media with most of our other work. But it just became clear that there had to be a significant push for a lot more media outrage about what was going on and about what happened that rainy day, because it was just a question of that this is just going to continue to happen and we need to visibilize this more. There was a journalist, a local journalist, who was out, who came out during the rainstorm and wrote a solid story about what was happening, but the larger mainstream media attention to it has been pretty horrific. I'll say the New York Times came out here a few days ago and wrote a disgusting propaganda piece that basically...it was a piece about how, you know, hordes of people are coming into the country and Border Patrol is overwhelmed and doing everything they can and trying to rescue as many people as they can. But they're so overwhelmed. It felt very much like the liberal media version of like an "invasion of the country," and Border Patrol being overwhelmed. I mean, I think it's really scary that those are the...are the stories that are taking shape in the more kind of centrist or liberal mainstream media with no context of why people are coming here, no context of why people are being pushed out into the remote areas of the desert, no context about how much money Border Patrol has, and their absolute refusal to do their job in this case, which is to process people that are seeking asylum. None of that context. And instead, a story that literally is about, you know, Border Patrol just like trying to do everything they can to save these people being manipulated by smugglers. And it was also in the New York Times, was next to an article about the--kind of fear mongering--about a large migrant caravan that's coming up through Mexico right now. And it just felt very much part of this media narrative that is really just playing into the worst fascist impulses. So, yeah, it was a pretty horrific article.
**Bryce ** 50:20 Yeah. And in addition to that, I mean, the New York Times article, in addition to other articles that ended up talking about the rainstorm and some of what we've been dealing with, we're really tucked into a different story about the record number of migrant apprehensions. It seems like all these news media outlets were just sort of waiting for those numbers to get released and then they kind of had these pre-written articles and anything about the humanitarian disaster was just sort of tucked into that, which that narrative is always like, "There's too many people at the border. Border Patrol is overwhelmed," or they're not really interested in any other narrative whatsoever. And, which is just really bizarre, because, I mean, when a journalist comes out and we talk to them, the first thing we explain is [that narrative] is so much the opposite to what we actually see on the ground. Like, the migrant apprehension data is inflated because there's now, rather than people seeking asylum at a port of entry, they're coming through irregularly where that gets put in as a Border Patrol migrant apprehension. So it seems like numbers-wise that there's some huge surge of, you know, the numbers are just off the charts and they've "never seen anything like this before." But these people actually should be under an entirely different system altogether, coming through a port of entry and, in which case, the migrant apprehensions would probably not change that much at all. And so there's this narrative that gets pushed forth where you look at this increase in numbers, which is totally fake, and then you get to show Border Patrol in a place where we've been going out and just seeing...dealing with the most horrific medical emergencies every single day and watching Border Patrol do nothing to stop it and also [Border Patrol is] causing the situation in the first place, and it shows them, like...rescuing people. I think the New York Times article specifically said like, you know, under the caption for one of the pictures, it was like, "Border Patrol's leaves with a group of people and rushes off to go rescue some more people," or something like that, which as you're saying before, it's like, they cause a problem and then give themselves credit for rescues, which is just not...is just upsetting and false and just like, insulting on a human level, you know?
**Inmn ** 52:57 Yeah. Yeah, they're really...they're quite...they're quite adept at what they do, which is creating humanitarian crises that they then pretend to respond to so that everyone thinks that they're humanitarian actors. Meanwhile, they're sitting on their asses doing nothing.
**Ember ** 53:25 Well, I mean, literally. When we were evacuating people to the station that day, they were sitting on their asses doing nothing, not wanting to get up. "Well, there was a massive rainstorm," and asking us, you know, like, "How do you know these people are cold?" as a question.
**Bryce ** 53:42 Yeah, literally.
**Ember ** 53:43 That was a question. I was literally asked. And this was with a group of like, mostly children who had been out in the freezing rain and were in severe danger of hypothermia, and they [Border Patrol] literally were like, "How do you know these people are cold?"
**Bryce ** 54:00 And then since we started building shelters, they would ask, "Oh, do they have shelter?" using our little like, half-assed, last-ditch effort to fucking have people not die against us or as an excuse to not go pick people up because they have, quote-unquote, "shelter?" You know, I mean, it's just horrific. And Ember, do we have permission to say that correction thing?
**Ember ** 54:26 Oh, yeah, I think we should say it. I mean, yeah.
**Inmn ** 54:31 I'm so curious about what's going to be said.
**Bryce ** 54:32 So, the New York Times, their original article that they published, so we all sat together and read it together and we're like, "Oh!" we're all yelling like, "What the fuck? That's bullshit. Like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, that's totally..." and we get to the end and see that they have a paragraph saying, "Last friday, Border Patrol had to evacuate 300 people during this rainstorm that almost caused all these deaths," or whatever. And we were just like...I almost threw the computer across the room. It was like, you know, we expected an awful narrative but to have not just a lie but the literal opposite of what happened, like the people that caused the problem.... You know, because it would have been messed up no matter what it was on that day, but we expected, stupidly, Border Patrol to show up in the same way that they had been. And so by not showing up, they actually caused a potential mass casualty incident. So to give them credit for averting something that just outside of anything, any context, just was going to happen, and Border Patrol "rescued" people...and not that some random scrappy punks from Tucson wandered down into the desert and under threat of arrests drove a bunch of people to the Border Patrol station was just like...like, I don't even have words for.... Like, what do you even fucking do with that? Like? Yeah, it's...it was, so we...one of our media people forced them to make a correction. And they quickly did. They didn't fix the rest of the heinous fucking article, but they at least changed that, which they also seem to credit it to Border Patrol. But our person was there during their [NYT's] interview with Border Patrol, and at no point did Border Patrol claim to have rescued anybody on that day. So this was just New York Times on their own just coming up with some bullshit out of thin fucking air.
**Ember ** 56:37 And then when they corrected it, they never...there's no note in the article that says a previous version was...had this lie in it and it was corrected. But I will also add that the article on the website was also next to an ad for Exxon Mobil and the other articles next to it were defending the genocide of Palestinian kids because IDF spokesperson says "It's justified." So we also obviously shouldn't be, you know, shouldn't be surprised.
**Inmn ** 57:06 Yeah. I mean, you know, it's like, we see the same thing over and over and over again, of governments causing horrifying things to happen and then blaming it on some shadowy thing and then taking credit for fixing it. Or making it worse. Wow, yeah, that's fucked up. Like fucking shame. Shame on the New York Times. I know this is not a new thing for anyone to hear, but fucking shame on y'all. Yeah, it's upsetting. It's beyond upsetting. Well, I, you know, I want to end on a positive note. What's some like...what's some inspiring shit? Because also, this is...this is like, I don't know, it's...I feel like it's easy to get wrapped into this, the horrifying reality of like, "Oh, we're just doing Border Patrol's job for them." Or, like, "How sustainable is this?" But y'all I've been doing...like, people have been doing some truly inspiring shit and I think that's like really worth reflecting on and y'all will continue to do really amazing things to respond to these horrifying things.
**Bryce ** 58:42 But also, just right afterwards, the huge community mobilization that happened and continues to happen has just been not surprising but just really amazing like knowing that in some situations like this people can just…the Tucson community will just throw down so hard and so quickly for some shit is just… like I think brought us all to tears the next day when we went down to collect donations and stuff.
**Inmn ** 1:00:13 Yeah, the supply drives have been wild. Like that's... Yeah, I don't know. Ember, you got any inspiring shit to go out on?
**Ember ** 1:00:25 I mean, everything Bryce said. And just like, I mean, the night with the rainstorm, where it's like, what we really realized we needed at a point is just like, people are building tarp structures, people are taking care of each other, but what we really needed at a certain point was just more trucks to drive people and evacuate people to the substation. And we would just get, kind of, convoy after convoy, late in the evening and at night of friends or people we don't even know, through our networks, coming down. And it was really fucked up because it wasn't Border Patrol, who we needed to fucking pick people up. But to just see so many people come out on really last minute notice and be able to help with evacuating lots of people, what we needed was those vehicles and more and more people. And people really showed up and continue to show up. And it's the same thing people are doing all over the country in response to this, you know, from cities where people are mobilizing to support asylum seekers that are, you know, just being dropped off in random cities, and to just like other places along the border where people are responding to this at its inception point at the wall. Like, it's really.... Yeah, the amount of mobilization is pretty awesome, just people like trying to take care of each other on all levels.
**Inmn ** 1:01:52 Are there any things you want to say before we...before we break? Any, you know, broader call things people who are listening hundreds or thousands of miles away can do?
**Ember ** 1:02:12 I think, you know, on a small scale people are gonna do what they can in the places they are, but on a larger scale, it's like...a lot of these media narratives, a lot of the right-wing push, all of that is really going to continue to grow and push for harsher, gnarlier border policies. And I think that really the thing that can push back against that is people mobilizing together and organizing against it. And I do think there is power for...or potential for, with enough, you know, people, power for things to actually not get gnarlier but, you know, go in the other direction. And I think we really have to keep that in mind that we can't just submit to the idea that, you know, the right-wing and the mainstream news outlets are just gonna push this narrative and policies are gonna get stricter and stricter. Like, we have power to push back against that as people everywhere, mobilizing and organizing together.
**Inmn ** 1:03:18 Great. Well, I mean, you know, not great, but...shit. Great that people are doing great things in response. I'm a little emotionally dead end right now because this...because everything's just really fucked. Thanks, you all so much for coming on today and talking about what's going on. And, you know, if anyone in the Arizona area wants to donate 4x4 trucks, donate your 4x4 truck.
**Ember ** 1:03:58 It will die a glorious death.
**Bryce ** 1:04:03 Yeah, a couple of trucks have already died on the border wall roads. So, trucks are very needed.
**Ember ** 1:04:11 I will add too, obviously, we preface it that we're just talking about this one area, but maybe we could link in the show notes to just some of the other struggles of other groups and communities, you know, pushing back and mobilizing for similar shit.
**Inmn ** 1:04:28 Yeah.
**Bryce ** 1:04:30 I mean, yeah, it's all over too. I mean, the stuff in California has gotten a lot of coverage. But also in Texas this stuff is happening just as much. So it's really like border wide. And it's somehow managed to be pretty invisible or co-opted into other narratives. But yeah, pushing...pushing back on that I think is super important.
**Inmn ** 1:04:52 Cool. Well, thanks y'all for coming on today. Hope you get some rest.
**Bryce ** 1:05:02 Yeah, thank you.
**Inmn ** 1:05:07 Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this show, then do what you can to fight border militarization and do what you can to support asylum seekers in your city. Or go out and respond. If you're near a place where similar things like what's happening in Arizona and Sasabe are happening, then go out and get involved, see what you can do to help. And also, if you like the show, you can support it. You can support the show by liking, subscribing, following, and whatever.... These words are.... I'm clearly actually detached from how the algorithm works. And you can also just tell people about the show. It's one of the better ways to support it and one of, just one of the best ways that people hear about the show. You can also support Live Like the World is Dying by supporting our publisher, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness is a radical publishing collective. We put out books, zines, and other podcasts, obviously. And you can support Strangers by buying books. You can support Strangers by listening to our other podcasts, like my other podcast, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, or our other podcast, The Spectacle, which was formerly the Anarcho Geek Power Hour. You can also support Strangers by supporting us on Patreon. If you support us on Patreon, for $10 a month, then we'll mail you a cool zine every month, anywhere in the world. And you can subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And if you support us at $20 a month, then we will give you a really awesome thank you at the end of all of our podcasts, which are the names that you usually hear. And what I think is really cool about the acknowledgments tier of our Patreon is that you can put whatever! You know you can put whatever name you want there and we will thank and acknowledge it. So, you know, come up with a cool name or a cool organization that you want people to about like six times a month and we'll thank it. We will thank those things. And speaking of which, we would like to thank Patolli, Eric, Perceval, Buck, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, Funder, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, Theo, Hunter, S.J., Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Michaiah, and Hoss the Dog. Thanks y'all so much for all of your support and making this show and so many other shows possible. And you know, to let people know, our Patreon goes to support, you know, broader things that Strangers does, but it also goes to support people who helped create the show. We pay our audio editor and our transcriptionist and maybe one day we'll be able to pay guests or hosts. But currently...currently, we can't do that. But yeah, anyways, I hope that everyone's doing as well as they can with everything that's going on. And we will see you next time. Bye.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, we have a short story about prepping called "Blood, Soil, & Frozen TV Dinners" by Matthew Dougal. It's a parody about two right-wing preppers who are faced with a collapse in society. After the story, there's an interview with the author about prepping mentalities and writing. This episode was reposted from the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness podcast. The story can be read at tangledwilderness.org.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery
The Reader is Bea Flowers. If you would like to hear Bea narrate other things, or would like to get them to read things for you check them out at https://voicebea.wixsite.com/website
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
The theme song was written and performed by Margaret Killjoy. You can find her at http://birdsbeforethestorm.net or on twitter @magpiekilljoy
Live Like the World is Dying: “Blood, Soil, & Frozen TV Dinners” with Matthew Dougal
**Inmn ** 00:16 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I’m your host today, Inmn Neruin, and today we have something a little different. I host another podcast called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness where every month we take a zine that Strangers puts out and turn it into an audio feature and do an interview with the author. We had a two-part feature called Blood, Soil, and Frozen TV Dinners by Matthew Dougal, and it is a short story about prepping from a very strange perspective, that of two right-wing preppers facing a mysterious collapse of society. This short story is a parody and I promise that the two main pov characters are not the heroes of the tale. It’s a fun story and I do an interview with Matthew afterward about prepping mentalities, fiction, and other neat stuff. If you like this episode, check out my other podcast that this is featured from. I did not re-record the outro, so you’ll get a little taste of Margaret playing the piano, because she wrote the theme music for the Strangers podcast. You’ll also get to hear our wonderful reader, Bea Flowers narrate the story. Follow along with the transcript or at Tangledwilderness.org where you can read all of our featured zines for free. But before all of that, we are a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and here’s a jingle from another show on that network. [sings a simple melody]
**Bea ** 02:49
“Blood, Soil, & Frozen TV Dinners” by Matthew Dougal. Read by Bea Flowers. Published by Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. Katie sat, wide-eyed, beneath the kitchen table and hugged her knees to her chest. She was shaking, vibrating visibly. Tanner put his finger to his lips and prayed that her silent tears would remain just that. There was no time to stop and calm her down. Not again. He moved slowly around the kitchen, fumbling through cupboards and pulling out pre-wrapped packages of food. Always be prepared. Tanner had practiced this before things went dark, but it was different doing it for real. His hands hadn’t been so shaky, back then. A noise, on the porch. His body froze before his mind registered the sound. Tanner dropped into a crouch and crossed the room to the window, willing every cell in his body to radiate confidence toward his baby girl. His hand found the Glock 17 at his belt and he brought it up in front of him, the familiar feel of the grip reassuring. He took a breath, steadied himself, and raised his eyes to the level of the windowsill. The muscles in his thighs steeled and he remained, unblinking, utterly still, staring out into the darkness. After thirty or forty nerve-twanging seconds, Tanner drew breath and relaxed. His quads were burning, and they thanked him as he straightened. He could hear the specter of his ex-wife in his head, telling him to lose some weight, exercise more… Well she’d left, and that was 135 pounds gone right there. She’d probably say that was a good start. An unbearably loud ringing pierced the silence and sent him diving to the floor, landing awkwardly on his gun and sounding a crash through the kitchen. A keening whine came from under the table, Katie shaken from her silence. The doorbell. Feeling foolish, Tanner twisted over his shoulder and hissed at his daughter to be quiet. Still prone, he crawled toward the hallway in the most reassuring manner he could manage and pointed his Glock at the front door. Footsteps outside, then a shadow appeared at the window. Tanner’s heart pounded in his ears—more violent pulses of silence than sound—and his vision blurred as panic flooded his body. He’d heard the early reports of armed groups in the streets, some sort of fighting downtown, but he hadn’t really believed they would come here. His legs were weak, and he silently thanked God that he was already on the floor. The shape at the window didn’t move, frozen in the gloom, silhouetted by flickering light coming from the street. As Tanner’s head cleared he tried to take stock of what was happening. The apparition was vaguely man-shaped but shorter and slighter, an ethereal grace evident even in its stillness. A voice called out, muffled through the door, the guttural singsong completely at odds with the sleek form at the window. Tanner couldn’t understand everything, but he thought he caught the words “little girl.” A second shape mounted the porch alongside the first, similarly short but squat and stocky, and grunted something to its companion in an alien tongue. Fluorescent light flooded the yard and the voices momentarily disappeared beneath the growl of an angry engine. Tanner’s breath caught. His trembling finger hovered over the trigger and he willed the barrel to still its swaying dance. Two shots exploded outside—loud shots, from a much bigger gun than his. The creatures spun to face this new threat, their chatter rising in pitch and speed. They sounded panicked. “yalla! hawula' alnaas majnoon.” Tanner sensed his opportunity. He was forgotten. All those hours of training kicked in and muscle memory took over as he rose to one knee, took a two-handed grip, and unleashed a furious hail of fire at his front door. “Keep your filthy hands off my daughter!” He fired until he felt the Glock stop kicking, the magazine spent. As the cacophony faded he realized he was screaming. “Tanner! It’s me, Blake. Stop shooting goddammit, they’re gone.” “Blake?” Tanner mechanically reloaded his gun. “Why…” His throat was raw, his voice barely audible even to him. He swallowed, fighting to control his breath, and cleared his throat. “What are you doing here?” “Come to see if you were okay. Figured you and the kid might need a hand.” A stocky, heavily muscled figure wearing fatigues and a plate carrier stepped up to the porch, visible through the splintered ruins that had been the front door. A halogen glow lanced through the holes, like the brilliant aura of some kind of avenging eagle. “When this shit spread across the river from the city we locked down. It was touch-and-go for a while, but things quieted down eventually. When they did, I came straight over. Good thing I got here when I did. The quick little fuckers ran for it, but I think you hit one of ‘em.” The figure stopped, pulled down the red, white and blue bandana covering its mouth, and spat. Tanner had never been more relieved to see his buddy’s foul-mouthed face. Or his M1A SOCOM 16 rifle. “We’re alright.” Tanner’s voice was exhausted, his body shivering as the adrenaline fled. “Thank God I was prepared. Still, it’s good to see you.” “Prepared, shit.” His buddy grinned. “I been telling you for years to get something heavy duty.” Blake kicked the splintered remains of the door and his grin faded. “You can’t stay here. Those things’ll be back. Grab your girl and jump in the truck. Let’s head to mine, she’ll be safe there.” The grin returned.“Prepared, shit.”
An hour later they were sitting in “the Hole,” as Blake affectionately called it. The Hole was both name and description, although it perhaps undersold the amount of effort that had gone into its construction. Attached to the garage by a short, downward-sloping corridor, The Hole was a full-blown bunker that spread underneath almost the entirety of Blake’s backyard. Tanner was sitting in the main chamber eating Top Ramen, chicken flavor. They had made the half-mile journey in silence—lights down on the Tacoma, Tanner jumpy, Blake grim, Katie in a state of shock. The streets had looked completely foreign, the usual calming glow of LEDs replaced by the orange flicker of scattered flames. The familiar hum of traffic had been gone. Instead, gunfire had cracked in the distance. Blake’s wife Lauren had buzzed them inside after Blake confirmed his identity via video feed—three times: at the gate, the door, and the entrance to the Hole. The security was impressive. Lauren had ushered them inside, AR-15 at the ready. “This is prepared,” Blake was saying, as Katie stared blankly at her untouched ramen. “Old owners, they had this backyard full of fruit trees, vegetables, fuckin’ kale and kohlrabi. What good is that gonna do, I said, you gonna hide in the pumpkin patch with a slingshot? Idiots. “Anyhow me and Lauren, we wanted to be ready, so I been building this the last two years. Ain’t no one knows about it, not even the contractors…” Blake sliced a finger across his throat, then laughed, “I’m joking, but they were from one of them Mexican countries. Had no idea what they were building. Good workers, though, came here the right way. And I did the security all myself.” Tanner laughed too, but at what he didn’t quite know. “You took this all real serious.” “Yessir. You never really believed, but we did. Earl Swanson was right, this here’s been a long time coming. It’s just like he said, and we listened. And here we are, while you was laying on the floor waving round that little waterpistol of yours.” Tanner had listened too, but apparently not well enough. There was only so much time he could watch an angry man on TV shouting about the state of the nation, no matter how prophetic he was turning out to be. Tanner tried to put up a strong front and flex his knowledge. He had listened, dammit. “Is this it, then? The invasion? Earl said they’ve been preparing it for years, brainwashing people. Recruiting sympathizers and traitors…” “It’s worse than that. The invasion started way back, we just didn’t notice. Well, most of us didn’t. Earl did. He tried to warn us, that the aliens’d started infiltrating, landing in remote parts of the country, blending in, looking just like us…” Blake spat. “Well, not quite like us. But close e-fucking-nough, hiding out and biding their time.” “And now it’s out in the open…” Tanner looked from his friend’s face to his daughter’s, scared and staring, and trailed off. He may have been listening, but he sure as hell didn’t understand. “What’s happening?” Tanner asked. “We’ve been laying low at home, locked down and trying to wait out whatever this is. We haven’t heard a thing since the power cut out three days back.” He could feel a surge of emotion building, pent-up adrenaline and stress and fear and loneliness rolling over him in a wave as they were released. His stoicism wobbled. “We’re… Katie’s scared and confused, and tired and sick of hiding and we’re all alone! What is all this? What’s happening?” Tanner realized he was shouting and stopped, taking a deep breath and lowering his voice. “Blake, man, what the hell is going on?” Blake never flinched, just ran his tongue over his teeth in thought while he watched Tanner’s outburst through hooded eyes. “Naw, we don’t know nothing for sure. Swanson’s been off-air for two days, since just after shit started going down. Said he was right, that it sure as shit seemed like those aliens he’d been warning us about were making a move, and the whole fuckin’ lot of us did nothing. Well, seems like it blew up in our face. Last thing he said was he’s heading somewhere safe to keep broadcasting, and he’d let us know when he found out more,” Blake paused, sucked his teeth, “We’ve had the TV and radio on non-stop since then, since we fired the generator up. Nothing.” Lauren lent forward. “There was something, couple days back…” “Nothing useful,” Blake cut in. He spat. “Same old fuckin’ commie stations, same old crap. They took over the channels, emergency broadcasting. Said there was a ‘protest.’ Stay inside, all under control, daddy government’s here, blah blah,” he laughed “Hell of a protest. More like an insurrection. Doublespeak bullshit.” “So what’s the plan? We hide out? Lay low? Wait for the military?” “The troops ain’t coming, chief.” Blake grimaced, “Alien tentacles go deep. Probably strolling around in general’s stars by now, the politicians just handing over the keys. This President’ll have us kissing their feet before dinner. “Nah, if we wanna fight back we can’t rely on that fuckin’ bunch of secretaries and scribes. We hole up here, wait for instructions.” He laughed again, “Huh, hole up in the Hole. That’s funny.” That grin was starting to get on Tanner’s nerves. “Instructions from who? How long is that gonna take? Who’s gonna fight back against… this?” “I know some people, from back in the old days. Good people. There’s still patriots out there who won’t give up this country without a fight.” Tanner still bristled with questions, but he was starting to feel relieved. There were people in charge, and they had a plan. That was something he could work with. “What if it takes weeks? Months? Do we have food for that long?” Blake settled further into his chair, grinned that cocky grin. “I do, don’t know about you.” Before the words were even out of his mouth he was already raising his palms, “Chill out, I’m joking. I’ll put it on your tab. You’re a lawyer, I know you’re good for it. Show him, babe.” Lauren got up and went over to a large yellow flag hanging on the concrete wall, pulling it aside to reveal a long, narrow room that ended abruptly at a large steel door. She flicked on the light. “Dry storage,” she said, gesturing at the shelves lining both walls. Packets of ramen, boxes of cereal, rows of whiskey, and gleaming stacks of cans stared down at Tanner. “And cold storage,” Lauren continued as she stepped over to the door, kicking aside two enormous tubs of supplements and pulling it open to reveal a walk-in freezer. Tanner followed her inside as she happily chatted away, showing everything off like a house-proud hen. “We’ve got everything we need. Steaks, hotdogs, chili, hamburgers, mac and cheese, chicken parmesan, mashed potatoes--whatever you want. There’s a well, too, over the other side, we had that dug last summer. Tastes a bit funny, but it won’t hurt you.” Tanner was hardly listening. He had never seen anything like it, never imagined anything on this scale. Blake really had taken preparing for the end of the world seriously. The freezer room was filled, wall to wall, with a treasure trove of gourmet excess; thousands upon thousands of frozen TV dinners.
Tanner stared at his microwaved salmon filet, fries drooping from his fork. Out of habit he was eating in front of the TV with Katie, though the display hadn’t changed in… however many days it had been. Just the red, white and blue logo, a tile flipping between ads for pillows, brain pills, and frozen food, and the same scrolling red banner: Breaking: The United States of America is under attack. Stand by for updates. Katie was poking at her food silently, barely eating. Still no appetite. Tanner had told her they were safe, told her he wasn’t going to let anyone hurt her, told her a hundred times in different ways that she was his precious little girl and he would make sure she was okay. It had made no difference. She had just looked up at him with big, frightened eyes that pulled at Tanner’s heart. The only time she had spoken in the past 24 hours was to ask why he had tried to shoot people. Of course she didn’t understand. Maybe he should ask Lauren to talk to her. The TV display glitched, blipped, flicked to static and then to black. Tanner shoveled the fries into his mouth and rubbed his eyes. He’d been staring at a blank TV for too long. He chewed and stretched, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to straighten out his aching back. Earl Swanson was on TV. Tanner blinked a few times to make sure he was seeing straight. Swanson’s shirt was wrinkled, his hair a mess and his signature bowtie slightly crooked, but his face wore that familiar expression of righteously indignant bewilderment. It was him. “Blake. Blake, get in here!” Swanson was in what looked like a large living room rather than his usual studio. Bookshelves and a TV cabinet were visible behind him. There were shadows under his eyes and his wrinkles were clearly visible without his usual TV makeup, but his eyes were as sharp as ever. There was a strength to them, piercing the screen, full of faith and fire. It felt like he was in the room. He looked like he’d been in a fight, and won. He was back. “Good evening America, and welcome to Earl Swanson Tonight.” “Blake!” Blake stuck his head through the door. “What? I’m working out, give me a…. No shit.” Blake stepped into the room. He was topless, breathing heavily. His stomach was shiny with sweat, pooling and running down the chiseled channels between his well-defined muscles before disappearing behind the low-riding waistband of his camo pants. Tanner realized he was staring and felt his cheeks flush as he snapped his eyes back to his friend’s. “Blake, it’s--” “Shut up, I’m trying to listen.” The rebuke slapped Tanner back to the present and back to the TV. He surreptitiously sat a little straighter and sucked in his gut, trying to ignore the heat rising in his face. “...cities up and down the west coast. From Seattle to San Diego, the alien invaders and the traitors from among our own citizens have taken control, sowing chaos and destruction. Order has broken down, and anarchy rules in the streets. Yet we hear nothing but silence from the White House. The elites in Washington won’t do anything about this -- they encouraged it. They caused it! “No, it is up to patriotic Americans to stop this existential threat. It is up to us, to you and me and the other patriots out there. If you value the American way of life, if you respect the principles that built the greatest nation ever imagined, if you care about your family and the future of your children, then the time has come to stand up. Your country needs you. “I have been warning about this day on this very program for years. If you have been listening, you will be prepared for this betrayal. You know what to do. Find other true Americans who are ready to fight for our civilization and our culture. Defend our Western values against this attack by anarchists and aliens who wish to destroy us. They tried to take our guns from us, to disarm us, and failed -- now is the time to use them. Seek out the prepared, the militias, the heroes. Fight back. Show them that we will not allow it. “I will be moving to an undisclosed safe location so I can keep you informed. You know your job. I am doing my part, will you do yours?” Swanson sat erect and defiant, no less commanding for his disheveled appearance. His willpower flowed from the screen in waves, washing over the watchers. It was compelling. It was urgent. It was the only option. The screen went black. Swanson’s gaze bored into Tanner long after the TV went dark, burning with righteous fire, lip curling with fury. The heat in Tanner’s cheeks sharpened, focused, began to spread into his chest and throughout his body. There was only one thought in his mind. “We gotta go.” It took him a second to realize that Blake had spoken the words out loud. “We do. But where? I don’t know anyone like that.” “You know me, and I know people. Don’t worry about that. We gotta go to Baker City. I talked to one of my buddies from the marines this morning, he’s headed to join one of the militias out east. They might not be big, but they’re hard. They’re something.” Tanner looked at Blake blankly, unable to quite comprehend what he was being told. Days of no news, no action, now everything all at once. “But what’s in Baker City? Don’t you know anyone here? This is where we live, where we have the Hole, where we have a safe base.” Blake was clearly agitated, shifting from foot to foot. “It’s not safe. Weren’t you listening? It’s fallen. The military ain’t doing jack, like I fuckin’ told you they wouldn’t.” Blake stopped bouncing and steadied himself. “But my buddy said the boys in Baker held out. It was bloody, but they held strong. If we can get there in a hurry, we can join a caravan heading for Boise.” “Baker… Boise? What the… Boise?! Surely it’s safer in Texas, or… or…” “Texas? And how far away is that? Look, I don’t know nothing about nothing, but I know I ain’t looking for safer. All I know is I got buddies in Baker, and they say Boise, and they are the fuckin’ resistance. We got our orders, soldier. “The west had been invaded. Destroyed. Gone. You heard Swanson, same as me. Grids are down, water’s down, TV’s down--mostly, anyway. Sky’s half full of fire and smoke, gangs roaming the streets, traitors and aliens taking or breaking whatever they can get their thieving hands on.” Tears came to Blake’s eyes. “It’s a fucking mess out there, buddy. Anarchy. They’ve burned the lot.” It was a lot to chew on. Tanner put a piece of salmon in his mouth. “I’m not gonna let some filthy aliens take my home, fuck my wife, invade my country, and steal the god damn US of A! The fight is right there, and I’m gonna fight it. Are you?” Tanner’s brain was spinning, but his blood was still hot from Swanson’s speech. Blake’s fire, delivered standing there half-naked like a Steven Seagal action figure, was rousing something inside him. His country needed him, and he felt the call in his bones. He put down his fork. He swallowed. He rose. “Of course I’ll fight. I’ll put a bullet in every alien who steps foot on American soil. I’ll put every collaborator in the dirt.” He saw himself, next to Blake, riding shotgun as they made a fighting escape through the streets. He saw a heroic journey to Baker City, filled with danger and righteous violence. He saw a triumphant return, at the head of an army, cleansing his city with purifying flame. And he saw Katie, small and fragile and beautiful. Perfect, and terrified. The flame wavered. “But I’m fighting for her,” Tanner gestured, “I got my little girl, and I’m not so red-hot on riding out guns blazing to meet these savages with her hanging off my arm. She’s the future of this country, and that’s a future we have to protect.” To Tanner’s surprise, Blake took a half step back. “Shit. I know, man. Katie and Lauren, the innocent and the pure. I’m thinking of them, too.” He dropped his shoulders, but held Tanner’s gaze. “But it’s not safe for them here neither. We’re on our own, and all hell has broken loose up top. We fight for them, and they are the reason we have to fight.” Tanner paused, then nodded. He reached out and placed his hand on his friend's shoulder, fingers gripping the sweaty skin. “Let’s go pack the truck.” As the sun set and twilight brought a low fog creeping across the city, they piled into the Tacoma with as many frozen dinners as they could carry. Tanner rode in back. Lauren was up front, AR at the ready, while Blake drove, M1A by his side and his Glock taped to the dash. Katie was at Tanner’s side, curled up below the window and hidden from view, and Tanner watched over her with his own Glock and a borrowed Remington 870. They were all a little jumpy. He and Lauren had wanted to maintain a shoot-on-sight policy. Blake had been more cautious. According to Swanson, there would be plenty of people collaborating with the aliens. Lights out, engine low, and hopefully they could slip right on by. No one knew what to expect—Tanner suspected they were all terrified. He certainly was. Even Blake had swapped out his flag bandana for a more understated camo print. He had stashed the red, white and blue fabric in the bed of the truck with the rest of their gear. They pulled out into streets Tanner knew, but didn’t. He had driven them every day, on the way to work, to Katie’s school, to church, to the mall. The streets were as familiar as a cold Coke, yet now, in some important way, they were… different. As they left the Hole and drove through the suburb he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but once Blake reached the main street and turned past the bars and shops and take-out joints, it hit him. The streets were dead. The cars were gone. The steady flow of traffic, of people living their lives, had stopped. The parking lot in front of the drug store was empty; so was the one behind the bar. The convenience store, normally ticking over with a steady stream of customers buying cigarettes and beer, was dark behind its windows. Unintelligible graffiti in some alien script covered the ads for energy drinks, an expression of mindless violence across someone’s hard work. A light rain had started, misting around them and adding to the dreariness. A billboard loomed overhead, the lights that illuminated the Colgate-bright smiles of the models now permanently dark. Tanner was glad—the gloom obscured the flame-scarred destruction streaking the toothpaste company’s perfect white message. “Disgusting,” Blake spat. He looked like he wanted to say more but pulled up short, shocked at the sudden sound of his own voice. His eyes focused back on the road and he fell into uneasy silence. The truck continued its crawl down the deserted street, barely clocking 20 miles an hour. Even at that speed, the low growl of the engine seemed unbearably loud as it reverberated among the carcasses of commerce and ricocheted down abandoned side streets. They kept driving, and nothing kept happening. It was torturous. Every minute of unbroken inactivity twisted the crank on the tension in the car, until the unceasing hum of the engine began to seep into Tanner’s brain. Every muscle in his arms and legs, primed and waiting and ready to spring, began to tremble, and his eyes focused and unfocused on nothing at all. His frantic heartbeat messed with his breathing, a powerful panicked thud that matched the rumble of the pistons. Overall, he was relieved when the road curved and they entered a strip of restaurants to see signs of life among the debris littered across the street in the distance. It wasn’t immediately clear through the gloom what was happening. Blake slowed the truck, now rolling along at barely more than walking pace, and they crept closer. The scene was illuminated by the flickering light of small fires and backlit by a pair of enormous floodlights, creating a glowing aura in the surrounding mist. Images began to resolve, ghostly figures flitting in and out of view and the harsh geometric shapes—not of debris, but of hastily manufactured barricades—throwing long shadows that lanced through the air around them as they approached. All eyes were fixed on the barricades as they pulled within shouting distance, and Tanner nearly pissed himself when someone knocked on his window. He yelped, Blake swore, and Lauren’s weapon x-rayed Tanner’s head and pointed at the intruder. Tanner followed her lead and jerked his gun up to aim in the general direction of the window and for ten, twenty heartbeats nothing moved. Then another knock, and Blake hissed at them: “Put those things away you idiots, we’re the good guys here. Whatever side that guy is on, so are we.” Tanner slowly lowered the gun, then the window. “Hey folks, no cars through here.” The man was clad head to toe in black—black jeans, black hoodie, black gloves, black bandana covering his face, black curly hair running with rainwater. No wonder they hadn’t seen him. The stranger spotted their guns. “Oh, nothing like that,” he added, catching the nervous energy in the truck, “You’re a bit late to the party. No trouble ‘round here, this area’s been cleaned out for days.” He chuckled, sending a shiver through Tanner. “Some folks messed up the cop shop a while back, it was a bit of a fight. Streets were all blocked up anyway, so we set up a little kitchen here. Been feeding some folks. Symbolic, like, new world in the ruin of the old and all that.” The smile fell from his face as he took in the scene in the truck. “Everything alright? Is she okay?” He gestured at Katie, curled up and quivering silently beside Tanner. Tanner opened his mouth to respond, but Blake was quicker. “Sure, probably just spooked by that fucking mask. Look, we don’t mean to bother you people. Just heading east, trying to cross the river. We’ll go around you and your little kitchen.” If the man took issue with Blake’s tone, it didn’t show. “Bridge is a no-go, I’m afraid. Pigs blew the cables as they pulled out, some of it collapsed. It’s way too unstable to cross.” He scratched at his temple. “What d’you want out that way, anyway? There’s dangerous people out there, not exactly safe for… families.” “We’re heading for, uh, Hood River,” Tanner spoke up, “Taking supplies out to the girl’s grandparents.” “Indians,” Blake chimed in, “they need the help.” He winked at Tanner. The stranger turned to Blake and met his eyes, holding his gaze for an unnerving moment. Then he seemed to resolve some internal discussion, relaxing his shoulders. “Well, you might be able to get across up St. Johns, last I heard the bridge was still intact. There’s some folks in the park up there, you can ask them.” “St. Johns? That’s the wrong fucking way!” “A bridge is a bridge. It’s that or swim, champ.” “Can you at least call the, uh, your boss? Tell him you checked us out, ask if we can get across?” The man smiled, but something hardened behind his eyes. “My boss? Sure, sure. Look, I think it’s time you moved on. Head on up there and tell ‘em what you told me, they’ll let you out. There’s a bunch of poor Indians waiting for their dinner.” There was something strange about the way the man said “Indians,” but he patted the hood of the truck and turned away, waving them down a side street away from the barricade. As Blake slowly drove off, Tanner collapsed back into his seat and quickly rolled up the window. His underarms were cold with sweat, and he relaxed muscles he hadn’t known were clenched. Blake took the turn the stranger indicated, muttering that if he heard anyone say “folks” again he would hit them. Tanner stared out the window at the “little kitchen” as they passed. There must have been a couple hundred people, milling around a dozen or so small fires. They were all loosely centered around a large tent directly in front of the scorched skeleton of the precinct. Laughter and music drifted through the open window, and Tanner closed it. He didn’t think he could see any aliens, but it was difficult to tell in the dark. “Collaborators. Must be a ration station or something,” he muttered, mostly to himself. Lauren heard him. “No, this has been going on much longer than that, it just wasn’t so out in the open. Swanson warned us about it. He said they lure hungry people in with food.” “Yeah,” cut in Blake, “this is how they recruit ‘em. Set up a kitchen, give ‘em food, homeless and crackheads and queers, mostly. Drugs too, probably, and spewing their propaganda. That guy was probably one of the junkies. Sure as shit looked like it, you see the way he stared at me?” Tanner shuddered. A junkie. He had an overwhelming urge to wash his hands. He remembered the way the man had talked about the police station, his manic laugh in the face of such violence, and glanced back at the quickly fading light. And saw a small figure, tottering at the edge of the firelight. A child. “Disgusting,” he said out loud. “Yeah, disgusting. It’s like Earl said,” Blake continued, “they been feeding people right under our fucking noses.”
They drove on toward the bridge. The streets were more cluttered here, both with people and the remnants of the riots, and they could only manage a slow pace as they picked their way through the destruction. Blake had to swerve to the wrong side of the road to avoid a group of people carrying trash bags, picking through the rubble. “Looking for something to eat,” he grunted, and locked the doors. Signs of violence were everywhere. Tanner’s chest tightened as they drove past the law firm where he had started his career—the job that had brought him to the city after he finished college, working for his father’s best friend and learning his profession. Inside the shattered windows it was nothing but a shell, the desks overturned and the computers gone. No one would be working there any more. The destruction was completely random. Violence for its own sake. Beside the firm was a pawn shop, covered in graffiti and looted. Next to that, a Vietnamese restaurant, completely unharmed except for ‘Delicious, 5 stars’ sprayed on the pavement outside. Across the road was an untouched convenience store and a bookshop with its doors wide open, light flooding out and people crowding the entrance. A donut shop and an Apple store destroyed, a mechanic and a bar looking like they had simply closed for the night. There was absolutely no pattern or reason to it. They saw a Fred Meyers with every window broken, the front door jammed open with a twisted shopping cart. A movement caught Tanner’s eye and he saw someone leaving from a side door, carrying a huge bag of stolen food. He hoped Blake didn’t see—he might do something stupid, and Tanner didn’t want to stop. It wasn’t safe. They made it a few more blocks when Lauren gasped and grabbed Blake’s arm, making him brake. She gestured across the intersection to a KFC. Half the building had collapsed in what must have been an enormous fire; the half that still stood had been savagely attacked. She pointed to the entrance with a shaking finger. Someone—or something—had toppled the giant bucket sign and sent it crashing through the ceiling of the kitchen. Above the door, someone had scrawled a message in red spray paint: FUCK YOU SANDERS OUR SECRET SPICES NOW
There were more barricades set up near the bridge. Where the others had been makeshift, marking a boundary, these were more serious. They were to stop people getting through. Blake slowed before they got too close to the blockade, which they could now see was lined by shapes that very much suggested people. On both sides of the road the land fell away into darkness, sloping down to become a park that ran beneath the bridge. The park itself, a rare green space normally dotted with dog walkers and children, was transformed. The once-quiet lawns were a mass of tents and makeshift structures, stages and bars and sound systems, the proud trees now decked out with effigies and lights. Fires burned everywhere, and the distant space was carpeted with a swarming mass of humanity, undulating to a throbbing cacophony of noise. “This doesn’t look good,” said Blake. He pulled over, a hundred yards or so short of the bridge. “That guy said they would let us through,” said Tanner, “if we stick to our story.” “He was a junkie,” scoffed Lauren. “But he thought we were working with them,” said Tanner, “he had no reason to lie to us.” “I guess it’s worth a try. Anyway, they ain’t gonna try anything against this much firepower.” Blake grunted. “Too late to change our minds now. They’ve seen us.” He nodded at the barricade, where two shapes had detached from the mass. They moved toward the Tacoma, and Blake responded by flicking the lights to high beam and heading to meet them. As Blake swung back out into the road the beams cut through the darkness to illuminate the figures, throwing wild shadows from the two shapes until the truck steadied course and they coalesced into recognisable forms. One was a large man, white, with a nose ring and a loosely-tied blond ponytail. He was wearing a plaid shirt and carrying a large rifle. The other—Tanner’s throat caught—the other looked like one of the aliens. “Shit,” said Blake, as the headlights picked out at least half a dozen more shapes along the barricade, several with big guns visible. “Fuck.” He stopped the truck and rolled down the window, then cursed again and threw open the door. “I’ll be fucked if I’m gonna sit here and be pulled over like some criminal. Tanner, you’re with me—let’s go meet them man to man.” Tanner scrabbled for the door handle and chased after Blake, half-skipping to catch up. They pulled up a few paces before colliding with the approaching party. The blond man stepped forward. “How’s it going, dude?” he said. “We need to get to Hood River,” said Blake, “we’re trying—” “Yeah, we heard.” The man cut him off. “Bridge is closed to traffic, unfortunately. You wanna cross, you’ll have to walk.” Blake bristled. “Are you joking? We need to bring all this stuff. It’s… important,” he objected. “You can’t just keep people here!” “We could,” said the blond man, calmly. He sounded confident in his assertion. Looking at the line of men—and women, Tanner realized—standing along the barricade, he agreed. “But we’re not,” the man continued. “You can go wherever you want. Take your shit, cross the bridge. Some folks have organized buses up the river, they’ll take you. But the truck stays.” “But that’s my fucking truck!” Blake squealed. The man’s eyebrows shot up and Tanner laid a hand on Blake’s shoulder, squeezing it and hoping he got the message. The stranger paused, then sighed. “Look, I’m sorry dude. I love my truck, too. But there was an attack at another camp last night by these so-called freedom fighters,” he grimaced. “Militia wackjobs, really. Word is they are gathering across the river, and we can’t risk weapons and vehicles falling into the wrong hands. Especially not an arsenal like you folks got here.” The alien stepped forward and, much to Tanner’s surprise, spoke in perfect American English. “Don’t worry, it’ll be here when you get back. We’ll take real good care of it for you. They will appreciate the help guarding the buses and I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to help you move these… important supplies.” They signaled to the group at the barricade and two more figures made their way into the light of the truck’s high beams. The first was a slim Black man in fatigues, wearing a red beret at a jaunty angle and carrying a AR-style rifle in one hand. The other was a woman, tall and imposing. She wore a leather jacket over a long black dress, which was slit to the thigh to reveal hints of slim, bare legs that stretched from the pavement to the heavens. Tanner blinked rapidly and swallowed. He had always had a soft spot for long legs in thigh-slit dresses. As they came closer the man nodded at Tanner and Blake, but he was not what held their attention. The woman with the legs from God was also rocking a luxurious mustache that would have put Teddy Roosevelt to shame. As Tanner’s eyes bulged, she caught his gaze and winked. “Hello, boys. I’m Sunshine, they/them. I’ll be with you on the bus.” Tanner didn’t know how to react. A fuzzy memory bounced around in the back of his head. “An investigation on college campuses found that increasing numbers of American citizens are using pronouns.” Earl’s bewildered face frowned, then puckered. “These ‘theys’ and ‘thems’ are making a mockery of the American tradition, seeking to spread their insidious ideology among good, hard-working citizens, brainwashing young Americans into adopting these ‘pronouns.’ What’s next, people identifying a different age? A different race? We need to speak out against this perverse trend and most importantly, keep them away from our children.” _ That was it. These were the pronouns Swanson had warned them about. He gripped his gun and glanced at Blake, trying to get his mental footing. Blake looked shocked, too, but quickly pulled himself together. He threw Tanner a sly look, one that hinted at an idea. “Give us a minute,” he snapped, and pulled away from Tanner, back to the truck. When they were both inside he turned on the occupants with a spark in his eyes. “They must be talking about my boys, alive and kicking,” the old grin was back, his excitement barely contained. “Must have set up in the woods. We’ll head over and find ‘em. Maybe they got word from Earl. If they’re here, and they’re fighting, maybe we don’t have to go all the way to Boise after all.” “What’s going on?” Lauren looked confused. “We’re leaving the truck. Grab the shit, cross the bridge, hijack their fucking commie-wagon and strike out east. Either we find them in Baker, or our boys find us first.” Tanner was still coming to grips with the situation. “What about… them?” he said. “Who?” “They… them. In the dress, with the pronouns!” “And what are they going to do, stop us? You ever tried to fight wearing something like that? No. The four of us, across the bridge, grab the bus, easy.” “Katie’s not hijacking any bus. She’s eight, for God’s sake. Maybe she and Lauren should stay here…” “You stay here with Katie,” Lauren snapped, cutting Tanner off. “If you think it’s safer, if you’re looking for safer, you take her for a nice walk in the park down there. I’ll be with my husband, taking my country back from these freaks.” “I know you want to keep Katie safe,” Blake added, almost apologetically, “but you saw what it’s like out there. You heard Swanson’s warnings. These aren’t people, they’re animals, aliens. She’s your baby fuckin’ girl, man. You do what you’re at peace with, but my wife sure as shit ain’t staying here to get felt up by some dick in a dress.” Tanner looked at Lauren. “But she’s just a kid! What if she gets hurt.” “What if she gets hurt _here? So you look after her. Be a man,” Lauren spat back. Blake clapped Tanner on the shoulder and held his gaze. “It’s do or die time, soldier. Let’s get the fuck outta here, hook up with the resistance, then bring back the fury of God and freedom and the USA to take back this city and liberate my God damn truck!” Tanner looked at Katie, curled up in the footwell, and wanted to object. He wanted to take her somewhere safe, back to the Hole, where it was warm and they could hide from the aliens and the bad people and they had all the food they could need and they could wait for this all to be over. But the fire in his belly wouldn’t let him. He knew Blake was right, he knew that he should be ashamed of his moments of weakness. He saw Lauren gripping her rifle and staring at Blake with faith and devotion in her eyes and he knew that was the kind of man he wanted to be. Tanner breathed a silent promise to keep Katie safe, no matter the cost. “Let’s do it.” Blake pulled the truck up to the group of guards and they all piled out, Tanner standing straight and feeling tall, Blake’s words ringing in his ears. It’s do or die time. _ Two of the barricade guards came over to help them unload while the others stood around and watched, their mustachioed escort who made Tanner’s skin crawl and the large blond man. Traitor. They stripped off the tray covering and began shifting gear, Blake and blondie up above handing packages down to everyone else. Tanner heard the guards muttering to each other. “Holy shit, that’s a lot of firepower.” The blond man snorted. “And a lot of nasty-ass TV dinners. Important supplies, my ass.” Sunshine shrugged. “Folks eat what they eat. Not everyone lives in a Whole Foods and learned to make Tom Yum on their gap year,” they rebuked him. The man grimaced and scratched his jaw. “Yeah, right. That was unfair of me. Well, Thai cooking workshop tomorrow and I’ll make a big pot, so at least folks here don’t have to eat that frozen stuff… unless they want to.” They busied themselves unloading, bundling food and weapons into bags or tying them together for ease of carrying. Tanner was tying the straps of his backpack and settling it on his back when he heard a curse from the back of the truck. He glanced up, and, frozen in time, watched the next few seconds helplessly. The blond man had pulled out one of the last few satchels, the one containing all their spare clothes. He was standing upright, arms held out, nose ring quivering in silent outrage. In his left hand he had Blake’s flag bandana; in his right, Blake’s spare jacket, rebel flag patch sitting proudly on the shoulder. Blake reacted fastest. He dropped the food he was holding, raised his Glock, and with a vengeful crack the blond ponytail exploded in a spray of red. The man in the beret raised his rifle and fired two shots into Blake’s chest, sending him flying from the tray. A scream burst from Lauren as she reached for her gun, but the alien matched the sound and met her with a powerful tackle, sending both of them crashing into a pile of frozen hamburgers. Sunshine reached out and grabbed Tanner’s arm. Time snapped back into motion for Tanner. He instinctively pulled away and shook his arm free of the grasping fingers. Stepping back, he spun and swung his fist in a wild roundhouse. It connected with Sunshine’s jaw as they overbalanced toward him. Tanner watched them collapse in a heap. His gaze danced over the chaos unfolding around him, frantically searching for Katie. _There. Tanner picked her up and ran. They plunged off the road and into the darkness. There was only one thought in his mind: get Katie across that bridge. She was sobbing, shaking in his grasp, and Tanner made what he hoped were comforting shushing noises as he ran. He knew this park—there was a staircase inside one of the support towers that rose from the park to the bridge overhead. That was his way out. Holding Katie tightly, breath ragged, he ran toward the orgy of light and noise pulsating below. The two escapees burst into the mass of people. Tanner looked around, eyes darting, taking in the madness and trying to get his bearings. The sensory assault was overwhelming, but he slowly made out patterns in the polyrhythmic press. What had looked from above like a continuous swell of humanity was actually a hundred, a thousand separate groups and camps and parties. People flowed freely between them, groups forming and merging and coming apart in a chaotic, everchanging anarchy. A makeshift stage to his left throbbed with bass, colliding with the bone-jarring screams and guitars of a group of punks. Tanner found himself surrounded by ecstatic dancers, while a group almost under his feet sat staring into a campfire, oblivious to the rest of the world. He crashed through their doped-out reverie and bounced off two men, locked in a hungry embrace. Tanner recoiled and turned away, shielding Katie with his body, searching desperately for the tower that would lead him out of this nightmare. Lights flashed, blinding, creating a sort of slideshow of horror as Tanner scanned the crowd. There. He found it. His escape from this festival of the damned. He soldiered on, caught up in a whirl of half-naked dancers, men, women, and everyone else, mindless of the frigid air as they span and writhed in rapture. Tanner spotted an exit, an island of calm, and dove for it. He exploded from the throng, gasping for air, and breathed in the relative silence. Collecting himself, he was faced with rows of bodies, still, staring at something unseen up ahead, the very air trembling with collective anticipation. A voice shattered his uneasy reprieve, loud and bombastic and dripping with drama. “And now, my darlings, it is time for these fuckers to do what I do best—go down!” Tanner dashed through the crowd as they roared and surged into motion, and caught a glimpse of the scene ahead: two lines of people, straining on thick ropes, as a woman in lingerie and feathers pranced like a princess of hell before them. The ropes led upwards, where they were tied around the necks of two enormous metal figures. Lewis and Clark. Tanner broke into a full sprint, shouldering bodies aside. He was almost there. Up ahead, rising from the chaos, was his stairway to the heavens. His legs trembled and his breath came in ragged sobs, but he couldn’t slow down. Not when he was so close. He tore out of the crowd and into the comforting darkness of the spaces in between. His hysterical panic began to subside. One foot in front of the other. Keep running. They were going to make it. As he neared the tower a figure came into view at the base, looming from the shadows of the doorway, staring into the blackness beyond. A stocky, muscled figure wearing fatigues and a plate carrier. It couldn’t be… “Blake! Blake, thank God.” Tears welled in Tanner’s eyes as he reached his friend. Lauren was nowhere to be seen, but right now Tanner couldn’t think about her. He had survived, and he had brought Katie through. His heartbeat was still frantic, but from exertion rather than fear. They were here. He, Katie, and Blake. Emotionally exhausted, physically spent, battered and terrified, but alive. They were going to be okay. He reached out to his friend. Blake turned—No, not Blake. A thick black beard engulfed the shadowy face, momentarily lit by the glowing ember of a huge cigar. The eyes were deep-set and dark, the skin weathered, wrinkled, brown. The face of an illegal alien. Tanner’s throat betrayed him. He squeaked, and nothing more would come out. His knees wobbled and threatened to give way, his feet froze in place. He wavered. He whimpered. Puffing on the cigar, the alien took in his terrified face and the little girl slung over his shoulder. He gestured toward the doorway and blew out an enormous plume of smoke. “Go, gringo.”
It was well past midnight when Katie ran into the side of a tent, fell on her bottom, and started crying. They had crossed the bridge, left the highway, and headed for the safety of the forest. Since then they had been wandering among the trees for hours, directionless, driven by fear, then by hope, then exhausted aimlessness. Tanner wasn’t going anywhere except away from that park. He had briefly entertained the image of finding a group of militia, sitting around a fire, eating and laughing and, maybe, swapping stories with their old friend Blake. That was hours ago. Visions were fleeting in the fever dream of the forest. Since then, they had walked because they didn’t know what else to do. Tanner stumbled over to Katie and collapsed beside her, holding her close and hushing her. He felt like crying too. A flashlight clicked on inside the tent and a dreadlocked head poked out of the flap. “Hey, there’s someone here!” Rustling erupted from all around and more faces appeared. “Wasn’t someone keeping watch?” “I thought you were.” “Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. Someone’s crying.” “You folks okay?” Tanner and Katie were soon surrounded by a small group of people. He looked up at them. “Are you the militia?” “No, don’t worry. You’re safe here. We’re friends.” “Although I guess we are a militia if you think about it. Sort of.” “Shh, don’t confuse the poor people. They’re terrified.” “Sorry. No, no militia. Someone get them a blanket and something to drink.” Minutes later, Tanner and Katie were wrapped in sleeping bags, sipping on hot cocoa. It was scalding and familiar and Tanner felt the tension of the past day fading, leaving bone-deep exhaustion in its place. “Are you okay? What happened?” “Thank you. We were… we just need to sleep.” “And you? What’s your name? Are you alright?” Katie looked at her dad, then stared up from her tin mug. “I’m Katie. I’m scared.” “You’re safe now. We’ll help you. Look, we’ll get you somewhere to sleep.” The first face they had seen rummaged around in a tent and brought out a bag. “Lucky we have a spare tent. I’ll just put it up, won’t be a second.” The tent was almost up by the time Tanner and Katie finished their drinks, and they got up and walked over, sleeping bags over their shoulders, holding hands. “Hey, thanks,” Tanner said. “I would have helped but I don’t really know how. Never had much call for camping. I am, uh, was a lawyer,” he glanced around, “not criminal, uh… intellectual property. Copyright.” “No problem, of course. Here, it’s not hard. I’m just clipping the…” “This isn’t the time for camping lessons, Jacob. Anyway, you’ll scare the man, sharing information for free like that. They’ve been through enough already.” “Sorry, yeah. Look, slide in. Take these sleeping mats. It’ll do for tonight, I’ll teach you tomorrow.” Tanner and Katie squeezed into the tent, sleeping bags huddled together on the cold, hard ground, and slept. THE END
**Inmn ** 1:03:01 Hello, and welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming on today. Could you introduce yourself with your name, pronouns, and just a little bit about what you do in the world?
**Matt ** 1:03:15 Yeah, hi, I'm Matt. He/him pronouns. And I'm a student again, after a really long time, actually, which is why I've just moved to where I'm living now. But I like to write, you know, mostly for me, and this is the first first thing I've published but I enjoy it. And yeah, I'm really grateful that you've taken an interest in it.
**Inmn ** 1:03:37 Yeah, totally. I love the story. So we just listened to the second half of your story, Blood, Soil and Frozen TV Dinners and even though listeners just heard...just heard the whole story, I'm wondering if you could just kind of like walk us through the story in your--you know, from the mouth of the author--what is this story about?
**Matt ** 1:04:01 So the story, for me, was about, to some extent, seeing yourself in some ways or, you know, people like you, through the eyes of...through the eyes of someone else, I guess, someone who's very different and might see things in a different way. So I always find it interesting to play with different perspectives or different characters instead of telling the story from a heroic perspective or something. And I wondered what a pathway to a better world might look like from someone who didn't necessarily want that to happen. So we have these, you know, preppers who--call them you want, right-wing conservatives, something like this--and what they might think, given the knowledge that they receive about the world, what they might think is happening when something happens that a lot of the rest of us might want.
**Inmn ** 1:05:00 Yeah, totally. I really like how you put that. What was it, like, "a better world that they don't necessarily want?" [both laugh] Okay, well, how did this, how did this story kind of...like how did it come to be? What inspiration did you kind of draw from to craft this situation or these like personalities from Tanner and Blake or Earl Swanson?
1:05:35 Yeah, the story itself, there was a discussion last Halloween, I believe it was, on Coffee With Comrades, there was a interview with Pearson and Margaret Killjoy, talking about the discussion of the monster in literature, which is where I first took the idea that they were talking about seeing yourself as the monster in this idea and sometimes reveling in that or perhaps enjoying it. And that was where the first idea came from. And then the most specific layout of the story or main theme, I guess, was, I was doing something on the US Tax Office website. And there's this whole section for aliens, right, if you're an alien in the U.S., these are the tax rules you need to follow. And I just thought it was a funny word. You know, I'd seen it on Fox News or something before but it just struck me as really weird in such an official position. Yeah, and I just was playing with the ideas of this and, you know, I like thinking about utopias and things. And this is where the like the main shape of the story had come from, just the idea of seeing the monster, seeing the alien from there. And then specific characters, I mean, some of them are just kind of people that I've met, you know, Tanner and Blake, specifically, and I think Earl Swanson's character, I mean--I don't know it's possibly libelous--but we can probably figure out who that's meant to be, right? I think it's reasonably obvious.
**Inmn ** 1:07:09 Totally, totally. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's super interesting. Yeah, it's funny, I was rereading the story today to prepare for this interview and I realized that the first time that I was reading it, because of this perspective of the.... I'm like, okay, I know, these are some, you know, at least center-right, far-right preppers and they're using the word "alien" and I don't actually know what they mean by this, which was, you know, maybe a purposeful being vague about it, but I was like, I don't know if they think that it's, you know, illegal aliens or undocumented migrants or whatever or if they mean, like, literal from outer space aliens. And, yeah, I was like, I don't know what they mean by what they're talking about. And maybe they don't either.
1:08:20 This was part of the conceit, right, was setting it up like it's a pretend big reveal, I think, that it's a twist in the story that at some point gets revealed, but that's not really the point. It's not really meant to be a big trick or something like this, you know? I think in discussions in the editing, we talked about in the first page or so when they speaking Arabic, and it's reasonably obvious to anyone that knows Arabic who these people are, you know, it's not hidden, but this was the idea, that they may have meant illegal alien all along, was, you know, the way they we're using the term, but that they weren't necessarily drawing so much of a distinction between the two uses of the word alien, that in their minds a, sort of, invasion by one was the same as the invasion by the other to some extent.
**Inmn ** 1:09:10 Yeah, which, you know, I actually really love that from the perspective of.... It's like maybe an interesting twist. I didn't listen to that interview with Pearson and Margaret, so I'm not sure what they talked about, but there's this kind of idea in a lot of spaces that I've been part of,you know, when people talk about things like assimilation or something, especially in queer spaces, of like, "We have to seem harmless to them. We have to seem innocent. We have to seem like we just want to be part of the group," you know, and then this other side that's like, "No, we want to be unknowable. We are claiming the monstrosity that they are putting on us," and I'm like, yeah, we're fucking.... I don't know, anarchists are kind of aliens, like, in an entirely other way of thinking, you know?
1:10:09 Yeah, and just considering some social norms is completely irrelevant or harmful or repressive and other things that other people would consider, perhaps, violent or something seem completely okay to other people. There is a complete sort of alienation of perspective from broader society, I think. And yeah, it is, there's a tension between sometimes wanting to go unnoticed, or, as you say, like assimilate, and even, for me, walking around, you know, sometimes you want to look like an anarchist and sometimes you don't. It's an interesting dynamic, I guess, that you can switch sometimes day-to-day.
**Inmn ** 1:10:54 Yeah, yeah. Have you read much of--you know, love talking about this person on the show--have you read much of Ursula Le Guin's Hainish Cycle?
1:11:08 I've read only "The Dispossessed" and "The Left Hand of Darkness".
**Inmn ** 1:11:16 Great examples. I think "The Left Hand of Darkness," kind of brings out this idea of where the reader is going to maybe most identify with the alien, or whatever, in "The Left Hand of Darkness" being not the not the Gethens--or I don't remember what they're called. But then it's like, the more that we're reading the book... or there's some times where I'm this alien or, you know, our perspective person just doesn't understand this culture. And that's really painful. And then there are other times when I'm like, I don't know, maybe the alien's perspectives on the world are far more dissimilar to what a normal person on like our planet Earth would think, because they're advocating for a better world that is very alien to people on this planet. Does that make sense?
**Matt ** 1:12:24 Yeah, I mean, in "The Dispossessed," I think it's the same dynamic with Shevak coming back to Earth and presenting the perspective, both ways that it seems incredibly alien to him and then the other way around to everyone else that's there, to the general culture there. Yeah. I think it's an interesting literary device to present the outsider point of view, I think, which I mean, is quite the opposite of what I did in this story, I presented the more mainstream point of view, I guess, but from the circles that we're in, it's funny to see from the outside what that looks like.
**Inmn ** 1:13:02 Yeah, yeah, I had this very silly idea once for...I don't know if it was gonna be a short story or what but kind of, using that "alien" trope or like "Stranger in a Strange Land" trope as a way to talk to my parents about anarchism or about radical queer spheres.
**Matt ** 1:13:27 Yeah, I mean, that's about as alien as it can get for a lot of people's parents, right.
**Inmn ** 1:13:31 Totally. But just as some funny little zine that's like an introduction to the punk house, you know?
**Matt ** 1:13:44 Yeah, viewed as some sort of interesting zoo creatures.
**Inmn ** 1:13:46 Yeah. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the kind of political renderings of Tanner and Blake or ,rather, their differences in how they perceive or interact with either preparedness or this new world that they're encountering?
**Matt ** 1:14:14 Yeah, I think that Blake's character is a lot.... He knows what he's doing, right? It's a lot more intentional and more--I guess educated is maybe not quite the right word--but a lot more of an actually constructed ideology, whereas for Tanner it's very much received. He's not so keen, not so entirely sold on the idea or doesn't necessarily know the idea. It feels like it's like lost and failing a lot of the time and I think that's why I found him a much more interesting character because that's how I feel a lot of people that I know and talk to and family members and friends and things or friends of people I know get pulled into a lot of these, you know, reactionary ideologies is kind of by accident a lot of the time, right? Because it's what's presented and what they're drawn into by someone who has a lot more investment in it than they do. And they just kind of bumble into it almost by accident. Yeah.
**Inmn ** 1:15:20 Because it's what they're seeing on TV. People who are deeper into that philosophy are like.... It's like the people that they're around who are their own little echo chambers of, "Oh, okay, there's this thing happening. Not sure how I feel about it. But I'm being like, fed this perspective on it."
**Matt ** 1:15:46 Yeah, and a lot of the social or interpersonal issues that draw people in as well, I think. I tried to make it seem relatively obvious that Tanner is envious of Blake in a lot of ways, right? He is, you know, hotter than him and he is cooler than him and he knows more than him and he's always trying to, like, live up to this ideal that he has just completely interpersonally with no politics or anything in it. And he just wants to live up to what he thinks Blake wants him to be, which it turns out, is a bad thing. I mean, I'm not trying to excuse Tanner's character too much here. But yeah, I think this is what's really dangerous a lot of the time actually, for people who don't necessarily have a fully formed belief in all of these philosophical systems or something that then puts them on the wrong side not by...not necessarily out of evil intention.
**Inmn ** 1:16:54 Yeah. No, that's very true. And it's interesting talking about not excusing Tanner's character too much, but as I was reading the story I found myself like, not necessarily rooting for Tanner and Blake to win or whatever, but rooting for Tanner to be confronted with the contradictions in his worldview. Because it's like, I don't know, it's like, that's what I hope for in the world that we live in is that these kind of--I heard this phrase recently. It was people talking about everything going on in Palestine right now and these "sharpening contradictions" and that's what I hoped that would happen for Tanner, which is not really what happened for Tanner. [Laughing]
**Matt ** 1:18:00 Yeah, well I'm sorry to let you down, I guess. When I was thinking about the story initially, I was thinking about doing this, but then it became kind of a, I don't know, a redemption story, everything ends.... Well, he gets pulled out of this destructive ideology. He, you know, potentially reconcile some of these contradictions and, you know, maybe even talks to his daughter or something. But I didn't necessarily want it to go in that direction because it's not necessarily the way I see the world going, that these things just get better and everything's okay in the end and I don't always like stories when that happens. You know, it's a bit too optimistic for me sometimes. And I thought it was maybe more interesting just to sit in it.
**Inmn ** 1:18:50 No, yeah. No, I appreciate how the story ended. And like, I think that is, you know, that is unfortunately probably a more likely outcome for most people and that is a hard reality to sit with because--I'm not an optimist as much as I am just really holding on to hope or something. I don't know. You know, I'm a hopeful nihilist or something.
**Matt ** 1:19:25 Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to be hopeful. I mean, I'm quite happy to call myself a utopian...maybe a pessimistic utopianist or something like this, but I think these things are important. And, you know, I tried to leave a little seed of that in there with--you know, there if there's one thing that does redeem Tanner's character in some way is his poorly expressed but the care for Katie. And we tried to end it on that, right?
**Inmn ** 1:19:55 Yeah, totally. And maybe I'm experiencing these political ideologies wrong but Tanner is like this kind of center-right kind of character--in the American perspective, I know other places these things mean vastly different things--but how Americans might view Tanner is center-right, who.... You know, Tanner's fear, or the core fear for a lot of people is reasonable things where they're like, "Oh, I'm worried about my kids. I'm worried about surviving with my family in these situations." But then, you know, they go about it in the most horribly wrong way.
**Matt ** 1:20:48 And they take the easy options that are given to them that don't make them think too much. I mean, just on the point of him being center-right in the US, here in Portugal, a friend was telling me the other day that they consider their Socialist Party center-right. So it's kind of funny. But I think Tanner represents someone who's maybe not even so political, but he's just been given explanation to things that he is worried about and it doesn't require him to think too much. And he doesn't have to do so much. I mean, okay, well, then the position is presented in the story, a lot of stuff happened, but ideologically, he hasn't had to do too much work, right to get to where he was.
**Inmn ** 1:21:31 Totally, totally. And golly, I'm sorry, my last like having empathized a little too much with Tanner throughout the story, is--I think this is the quotation--"These were the pronouns Swanson had warned us about." And when Tanner attempts to use Sunshine's pronouns, I was like, okay, yeah, you're a little wacky and like, I don't know, you're trying I guess?
**Matt ** 1:22:12 Yeah, I mean, okay, I was not sure about this, you know, we talked about being a bit concerned about how the story would be received because it's through this strange perspective. And I genuinely wasn't sure if this was kind of funny or weird or a little offensive or something, perhaps. But, you know, it's important to acknowledge that this is at least like such an amazingly popular topic at the moment in the US on the reactionary right. I think. So….
**Inmn ** 1:22:50 Totally, totally. Um, well, I don't know, you know, at least as someone who.... I'm nonbinary and use they/them pronouns and I found it weirdly relatable at least within.... I don't know, we have a lot of caricatures built up about what the Right looks like here in the United States. And these depictions, to me, are very spot on. I've met both of these people, you know. But it's like, I've also met that version of Tanner who's center-right has some wacky thoughts about the world, listens to Earl Swanson, or whatever, but like, at that core, just, you know, they're like, "Oh, well, this person hasn't harmed me. They seem nice. And they want to be called this thing. And I was told that was dangerous, but I just want to refer to people how they want to be referred to," it's like, I don't know, you know, it's like I've met that person. I've met that person who has some problematic views and also doesn't actually want to be rude or be viewed as rude to people.
**Matt ** 1:24:18 Especially, I think, you know, on a lot of these more conservative positions, that politeness is, you know, almost a virtue above all others sometimes. In a more traditional Conservative view, maybe not so much sometimes now, but, yeah, like, exactly like you say, that someone doesn't want to be mean for no reason, or they might not understand it and they might have very problematic views about it, but this inherent very conventional politeness just prevents them from actually saying what they might mean or say otherwise when they don't necessarily--like I said--does not necessarily have this ideological position so much. Like, why would they want to be mean to another person?
**Inmn ** 1:25:07 Yeah, they view themselves as you know, like the quote-unquote, "Good guys." And so when they're confronted with someone who's like, "Oh, this is just a person, they seem nice. I don't know, doesn't seem dangerous anymore." You know, because that's the narratives that people like Earl Swanson are feeding people, is "These people are dangerous." And I don't know. Sorry, not not to harp too much on the humanity of these characters, but I think they're.... I do think there's interesting things to find in those interactions. I don't know.
**Matt ** 1:25:53 Yeah, no, sure. I mean, I was talking to some people about this last night, but that this liberal position that especially we saw coming up during Covid, where, you know, "Oh, Florida voted Red, let them all die," type stuff. You know, "Everyone's redneck hicks and things," that this is for me much more.... It's horrible, right? It's really, really terrible. And there are a lot of people who, I mean, again, maybe a lot of people who wouldn't even attempt to use the right pronouns or that do genuinely hold more problematic views, but fundamentally they're still people. We can't just write off half of everyone because they vote the wrong way. Or, we don't have to accept the positions, but we have to accept that they are people, right?
**Inmn ** 1:26:39 Yeah. Or it's like, I don't know, I think about it, as--you know, again, talking to people where I'm like, okay, yeah, y'all got some problematic views. And when I talk about pronouns, you try at least? And I don't know. Anyways, I'd be super interested to hear about like.... So you have spent some time living in the United States but I'm curious what.... I'm curious how, kind of, American. you know, preparedness, prepper culture is viewed from not the United States.
**Matt ** 1:27:26 Yeah, I mean, I've sort of got a background in anarchist circles and things, so a lot of the more community preparedness sides are more universal, especially when we're talking about climate resilience and food sustainability or, you know, local food sustainability and production and these kinds of ideas. And, you know, even just decommodification of some of these things, to provide them for ourselves even without a massive sudden crisis or something. So I'm, like, more familiar with these kinds of ideas, but the specifically right-wing, American version, or US version, is kind of interesting, you know? Like, one of the first experiences I had coming into the US that I found quite interesting was went to the supermarket the first or second day I was there and there was just a guy with a hunting knife strapped to his thigh that was down to his knee, you know, just walking around. And this kind of stuff, I mean, okay, not necessarily prepper ideology, but it just really threw me off that these kinds of things happen and how.... The way that this then pulled...the types of things they're being prepared for, I guess, is what it is, I just find very, very funny. I mean, that was part of the reason for choosing the frozen dinners, apart from a symbolic value of it, is that as a way to prepare for the end of the world, they're the worst kind of food you could have. You know, they've got the highest sort of.... They require the most convenience infrastructure, right, you need a freezer, you need some kind of microwave or something. It's a very useless way to prepare. I find it kind of funny, you know, that Blake talks about when he builds his bunker, that there were a bunch of useless fruit trees and stuff there, so he took them out to put in a freezer full of frozen foods, right? Yeah, I find the approach very strange. And it's incredibly individualistic, I guess, is the main point and assumes a level of comfort that might not necessarily be there if the end of the world came.
**Inmn ** 1:27:27 Yeah. And there's these, I don't know. there's some really fun quotations that I'd really love to just highlight from the story that kind of relate to that, like them talking about, you know, when talking about food, they're like, "Oh, they've been luring people in with food," or I think Blake says, "They've been feeding people right under our noses," and I'm like that's what you do during disasters, is you feed people.
**Matt ** 00:12 Yeah, this is, I mean, not so much even on the prepper side of things, but just the attitude of people towards a lot of the sweeps and stuff, right, the absolute dehumanization of people that just don't have somewhere else to live, that all of a sudden that.... Not even that they don't deserve anything, but that anyone who helps them is a criminal in encouraging, encouraging the fall of the US empire or something. And I just, I mean, I find these attitudes just deeply inhuman. I don't know, I just...the story is mainly a joke. Not trying to highlight too much. I think most people know most of these things, right? Especially people that are listening to this podcast, but I just wanted to have some fun with some of it.
**Inmn ** 01:06 Yeah, I really appreciate that as like, you know, we do Live Like the World is Dying and we talked a lot about preparedness and we usually approach it from these like, really, you know, these much more serious views and we're like, "the danger of the Right, the danger of bunker mentality," and, you know, with good reason, those things are scary and like the world is having some wild...you know, wild things are happening in the world right now. And I really appreciated this bit of humor about it to be like, yeah, here's this funny tale.
**Matt ** 01:48 Yeah, I had to do a lot of research into all the different types of guns, because I'm not so familiar with them. I mean, okay, there's like three types of guns, but I still had to go look at what they were because I don't know them. But that seems to be the number one, the number one thing to do, if you're right-wing prepper is to build a bunker and put like 70,000 guns in there. So....
**Inmn ** 02:08 [Laughing] Yeah. Extreme forethought on the guns and not that much forethought on food.
**Matt ** 02:16 Or access to water or something, you know?
**Inmn ** 02:19 Yeah, or just community, you know? I don't know, that's one of my big things with bunker mentality. It's like, okay, you've built the bunker where you're going to survive the collapse, or whatever, and then what? You're just like, alone in a bunker? That doesn't sound like a good place to end up. I'd rather build these communities that can, kind of like, get through things together and like, take care of each other.
**Matt ** 02:52 Yeah, I think you can have a lot better chance of getting through something with a group of people around with varying skill sets and expertise and experience and so on. But also, like you say, I mean, I just…I don't want to end up by myself in a bucket. That sounds like not a lot of fun. It's not really a life I want to live.
**Inmn ** 03:10 Um, how do people talk about community preparedness in Europe or Portugal?
**Matt ** 03:21 Yeah, I mean, it's not so much of a.... Things here maybe haven't broken down quite as much as they have where you are. There aren't...the contradictions haven't sharpened--I think was a way to use before--quite as much as they maybe have. So people are much more interested in--or, not interested, maybe more focused on--finding ways to provide things for ourselves in the moment without a market, right. So finding ways to access housing and to access food and to provide food. There's at least as much hyperbole and xenophobia and panic about refugees in Europe as there is about people coming into the US. And so trying to, you know, build links with these communities and things I think are much more focused on. The sorts of community care that people are doing here is more immediate, it's not really aimed at the future. It's kind of aimed at now. It has a different character, right?
**Inmn ** 04:30 Yeah, which stuff like that certainly happens here where there's just so much to respond to. There's so many bad things happening that it...it does feel hard to adequately be able to plan for the future because we are constantly reacting to what is currently happening.
**Matt ** 04:55 Yeah, I mean, I think there's plenty of people trying to make life better right now in the US too. Yeah, I think maybe there's not quite the same expectation that it's all gonna go to shit soon here right away.
**Inmn ** 05:14 Oh, yeah, no, that's an interesting difference because here, there's just so much that it feels hard to stay on top of it but we all know stuffs gonna get real bad. Whereas there, it seems like people have more optimistic views of stuff not getting bad or they're just like not thinking about it? [Said like a question]
**Matt ** 05:36 I mean a lot of it's just kind of more hidden, because there are, you know, stronger welfare states in some parts of Europe. So things aren't as immediately bad for, you know, as many people. It's still very bad for plenty of people. But there's not as many people who are facing the same immediate problems. And, sort of lurking in the background, you know, like, but I think they haven't been brought into focus as much as the US has.
**Inmn ** 06:08 That makes sense. I guess like...I usually ask this at the beginning of the story, or at the beginning of the interview, but like...and, you know, we've talked about a lot of this already, but what is the story behind the story? like, why is this an important story for people now?
**Inmn ** 06:27 I know, I love that the mechanism of collapse, of whatever's happening in the story is really vague, you know? I'm like, did something happen? Was there just an insurrection? But whatever happened, like, I don't know, these anarchists are really on top of it. [Laughing, like it's unexpected they would be]
**Matt ** 06:27 I think it's, first, important to sometimes laugh at these things because otherwise you just despair. And like I said, I wrote this for myself as a joke initially. So for me it was important for me to write, not necessarily have a plan for anyone to read. But I think--so, I mean, this is maybe stretching the definition of Utopia a little bit--but I think that thinking about what worlds could look like is incredibly important. You know, I think Bookchin says that, "The change comes from the difference of what people see their life to what they can imagine it to be like," basically, the bigger this differential, the more likely people are to act. And I think by expanding the sort of normative horizons of what we can expect of the world, I think this is quite important, genuinely. Like I said, it might be stretching it a little bit to apply that to this story. But I think it's maybe a funny look at changes happening, right? I mean, it's somewhat utopian to imagine that a city in the US could fall. So....
**Matt ** 08:09 Yeah, I didn't want to go too much into that and make some sort of, you know, "10 pages on how to do a revolution," because, I mean, who am I to talk about that? And we've had that and got that. And, you know, this is a much bigger, more serious discussion. Also, it didn't make any sense for Tanner and Blake to know how that happened.
**Inmn ** 08:33 No, I love that we're wrapped up in the mystery of that.
**Matt ** 08:37 Yeah. And I think, you know, we wanted to suggest that some things, they're very basic things, like you mentioned before, just, you know, feeding people for a long time, recruiting people by helping, you know, helping people, convincing them at their side is better because actually their side was nice to them and help them and, you know, gave them some agency. Oh how dastardly of them. [said sarcastically]
**Inmn ** 09:02 Yeah, so dastardly. But, yeah, sorry, just to go back real quick to this.... It's funny because I think maybe we maybe have different terms that we might use, but I, for instance, I feel resistant to the idea of utopian thinking, but something that I think is really important is like--and I think Bookchin talks about this idea or at least Cindy Milstein talks about this idea a lot--is prefigurative organizing or prefigurative visioning, which is like.... I don't really...I don't know enough about these things to know the difference between utopianism and prefigurative visioning but prefigured visioning being like, "We want to build the world that we want to live in now and not like wait for the future or for to be too late," or something?
**Matt ** 10:02 Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, there's a lot of debate over what utopianism is, if it's good, if it's bad, if it's whatever. So I'm just, you know, I'll use the word and other people can disagree. But I exactly agree. Like, I think, you know, prefigurative politics is what we need to be doing. We need to build a world that we want to live in. But we need to have an idea of what world we want to live in to do that. And so I think we hold it out as a horizon that we can move towards, it's not some fixed blueprint of how we want the world to be, but rather, that we can just continuously imagine and change and reflect on and we can bring little bits and pieces of it into the here and now. You know, like I've mentioned a couple of times with people trying to find ways to feed themselves in their communities and other ways to access housing and other ways to just exist right now. I mean, we need to have some idea of how to do this. And I think if we can, if we can conjure--especially as writers--I think if we can conjure some of these ideas of Utopia then people can take bits and pieces and try it. We can experiment, we can see if it works. If it doesn't work, we can update our idea of Utopia. But it's important that it's a practice not a...not some fire or vision, you know?
**Inmn ** 11:13 Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, I totally, totally agree. And that's like one of the...that's like one of the natures of, you know, anarchism or anarchic philosophy is this adaptability or the ability to experiment and be like, "Oh, golly, that didn't work. Well, we're going to.... We thought it would, but it didn't. So we're going to try something different and see if that works better for people." We can change. Our visions can change. I don't know.
**Matt ** 11:44 Yeah, and we try ways of, I don't know, something as simple as try a way of organizing some collective or something. And then you find out that, actually, maybe we didn't need 10 pages of different bureaucratic structures to stop power accumulating in one place too much. Maybe we could just wing it a bit, you know?
**Inmn ** 12:02 Yeah. Well, we are nearing the end of our time. But is there...are there any...is there any last things you want to say about this story? Or like, questions that I should have asked you that I didn't ask you?
**Matt ** 12:18 I don't think there's anything that I was really itching to say that didn't get mentioned. I mean, I don't know. Maybe, like I said, I was worried about the story. Maybe just to mention that the misogyny that comes across is, as you know, is definitely...the characters are not speaking for a reason. So maybe I'll just mention that in case anyone's worried about it.
**Matt ** 12:42 Totally, totally. Yeah.
**Matt ** 12:45 No, I think there's.... Yeah, it was a good discussion. I enjoyed talking about it.
**Inmn ** 12:50 Yeah. And maybe that's my final question about the story is like--we talked a little bit off air about this--but there being some nervousness around how the story would be perceived. And I was wondering if you wanted to say just a little bit more about that?
**Matt ** 13:07 Yeah, sure. I mean, I think writing from this perspective, I mean, from the perspective of someone who holds some racist views, misogynistic views, they're gonna have a racist, misogynistic perspective. And it would be kind of weird not to have that in the writing. It would feel off somehow. So I mean, okay, obviously, I'm not using slurs and stuff. And I think in some way, you know, we mentioned this slightly before, but that in some ways, this is a caricature and in some ways it's toned down. Like I think of these characters that actually have this happened in real life, they would have been a lot.... The language would have been a lot stronger in a lot of cases, even if they behaved slightly more sensibly in some cases, right? I think there was a tension there. But I think this was a very nervous story. So far everyone that's read it has been very graceful or given me a lot of grace or goodwill, I guess. In reading it, assumed I had good intentions, which is very nice. But yeah, it was definitely very nervous submitting it to people that don't know me at all and I don't know them and they could have read it in a different way. So yeah, that went a lot better than I was maybe hoping
**Inmn ** 14:18 That's all very understandable. I thought it was.... Like, we thought it was hilarious that Strangers so....
**Matt ** 14:25 Oh thanks a lot.
**Inmn ** 14:28 Yeah, I had some nervousness because where we ended the first part was like the kind of big reveal really hasn't happened yet. I really hope people stick with this and are viewing it as a caricature or as a satire, which I thought was pretty obvious from the beginning. So....
**Matt ** 14:50 Yeah, it's hard to satire something these days. I mean, alright, it's cliche to say that satire is dead. It's definitely not. You can still do it, but it's getting difficult, you know?
**Inmn ** 15:00 Yeah, well it's like.... I don't know like there's this--this is a weird plug--there's this really silly movie that came out a while ago called Dark Dungeons and it's a movie that some people made about this Chick Track of this Evangelical comic about how Dungeons and Dragons the game will make your kids queer and it's about how they're trying to summon Cthulhu. And they like.... So people made a movie of it and the movie is incredible. And like you watch it and you're like, "Wow, this is a whole area satire." and the creators of that movie we're like, "This is not a satire. We didn't change anything. This is a sober rendition of these events and they satire themselves."
**Matt ** 15:57 Yeah, this is documentary. What are you talking about? [Joking]
**Inmn ** 16:02 Yeah, it's like these things where it's like, yeah, maybe it's not the appropriate thing to call it a satire because it's just presenting it as it is, you know? Does that make sense?
**Matt ** 16:13 I mean, as the world gets more ridiculous, it's, you know, you have to do less work to do satire, I guess. [Laughing]
**Inmn ** 16:21 Yeah. Okay. Um, are you working on anything else or have anything that you would like to plug?
**Matt ** 16:28 Um, nothing really to plug. I mean, I'm writing.... Like I said, I like...I like the idea of utopia--as you know, we could disagree on maybe--and the idea of different perspectives and different utopias and how this could be. So I'm working on, you know, a collection of short stories of, you know, different utopias from different points of view. So, you know, maybe people can find that on Strangers. I don't know. In the future. But yeah, that's about it.
**Inmn ** 16:58 Are you...can you be found on the internet anywhere where you would like to be found?
**Matt ** 17:03 No.
**Inmn ** 17:04 Great. I love when people can’t be found on the internet. It's wonderful.
**Matt ** 17:10 Yeah, no, I mean, it's not my favorite place to be.
**Inmn ** 17:15 Yeah, it's a weird place. Yeah. And I think we probably have more similar views than.... I think the word "utopian" is like a kicker word to me. But it seems like we have pretty resonant views on those things. Um, so just to end out the episode, we do this, Word of the Month, which is I'm going to tell you a word. I'm going to ask you if you know any of its origins or like any guesses about its origins and then I will tell you a little bit about the word.
**Matt ** 17:54 Excellent. I can't wait to sound pretentious by guessing the origins of something.
**Inmn ** 18:01 So, you know, the word apocalypse?
**Matt ** 18:03 I do.
**Inmn ** 18:04 Do you.... What does the word apocalypse mean to you? And where do you think the word might come from?
**Matt ** 18:12 Apocalypse? I'm probably just gonna embarrass myself here, like "the end of the world," something like this. Right? Like, maybe it doesn't mean this. But where it comes from? No idea. I mean, the only thing I could think of it similar to it is like Calypso, and I'm sure that's not...that's very far away.
**Inmn ** 18:29 Oh, I should have looked up Calypso. I didn't make that connection. I'm gonna have to look. There might be...there's there's usually connections. Um, yeah, you know, it means the end of the world. That's what we've come to...that's the meaning that it's come to have. Yeah. And Margaret actually posted something about this recently, which is why I'm doing this word. I was like, "Oh, that that is an interesting word." But you know, Apocalypse from the Greek 'apokalyptein," in which means, 'uncovering,' and it has these two components there's 'apo' and 'kalyptein.' 'Apo' meaning 'off' or 'away from' and 'Kalyptein' meaning 'to cover' or 'conceal.' And then, you know, the root word 'kel' goes to form some other words. Like in Latin, there's 'celare' [said like 'sell-are'] which means--or celare [said like kel (rhymes with 'tell')-are], which means 'to hide.' The derivative, there's a derivative of 'kol' which forms 'hal' in Germanic and 'haljo' which means 'hidden place' and it's the source of the Old Norse word for the deity Hela, who rules the underworld and then also like the Christian 'hell' as in like the bad place. And you know, it's famously like, The Book of Revelations was, it was originally called like, or it was, since it was named in Greek, it was 'apokalyptein," or sorry, 'apokalypse,' which was a derivative of 'apokalyptein' and it's an interesting word to me because it's like an--I always tried to pick a word that in some way applies to the story--which is like.... Apocalypse, meaning disaster or cataclysm wasn't a component of the word until the 19thcentury or something. And prior to that, it was like...it was a word that was like, "uncovering" or "revealing things that have been hidden." And like...I think, disasters kind of do that. They reveal simmering things in our society that are apparent to a lot of people but not apparent to everyone. And yeah, I don't know.
**Matt ** 20:47 If they're big enough disasters, maybe they can reveal some sort of pathway to utopia, you know, we'll see.
**Inmn ** 20:56 Yeah, or at least like--again, to use this phrase--these sharpening contradictions of like.... For which is I think applicable to a lot of people who are like, not, you know, not like anarchists or like people who are confronted with these things in their lives all the time, but for people who are more hidden away from these realities and like being fed propaganda by people is like, that these systems or structures that they have put faith in are not designed to help them and that will become more obvious to them so that we can build a better world with more people. That sounds great. Yeah.
**Matt ** 21:41 That's a good place, a good place to end with apocalypse, I think, is that maybe it can lead us to something better.
**Inmn ** 21:49 Yeah, exactly. Which...I hate this kind of...this lining up with the Book of Revelations. It's a weird...it's a weird book. Christian mythology is really weird. But anyways, thank you so much for coming on the show. And we will catch you next time.
**Matt ** 22:10 Yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me.
**Inmn ** 22:21 Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, then prepare for the apocalypse. Or just tell someone about the show. Or tell someone about the show and then prepare for the apocalypse together. That's the ticket. Also, you can rate and review and like and subscribe or whatever the nameless algorithm calls for. Feed it like a hungry god. But really just tell people about the show and prepare for the apocalypse. It's the main way that people hear about the show and honestly one of the other one of the better ways to support it. However, if you want to support us in other sillier ways that don't involve feeding a nameless and mysterious entity, consider supporting the show financially by subscribing to our Patreon. If you subscribe to our Patreon at $10 a month, we'll mail to you a zine version of the pieces that you hear here every month, anywhere in the world. You can also get access to an archive of old Strangers content as well as discounts on things like Tshirts and books we publish. Find us at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Oh and current Inmn, or future Inmn, looked up the origins of Calypso and you know Calypso's a Greek word. It absolutely has the same roots as apocalypse or at least that Calypso has the root 'kel', meaning 'to conceal' and so Calypso literally meaning 'hidden one' or 'one that hides.' So, these words are absolutely related. And that's...that's kind of cool. That's all I got. Our theme music is by Margaret Killjoy. Our zine layout is by Casandra. And thanks to the lovely mountain goblins that mail out our feature every month. I would like to give some special shout outs to these wonderful people though, who have helped make this podcast as well as so many other projects possible. Thank you. Patoli, Eric, Perceval, Buck, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carrson, Lord Harken, Trixster, Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, Funder, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milicia, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, SJ, Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Miccaiah, and Hoss the Dog. If you sign up for our $20 a month Patreon then you can also get your name read here. And, you know, it can be, it can be whatever you want. So, you know, so if you feel like supporting us at that level, come up with a fun name for us to read every, you know, two or three times a month. It'll be fun. And lastly, a lot of these features on the podcast come from listeners like you. So if you feel like a stranger that would like to find their story at home in this tangled wilderness, consider submitting it. Next month, which is going to be a little bit earlier than usual. It's not.... Instead of coming out on the last day of the month, it's going to come out earlier in the month, so keep an eye out because we're going to be talking about a pretty timely thing. And that is St Lucy's day. And...which means that we have a really wonderful piece by one of my favorite writers and one of my oldest friends, Wren Awry, who is bringing us a piece called "St. Lucy: an anti-hagiography." It's gonna be a lot of fun. And if you want to learn more about, you know, Catholic mysticism and other really cool things--you can tell I feel really articulate right now--then come back and give it a listen. It's gonna be a fun time. Stay well. We hope you come back
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret and Leah talk about disability, preparedness, finding community, and covid.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (They/She) is a writer and structural engineer of disability and transformative justice work. Leah can be found at brownstargirl.org, on Instagram @leahlakshmiwrites, or on Bluesky @thellpsx.bsky.social
Their book The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs can be found: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-future-is-disabled-prophecies-love-notes-and-mourning-songs-leah-lakshmi-piepzna-samarasinha/18247280
Their book Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice can be found: https://bookshop.org/p/books/care-work-dreaming-disability-justice-leah-lakshmi-piepzna-samarasinha/16603798
Margaret (she/they) can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Leah on Disability and Preparedness
Resources Mentioned:
NoBody Is Disposable Coalition: https://nobodyisdisposable.org/
Power To Live Coalition: https://www.powertolivecoalition.org/
Disability Visibility Project article about Power to Live : https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2019/10/26/call-for-stories-powertolive/
Power to Live survival skillshare doc: http://tinyurl.com/dissurvival
Long winter crip survival guide for pandemic year 4/forever by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Tina “constant tt” Zavitsanos https://www.tinyurl.com/longwintersurvival
Pod Mapping for Mutual Aid by Rebel Sydney Rose Fayola Black:
Half Assed Disabled Prepper Tips for Preparing for a Coronavirus Quarantine. (By Leah)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rIdpKgXeBHbmM3KpB5NfjEBue8YN1MbXhQ7zTOLmSyo/edit
Sins Invalid Disability Justice is Climate Justice: https://www.sinsinvalid.org/news-1/2022/7/7/disability-justice-is-climate-justice
Skin Tooth and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People (A disability justice primer): https://www.sinsinvalid.org/disability-justice-primer
DJ Curriculum by Sins: https://www.sinsinvalid.org/curriculum
Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies: https://disasterstrategies.org/
Live Like the World is Dying: Leah on Disability & Preparedness
**Margaret ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret killjoy. And I always tell you that I'm excited about episodes, but I'm really excited about this episode. It put me in a better mood than when I started the day that I get to record this episode. Because today, we're going to be talking about disability and preparedness. We're gonna be talking about Covid abandonment. And we're gonna be talking about a lot of the questions that... a lot of the questions that people write us to talk about that they have about preparedness and I think that we can cover a lot of those. Not me, but our guest. But first before the guest, a jingle from another show on the network. Oh, the network is called Channel Zero Network. It is a network of anarchists podcasts and here's a jingle. [sings a simple melody]
**Margaret ** 01:08 Okay, and we're back. So, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then I guess just a little bit about how you got involved in thinking about and dealing with disability and preparedness.
**Leah ** 02:00 Sure. Hi, my name is Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. She and They pronouns. Right now I live in Pocomtuc and Nipmuc territories in Western Massachusetts. And that is a great question. I will also just plug myself briefly and be like I'm a disability justice and transformative justice old sea-hag, aging punk of color who has written or co-edited ten books and done a lot of shit. Okay, so when I was sitting on the toilet thinking about "What do I want to tell Margaret when we get on the show?", I was actually thinking that my disability and my preparedness routes are kind of one in the same because... So I'm 48 [years old] now and I got sick when I was 21-22. So like back in 96-97. And, it was the initial episode that I got sick with chronic fatigue, ME, and fibromyalgia. And I was just super fucking ill and on the floor and was living in Toronto as somebody who was not from Canada. And, you know, I was just sick as hell, like crawling to the bathroom, like sleeping 18 hours a day. The whole nine. And I'd been really really deeply involved in anarchist of color and prison abolitionist and antifascist organizing and lots of stuff. I had a community, but it was 1997, so most of my community was just like, "What you're sick? Why didn't you make it to the meeting? We have to write all the prisoners with the [untranslatable]." And I was just like, "I just.... Okay, great." Like it was a really different time. There was no GoFundMe, mutual aid, Meal Train, someone brought me some soup. Like, know you, we weren't really doing that. And people really did not have a consciousness around, "You can be a 22 year old brown, nonbinary femme and be really, really sick and be disabled." So something I think a lot, and I've said before, is that disabled people are really used to the concept that no one is going to save us and we are really not surprised when state systems abandoned us because we live in that all the time. And so I was just like this little 22 year old sicko weirdo who'd read my Octavia Butler--and, in fact, that was part of the reason why I was like, "Toronto, great, there's gonna be more water and less heat." Okay, wasn't totally right about that. But, you know, I mean, I really had to save myself and I kind of was like, "Alright, I don't have..." Like, I'm working off the...I'm working under the table. I have hardly any money. I'm gonna make my own herbal medicine. I'm gonna grow a lot of what I eat from my backyard. I'm going to store water. I'm going to run a credit card scam and get a lot of dried goods and live off of those for like a year. [Margaret Hell Yeahs] Yeah, stuff like that. I feel like from there, over the last, you know, 26 years like it's....like, that's the route. The route was, you know, similar to a lot of people, I think of my generation, we were like on the cusp of looking at the current crises of like hot fascist war, hot eugenics war, hot climate crisis, and being like, "It's coming," and I started being like, "Yeah, like don't...don't think that it's all going to work out okay and that somebody else is going to fix it for you." So, I would say that's where my initial route--and then do you want to jump in? Or can I jump ahead like 20 years or something?
**Margaret ** 05:10 Honestly, you could jump ahead 20 years later. I'm gonna come back and make you talk more about Octavia Butler. But we'll do that later.
**Leah ** 05:16 Let's talk more about Octavia Butler because I have a lot of stuff about Octavia Butler and how she thought of--and I think sometimes misused--like nowadays [this is probably not the word but it's untranslatable] and also about disability. [Margaret "Oooohs" curiously] I know. We can get to that. Okay, so that's one route. And then, you know, I mean, I was always kind of like a little weirdo, where it's like, yeah, I grow most of my own food--or as much as I can--and it's not a fun green hobby. It's like, I'm broke as fuck and I need to grow a lot vegetables that fucking, you know, I can mulch and that can stay growing into December, you know? I stashed stuff. Something I also think a lot, is that as disabled people--and we talked about this a little bit when we're emailing--I think we're always prepping whether we call it that or not. Like most disabled folks I know just do shit. Like if you get a prescription and you have extra, you store it, you know? Like, if you can get a double dose, you put that aside. And then maybe you have it for yourself. Or, there's so many disabled mutual aid networks I've been a part of where someone's--I mean, before Facebook clamped down, this is really common on a lot of Facebook disabled groups--someone would be like, "Yo, does anyone have an extra five pills of such and such?" and I've seen total strangers for 15 years of disability justice be like, "Yep, what's your address? I do. I'm gonna mail it to you. I have my old pain meds. I've got this. I've got that." But, um, yeah, like doing the jumping forward that I promised you, so for people who don't know, disability justice as a movement was founded around 2005 by a group, a small group of disabled Black, Asian, and poor and working class, white disabled folks, who were all pretty, you know, gay, trans, and radical. And they were like, "We want to bring a revolutionary intersectional out of our own lives and experiences and issues. We want to create a disability movement that's for us and by us that's not just white, single issue, often cis, often male, often straight." Like, we want to talk about the fact that 50% of bipoc folks who were killed by the cops are also disabled, deaf, neurodivergent, etc... just to give one example. So, you know, that was '05 in Oakland, you know, Patti Burn, LeRoy Moore, Stacy Milbern, Ely Claire, Sebastian Margaret, Stacey Milbern Park, you know, the six. And I was living in Toronto and I moved to Oakland in '07 and I was kind of around for some of the beginnings of it. There's two stories I want to bring in. One actually predates my move. It was right when I was getting ready to leave Toronto, I got invited to go to this reading by a bunch of queer--I think all white--disabled radical folks. And I was just like, "Oh?" And I did the whole, like, "Am I really disabled enough?" and then it was like, "Oh, it's gonna be really depressing." And then it was really awesome. And I was like, "Whoa, disability community. Life saving." But it was kind of one of my moments of being brought into the disability community because there was this writer who was there who, their reading series was actually a choose your own adventure where there's four disabled, queer, and trans folks who are having a sex party and the zombie apocalypse happens. And then they have to figure out how to survive it without abandoning each other. And it was all like, "Okay, you all get to the van, but then there's no ramp. What do you do? Oh! You get this accessible ramp, but it smells like perfume and somebody has NCS. What do you do? And I was just sitting there with my mouth open--and it was also interwoven with like, 'Yeah, and then somebody's fucking somebody else with like, you know, a dildo strapped to their prosthetic,'" and I was like, wow, I fucking love disability. Like, sign me up. But I gotta say briefly, that was one of my first examples of like, you know, there's a really important phrase in Disability Justice, which is, "No one left behind, " right? Like, that's one of the core organizing principles. And that was kind of.... Before I even heard that phrase, I was like, "Fuck like this is..."--because I'd been around antiauthoritarian, quasi prepper, like "shit's gonna happen, we have to get ready." But I was always kind of quiet in the corner closeting my disability being like, "Well, shit, like, what if I don't have my meds? Or what if I'm too.... What if I can't run away from, you know, the Nazis or the zombies because I have a limp and I walk with a cane? Like, what if?" And that was my first example of this cross disability fantasy space of like, "We're going to escape together and we're not going to let anyone get eaten and it's going to mean really being creative about access stuff." Okay so jump ahead to, right, then I moved to Oakland and then I ran into actual Disability Justice community through Sins Invalid, which is an incredibly important foundational Disability Justice group, and through a lot of friendships I started making with other QTBIPOC disabled folks and my really, really good friend Stacy Park Milbern, who, people should totally know her work. She's incredible. She was one of the best movement organizers that the movement has ever seen. And we met online. And she was living in Fort Bragg, North Carolina with her family on the base because her family's military. And she was a queer southern, working-class, Korean and white, you know, physically disabled organizer from when she was really young. And then she was like, "Okay, I love my family, but I'm literally hiding my gay books in the wall because my mom's Pentecostal." So, yeah, and she's like--I literally realized she tells the story a lot--she's like, "Yeah, like, I realized I hadn't really left the house for a couple months and like, this is gonna be it," and she's like, "I was literally watching Oprah. And Oprah said, 'No one's coming to save you.'" And she was like, okay. She's 21 years old. And then through online, disabled, queer of color community there was this--or she organized--this initiative called To the Other Side of Dreaming where she moved crosscountry with Mia Mingus, who's another queer Korean organizer who was a friend of hers, ad moved to the Bay Area. And so that was around 2010-2011. And then in 2011, what happens but the Fukushima nuclear accident, right, disaster? And we're all on the West Coast--and it's completely ridiculous bullshit, looking back on it now--but all of these Bay Area folks were like, "Oh my God! Radiation!" And some people pointed out, "Look, you know, we're not.... There's...it's a big ocean. The people who really have to worry are in Japan and areas around it, so whatever?" But it was one of those times where we were like, fuck, this is a really big nuclear accident and we are sort of close and it's making us think about disaster. And I remember just going to fucking Berkeley Bowl, which is this big, fancy, organic supermarket and people had bought out all of the burdock all the fucking seaweed. And I was like, "Oh, my God, these people." But out of that, Stacy started having conver--and I and other people who were in our organizing network of disabled, majority BIPOC--were like, "What are we going to as disabled BIPOC if there is an earthquake, fascism, like another big disaster? And Stacy said, really bluntly, she's like, "You know," and she was a power wheelchair user. She used a ventilator. You know, she's like, "Yeah, I am supported by electricity and battery dependent access equipment." And she's like, "Well, I'm going to be really honest, my plan has always been, if something happens, I'm just going to lay down in my bed and die, because I don't think that any emergency services are going to come save me and the power is going to run out in 48 hours. And then we were like, "Okay, that's super real. What if, through our amazing collective access stuff we're doing, we could figure out something else?" And we had this meeting at Arismendy bakery, which for folks who know, is like a worker owned co-op chain, Our friend Remedios worked there. It's wheelchair accessible. We met there after hours. And it was just like, 12-15 of us who started just sitting there and being like, "What are the resources we have? What are the needs we have? And we made this map, which I still have, which I think I shared with you, which is just like, "Apocalypse, South Berkeley/Oakland Map 2011," where we were like, "Okay, you know, when the power goes down, the communication goes down. We're gonna meet at this one traffic circle because people who are wheelchair users can roll up. And we're gonna bury note paper in a mason jar with pens and we're gonna leave notes for each other. But we're also going to agree to meet there the day after at noon." And I was like, okay, my collective house, the first floor is wheelchair accessible. We have solar, we have a landline. And we have a lot of space. So like, let's meet there. And then someone was like, "We've got the one accessible van. And we know, it's only supposed to fit 4 people, but we can fit like 12 in there." And we started.... Like, I just think about that a lot because it's, I think it was a really important moment where it was important...the stuff that we did like that--you know, the actual strategies and the resources we started talking about--but it was also that it was the first time in my life that I was like, "Okay, we're not--not only are we not going to just die alone in our beds, I'm also not going to be the one person who survives. Like, I can actually survive with, and because of, other people. And we're all disabled BIPOC with a couple of disabled white folks. And we can actually collectively strategize around that. And this will be my last leap forward, because I see that you're like, "I want to ask you stuff." So, you know, eight years go by, and in that time we all do an incredible amount of Disability Justice organizing and strategizing. And, you know, in 2019.... And a lot of it started to be around climate disaster on the West Coast. Like, I moved to Seattle in 2015. The wildfires started being really bad a year or two later. A lot of us were involved in mask distributions, just spreading information about smoke safety and survival. And then 2019 was the infamous year where the wildfires came back and Pacific Gas and Electric, in all of its fucking glory, which is the main--for people who don't know--it's the main utility electrical company in Northern California. They announced two days before wildfires were going to really impact the Bay, they were like, "Oh, so we've decided that our strategy is going to be that we're just going to shut down all the power in Northern California.
**Margaret ** 14:52 No one uses that. [Sardonically]
**Leah ** 14:53 No one uses that. And they're like, "Oh, if you have a medical need, call this number, and we'll make sure to leave it on at your house." and Stacey was, "Okay." She had just bought her house, the Disability Justice Culture Club in East Oakland, you know, which was her house but also a community center, de facto community center, that housed a lot of disabled folks of color. And she was like, "I was on the fucking phone for eight hours. Like, I never got through." And she and some comrades started this campaign called Power to Live where they were like.... It started out as, "Okay, we can't save everybody, but we're not going to just lay down and die. What do we do?" So it started out as like, okay, let's identify who has housing that still has power. There's some people in Richmond, there's some people in this neighborhood, but then it also developed into this thing where it was just this amazing crowdsource survivalist resource where it was everything from, she's like, "Here's a number. Here's an email. If you need something, text us, call us, email us. We have a team of eight people. We'll figure it out. If you have something to offer, do it too." And then some of it was that people were sharing everything from generator information, to generator shares, to people in different areas-- like I was in Seattle and we were like, "Okay, we will mail you generators and air purifiers, because it's obviously all sold out in the Bay, but we can get it here and get it to you." The thing that always stands out to me is people being like, "Oh, yeah, here's how you can use dry ice and clay pots to keep your insulin cold if refrigeration goes down." And there's a lot more I could say about that action and how amazing it was. But for me, when I think about the through line, I'm like, that moment in 2011, when we all got together, and were like, "What do we do?" we were prepping for what we couldn't fully predict, you know, the exact manifestation of eight years later. We're there and we're like, "Okay, there's wildfires, there's smoke, there's no fucking power, and we've not only built our organizing base, we built our relationships with each other so that we can actually trust each other and more or less know how to work together when this shit actually is hitting the fan to create something that's really life giving. Okay, I'll shut up. That was a lot.
**Margaret ** 16:52 Now I have so many questions about all of it.
**Leah ** 16:53 Yeah, ask me all the questions.
**Margaret ** 16:55 Because there's a couple...there's a couple of questions and/or feedback that we get with Live Like, the World is Dying a lot. And some of them are very specifically disability related, and you covered most of them, but I want to highlight some of them. Like a lot of people write and are like, "Well, I rely on the following thing that is provided by civilization. So my plan is to lay down and die." Right? This is a--and I know you've kind of answered it--but I.... I want to ask more. Okay, I'll go through all the things. Okay. So to talk more about what "No One Left Behind," means? And then the other thing that really stands out to me is that, you know, when we were talking, when we were talking about what we were going to talk about on this on this episode, I was saying, okay, we can talk about, you know, making sure that preparedness is inclusive and open and includes disabled folks, or whatever, and you pointed out, really usefully, the, the necessity to reframe it. And I think that the story you just gave is a really beautiful example of this, where it's less about, like, "Hey, make sure to pay attention to the people who need canes," you know, or whatever, right? Like, you know, "make sure you keep track of folks based on disability." And more than like the thing you just described, is the thing that we're always trying to push, which is that you need to make a list of all the resources and needs within your community and then figure out how to meet those needs and instead of assuming that we can't meet those needs, figuring out how to actually do it. And so I love that it's actually like.... It's actually disability justice movements that we should be learning from, I mean, or participating in, depending on our level of ability, or whatever, but I just find that I find both of those things really interesting. And so I wonder if you have more that you want to say about alternatives to laying down and dying, and specifically, to tie into the other thing that I get asked the most or that I get the common feedback is--because we talk a lot about the importance of community for preparedness on this show--a lot of people don't feel like they have community and a lot of people write to be like, "I don't have any friends," or "I don't know any other people like me," or, you know. And so, I guess that's my main question is how do.... [Trails off] Yeah, how do?
**Leah ** 19:22 So how do you make community when you don't have community? Alternatives to lying down and dying? And was there a third one in there?
**Margaret ** 19:28 I was just highlighting how cool it is that y'all sat there and made a list of resources and needs, which is exactly what.... Instead of deciding things are impossible, just being like, "Well, let's just start doing them." You know?
**Leah ** 19:40 And I think.... Okay, so I'll start there. Like I think that like.... You know, Corbit O'Toole, who's like a, you know, Disability Rights Movement veteran and like older Irish, disabled dyke, you know, in Crip Camp, the movie, she's like, "Disabled people live all the time with the knowledge that the society wants thinks we're better off dead," right? Like one...back in the day, you know, there's a--I think they're still active--one of the big Disability Rights direct action organizations was called Not Dead Yet, right? [Margaret Hell Yeahs] I think this is the thing is like I think that sometimes abled people or neurotypical people are not used to sitting down and making the list. And I think that even if disabled people aren't preppers, we're used to being like, "Okay, what do I need? Fuck, I need somebody to help me do my dishes. Oh, I can't bend over. I need to figure out what is the access tool that will allow me to pick up something from the floor when my that goes out? Like, if my attendant doesn't show up, can I have a..." You know, like, my friends always like, "Yeah, I've got a yogurt container by the bed in case my attendant doesn't show up so I can not piss the bed. I can lean over and piss in the yogurt container." Like there's a--and I think that.... God, I mean, there's been so many times over the years where I've done or been a part of doing like Disability Justice 101 and me and Stacy would always talk about crip wisdom and crip innovation and people will just look blank like "What are you talking about? You guys are just a bunch of sad orphans at the telethon." It's not just about making the list, it's also about how disabled disability forces you to be innovative. Like, Stacy would always share this story where she's like, "Yeah," like, she's like "Crip innovation is everything from," she's like, "I save a lot of time sometimes by pretending I can't talk when people come over and want to pray over me. You know, I just act like a mute and they fucking leave and they go on with their life," and she's like, "You know, I realized one day, if I took my sneakers off, I could ramp a step if it's just two steps. I could just put them there and I could roll up." Or I mean, there's a million examples.... Or like, because I think it's about prepping and about making the lists and it's also about whatever you prep for, there's always going to be the X Factor of "Oh, we didn't fucking expect that." And I think that's where a lot of prep falls apart is people have their "Dream Bunker." They're like, "Oh, okay, I know exactly what the threats are going to be." And then of course, it doesn't fucking happen that way. I really hope I can swear on your show.
**Margaret ** 21:46 You can. Don't worry.
**Leah ** 21:47 Great. So, I mean, one example I could give is I'm remembering at, you know, a Sins show when we were in rehearsal, where everyone drove over from Oakland in Patty's wheelchair accessible van, and then the ramp broken wouldn't unfold. So we just were like, alright, who do we know who has welding equipment? Who do we know has lumber? Like, I think we ended up going to a bike repair shop and then they had tools. And then we're like, okay, we'll just bring the rehearsal into the van and do it that way. Like, you have to be innovative. And that's a muscle that I think society doesn't teach you to flex and that often, I think that even people who.... I think there can be a lot of eugenics in prep, you know, whether people are overtly fascist or not, there's a real belief of like, "Oh, only the strong and smart," --which looks a certain way-- "survive," and that "We should use rational thinking to make it all work out." And I think a lot of crip intelligence or wisdom is actually knowing that shit can go sideways 48 different ways and you have to adapt. And you have to just kind of be like, "Well, let's try this." So I think that's one thing. And I think, you know, one thing I'll say is, yeah, just speaking to kind of the reframing we were talking about, I think it's less like, "Oh, remember the people with canes," but, I mean, that's good, but also knowing that we're already doing it and that abled people actually have a shit ton to learn from us. But also, I mean, something.... I mean, the title of my last book is "The Future is Disabled," and it comes from something--it's not unique thinking to me--it's something that a lot of disabled people have been thinking and saying throughout the pandemic is that we were already at like a 30% disabled world minimum and we're pretty close--we're probably at majority disabled right now. Because what, 2% of the world didn't get Covid? Like, how many people have Long Covid? How many people have complex PTSD? We're all sick, crazy, and, you know, needing access equipment. Disability is not out there. It's in here. Like there's no such thing as doing prep that's like, "Oh, only the three Uber Mensch are gonna survive." Like fuck that. And that actually--I mean, sorry, this might be a side note, but a lot of people have probably seen The Last of Us. And I'm just gonna SPOILER ALERT it. You know that famous episode three of those two gay bear preppers in love? Yeah, I loved a lot about it. I was so pissed at the ending, which I'm just going to spoil. So you know, the more artsy, non-prep guy....[interrupted]
**Margaret ** 21:47 Yeah, they don't survive.
**Leah ** 22:47 Well, no, but like, not only did they not survive but one of them gets chronically ill. And I was just like, grinding my teeth because it's like, "Oh, he's in a wheelchair. Oh, his hand tremors." And then they end up deciding to both kill themselves rather than do anything else. And I was so furious at it because I was like, these are two people who are so innovative. They have figured out all kinds of problem solving. They have an entire small city for themselves. And it's all like, "Oh, no, he can't get up the stairs." And I'm like, really? There was no accessible ranch house you couldn't of fucking moved to?
**Margaret ** 24:38 Or like build a bedroom on the fucking ground floor.
**Leah ** 24:40 Or youcouldn't get meds? You couldn't? I mean, when his hand was shaking, it was like, "Oh, it's so sad. He's being fed." I'm like, there's tons.... First of all, it doesn't suck to be fed. A lot of things that seem like a fate worse than death are not when you're in them. And also, there's like all kinds of adaptive utensils that they could have fucking raided from medical supply if he wants to feed himself. Or I'm sorry, there's no cans of Ensure? They absolutely have power. They couldn't have made smoothies? Like, what the fuck is this? But beyond that--and I think that a lot of people who have talked about that episode did, I think, have some good analysis of it where, you know, the whole way they set up their prep was they were like, "Oh, it's just the two of us," and the one super prepper guy was like, "I don't even want friends to come over." And the other guy was like, "Hey, actually, we need to make alliances because there's things they have that we don't. And we also need more than just the two of us because I love you, but I'm gonna kill you." And I think that's something to think about is really moving away from the idea that just your little you know, the utopic queer rural community that so many fucking city queers fantasize about or, you know, lover are going to be enough, because it's not. So that actually leads me to, "I don't have community. Where the fuck do I get it?" And I'm like, yeah, that's super real. Right? And I think it's something I actually wrote about in "The Future is Disabled" is that I have people be like--when I write about different crip communities, just even when I talk about stuff on Facebook.... Like my friend, Graham Bach, it's going to be his second year death anniversary in like two weeks, and he was like, you know, white, psychiatric survivor, super poor, amazing sweetheart of a human being, he died.... I mean, he died in his, you know, rent to your income apartment because he was really afraid to go to the hospital and he had cardiac stuff going on. And he was an anarchist, he was amazing, kind, complicated human being. And, I was writing about, like.... I'm going to tell the story and there's a couple things I want to pull out of it. So I was writing about meeting Graham when I was in my early 20s through radical Mad people community, and somebody was reading it and was like "That sounds so great." And I was like, "Yeah, it wasn't utopic. Like, I had to yell back at Graham because he would scream at me and I'd be like, "Shut the fuck up!" Like, there was so many fights. There was so much racism. There were so many older white cis dudes who had electroshock who were jerky or gross, you know? And I guess that was the thing is, I was like, they're like, "Well, how did you find each other?" And I was like, it wasn't perfect. Also, it was very analog working class. Like my friend Lilith Finkler, who is an amazing Moroccan, Jewish, working-class queer femme psych survivor, she would just go to the donut shop where everybody poor hung out and would talk to everybody who wass there who wass crazy who no one wanted to talk to and be like, "Hey, do you want to come hang out at this meeting at the fucking legal clinic? We have a room. We have a snack plate. I'll give you tokens. Let's organize." So I think that's the first thing is that it's not--and I don't mean this in a finger-wagging way--it's not automatic. And also, one of the really big ways that community is often ableist, and that a lot of us get cut out from it, is that a lot of us who need it the most are not particularly easy to love in ableist neurotypical worldview. It's like we're cranky, we're wounded, we're in a bad mood, we're weird. So a lot of the time, I think it's thinking about, first of all, what's one step, one move you can take towards it. Like, can you make one fucking acquaintance and build it. And really think about what it would mean to build some kind of relationship. I think the other thing that I really want to highlight is that a lot of the communities that I see that keep each other alive, that I'm lucky to have been a part of making and being supported by in disabled community, they're not static and they're not perfect. Like, I have networks with people who piss me the fuck off and who, you know, I've sent 20 bucks to people who I'm just like, "I really don't like you, but I can see that you really don't have food," you know, and we're not going to be friends and we're not going to like each other, but I don't want you to die. And that's not...I mean, it's bigger.... There's also people who I'm like, "Okay, you're my ex-abuser. I'm not gonna give you $5. Someone else can give you $5.
**Margaret ** 28:42 There's this person who puts a lot of their effort into talking shit on me on the internet and I...they're also broke and have a lot of chronic health issues and I send them money every month. And every now and then I'm like, could this like...could you stop talking shit now?
**Leah ** 29:03 I think this is the thing sometimes is like, hey, how about this is the deal, like maybe just say "Thank you," or maybe just talk shit even like 20% less? Because you know, I'm really doing we keep us safe here. I just really want a "thank you."
**Margaret ** 29:16 I don't want you to die. Like, I don't want you to starve to death, but I really wish you would be a little bit more open minded to people having different opinions on yours.
**Leah ** 29:26 Oh yeah, nuance, right? Yeah, it'd be fucking nice.
**Margaret ** 29:29 God forbid. Anyway.
**Leah ** 29:31 No, it's good. I guess my TLDR would be to start where you are and start with "what's one thing you can do? What's one person you can reach out to?" And I think, you know, I don't know if this is true for everyone who reaches out to you and it's like, "Well, I don't have anybody," but I think that social media and online connectivity is a real double-edged sword because for some of us who are isolated, it can create both online communities that can sometimes become in-real-life community and, either way, can be sources of some community or support. But I think.... I mean, you know, I'm a Generation X'er and I've just seen social media get more and more chokehold and just turn into fucking the panopticon meets a mall, you know? [Margaret laughs] And I think it's hard because 12 years ago I was part of really early online disabled spaces, which were great because so many people were like, "Well, I'm so isolated in my small town or in my city," or "I can't leave bed, but this is great. I'm meeting with other people and we're building these connections and it's actually more accessible for me to be real about my stuff from like my bed with a heating pad." And now I just think it's so chokeholded that it's hard for us to find each other. So it's much more common for people to be like, "Wow, I'm seeing all these people who have millions of followers and a shiny brand and I just feel like even more of an isolated loser." And then at the same time, I think people are like, "Well, how did people meet each other before this?" And I was like, "Yeah, like, you go to the coffee shop or the donut shop. You put up a flier. You go to the library. You like, I don't know. I mean, I just remember people I met on the food stamps line, you know, when we got there at six in the morning. And not everything's gonna stick, but maybe something sticks. And I also think about like, I'm going back to 13 years ago in early Disability Justice community spaces where--I mean, I think back to [untranslatable] when I went back to Toronto--which, yeah, big city--but I remember I had so many people come to me and be like, "You're..."--because I was starting to be more out about disability, cuz I was like, "I'm in the Bay and there's these wild people who talk about it and they're not all white people." and so I have so many, especially Black and brown disabled femmes be like, "Hi, you don't really know me, but I have fibromyalgia too," or "I have Lupus too. And like, no one I know talks about that. How do you do it?" And I'm specifically thinking about this time that this person I'm no longer in touch with--but we used to be friends--who's like, you know, queer, brown nonbinary person was like, "Let's just have a meet up of other chronically ill femmes of color," which is how we were identifying a time, and it was four of us, four heating pads, a bottle of Advil, and just very tentatively starting to share things about our lives. And I was like, "Yeah, that was four people." But a lot of that hang out then rippled outward. And it was like, I think it's also important to be like, it's scary to build community. Some tools I want to shut out like, so Mia Mingus, who I mentioned before, she has a lot of really great writing on her blog Leaving Evidence and she created this tool a long time ago now--that some people might be familiar with but for folks who aren't--it's, you know, it's her tool that she calls Pod Mapping. And she actually created it as part of a collective she founded called the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective that was working on doing transformative justice interventions into intimate violence, specifically childhood sexual abuse a lot of the time, and she had this framework that I find really helpful. She's like, "A lot of..." she was talking about in community accountability, transformative justice spaces and she made a really good point where she's like, "Sometimes we talk about like, 'Yeah, bring in the community. Like, everyone has a community.'" And she's like, "Most people don't have a fucking community, let alone one that can interview in childhood sexual abuse." So she created this tool where she's like, "Let's broaden the idea of what community is." Like, maybe it's that one cousin, that you only talk to once a year, but you could call them in a jam, or it's this hotline, or it is like, yeah, they're a weird church, but you really like their food banks. She's like, "You have to really bring in.... Like, start where you are and do the resource mapping we were talking about" I really liked that tool a lot as a place for people who are like, "What's my community?" because I think it's a big word and really being like, "What does that even mean to me?" and like, "What's one place that can start building it?" And I also want to shout out, Rebel Sydney Black, who's a friend of mine who passed this June, at the beginning of the pandemic, he created this tool called Pod Mapping for Mutual Aid that was specifically aimed at disabled folks who were trying to pod map during Covid--and we can provide the link and stuff like that--but I would say that those are two places to start and then I want to get to alternatives to lying down and dying. And then I'll stop.
**Margaret ** 34:04 Okay, wait, wait, before we get to that I want to talk more about the building community thing.
**Leah ** 34:08 Yeah, please.
**Margaret ** 34:09 I think you brought up a lot of really interesting points. And one of the things that I really like about it, you know, talking about having like...you're broadening the idea of what counts as community, which I think is really useful. And one of the things I realized is that a lot of times when I was younger, I was like, "Y'all say 'community' and you just mean the people that you like," right? And that didn't make any sense to me. Community seems like the people where you have a shared interest, whether the shared interest is you live on the same block, or whether the shared interest is an identity, or whether the shared interest is an interest that you're trying to see change, or whatever. It doesn't mean people you like. It's a different thing. Friends are the people I like, right? Well, mostly. I'm just kidding. I love all of you. I mean, there's a lot of people I love that I don't always like. Anyway, so I don't know, and so I think that one of the things that stuck out with me about what you're gonna say and I want to highlight is the idea that--or maybe I'm misreading it--but like "pick issue to work" around seems like a good useful way. Especially if you struggle to just have friends, right? That's not like the thing that you're good at. But maybe there's a thing that you want to work on? Or having that meetup where it's like, oh, all the following people who have the following things in common, let's meet up and talk about it. Or honestly, activism is a really good way to meet people and work closely with people about things. And it doesn't necessarily have to mean these are now your friends. But they can be people where you rely on each other. And that doesn't have to be the same. I think about it a lot because I live in a fairly isolated and rural environment where there's not a lot of people around me who are culturally.... Whatever, there's not a lot of out, queer people where I live. There's not a lot of punks. And I'm like, that's okay. I talk to my actual neighbors instead. I mean, some of them, not all of them, but most of them, you know, they're who I would rely on in a crisis, because they're right there. It doesn't mean that we have the same ideas about a lot of stuff, you know? But we have similar ideas, like, "Let's not die," right? And so that's enough sometimes. Anyway, I just wanted to....
**Leah ** 36:12 No, I really appreciate it. And I mean that makes me kind of think about, when you were talking, I was like, yeah, you know, there's friends, there's communities, and then there's survival networks, which can include contacts, right? Because I just think about what would I do right now, if some should happened? And I was like, I've got long distance kin and long term friendships and relationships ofvarious kinds and I also have--because I moved to where I live, which is like semi-rural, but definitely more rural than where I've lived before--and I'm just like, yeah, I have a small number of friends. But there's like people who I know who I can...who are neighbors who like, maybe we don't know a shit ton about each other but I could be like, "Hey, this thing?" or "Hey, do you have water?" or, "Hey, let's do this." I think it's a lot about thinking about what are your goals? Is your goal intimacy? Is your goal survival? Is your goal friendship? Because you need different levels of trust and commonality depending on those things, right? I also think, and this is the thing too, I think something.... I think a lot of times because I've had people be like, "Well, I don't have community," also, I've heard that. And I think that a lot of times the context, I hear it in is people being like, "Well, I have care needs, but I don't have any community." So then there's also the really big thorny question of "need" and like being cared for is actually very complicated. It's very risky. It's very vulnerable. It's not safe a lot of the time. It may feel a lot easier to just be like, "I don't have any fucking needs." And so there's a lot, I will just say that there's a lot of unpacking that needs to do around like, "What would I need to be cared for? What are my lower risk needs that I need help with? What are my higher risk needs?" right? Like, there's people who I can.... There's some needs I have where I'm like, I don't need to trust you super, super deep politically or on an intimate level to let you do that. There are certain needs where I'm like, that's only going to be people where we've really built a lot of fucking trust because if this goes sideways you could really stuck with me. Right? And I think that when you're starting from nowhere, I think often where people get stuck is like, "Where I am feels like I have nobody and nothing. And I want to get to like the thing I've read about in your topic science fiction, where you know, it's Star Hawk and everybody loves each other. And how the fuck do I get from A to B." And I think the solution is like, yeah, you're not gonna get to fucking "Fifth Sacred Thing" right away--and that book is complicated.
**Margaret ** 38:29 Yeah, It was very influential on my early....
**Leah ** 38:31 Oh yeah, when I was 18, I just wanted to fucking move there. And now I'm like, "Oh God, this is embarrassing. There's some shit in here." I'm like, "Wow, everybody's mixed race, but everyone's Black parents are dead." Wow. Cool. Nobody really thinks about race. I'm like, I'm gonna throw up. And like, you know, BDSM is just violent....Okay, sorry. We're not going to get into that.
**Margaret ** 38:47 Oh my God, I don't remember that part.
**Leah ** 38:49 Oh, yeah. No, where it's so violent. Like, "We're just loving." And I wrote a really no passion paper for school, because we actually had to read it in a college class I was in, and I was like, "Why are they not into leather sexuality?" And my professor was like, "Okay, 18 year old..." but yeah.
**Margaret ** 39:04 I mean, legit. You 18 year old self had a legitimate critique.
**Margaret ** 39:08 Yeah.
**Leah ** 39:08 Yeah, no, there's a lot there. But, um, but jumping back, I guess it's just like, you know.... And I think this feels like disabled wisdom too, it's like, what can you do with the spoons or the capacity you have? Like, what's one move you can make that small? And then can you build on that? Yeah, but can I talk about alternatives to lying down and dying?
**Leah ** 39:28 Yeah. Well, I think...I mean, this is the thing, is like, I'm a survivalist, but I'm not like anti-civilization in the ways that some people are. Like, I want meds, you know? And I think that's something that other crips I know talk about a lot, which is like, you know, we're really against this way that some people, including some people who would like align themselves with like Healing Justice who are like "We're like, oh, yeah, we just have to go back before colonialism and capitalism, and just everyone lived on herbs and it was great." and I was like, "Nah, bitch, I need surgery and meds." Like I want it all. Like, I love non-Western pre-colonial traditional healing. Absolutely. And I've had friends who died because they didn't get their surgeries on time. Like my friend LL died because nobody would give him a fucking kidney because they said he was too fat. And I'm just like, my good future involves.... I mean, and he's one of millions right? So like, my good future involves that we have surgical suites. And I'm just like, you know, honestly, also, a lot of times that worldview just seems so white to me, because I'm just like, listen, a lot of like, global south places figure out how to have field hospitals, right, in really dire and low-resource situations. So I'm sorry....
**Margaret ** 40:40 I mean, only Europoe's ever figured out surgery. No one else has done surgery until Europe showed up. [Said sarcastically implying the opposite]
**Leah ** 40:45 Yeah, not fucking ever. [Also said sarcastically]
**Margaret ** 40:46 Said the people who are like, "bite down stick and I'll saw your arm off."
**Leah ** 40:49 Yeah, so I mean, I guess one thing I would just say is like, I would say that and I would say like, you know, really...I want to like lift up and encourage people to look at--and they can be hard to find--but look at cultures, look at organizing initiatives where people were like, "We can have our own ambulance, we can have our own like..." And when that's not there, to think about what it would mean to have medical care after the apocalypse, right? What would it mean to make hormones, make drugs, synthesize chemicals, and it's not impossible. I think that we're still in the in between of like, okay, we gotta figure out how to do that. But, um, you know, I'm thinking about, Ejeris Dixon, who's my friend and comrade, and, you know, we co-edited "Beyond Survival" together, which is a book we wrote that came out right at the beginning of the pandemic about stories and strategies from how people are actually trying to create safety without the cops. Ejeris always talks about how they were like, "Yeah, like, in Louisiana, you know, in the South, you know, like in the 50s, and 60s, and before I believe, there were all kinds of Black run ambulance and 911 services," because regular 911 wouldn't come to Black communities. Right? And they, I mean, something that I've heard them say a lot over the years is like, "We don't have the people's ambulance yet. But we could." And then it makes me also jump to some friends of mine who were in Seattle who were really active as street medic crew during the rebellions after George George Floyd was murdered by the police in, you know, 2020 in the summer, and specifically in, as some people remember, Seattle managed to have 16 square blocks break off from the city for a while, CHOP, Capitol Hill Organized Front. And so what people don't know is that the cops were like, "Okay, fuck you. We're not going to...If there's any 911 ambulance calls, we're not going to fucking let anyone go in there." So the street medic crew had to deal with a lot of really intense situations. And then after that, like a lot of us folks, like some folks were already nurses or EMTs and a lot of folks who were involved went to nursing school or EMT school and we're like--and I don't know where it's at now--but they were like, "We want to create,"--because right now in Seattle, there's, if somebody is having a crisis on the street, like a medical or a mental health crisis or an altered state crisis, there's no non-911 crisis response that you can call. There's either you go down the stairs to talk to somebody or there's the cops, right. And they were like, "We can get a van. We can get medical equipment from eBay." And you know, I don't know where they're at with that, but they were really organizing around like, "Yeah, we could get a defibrillator. We could get oxygen. We could get blood pressure cuffs. We could get fucking..." you know? And I think that that shit gets complicated in terms of insurance and regulation and the State and the medical industrial complex, but I want us to keep thinking about that. I also, and then I'll wrap up because we have other questions to get to, but it also makes me think about, I mean, I don't know if folks are familiar with Gretchen Felker Martin's amazing science fiction book "Manhunt," right, which is about....
**Margaret ** 43:50 I haven't read it yet.
**Leah ** 43:52 It's so fucking good. Okay, so I won't give it away. But just for people who don't know, I'd say it's the one kind of gender sci-fi book where "Oh, a virus, you know, affects people with certain chromosomes or certain that dih-dah-dug that's not TERFy because it's a book that, you know, she's trans, and it's a book that centers trans women and nonbinary communities and there's like one or two trans masculine characters. But the two main trans femme, like trans women characters in the book, they're like, they have to, they're like, "Yeah, like, we're going on raids to get, you know, hormones, and, you know, different, like chemical drugs we need. And we're also figuring out how to synthesize them from herbs and different substances." And it's not easy. It's a struggle. But there are organized communities of trans women and allies that are fighting to do it. And I'm just like, yeah, and I mean, it's an amazingly well written book, and she's incredible, and I fucking loved it. And it's just beautifully written and really just--sorry, I won't gush too much but go read it, it's incredible--I just really also appreciated it because she was like, "Yeah, of course we're gonna get our hormones after the end of the world. Like of course it's possible." And I will also.... I have some criticisms of the ableism in it, but M.E. O'Brien and--fuck I'm forgetting the second author's name, but every you know, "Everything For Everyone," that book. I appreciated how in the good future society, they're like, "Our priority is making sure that insulin and chemical drugs and hormones are accessible and free to everybody." And I was like, I guess I would just push people towards there are ways of imagining the future where we can defeat capitalism but still have medical care of all kinds. We can have Reiki and acupuncture and we can also hormone surgery and transplants. And we might be doing it better because it's not controlled by fucking corporations and assholes. Sorry, that's my soapbox. Um, okay. I will say in terms of people being like, "That's really nice. But what about me?" I would be like, you know, I mean, right now in the war on trans America, there are so many people already who are like, "Yeah, I'm stockpiling meds. I like doing meds trading." I would say it goes back to what we started about, which is like, "Okay, what are your needs? What are the things that you're worried will not be there if the world ends?" Right? And we also need to recognize that the world's already ending and it's ended for some of us a bunch of times already. But I would be like, make that list and then really be like, "Alright, how do I get it?" You know, and if I can't specifically get it, are there like backups that I can get? And it may be stuff that you can research on your own. It also might be stuff where it's like, "Okay, are there trans [untranslatable], disability justice organizations, nationally, globally, locally, that you can hit up and be like, "What are folks thoughts about this? Are there ways that we can resource share?" Because I think it's about pills. I think it's also about durable medical equipment. So in terms of stuff that requires power to live, I think about generators and I think about generator shares. And I think about things like...there's a story when Hurricane Sandy hit New York 10 years ago, there were a whole bunch of us where...there's a guy Nick who's in community who, physically disabled guy, 13th floor, accessible apartment, you know, the lights went out, you know, really dependent on electricity to change out the batteries on his ventilator. There's a whole crew of disabled folks, like people walked up and down those fucking stairs every eight hours to take the spent batteries, figured out, "Hey, you know, what still has power, the fucking fire department." People were walking down recharging the batteries every eight hours. And it was allies, it was ambulatory, it was disabled people who could walk. It was fucking hard. But people were like, we're not.... Nick and his friends were like, "We're not just going to die. We're needed." So I wanna shoutout that and just for possibility modeling, I really want to, one other place I want to shout out, is an org that used to be known as Portlight but was now known as the Center for Inclusive Disaster Strategies, which is a disabled-led organization that is about like, yeah, when there's a climate or other disaster, they figure out ways of getting like accessible fucking evacuation methods to places because they know...we know, there's millions of examples of people who are just left to die in nursing homes or like, "Oops, the bus doesn't have a ramp," or, you know, I really want to name that during Katrina, some people might know about, you know, the situation with the nursing home that was there were a lot of folks who were wheelchair users or had high care needs were fucking killed by medical staff because the medical staff were like, "We're gonna actually euthanize these folks without their knowledge or consent." [Margaret exclaims] Yeah, no, there was actually a movie on HBO about it I think semi recently. Because "that's easier than figuring out how to fucking get people in the medivac ," right? Yeah, and so the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies, I'm still getting to know them, but I have friends who are involved and they're like, "Yeah, we're aware this is an issue." So yeah, let's work with the fucking Cajun fucking Navy to like make sure that you can get folks with different bodies onto evac boats. Like let's figure out what disabled survival looks like. And I will just say, and this is the last thing I swear, for me, I mean, we all know water is important. Like, I can't lift 54 pounds. Guess what? So can't--which is, you know, a seven gallon right, like a five or seven gallon whatever--I'm just like, yeah, so I can actually have smaller jugs of water that I can lift. So yeah, I have a bug out plan, but I also have a real Shelter in Place plan because I'm just like, yeah, my apartment's accessible for me. So yeah, I got a shit ton of water right here and I'll be good for a while. And I also have a plan B for.... Okay, there's...I've got my filtration equipment, so when that runs out, I'm close to some water sources where I can go and I can filter that shit. And that's me thinking about what works for my body. Think about what works for yours and then plan out from that. Okay, I'll really stop talking now.
**Margaret ** 49:44 No, no, but there's so much there. Even just like to go to the weight of water, right? The thing that I ran across that I'm like--I'm reasonably able-bodied and such like that, right--but I live alone and so obviously there's this specific thing where like.... Well, one, I mean, abledness is always a temporary position....
**Leah ** 50:04 Yeah, you're going to get disabled, you're gonna get sick and disabled.
**Margaret ** 50:07 Like it literally happens to--unless you, I don't know, die very quickly, very suddenly, probably violently, you're gonna go through a period of disability in your life, you know? And so my argument is that machismo is anti-prepping. And one of the ways that I would say is that like, there's now, I think.... Okay, so cement bags, they come in 50 pound bags traditionally, right? But now there's more and more, I think, there seems to be more and more 30 pound bags, right? And I used to be like, "Oh, whatever, I can lift a 50 pound bag. So I should carry the 50 pound bag." And then I'm like, well, it was not a helpful way to look at it. It is far better for me to just have 30 pound bags of cement because they're easier to carry and I'll get tired less. And I, you know, at the time that I was pouring these bags, I lived up a hill about probably the equivalent of a seven storey walk up to this cabin that I was building, right. And so I had to carry each and every one. It was way nicer that I carry 30 pound bags. And if your preparedness doesn't include the fact that your level of ability will change in different situations, then it's not very good preparedness. And and so like, I don't know, I mean, like most of my water jugs are four or five gallon jugs. I use jerry cans. I think most of them are five gallon. And I hate the six gallon ones and the seven gallon ones. They're just heavy and annoying. And it's like I can give lift them but there's no reason why I should. Unless I'm specifically working on lifting weights. And then the other thing that you talked about that I really think about a lot, you know, is this idea, of does your version of disaster mean that every doctor dies? Or like, does your version of disaster mean everyone who's ever made insulin dies? Like, it's possible. Sure, you could have 90...if almost everyone on Earth dies, then everything is a little different. But most disasters don't actually..... Most disasters destroy ways of living and large numbers of people, but not the majority of people write. Most people survive most disasters. And, people are like, "Well, our organizational systems are what produce insulin," and like, no, people produce insulin and they use organizational systems with which to do it. But different organizational systems can also produce insulin. Like different organizational systems can use the same infrastructure sometimes and make the things that we rely on. And it came up with this like whole thing where people on the internet were like, "Ah, if you're an anarchist, you hate disabled people because in anarchy, you can't have insulin,"
**Leah ** 50:28 That's gross.
**Margaret ** 52:40 It is a complete misunderstanding of anarchism. It is not a lack of organization, it is a different type of organization.
**Leah ** 52:46 Anarchy is responsibility.
**Margaret ** 52:48 Yes, totally.
**Leah ** 52:50 Sorry, sorry.
**Margaret ** 52:52 That's why people don't like it. People are afraid of it because they actually have to.... It's the accepting no one is coming to save us except us. You know? No, I love that way of framing and it also annoys anarchists when you tell them this too.
**Leah ** 53:07 Okay, well, I mean, you know, so I worked at Modern Times books, which was, you know, is no longer around, but was a long time anarchists and anti authoritarian radical bookstore in the Bay. And we had the only public toilet in all of the Mission because everybody else was like, "No, you gotta buy something." and in my interview, they're like, "How will you make the store better?" And I was like, "I will make the bathroom not smell horrible." Because, you know, it was just like a bust, everyone was pissing in there. And so I taped up a sign that said "Anarchy is responsibility. If you spray the fucking toilet with urine, please wipe it up. Together we can have a toilet." And somebody called me out and was like, "That's capitalist." And I was like, "No, just wipe your piss up or we're not gonna make the revolution. Like, come on." But yeah, they got pissed at me about that. [Both laugh] But yeah, I mean, I think that's a really good point. And it's like, you know, I mean, I think that it does point to, you know, I think a structural problem in a lot of our movements, which is like, yeah, we don't we need more people who know some basics of chemistry and can synthesize stuff. Like, that's, you know, we need more people who've gone to some kind of science or engineering school who can figure out how sewage works and how you synthesize insulin and how you synthesize hormones and like, basic surgery. And I think there's a lot of hopefulness because I--maybe it's just the folks I hang out with--but I have a fair number of friends who are like, "Yeah, I'm gonna be a nurse practitioner. I can give you an abortion. I can sew up your wound. I can help you figure out this thing." And I'd love for there to be more of us who can go to PA school or know more than that. And I also think, yeah, we need to.... I mean, of course it's a longer range strategy but it's like yeah, some chemistry school would be great. And, you know, recruiting folks who know some STEM stuff and who are like, "Yep, we can build it. We have the technology," I think is super important. And also but I really...thank you for saying like "What in your idea of disaster do all the doctors die? because, no, they're not going to fucking all die. It is a problem that, you know, under capitalism and ableist, racist, white supremacist, sexist, cis sexist society, you know, medical school is really expensive and hard to get through and will fucking make you half dead. But it doesn't mean there aren't some progressive PAs and doctors out there who are like, "Yeah, like we can figure it out." And it does not mean that the entire national medical stock is going to disappear overnight. It's not. Like it's really not. There's a lot of insulin out there. It may not seem like it because it's hard to get because it's expensive, right? There's a shit ton of meds out there. And it's not all going to run out right away.
**Margaret ** 55:37 And it does have a impressive shelf life overall. The dosages will change as it gets older because it becomes less effective, but it is hard to get, but it's actually more stockpile-able level than most disposable, or consumable [replacing the word disposable], goods. So there's one more big topic that I really want to talk to you about. Originally we're gonna do the whole first half about it. And basically, I want to talk about the state of Covid and how it ties into disability and preparedness and I want to talk about how we as both as society and then also as movements are and are not handling Covid in responsible ways and where we're at with it now.
**Leah ** 56:20 Yeah, well, sometimes I think it's the crips that are gonna inherit the Carth because, you know, I mean, part of the "anarchy is responsibility," thing is, you know what's responsibility and anarchy? Public fucking health. You know, and it's the irony where, you know.... So, you know, as of this recording, the CDC and a ASIP [American Society for Investigative Pathology] just authorized the newest variation of the boosters and the Missouri--let me find this because it was just so fucking horrible--and I was like, "Is this real?" and they were like, "Yeah." So yeah, Triangle Mask Brigade [Bloc], which is like a Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill mask, you know, just masc disto and Covid activist group, they had posted.... Hold on, the Missouri Department of Health, their Instagram literally posted a thing that was like "Covid vaccines will be available in Missouri soon." And then they say, I shit you now, "If you're into that sort of thing. If not, just keep scrolling." And I was like, "This can't be real." And they were like, "No it's fucking real. It's literal." And they're like.... I was screaming at the person who's listerally an epidemiologist, but who's, you know, a eugenisist and fascy. And, okay, so what do I mean by this? What I mean is, is that anarchy's responsibility and that everyone I know who's involved in disabled organizing, like Covid safety organizing, that's like.... I'm like, shit, I hate to look like a tin hatter. But I'm just like, 'The CDC has abandoned us," you know. It sucks. They're just like, "Oh, what Covid?" What Surge? What data? We've made it so there is none. Oh, everyone's sick. But oh, what could that be?" It is the rest of us who are like, it sucks that we've had to become citizen scientists and public health people with no budget to be like, "Wear a mask. Use, you know, nasal spray. Use, you know, use CPC mouthwash. Here's what you do when you get sick, like, here's..." you know, all of that. But we are the ones who are working towards collective safety and keeping ourselves and each other safe. I don't know if I'm answering your question. I just basically I'm just like, TLDR, those of us who are Covid conscious and who are not just continuing to keep ourselves safe individually but who are like putting out tools, are going to be the ones that save all of us that end up getting saved, as much as possible. And I guess something else say is, I was just talking to my friend Gabe, who's a musician, and he's got an album release in a week or two in Seattle and I'm actually going to be there because I was really excited to go and celebrate him because it's his first album in a while and I was like, "Hey, what's your Covid safety plan." and he's like, "I'm so glad to talk about this." He's like, you know, "It's in a bar. So I can make it mass required. But then people will take them off to eat or drink. So I don't know what to do." And I was like, "Great, but if you actually really model it and if you have masks that people can have at the door and if we get some air purifiers--cuz he was like, there's just not good ventilation--I was like, "That will do a huge amount of risk reduction. And like, I just have to keep reminding people and being like, 'Hey, yeah, take it off briefly to fucking drink your drink, but put it back on.'" And he was like, "God, I'm so glad to talk to you about this," because he's like, you know, "The last two times I got Covid were when I was performing at a show and I don't want anyone to get Covid and I don't want to get it for the fourth time or whatever." And so then I was like, "Hey, there's this group Clean Air Club," which some people might know that's out of Chicago that's a really amazing--I don't even know if their a collective, like it might just be one person--but they started out being like, "Hey," for musicians and people who are trying to do in person events, "We will loan you air purifiers."
**Margaret ** 57:10 That's cool.
**Leah ** 57:12 Right? And they're just like, "And we'll talk you through how many do you need for X number of square feet and here's the things you can do. And then they also, I think I first ran into them because they put out a really good safety guide for like, "Are you flying? Like, here's some ways to reduce myth and reduce risks." So like N95 vs KN95. But they're also the first place that was like, "Hey, people don't talk enough about nasal sprays, or they only know about Enovid," which is very effective, but is Israeli and it's expensive. So between those two things, a lot of people won't buy it. But they're like, "Here's all these different kinds that actually form a barrier in your nose so if you do get exposed to COVID, it can't really stick to your....
**Margaret ** 1:00:25 I've never even heard of this before.
**Leah ** 1:00:26 I will send you the link. I just had a direct exposure three weeks ago. I mean, I think we were talking because I still don't know if I had Covid or not, because.... But I was in Philly and I was just like, yep, you know, I know it's dense. I know, there's a lot of people around. I hung out with a friend outside. I sprayed myself beforehand. I sprayed myself after. I went and hung out with a friend for 24 hours. And then the day after that, my friend who I hung out with outside was like, "I'm so sorry, I tested negative right before I saw you, but I just tested positive," and I was having symptoms. And I was like--anyway, I don't want to go too much into my own story--but like, Clean Air.... I guess why I was bringing this up is that Clean Air Club is one of many examples I know where they're sharing knowledge of like, "Here's how we do harm reduction. Here's how we create safer spaces. Here's how we use layers of protection," which is the terminology People's CDC has put out there, which is like masking, air purifiers, CPC mouthwash after exposures, nasal sprays, antivirals, opening the windows. And then I think it's also the conversations we have because like, when I talked to Gabe, I was...he was like, "I really wanted to do it, but I was just stuck." And he needed the conversation we had, where I was like, "Hey, what about we try this? What about we try that? It's not going to be like 100% no one will have Covid situation, but we can reduce the risk so much and we can still together." It's not either, "We all never leave our houses or see anyone ever again," or, you know, we just raw dog the air and cough all over each other. There's a lot of shit we can do in the middle to reduce risk. And I think that that's going to be stuff...that's part of my prep. And like, I feel like for a lot of us, I use the term the Great Forgetting, which is what I feel like, you know, the State and governments and, you know, the medical Industrial complex has pushed under Capitalism, especially in the last year to be like, "What Covid? There's no Covid Let's take away data. Oh, all you have is wastewater and what's that even? Like, no one has Covid." There's just been such an encouragement of like, "See no evil, smell, no Covid, everyone go back to work." And then there's all the rest of us who are like, "No, it's still here. We're tracking surges. Here's how we're going to keep ourselves safe as communities." I feel like I'm rambling a little bit, but I guess the point I'm getting to is that a lot of us in disabled and Covid activist community have been like, eventually, I would love to believe that there's like effective vaccines that actually prevent the virus, not just, you know, make it suck less. I really hope for Covid PrEP, like a PrEP equivalent or like a protease inhibitor equivalent for HIV. I hope for, you know, like post-exposure stuff where you can just spray shit in your nostrils and it kills on 100%. Until then, we're going to have to keep creating harm reduction, layer protection strategies. And a lot of us, I feel like I keep almost saying this and then it feels like, tricky to say it, but I'm like a lot of us are like, "Yeah, it's kind of a forever pandemic. It's not, 'It's over.'" It's like it's not over yet. So part of the apocalypse of now is like, yeah, we're living in a pandemic in a plague that continues. How do we figure out how to socialize with each other, not get Covid, not give ourselves Covid for the first or the fifth time, and build strong communities that are about not dying, and not getting exposed to a disease that can have such disabling effects, right? And it is about community safety versus individualism.
**Margaret ** 1:03:47 No, I really like this because one of the things that I've been thinking about more and more is, I saw it somewhere I don't remember exactly, but it was that we need to mourn a world that doesn't exist anymore. [Leah affirms] The pre-covid world does not exist. And it's kind of a "grow the fuck up," to the people who are like, "Well, I want to just go back to doing these things." And I'm like, well, you just can't. And I'm sorry. Now there's other things.... I'm gonna be like, "No more live music." Like, I think that what you're talking about, this risk management structure is what to do. It's like, well, if you want to go back to doing these things, we need to be learning HVAC, like speaking of learning....
**Leah ** 1:04:28 Seriously, like, one of my best friend's is like a radical Palestinian HVAC trans engineer. They're not a nurse practitioner, but they were like, "I went into HVAC," and I was like, "Great, we're gonna need you. We need you right now. I'm so happy you have those skills."
**Margaret ** 1:04:42 Because it's like, this is just going to keep happening. And one of the things I think about is like, I was thinking about how like, you know, I travel a lot and I go to a lot of different scenes and some scenes I see a larger number of people who are like visibly--I don't know the right way to phrase this--wheelchair users and things like that, like people who have mobility needs.
**Leah ** 1:04:59 Disabled.
**Margaret ** 1:05:01 Well, I mean specifically people who are disabled in ways that physical access to space requires certain tool things. And I see a greater percentage of people in some scenes and some other scenes and then I'm like, oh, because you only see someone who needs a wheelchair when you're in a punk venue that's wheelchair accessible. And it's not because there aren't punks who use wheelchairs. But if you think that there's no punks who use wheelchairs, it's because you're going to punk venues that are not wheelchair accessible.
**Leah ** 1:05:32 The self-fulfilling prophecy of access, where it's like, "Well I don't see any disabled people. So we don't need access. And I'm like, we're not here because [emphasis on this word] your space isn't accessible, you right jackass, right?
**Margaret ** 1:05:44 And I'm seeing this increasingly also around mask use. And like, you know, because if you're like, "Oh, none of me and my friends, like everyone who comes to this thing, like, we don't care about masks," and it's like, that's because there's other people in your community who do want to come but can't because they showed up and no one was wearing a mask and so they left because they don't want to die. Or like, you know, they don't want to....
**Leah ** 1:06:07 And it's fascinating, because like this.... Sorry, I don't want to cut you off.
**Margaret ** 1:06:10 No, no, I'm basically done. It's just like, we just need to accept responsibility and fix shit. And that's, and that's the preparedness thing that you've been talking about is like, you look at your list of problems, and then you figure out how to do it, and you become really inventive about how to do it. And our problem is that Covid is around and so our solution can't be, "no more live music," because that is a part of living that we should appreciate. Right? But it also can't be "Pretend it doesn't exist." Sorry. What were you gonna say?
**Leah ** 1:06:37 No, now, because you don't lay down and die on the hill.
**Leah ** 1:06:37 I was gonna say that, like, I mean, what you said about like, the self fulfilling prophecy of like, "Well, we don't mask, so nobody needs an mask." And it's like, well everyone who needs to mask is home. The thing is, I mean, that was so dead on and also it was like, yeah, I mean, that's also not new. Like that's been like a disabled dynamic for a really long time. And what I mean by this--there's a bunch of examples--but I mean, I'm thinking about in chronic illness and like multiple chemical sensitivities/injury community, something I was involved in was creating more materials around fragrance free and chemical free stuff. Some people might know this document I made years ago now called Fragrance Free Femme of Color Genius. That was just a list of here's different products that are fragrance free and affordable, that aren't just like ye oldie whitey vegan crap that sucks and that doesn't work for curly or textured or kinky hair. But like, you know, we would fight a lot because something that people in MCS and environmental illness and the chronically ill community have faced for years was people when they'd be like, "Hey, can you make it fragrance free?" is people be [exasperated gasp]. I mean, it would just be like, you're asking them to, like serve Christ's head on a platter or something. And they'd be like, "Could you just not wear perfume just for the one fucking time." Yeah. And then the response would often be like, "You just, you can be fragrance free in your house. Like, why do I have to make it fragrance free?" And it's because, and it's like, actually, under the Americans with Disability Act, but also in terms of justice, like we deserve to be in the world, not just in our houses. And yeah, and that thing of like, "I don't know anyone else with this problem." And like, it's because we all had to leave because we were throwing up or we don't even come because we're afraid we're gonna get sick or we know we're gonna get sick of all the chemicals. Right? So it's a real paradigm shift. And like, it necessitates a lot of talking to move from this kind of individualist ableism of like, "Well, you can do whatever weird disabled shit that you want in the privacy of your own home. But I don't have to, because I'm American," to like, oh, actually, we need to make it for everybody. And actually, it benefits everybody. And I remember after like eight years of fighting it out in the Bay, Stacy called me crying because she was like, "Oh my god," like it was like 2016-2017 and it was like a Save DACA rally and she was like, "There were these 15 year old undocumented queer brown youth who are like," because it was indigenous and undocumented lead and she's like, "They have chairs for people to sit in at the front of the rally. And they're like, 'We're gonna hold up the sage and the cedar but not light it because we know that some people have asthma and MCS and if the revolution is not accessible at the revolution,'" and she was like, "I'm crying." Because for years ,especially in BIPOC community, it was a struggle because people would be like, "Wait, these are our medicines," and we'd be like, "We know. We use them too." And I just have friends who are indigenous who are like, "If there's so much sage in a tiny room, I'm going to have an asthma attack and like it means I don't go to events." or like, you know, Copal or different medicine, are there ways we can have the medicine present and do it accessible for everybody? So more access gets more access. If you make more for everybody, everyone will be there. Blah, blah, blah. I will die on this fucking hill, but....
**Leah ** 1:06:49 Yeah, I'm surviving on the hill. I'm surviving on the flat, accessible space. Shout out to disabled punks. Because there's, you know, we've been here for forever and, you know, especially in the past 15 years, like I feel like that is one place of hope where, you know, I'm like a semi-punk but like yeah, like I'm punk. I mean, I still have green hair or whatever. I think I'm a punk.
**Margaret ** 1:10:04 You're a punk. I'm looking at you right now. You are as punk as I am.
**Leah ** 1:10:10 Totally. I mean, I also have, you know my feet in different subcultures too. But I just hear there's a lot of different spaces. I think about like Gilman's still, last I checked, you know, had a bunch of disabled folks on the collective and they're like, "Yeah, we're still. Everyone masks," or like Vera project, which is a very loved, all ages venue in Seattle, where I'm not...I haven't checked recently, but I know that for a long time, they were like, they were one of the first places in Seattle that opened back up to live music and are like an all ages, anarchist queer space and they were like, "No, everyone masks and we have HVAC, or I'm blanking on the name of it, but a friend of mine, who is you know, really.... Biani, who taught me so much about masking as somebody with like severe MCS and other disabilities, they've posted a lot about how they're like, "I live in Albuquerque now. And there's a monthly burlesque/drag night that requires masking." And they're all these performers who are wearing the really good, hard mask. Like it's a really great respirator and also looks sexy as hell. And you can breathe in it. And they're just like, "Yeah, like, we can actually have a slutty drag, burlesque punk night and no one dies." How about that, y'all? Yeah, I mean, this is the thing.... I do want to shout out, if I can toot my own horn for a second, um, you know, I sent to you, there's a document that me and my friend Tina Zavitsanos put together earlier this year, "The Long Winter Covid Survival Guide." And we did it because we were just like.... Look, I mean, you know, the first year or two of the pandemic, I was in Seattle, and we really did have a bunker mentality of like, okay.... Yeah, we were like, eventually the vaccines will come, and at the time we were like, and they will just eliminate Covid. And great. So we just have to survive till then and not get COVID. So I was very much just in my house with the people I live with or by myself for like, you know, a year or two years. Yeah. And then, right around 2022, we were like, actually, no, it's not, it's not panning out that way. And we really are really, really struggling in isolation. So Tina is a friend of mine. We work together and they're on immune suppressants for their disabilities. So they were like, "I didn't really leave my house more than eight times to go into public spaces in two years," cause they were living in Brooklyn, and they were just like, "I don't have an immune system. And if I go to the hospital, like, it's just gonna be all bad. Like I cannot...I really cannot put myself at risk." And then they moved to lower Manhattan. They're living in an apartment in Chinatown now. And so, and they're also a sepsis survivor. And you know, sepsis, if you survive it, your immune system is altered for two years after that, or if you get like, cold, you can die. So they were just like, "I can't let anyone in my apartment but my partner, period." So I was just like, "Well, I want to see you." And they were like, "Well, there's a park across the street from my house." And we just call it Tina Park now amongst her friends. And they were like, we figured it on all this stuff. Like they were like, yeah, like we're living in Manhattan, but like, we have a portable gas generator that heats up. And we got sheepskins from IKEA. And we have hot pockets and like hot packs that we put all of our bodies in our shoes and like we're gonna order pho and eat it.
**Margaret ** 1:13:22 But now I’m imagining Hot Pockets, like the food, and you're just putting microwaved Hot Pockets in your clothes.
**Leah ** 1:13:33 But so basically out of that, I was just like, "Tina, I know so many people who are really...like this is a grim winter because everyone's just like 'fuck, like I have survived in isolation. But I haven't seen anybody in person, haven’t been touched for years. And I don't want to get COVID What do I do?'" So we put it together. And we put it out there as a like, "Yeah, if you are in cold areas, like here are ways that we can gather more safely outside as disabled people, including disabled people...like I have disabilities where I'm like, yo, if I sit in the cold too long, like I get really fucked up. I will be in a flare for a week. And I think that's another example of what we're talking about. It's not about either total denial of Covid, throwing ourselves off the cliff, or just lying down and dying in isolation, but about let's have live music, let's have burlesque, let's hang out in the park with our fucking portable heater, and our fucking sheepskins, and our layers and, you know, be able to be with each other safely.
**Margaret ** 1:14:28 Yeah.
**Leah ** 1:14:29 And not be abandoned.
**Margaret ** 1:14:32 Yeah. Well, that's most of what we wanted to talk about. Do you have anything you want to plug? I mean, there's obviously, there's the stuff you've plugged all along, and we're gonna put...we're going to compile all that and put it at the top of the show notes at the top of the transcript. But, um, is there anything in particular, other things that you want to plug, how people can follow you, or you've written a couple of books?
**Leah ** 1:14:57 Oh, just a few. Yeah. I've written or co-edited ten books, which is wild. My most recent came out, it's going to be a year in a couple weeks. And it's called "The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs." And we sold the first printing in nine months. We sold 10,000 copies, which is really good because my mom died last December and I did no promotion for six months, because I was just like, "I'm going into my cave. I cannot be In public." Yes, seriously. So the second printing is coming out soon. And I'm really excited because I, you know, it was kind of like a writing the plane as I flew it thing where I was trying to write down like, "Here's what how Covid's is looking." And then like, things kept getting out of date so fast. And so I added, there's a new afterword and also includes an article I wrote last fall for Truth Out, which is now called Against the Great Forgetting. And it's about like able bodied leftists can't abandon Covid safety if we're going to win. So that's both in there. And I am really excited because my friend Sandy Ho, who is a really incredible, queer, disabled, Asian organizer is writing a reading guide for it, which we're going to launch for free around the same time. So keep an eye out for that. And it's print book, ebook audiobook. It's in a lot of libraries. You can ask your library to order it. Have reading groups! Think about your own disabled survival and your own disabled future and how you're making it. That's one thing I want to shout out. I also really want to shout out, I Want to Be With you Everywhere, which is disabled arts collective that a bunch of my friends organize. And I want to shout it out because we had our first gathering since Covid started, this summer on the summer solstice in New York. And if you look us up, and I can give you the link, I mean, it was just an amazing day of performance. But I guess the reason I'm shouting out is that the people organized it. We were like, I'm gonna include myself in it because I was an artist and I created a disabled grief portal altar, so I'm like, yeah, I'm like, the Hair Club for Men. I'm a member and also the president because we all are. We were really, and people were really, like, we need to be together. And so it was a combination all outdoor like 95% masked in person. They were calling, it's like IRL in URL. So like, we had that. And then we had full Zoom, and it was 12 hours of gathering. And I know a lot of people are like, "Ah, it feels like either in person or Zoom, but not both." And it was like an example of like, we did both and we did it so that folks who are there in person could interact with folks on Zoom. And we had screens on stage. So like I could turn and like talk to the folks on Zoom and see them and like they can see me and we can interact. And we also just had like really.... I'm always about expanding access beyond the bare minimum that we're taught is the best we can get, so we're like, we have a travel plan. If you need money to get a wheelchair accessible cab, we got. We have, not just ASL interpretation on stage, but interpreters moving through the space because we know that otherwise deaf folks often are like, "Oh, I guess I'll just stay glued to deaf seating and not actually get to like hang out with people and like interact unless my interpreter is with me." I just want to shut out there is an example of a really creative way that we gathered together that was really life giving. And what is other stuff? I think that's all I can think of right now. I'll keep you posted. Places people can follow me are--I am a social media slacker and a hermit but brownstargirl.org is my I-need-to-update-it website. I'm leaving Twitter because fuck that guy and fuck some harassment off and on. And also just like, I mean it's all been bad, but then like the latest like, "Oh, we get the steal off your shit forever." I'm just like, no, I'm not giving you my intellectual property. But I am on Blue Sky at....
**Margaret ** 1:18:46 I bet people just put your name and they'll come up with it, right?
**Leah ** 1:18:51 Yeah, it is @thellpsx.bsky.social. I'm migrating over there. So yeah, like there's not a lot up there yet. But this could motivate me. You know, I'm gonna have to get back to you on my public Instagram because I can't find it right now. You can Google my name and stuff comes up. And also one thing I do want to shout out is like so last year, I kicked off this disabled centering queer and trans BIPOC disabled folk like writing and creative organization Living Altars. And then my mom died. So like this year has been like really much like chrysalis research, whatever, but um, keep an eye out for Living Altars stuff. We're gonna start a kind of low-key kitchen table online reading series every three months for disabled majority QTBIPOC writers. And when Stacey died in 2020, one of the things that I really, that really hit me was that she was an incredible, incredible organizer and I will shout out the Stacey Taught Us Syllabus that me and Alice Wong did where you can see a lot of her writing and poetry and organizing. She wrote Bernie Sanders' Disability Justice fucking platform. She did all kinds of shit. But I met her as a poet. You know? I met her when she was 20 online as a poet and I really saw the ways in which she struggled to find, like many of us do, accessible space to write as a queer disabled POC who had a million things going on. So I've been working on creating an accessible residency in her honor and one of the things that Living Altars is going to do is I'm hoping to launch that next year. So yeah, just Google Living Altars and my name and it comes up and there'll be all kinds of shenanigans. And We're going to also update the Long Winter Survival Guide soon, because a lot of people wrote in and had amazing things to add, especially a lot of folks who live in Canada and like more northern colder places were like, yeah, "Here's different things you can do with like shelters, furs, heating, different things like that. So I like to think of myself as a structural engineer of disability justice along with.... I'm kind of like disabled Scotty sometimes where I'm like, "Here's the thing. Try it." Yeah. Yeah. So these are some things. Okay.
**Margaret ** 1:21:03 Well, yeah. Thanks so much for coming on. And I hope to have you back at some point.
**Leah ** 1:21:08 Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for creating this podcast and being so awesome. And all the things you do.
**Margaret ** 1:21:20 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, you should fight for a better world. And tell people about the podcast that encouraged you to do so. Being like get put our logo onto a flag and then carry it and be like this is the flag of the revolute. Don't do this. Don't do what I'm saying. But what you could do is tell people about it in more polite ways. Instead of making it a weird flag. Why would you even think that? You can also support us on Patreon because we believe in paying. We pay our transcriptionist and we pay our audio engineer. And one day, we might even pay the hosts, which would be cool. And you can do that by supporting us on Patreon. It's patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness and if you support us at $10 or more a month, we will send you a free zine every month, anywhere in the world. But also you can listen to that zine anywhere in the world also for free without supporting us by listening to the podcast Strangers In a Tangled Wilderness, which comes out once a month. I want to thank, and there's some new names on this list, which makes me really excited. I want to thank Hoss the Dog and Michaiah, Chris, Kirk, Jenipher, Staro, Chelsea, Dana David, Nicole, Paige, S.J., Hunter, theo, Boise Mutual Aid, Milicia, paparouna, Alu, Janice & O'dell, Funder, Anonymous, BenBen, Princess Miranda, Trixter, Lord Harken, Carson, Marm, Catgut, Julia, Buck, Perceval. Thanks for supporting us. Y'all are great, and I hope everyone does as well as they can.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Brooke gives a report on how things have been going in Maui after the fire in Lahaina this summer.
Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn is joined again by Sophie and Parker from No More Deaths for part two of their talk about the militarization of the US-Mexico border, search and rescue, 911 discrimination, and medical collaboration with Border Patrol.
The Disappeared report can be found at www.thedisappearedreport.org. No More Deaths can be found at nomoredeaths.org, on Instagram @nomoredeaths_nomasmuertes, or on Twitter @nomoredeaths.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: No More Deaths on the “Disappeared” Report & Border Militarization Pt. II
**Inmn ** 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host Inmn and today we have part two of an interview with two folks from the abuse doc working group in No More Deaths or No Más Muertes. And we're just going to pick up right in the middle of where we left off and talk a lot about search and rescue and the newest report from No More Deaths, "Separate & Deadly," which is mostly about 911 dispatch discrimination and medical discrimination and collaboration with Border Patrol. If you haven't listened to part one, probably not entirely necessary but it lays a lot of important groundwork and context for what we're going to be talking about today. So go back and give part one a listen. But before we get to that, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here is a jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. [Singing the words like a melody]
**Inmn ** 02:14 Yeah, so it's kind of wild to me that like, you know, Border Patrol, has these like non-responses? And it's like, it seems like those nonresponses are on purpose, but they have every piece of technology at their disposal and like every system and like...they just have everything. And yet they purposefully don't help find people.
**Sophie ** 02:50 Yeah, that was something we really chronicled in part three looking at their budget and just the way in which Border Patrol is absolutely a militarized enforcement agency first and foremost and 99% of their budget and personnel are dedicated to an enforcement mission, you know, that they're kind of the search and rescue...border patrol search and rescue--so-called--wing of Border Patrol is miniscule compared in terms of staffing, and funding and so on and it's really, you know, there to propagandize and, you know, they do take part in some of this, of course, but really looking at the way in which they are geared towards enforcement first and foremost. And we have, you know, cases of agents being asked to search for someone in south Texas and a higher up saying, "I'm not going to pull agents off of the checkpoint to go search for a person in distress," you know, so seeing those priorities play out in real time on a given case. So yeah, they have all this, you know, powerful equipment and resources, but those are really dedicated to carrying out their enforcement mission, which then compromises you know, their status as a first responder.
**Inmn ** 04:18 Yeah. And it's like they have that like--god, what is it called--the BORSTAR helicopter that they pull out for photo shoots or something?
**Parker ** 04:27 Yeah, there's a lot of emphasis on, you know, their high-tech capabilities of rescue. And one thing that I can't remember if Sophie mentioned is what we found in the report, you know, when we were looking at these diminished responses and how brief some of their efforts are, is they essentially won't do a search. You know, really in any case, they'll do rescues that are pinpointed where they have exact coordinates. But a lot of the time, what their response will look like is going to the coordinates and if the person isn't right there they call off the search. So what we think of is like a search where like you have a whole, you know, maybe team of people combing an area, you're doing some investigation from like the information that you do have to try and, you know, guess where someone might be, and putting in like resources to look for someone where you don't have their exact location but you have some information to go on. We're not seeing those types of responses at all. So yeah, then what you see instead is these PR events where they're like, "Look, we could rescue someone off the side of a cliff," you know, but that's not translating to actual meaningful responses for the, you know, the situations that they're actually being confronted with. And we definitely have a lot of cases of, you know, Border Patrol saying, you know, "Our helicopters busy right now." So helicopters are used for enforcement. You know, in the "Chase & Scatter" report, we really looked at that, at Border Patrol flying helicopters very low over people who are migrating to scatter them, intimidate them, kick up a lot of dust. It's very intimidating and frightening for people to have a helicopter fly really low over them. And then we're seeing these situations where they won't respond. They won't pull their helicopter from an enforcement mission to go search for somebody who's lost.
**Sophie ** 06:02 And then this like, really perverse scenario in which someone who's been chased and become lost because of the helicopter scattering them then is supposed to look to the same helicopter that put them in harm's way to come and rescue them. I mean, it's incredible, the notion that Border Patrol could function to respond to the search and rescue crisis in the borderlands.
**Inmn ** 06:26 Yeah, and it's like, to put it in weird contrast, we did an episode on search and rescue specifically in a National Park, you know, from this person who does like search and rescue there. And they're like--maybe I'm remembering this wrong and someone's gonna be upset about that--but they're like, "Yeah, we get a call. And then like, within an hour, we're out and looking for people and like, usually find them very quickly." You know? And it's like this.... It's this other national agency with so fewer resources at their disposal. And they're like.... Yeah, it's like search and rescue isn't easy, but they're like, yeah, we find people pretty quickly because we're professionals.
**Sophie ** 07:25 Right. We did some interviews with Pima County Search and Rescue, which we'll talk about more, but talking with them, you know, they go out to deploy for hikers loss in the Catalinas, you know, citizens or tourists. And when they were asked, you know, what is your success rate? They're like, "Oh, you mean in like finding someone before they've died? Like, preventing loss of life?" And we're like, "No, in finding them at all." You know? And it was a confusing question, right? And they're like, "Almost 100%. Like, what are you talking about? We're not going to just not find someone."
**Parker ** 08:00 They're basically just like, "Yeah, we don't call off searches without finding someone."
**Sophie ** 08:04 Yeah, And that they really focused on preventing loss of life, like what you're saying, getting there rapidly. And to them, a failure is finding the person in death. But what we're seeing is this failure to even mobilize or locate someone ever at all on the border.
**Inmn ** 08:21 Yeah, and what resources or community.... Like what do community search and rescue efforts look like? In comparison, what resources do people have available?
**Parker ** 08:37 Yeah, I mean, it varies in different areas. But here in Pima County, which is, you know, the area we've looked at--and Pima County is, you know, most of the area that we work and do our humanitarian aid and in southern Arizona--the sheriff's department is in charge of search and rescue. They have a lot of resources at their disposal. They have a volunteer search and rescue team that when we were researching I think we saw that they had 150 volunteers. Some recent reports that have come out in response to our report say that they have 200 to 300 volunteers. So maybe that's increased. But they have this volunteer organization that works directly under the sheriff's and they're trained. Yeah, they go out and they respond to loss hikers. The sheriff's department, you know, they have helicopters, they have drones, and infrared cameras that they'll use. They also have volunteer canine teams that can go out--and especially if it's suspected that someone may have died already--the canine teams can go help locate them. They have a mounted contingent, they have a search and rescue contingent on horseback. So they have, in addition to their own search and rescue deputies, which I believe at the time that we were researching they had eight deputies in the sheriff's department that were the search and rescue coordinators who would then activate this team of hundreds of volunteers that go out to search. And like Sophie said, when, you know, we asked about their success rate, they're like, "We just...We find everybody," you know? Like that's what they do. And like you were saying with the rapid response, you know, we did-- and I guess we're getting a little bit into the next report now--but we listened to 911 calls that they're responding to from lost hikers, people who are calling and speaking English and presumed to be citizens and they usually have someone responding to the area before they're even off their first phone call. You know, you see they have dispatchers collecting the information and then they've already sent somebody immediately to the location that the call is coming from.
**Inmn ** 10:39 Okay, well, it's funny, we've been recording for a while now and it all feels in preparation for talking about the thing that we're here to talk about, which is the new report, which I want to introduce the new part o "Disappeared," "Separate & Deadly."
**Parker ** 11:05 Yeah, so "Separate & Deadly" is a report that kind of directly came out of the research that we were doing for "Left To Die." I left it I really just focusing on Border Patrol and their lack of response and contrasting that with, you know, they're sort of PR of putting themselves out there as rescuers. But in doing that research, we started to also learn more about the county and the way that the county is handling 911 calls that they receive as that first point of contact before they transfer it to Border Patrol. And that research, you know, kind of was happening simultaneously with doing the research into Border Patrol's response. We actually at that time had heard that the ACLU was, you know, considering pursuing a 14th amendment discrimination lawsuit against the Pima County Sheriff's Department for transferring calls to Border Patrol on the basis of people's presumed citizenship status. And they, in considering pursuing that, had received a few audio recordings of 911 calls and shared those with us. So then we put in our own records request and requested 911 calls that they received and transferred to Border Patrol within a two year period. It's from summer 2016 to summer 2018, we put in that records request and I think we were quite surprised by the volume of calls we got back. So that's when we got over 2000 recordings of 911 calls that were being received by the Pima County Sheriff's Department, their 911 system, before being transferred to Border Patrol. So we received those calls and we decided to listen to them and create data and document what we were hearing in those calls. And so that ended up feeling like it really was its own report, you know? Like we wanted a report that focused on Border Patrol. And then we wanted to really look at the local county and their complicity in their discriminatory response to people who are lost in the desert. So that's what this report came out of. It's been several years in the making. We wanted to, you know, release it as a follow up to "Left To Die," but really just focused on the county itself and its lack of response.
**Sophie ** 13:12 Yeah, and there's kind of this story told about border counties in the context of Prevention Through Deterrence that, you know, Prevention Through Deterrence is this federal policy and it's, you know, unduly burdening counties to respond to the emergencies that it's creating. And these counties are all, you know, under-resourced and flailing to handle these emergencies and that, you know, that's true in some counties on the border. Like if you look at Brooks County in South Texas, for example, it's, you know, one of the poorest counties in the country. But when you look at Pima County, which is so critical, you know, there's like 50% of all recovered remains on the border in Pima County, we see this other story that we've been talking about that there are robust search and rescue resources, you know, available in this county. And yet when you look at the emergency response system, what we see is this segregated system in which 911 dispatchers, when they're receiving a call from someone they perceive to be undocumented and crossing the border, which they determine based on a number of different informal factors, they forego doing a missing persons intake as they would. They have historically foregone even assigning that call a case number. They forgo forwarding that call and any information with it to Pima County Search and Rescue and instead they just quickly transfer the call to a Border Patrol line and quickly hang up. So what we are seeing and what the ACLU is concerned with and now we've partnered with Center for Constitutional Rights to look at this is a segregated system and in which your perceived identity as having citizenship status or not determines whether you'll receive County Emergency Services for search rescue response as robust or this really diminished, lesser Border Patrol response that we know based on part three results in these high rates of death and disappearance. So, kind of looking at the big picture of this, we just saw this really deadly form of discrimination, which, you know, gets into, on the one hand, the way in which counties, like Parker is saying, are complicit in carrying out Prevention Through Deterrence, that they actually have this active role, not just this passive role in carrying out and exacerbating the harms of this federal policy, on the one hand, and that's sort of an important lever for thinking about how to challenge what's happening on the border, locally. And then on the other hand, there's this kind of larger constitutional issue, 14th amendment equal protections issue, regarding what does it mean when something separate and unequal and there's all these Supreme Court cases, right, that have looked into that in terms of race, like Brown versus Board of Education, and seeing that those interpretations haven't yet really been applied to cases of segregation based on citizenship status that are really in direct conflict with the mandates of the county that they have. Like, if you look at their protocol and their mandate it's to protect the life of all people in their jurisdiction, right? There's no language distinguishing citizenship status, and there's actually anti-discrimination policies embedded in county protocols that we're seeing being really flagrantly defied and the practice of having dispatchers just bump these calls to Border Patrol and away from local resources because of the identity of the caller.
**Inmn ** 16:52 What were y'all encountering through going through these call records?
**Parker ** 16:57 Yeah, I mean, I think we went into listening to these calls not knowing exactly what we would find and, you know, sort of vaguely thinking that we would find some evidence of Border Patrol not responding. But listening to these calls, what we found is that people are just being incredibly rapidly transferred to Border Patrol and then the call is, you know, ended with no record of what happened after that. There's not really documentation of any of the outcomes of these calls. And we also just saw a lot of mishandling by the dispatchers. So what you hear basically is somebody calls and they say something in Spanish, sometimes, you know, people are transferred so quickly. It's like, really, like they call and they say, "Habla Español?" and dispatch says, you know, "Hold on," and then transfers on to Border Patrol. So a lot of discrimination on the basis of people calling and speaking Spanish as well as they're call plotting somewhere in like the remote wilderness of the Borderlands. So we saw that in a lot of cases, dispatch did not speak Spanish, so they weren't able to communicate at all with the caller. We found that in 68%, of the calls we listened to dispatch didn't have enough Spanish to be able to communicate with the caller in distress, which means that they're missing really important information. Like you do have callers who are calling and they're starting...they're describing their medical condition, they're describing their location, and dispatch, you know, is not able to communicate with them, which in a region where you have a humanitarian crisis, essentially, from a population that speaks Spanish, they're really not equipped to respond to this humanitarian crisis or to carry out their jobs of being emergency responders if you don't have Spanish speakers, working for the county. And then we found, you know, there were no intakes being performed. So in 99% of the calls, almost every call we listen to, dispatch did not conduct any intake. Meaning they didn't ask any information about the caller's name, their location, description, medical condition, do they have food or water? What do they see? You know, anything like that. And we did request 911 calls, like I said, from presumed citizens, lost hikers, things like that and in those cases, it is routine that they ask these sorts of questions. And the search and rescue deputies themselves have said, you know, "Every caller, we asked them the crucial questions because if their phone dies, something like that, then we've collected information that we can potentially base a search off. And that's not happening in any of these cases. So there's no information. So after the call is transferred to Border Patrol, you know, if that person's phone dies, they're not found by Border Patrol, there's no information collected at all. We also found that in 50% of cases that we analyzed there's no notice given to the caller at all that they're going to be transferred. So they're just saying like, you know, "One moment." and then they transfer it to Border Patrol. There's no explanation of what's happening. So that person who's calling who's potentially in like a life threatening emergency, they just hear a dial tone, you know, and then maybe the phone starts ringing. And so a lot of people, you know, seem to think that they've been hung up on or the call has been lost, which might lead color callers to, you know, hang up in order to not waste cell phone battery. Yeah, so that was in 50% of cases, there was no notice given. And then in another 13%, notice is given only in English even when the caller clearly doesn't speak English. So yeah, they're essentially, we're just seeing these like really truncated responses where people are immediately profiled on the basis of the language they're speaking. And then just immediately transferred,
**Inmn ** 20:37 Those calls are being traced, right? And so they have the ability to, like, really hone in on someone's location if they receive a call from them just via cell phone technology?
**Parker ** 20:50 Yeah, so the dispatchers, the 911 system, like they do have access to cell phone tracing technology. And Border Patrol is relying on these GPS coordinates that are obtained by the dispatchers. But it's kind of a faulty system. The accuracy can really vary, especially when people are calling from remote areas with not very strong cell phone service. So when they call, dispatch gets either phase one coordinates, or phase two. And what that means is phase one coordinates means that the call is only connecting to one cellphone tower. And so their exact location can't be triangulated. So they just get the coordinates of the cell phone tower, and sometimes a general distance of thousands of meters, you know, how close that person is to the cell phone tower. But those are very inaccurate coordinates. And then if they're able to get phase coordinates, that means that they're connecting to two different towers and it can be triangulated and they get a much more pinpointed rescue. So they do convey these coordinates to Border Patrol, which is the primary thing that they base their search off of. Like I said, Border Patrol will often only do a rescue if they have exact coordinates. So the accuracy of the coordinates is, you know, a huge deal. It's a matter of life and death for people whether they're able to get phase one or phase two coordinates. And unfortunately, a lot of the calls are phase one coordinates because there's such remote areas and there's not a lot of cell phone towers out in the desert. So what we're finding is that Border Patrol often won't search in these phase one cases and will only search for phase two coordinates. And dispatch actually, you know, they can sometimes re-ping, you know, a call that they're getting and eventually find phase two coordinates. So there are a handful of calls we heard where dispatch said, "I'm going to stay on the line while you talk to them and try and get better coordinates." And after a couple of minutes of trying, they might suddenly get phase two coordinates. So that is a huge difference that means this person might be rescued where they would not have been otherwise. But we're finding that in most calls, dispatch is not doing that. They're certainly not doing it as a matter of policy. It's at the discretion of the dispatcher. And most of the time, they're not doing it and they're hanging up immediately after they transfer the call to Border Patrol, even though it can make a huge difference in that person's rescue response and could potentially save their life. If they spend a few extra minutes trying to get better coordinates,
**Inmn ** 23:05 Have y'all been able to figure out if that is a matter of protocol or is it just that the person on the line just doesn't care?
**Parker ** 23:13 You know, we do have these examples of cases in which the person does choose to do it. It doesn't appear to be a matter of protocol. It's just, you know, they get a lot of these calls, and they're very, you know, bureaucratized about it, very routine. And a lot of the time, I think it doesn't really occur to them to stay and try and get better coordinates.
**Sophie ** 23:31 With what Parker is talking about, where we're seeing a real pattern of Border Patrol being unwilling to mobilize a search, right, like when there aren't exact coordinates of the person, when it's not a straight rescue, it makes that intake process even more important, right? So like a phase one call where you have 5000 meters of accuracy pinging off a single cellphone tower, well then in order to mount a search, what you really need is the narrative of the person, right, regarding exactly what they know about where they are, what they can see, what they've passed along the way, information about their medical condition, how far they are likely to be able to move or travel, you know? Do they have a lower extremity injury that's preventing them from walking? How much water do they have left? Can they make a call back? All the information becomes so crucial if they're only able to extract based on coordinates. And then I also want to add that we have cases in which even though phase two coordinates are being derived from the caller, there's apparently no response from Border Patrol. So we had this case in March of 2018 in which a caller who's crossing the border calls 911 in Pima County 11 times in 10 hours. He's lost and alone and keeps calling because no one is coming and his call is transferred to Border Patrol every single time and his call has phase two coordinates within five meters of accuracy of his location and you can hear his medical condition diminishing with each call. And eventually he stops calling. And we have no record of an outcome. So there's nothing with the phase two coordinates we can see that guarantees or mandates, you know, that says that Border Patrol is going to deploy. So within all of this, there's like trends of what seems to work better, but there's nothing really there as a true safety net to ensure response for someone calling 911 in distress.
**Inmn ** 25:37 That is heartbreaking in so many ways. In that like, yeah, it's not negligence, it's complete disregard for what's happening. Like, I don't know, I think that's why I kind of like ask questions about the dispatchers where I'm like, are they aware of what they're doing? Are they so entrenched in bureaucracy? Do they think Border Patrol is going to do something about it? Or like? And I'm like, what do they...what do these people think the outcomes of these situations are? And like with Border Patrol, it's like, it's clearly disregard, because if you know where someone is and you just don't go....
**Sophie ** 26:36 I mean, I think the powers of normalization are so strong in the border crisis, like looking at Pima County, they're receiving 1500 distress calls a year from people crossing the border, four to five calls a day. So dispatchers are fielding these calls all the time and automatically forwarding, automatically forwarding and that does something right? That creates normalization around disappearance within the culture of dispatch in a county. And we do see, you know, occasionally, bad actors, like dispatchers who are particularly abusive or hateful. We see on occasion, good actors, dispatchers who are clearly very concerned about the person and taking some extra measures. But it's all still really constrained within this protocol that they're not the ones actually facilitating a response, that they're counting on Border Patrol to act. And because our data was, you know, derived for part three and from 2016 to 2018, we decided to do a records request, just a sampling of more recent calls, from June 2022, from last last summer, just to see, you know, is dispatch still doing this? And I was personally, you know, after we listened to--because we spent hours and hours listening to these 911 calls--you know, and it's incredibly heartbreaking and discouraging. And I think I was hopeful that something had gotten better since 2018. And it was so jarring to see, you know, listening to the 2022 calls, like the same protocol being carried out. Someone calls, speaks Spanish, the dispatcher says, "Está perdido? Are you lost?" and if the person says "Si", the call is immediately forwarded and they hang up. And the rate of deriving phase two coordinates is still, you know, very partial. And in those calls, out of those 65 cases that we got notes on, 17 of those cases, the caller was never located. And so what we're also seeing in these calls is that even when there's clear indication, and even reporting from Border Patrol, that they're not responding to a person in distress. The county doesn't deploy. So it was really hard to listen to these calls where if someone's in such distress and they get forwarded and then you see the outcome that they were never located, right, and the county has done nothing, even though they have full knowledge that there's a person missing in the county and Border Patrol isn't looking for them.
**Parker ** 29:28 Yeah, and what we see a lot in this case is this exactly what Sophie was saying earlier where, you know, we know from listening to the audio recordings that dispatch is not collecting information from callers and then we look at the case notes later and they say, "Well, you know, Border Patrol didn't find them and we don't have any information. So we can't search." So just sort of this reinforcing loop where they, you know, they hand off responsibility to Border Patrol and then when Border Patrol doesn't search, they don't take up that search and they have not followed any of the normal protocols that they would have at intake for someone that they intended to search for like someone calling speaking English or a presumed citizen, you know. And so then they can just sort of wash their hands and say, "Well, we don't have any information. So we can't search."
**Inmn ** 30:09 Yeah. And like Border Patrol is not...if they're like transferred, Border Patrol isn't conducting a separate intake to get information that the dispatcher failed to get?
**Parker ** 30:26 Yeah, in the few calls, where we do have recordings of, you know, those cases where dispatch stayed on the line a little longer to try and get coordinates or for some reason we have a recording, you know, Border Patrol does seem to be doing those intakes that Pima County would normally be doing for someone they intend to search, but it doesn't seem from any of the files we've seen that there's any sort of that information sharing between Border Patrol and the county. The county is, you know, typically they hang up before Border Patrol does that intake and they don't have any of that information on which they can base a search.
**Sophie ** 30:56 Yeah, sometimes we hear those conversations and like...what Parker's talking about is true, that we do sometimes hear the start of an intake, but we also hear Border Patrol telling someone who's in distress, has no water, perhaps injured, that they need to walk to a road before Border Patrol is going to go look for them. "We'll tell them to go walk for an hour and call me back." [Border Patrol] This kind of handling, we had a case from 2022, from that batch of calls, where a caller is...the call is picked up by dispatch, the caller is frantic saying "My phone's about to die. I'm soaking wet and cold. I'm lost." And dispatch transfers the caller to Border Patrol and the person is trying to say like, "I'm near antennas," like trying to give locational information. They've transferred to Border Patrol and he's like trying desperately to talk and Border Patrol tells him in Spanish to, "Shut up." And like, so we're hearing like, you know, hostility from Border Patrol towards reporting parties. And that was a call that only generated phase one coordinates within 5000 meters, which is like three mile radius around the cellphone tower, and the case file that we got on that said that Border Patrol never located that person and that the county took no further action on that case. So we also hear like obstruction and abuse in some of those calls with Border Patrol when we do get, you know, audio recording because the dispatcher chose to stay on the line. Yeah.
**Inmn ** 31:58 And like, you know, looking through the report, there's some other standout quotations, whether it's from dispatchers being like, "Actually, we're not going to deal with that," or like a Border Patrol agent who says like....god, what is it, "They're gonna stay lost," or something?
**Sophie ** 32:31 Mm hmm.
**Inmn ** 32:31 Yeah, that was the case with phase one coordinates.
**Inmn ** 33:04 Like, on the recording, the Border Patrol agent just like says that? Is like, like, "Well, they're gonna stay..." like, Oh, my God.
**Parker ** 33:13 Yeah, dispatch gives them the coordinates and then the distance with the coordinates and the Border Patrol agent says, "This guy is gonna stay lost."
**Sophie ** 33:22 Yeah, I mean, you get the sense, even though this is public record, you know, anyone should be able to request these recordings, you can feel the kind of culture of impunity around Border Patrol. The agents clearly aren't speaking in a way where they expect to be checked up on, you know. So we're hearing those conversations and it's something.... Yeah, it's just this assumption of lack of oversight and impunity that's really embedded in the culture of the agency and its relationship with the public.
**Inmn ** 33:53 Yeah. And maybe to clarify, these calls that y'all are listening to or like requesting, these are like, the dispatch calls? Like, if dispatch hangs up, is that where the recording ends? Like, y'all aren't hearing the Border Patrol...like, once they're transferred, you're not hearing anything else?
**Sophie ** 34:15 Right. To get the Border Patrol end, you would have to have a successful FOIA, you know, which could take years and generally doesn't render those kinds of recordings easily.
**Parker ** 34:27 Yeah, we submitted a FOIA request in 2818 or something and are still waiting on documents. And we're working with a law firm who's litigating it and we still, you know, have like, just started to get some documents. And that's, you know, that's beyond the capacity for most people.
**Inmn ** 34:44 Yeah, to get these like recordings of Border Patrol calls with people? Yeah, okay. Um, so there's kind of like another side to...there's another component to this report too, which is, I believe y'all call it "compromised care," or "EMS collaboration with border enforcement." I was wondering if y'all could talk a little bit about that?
**Parker ** 35:16 Yeah. Do you want to start with that one, Sophie?
**Sophie ** 35:18 Yeah, I mean, I think that's a part of the report that pulls on aid worker testimony more heavily. It was really inspired by experiences of our volunteers--I mean, including Parker and I--working in the field and encountering people in distress who needed, you know, emergency evacuation to the hospital, and seeing the kind of infiltration of border patrol into the emergency medical response system, you know, every step of the way. So compromised care is less about search and rescue cases and more looking at the way in which Border Patrol infiltrates and inhibits EMS. So, I think Parker and I both have stories connected to this, but I was...in one situation I was out in the desert to put out water on Christmas with other volunteers and we encountered this woman Lupe in distress who had a collapsed lung. She had been attacked in the desert and left under a blanket and she was in respiratory distress. And she had been there for, you know, overnight, like a long time since that abandonment piece, right? And no one had been down that remote road until we happened to choose to go to a water drop out there that day. And we called, you know, talked to her.... And even though she was in such distress, it actually took a while to get her consent to call 911 because she was crossing because her son was chronically ill. She needed to make money to pay for his medical procedure, and, you know, was desperate to make it. And eventually, she did consent to calling 911. And we, you know, let them know we're in this vehicle on this road heading to the local fire station. And when we arrived, there was this armada of Border Patrol, like 10 agents, multiple trucks, surrounding the fire station essentially and in and around the ambulance. And when they were taking her from our vehicle, you know, into the ambulance before realizing they needed to call for her to be, you know, helicoptered to the emergency room because it was so desperate, the agents were getting in the way of medical workers to try to get her ID to start processing her on her criminal migration violation, you know, while she's like receiving care. And we followed her case, and she was...she had been, you know, assaulted in the desert and was handcuffed to her hospital bed. She had a Border Patrol agent stationed in the room with her the whole time she was there. You know, which is incredibly intimidating for someone who's a survivor of assault or anyone. And eventually, I mean, her case was interesting because she eventually qualified for a U-Visa, a protected status, because she had been the victim of a crime in the United States. And we saw sort of the interplay between the county that was treating her as the victim of a crime and Border Patrol that was treating her as a criminal. So that was a really stark example. And we saw, you know, every time that we've evacuated someone to the fire station to get to the emergency room, Border Patrol follows the ambulance. You know, they're really kind of embedded every step of the way, which is a deterrent to calling 911 in the first place and also can really inhibit care. Parker, I don't know if you wanted to talk about cases you've seen?
**Parker ** 39:05 Yeah, one that really stands out to me is I was volunteering at our humanitarian-aid station one time and a man came in who had been bitten by a rattlesnake. He came in and told us that he had just been bitten. So myself and another volunteer, you know, immediately wanted to call 911, but similarly, you know, for a long time was saying that he didn't want us to call 911, he didn't want to go to a hospital, that he thought he was fine because of course he knew that if we did call 911 and and ambulance came, that would result in him being deported. This is a man who had lived in Tucson for years before being deported. And his family was there. His young daughter was there. And she had actually recently had an accident. So he was, you know, very urgently trying to get back to his family and didn't want to be deported. And eventually he started to show symptoms and we said "Look, we like have to call 911. Like, we're really afraid that you might die." He agreed and was brought to the hospital. A volunteer was able to visit him in the hospital. And yeah, Border Patrol was.... He ended up being evacuated by helicopter. Border Patrol was waiting to start processing him as he was prepared to do Lifeflight to the hospital in Tucson. You know, as soon as we started driving up, to like drive him to where we were meeting the helicopter, he saw the Border Patrol vehicle and was like, "I don't want to go," you know. So it was really...you know, there's a huge deterrence to people to–even when they're like in a life critical situation to call 911, because they know Border Patrol is waiting for them. They know they're going to be deported. You know, he ended up being brought to the hospital. They were denying visitation for a long time. They had him handcuffed at the hospital. Border Patrol was stationed in his room at the hospital. And then he ended up being deported without even completing his full medical care. He still had follow up work to do, which is a thing that we also document and see pretty often is people being deported who are still in pretty unstable medical conditions.
**Sophie ** 41:08 Yeah. And just sort of violations of medical ethics every step of the way because of someone's...simply because of their identity or status.
**Inmn ** 41:25 Are there like...are there laws that require EMS to inform on someone's known or unknown status?
**Sophie ** 41:37 I mean, my understanding of that is it's really less about a legal mandate and more about funding and getting bumper funding from the federal government to cover, you know, the 30% of EMS calls and transfers in border counties that are undocumented people in distress. And so like calling and filing with Border Patrol is a way to access those bumper funds. Parker, do you have thoughts about that?
**Parker ** 42:10 No, I mean, I believe the answer is, no, there is nothing that requires them to inform on someone's medical status. It really is about funding and the fact that, you know, Border Patrol has created this humanitarian crisis that's overwhelmed the local emergency response systems in these rural areas. So they get reinforcement, I believe, from the Department of Home.... I mean, reimbursement from the Department of Homeland Security for the cost of providing the care. And that really is what has created this system.
**Inmn ** 42:39 Yeah. Dang.... That's, you know, that's just all really fucked up. That's, my very...articulate opinion about all of this is it's just really fucked up. I guess, like, what is the justification for the county to pass off all of this stuff to Border Patrol?
**Parker ** 43:09 So yeah, when we have, you know, confronted the county about this, they consistently deny making any decisions based on immigration status, which in addition to being a constitutional issue is against their own policies. And so what they'll consistently say is that they don't make any decisions based on immigration status but it's purely based on a caller's location and what resources are the closest, so saying, you know, Border Patrol is closest and that's the only reason we transfer. It has nothing to do with them having crossed the border. But, you know, we know that this isn't true for a number of different reasons. One is, you know, we document a lot of calls, like this one that Sophie was describing earlier, where the same person has called for hours and hours. You know, if you have the same person calling for 10 hours, he still hasn't been rescued. You can't say that you're just transferring to Border Patrol because they're gonna respond faster, you know, if you know, they're not responding. So, yeah, what we find in the calls is that it really is, you know, the person's spoken language and saying that they're lost is really used as sort of like a stand in to determine that a caller is crossing the border, rather than actually being like the basis of why they're transferring the calls.
**Sophie ** 44:22 And we have documentation of this. So there's this case that was really kind of important to the development of this report that came in through the Missing Migrant Hotline. This was in May of 2019. The family of a 17 year old named Daniel had called the Missing Migrant Hotline because Daniel had contacted...or traveling companions of Danielle had contacted them. So he was 17. He was traveling with other people crossing the border and he fell ill, was unable to walk ,was maybe unconscious, and his traveling companions contacted his family, told them his condition, and said that they left him 10 or 15 minutes from a paved intersection and Miranda, which is a suburb of Tucson. So not remote backcountry at all. Like a named, paved intersection. And they had screenshots of the location. And so then the family called Border Patrol with this information, asking for response and Border Patrol refused to deploy. And then they called the Missing Migrant Hotline, and a volunteer who picked up the call then called--with their consent called 911--and so this volunteer was English speaking and called 911 and said, "There's a 17 year old in distress this far from this intersection." He wasn't asked anything about the identity of the caller. He didn't...you know, he just said this is a person in distress. And then was told that, you know, deputies and multiple fire departments were en route to that location to the point-last-scene. And then they heard nothing for a few hours and the volunteer called back to see what was going on with the search and learned from the detective on the phone that they had called off the local response, the search and rescue deputies, the fire departments, because they discovered that Daniel was a known illegal immigrant. And that was the language in their case notes on the report, that it became apparent to them that he was a known illegal immigrant. So they'd called off local resources and instead transferred his case to Border Patrol. There was no follow up number and no one for the family to call to see what was the status of Border Patrol's efforts to look further for him. And Border Patrol had already refused once to go out. And then three days later, his remains were recovered extremely close to the location that was provided by his traveling companions. And so that was a really outrageous case in which it was obvious that, you know, this is a suburb, this isn't the backcountry, and that his case was, you know, forwarded, as they're reporting themselves, because of his status to Border Patrol, who then did not prevent loss of life and the 17 year old died as a consequence. And this is incredibly normal. And even when we confronted, you know, with the family and a coalition, confronted the then Sheriff Napier about this, they still insisted that it was just location because they know that it's a constitutional issue that it can be litigated against, if they admit, even though they've done it in writing, that they're forwarding based on people's identity. And then we have, you know, the opposite. We have cases of citizens calling for search and rescue in and around Arivaca, like in the border zone in this exact same mountains where a lot of these distress calls are coming from undocumented people, like people who went out to go hunting and got lost, and those calls aren't transferred. They get a full intake and deputies on the way to rescue that person. So we have a lot of, you know, evidence to contradict their policy. But they seem to, you know.... And I think this is part of why we don't hear dispatchers in these calls saying, asking directly, "Are you undocumented? Are you an immigrant? What's your citizenship?" Because they know that that's illegal. Instead, there's sort of these like, kind of code words for that. Like, they'll always ask, you know, "Are you lost?" and lost becomes, you know, a coded way of talking about someone's status to justify transferring the call.
**Parker ** 48:31 I mean, it's literally in their system now, They have it's like, "Lost person," is their official designation, whereas like search and rescue calls with citizens are, you know, coded as "search and rescue." You know, even if they're lost. But if the caller is speaking Spanish, they're called a "lost person." It's sort of their euphemism. And then as to dispatch, like you mentioned some of the damning quotes that we do have in the report, Inmn, you know, in these calls directly from people in distress, you're not really hearing them, directly address their immigration status, even though that is the basis of how they're responding to the calls. But we do have some recordings from over the years where you might happen to get like a dispatch from another county who's transferring over a call and you hear the two, you know, county officials talking to each other. And we have a couple of cases like that. Like one where someone's calling, I think from...I think that one's Maricopa, and they're saying, you know, "We have a call from this person. They're in your jurisdiction." And the Pima County dispatch is like, "Well, you know, are they speaking Spanish?" And, you know, the other dispatch is like, "Yes." And they're like, "Okay, so are they illegal? Because we're not going to go search for them." You know, or like a case we had from 2018, where they said, "Actually, we're not going to deal with that." And I myself and some other people have had experiences of trying to call 911 to get a response for someone and a dispatch, you know, maybe at that point doesn't, you know, know that they're not supposed to say this directly, will just say like, "Oh, is it a migrant? We don't search for migrants." So there's this thing where it's very well known internally that that is their policy, but it's also known especially amongst the higherups in the sheriff's department that they can't say that directly. So you just hear this sort of like, repetitive like, "Nope, it's based on location. Nope, it's only based on location because Border Patrol responds faster," kind of no matter what information we present them with to the country.
**Inmn ** 50:21 Yeah, that's...I don't know.
**Sophie ** 50:22 So it's rife for, you know, transformation. It's a context that's rife for serious transformation, I would say.
**Inmn ** 50:33 I mean, is there any hope of transformation beyond the abolition of the border and Border Patrol or like the shitty hell-government that we have?
**Sophie ** 50:51 I mean, you know, part of me wants to say no. But I also know that there are serious harm reduction measures that could be put in place pretty swiftly to affect a lot of people's lives. I mean, in the report we list a number of simple reforms that could happen within the dispatch system, such as having Spanish fluency be a requirement, right, for dispatcher hiring, such as requiring a full intake, such as requiring the county remain...maintain responsibility for these cases even if they're calling in Border Patrol, that they're responsible for the outcome and responding. So essentially, like, you know, there's little granular reforms that could be made to the dispatch system. There's a more general reform of everyone in the county should have the same response regardless of status, right? And if the county did actually have to bear the full burden of responding to these calls, they have the capacity to put pressure on the federal government, right, in a way that maybe we don't directly do something to change policy. So there are those pieces. And, you know, I think a lot of that requires further investigation into this issue. More litigation. So suing them, you know, and trying to increase accountability and equity, you know. A more robust response is totally possible. Yeah. And trying to....I think part of what's empowering about looking at the county versus looking at border patrol directly, like this report versus the others, is when we're looking at Border Patrol directly. It's like this, you know, totally opaque, powerful federal agency, that's getting all this war on terror funding, you know. It's like really hermetic and, you know, the goliath when thinking about trying to get any wins. But when you're talking about the county, it's like, there is more leverage, you know, for local people to demand accountability. They're more vulnerable to litigation. So there is kind of...I see it as something that can be more effectively pressured if you're thinking in those kinds of terms, you know. Will it end the border crisis? You know, not unto itself. But certainly it's an angle from which to try to squeeze the policy of Prevention Through Deterrence, you know. So we're hopeful that, you know, further investigation and exposure can put more pressure from this direction. I don't know if Parker has thoughts about that, but I found it more encouraging to actually have names and faces of people to challenge, you know, to answer for these policies, for example.
**Parker ** 53:48 Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think it's.... You know, search and rescue, no matter how well funded, is not the solution to the border crisis in that sense. You know, we gotta abolish border patrol for that. You know, definitely try and really center that we want this border crisis to end. We don't want solely just more humane responses to it. But, yeah, I mean, I guess I'll just say that working on these reports, especially "Left To Die," you know, it is obviously really fucked up heavy content, but there's a lot of inspiration there in seeing how like communities respond themselves to go out and search for people and the way that families respond and just like the solidarity between people crossing the border as well as like border communities. And so, you know, I think that was sort of like a salve in sitting with all of this content is just, you know, seeing the incredible ways that people have responded...just themselves, you know, outside of these sorts of like, official response systems.
**Inmn ** 54:54 Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, you know, it's the question of like, "How can this be better?" it's like, yeah, Border Patrol is the cause of the problem. So reforming it isn't gonna provide a solution because they are the problem. They can't.... You know? Like, they're doing what they set out to do and it seems like they're responses to search and rescue and things like that are just in line with what they set out to do, which is exactly what's happening. But, yeah, do y'all have any other kind of...I guess closing things for.... I don't know, for.... I think about this within a more direct connection to themes of the podcast, but what can people who live near border regions do to prepare for encounters that they might have with finding people who need help, regardless of their of their documentations status, or like encountering people who are lost or in need of medical care? How can people prepare for that?
**Sophie ** 56:11 Well, I think really, you know, kill the cop in your mind and know that humanitarian aid is never a crime. And that there's...you know, there are court cases to back that up. And there's a lot of people to back you up. I think, you know, if you live in a border region, familiarize yourself with the humanitarian groups and non-governmental groups that are working in that region. If there isn't one, start one. I think, contact the ACLU about setting up a Know Your Rights training. There's a lot of groundwork that can be done and you're not reinventing the wheel to, you know, connect with others around this and lose your fears that you can act like a human person when you meet human people in trouble. So I think there's a lot you can do. But it really starts with sort of embracing the notion that helping people out in a human way is not criminal, which is difficult when you're living under the intimidation of checkpoints and helicopters but know that people are doing this on their own every day.
**Inmn ** 57:20 Yeah.
**Sophie ** 57:24 The other thing I want to say is just that I think right now we're seeing this.... You know, we're recording this November 22 or more than 40 days into the Israeli bombing campaign and ground invasion of Gaza and a lot of people kind of power mapping, you know, how is it that the US is delivering 70% of its military aid to Israel? You know, and what are the kind of the direct links between US border militarization and the militarism that's, you know, killed at least 14,000 people in Gaza, and through that power mapping there's a lot of revelations about weapons contractors that are, you know, there's shared contracting between the militarization of the border and the militarization of the occupied territories. And, you know, people targeting Elbit Systems, for example, an Israeli company that has a multi-billion dollar contract for surveillance systems on the border that have super deadly consequences and putting pressure on them because they're also a contractor advancing, you know, this moment of really genocidal violence in in Gaza and the West Bank. And so I think really, you know, supporting those campaigns and connecting those dots, because these are.... There's sort of one industry that supports both of these border regimes, you know. And when we're talking about segregation, we're talking about forms of apartheid, you know. It is an apartheid system if you have separate laws and separate classifications applying to people based on identity and we certainly see that living in the border zone when we're looking at something like the 911 system. So that you know, these struggles are interlocking and I think it's really powerful and important to bring that solidarity in so that we don't feel so alone, you know, when we're fighting these goliaths.
**Inmn ** 59:38 And it's like the...I don't know if it's weird to...or whatever it's not weird. It's just how information processes but like to.... I remember like 10 years ago when I first got involved with border aid stuff like getting this like tore of the desert and seeing these virtual towers, or listening posts or whatever they're called, and like having the person who was facilitating that training talk about them like "Yeah, they're like made by this Israeli company Elbit...the same company that builds these systems of surveillance in Palestine." And that's happening to people in Palestine is essentially testing equipment and shit to use other places. And yeah, it's wild to see a lot of that coming out now. But how like these different border regions have been connected for a very long time. And I don't know, that's not very articulate. But it's all just bad. This is my burnout brain from talking about this for two hours being like, I don't know, shit's fucked.
**Sophie ** 1:01:23 But we must fight. Go to the protest. Such an important and powerful time to be getting together on this.
**Inmn ** 1:01:34 Yeah, and it's like, like we see with stuff in the US-Mexico so-called, like region that, a huge thing that people can do is to just form community-aid organizations or groups and have these conversations with your community to build preparedness for how to deal with finding people who are lost, how to deal with the--it's hard to say lacking because it's purposeful--but the conditions that Border Patrol or like the US government or any government has created that are in these humanitarian crises.
**Parker ** 1:02:20 Yeah, and I, you know, I mean, obviously, this work is also connected to any migrant justice work happening away from the border. And, you know, I think just having this awareness of knowing anyone who's deported from anywhere in the United States, this is what they face if they try and like return to their families. Like I said, a lot of people we run into in the desert, they're from Tucson or, you know, they've lived in the United States for a long time. And I think also just sort of like an awareness of the impact. I think there's less of an awareness of what the border is like, what the crossing is like, when you're away from it. Even though, you know, there's so many people everywhere in our country who have been, you know, affected by the trauma of crossing through the desert or are, you know, threatened with, you know, having to do that, again if they are deported or go visit their family in Mexico or something, you know, it creates such a huge barrier of like trauma between south of the border north of the border. So I think a lot of people, you know, when I give presentations are like, "What can we do to support No More Deaths?" And it's, you know, probably something in your own community.
**Inmn ** 1:03:31 Yeah. Cool. Well, that seems like a good place to kind of leave it. Unless, I don't know, do you either of y'all have anything else you'd like to say or are there questions that I didn't ask you that I should have asked you?
**Sophie ** 1:03:49 No, we just appreciate you so much.
**Inmn ** 1:03:53 Aww, I appreciate y'all.
**Sophie ** 1:03:56 It's really nice to talk through it.
**Inmn ** 1:03:58 Yeah. And I don't know, that's one of the big reasons I wanted to have y'all come on is that these conversations are so embedded in southern Arizona in like these places and I've had funny moments of going other places and trying to talk about this stuff and realizing that like nobody has any clue what I'm talking about. And I get really confused. I'm like, what do you mean? It's so obvious that all this stuff is happening? And it's...I don't know. Yeah. But they're just very embedded in our lives and our communities and I don't know.... So thank you all for coming on and telling more people about this. And if people want to learn more about it, where can people find the report or any of the reports that No More Deaths has put out?
**Parker ** 1:04:55 We have a website it's thedisappearedreport.org And if you forget that, you can just go to the No More Deaths website and find the link on there if you click on the Abuse Documentation tab. But yeah, that'll have all of our past reports as well as we have summaries and fact sheets for them as well, as well as some really beautifully done animated videos showing the findings of the different reports. Not the last one but the first three.
**Inmn ** 1:05:20 And there's a pretty cool article that someone wrote about it whose name I'm forgetting.
**Parker ** 1:05:27 Tanvi Misra at High Country News.
**Inmn ** 1:05:33 Okay, well, thanks y'all for coming on and talking about grim stuff and providing some little nuggets of hope.
**Sophie ** 1:05:45 Thank you, Inmn. Take care.
**Inmn ** 1:05:51 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoy this podcast then abolish the border? Abolish Border Patrol? If you could figure that out, a lot of people would be really grateful. And, you know, you can also tell people about the podcast. It's the main way that people hear about the show. And honestly, one of the better ways to support it. You could also like and subscribe or rate and review or whatever these words are. I don't really know how the internet works. And, you know, boost it in the algorithm. I don't...I don't really know about that. But if you want to support us in other sillier ways--sillier to me because, you know, all things are silly. Well, not all things. Wow, Inmn's in a ranting mood..... Another way to support the show is by supporting our publisher, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, and you can support strangers by going to tangledwilderness.org and buying books and zines and games. We have a lot of fun stuff coming out, you know, soon and next year including the TTRPG that we've been working on for an incredibly long time, Penumbra City. It is currently out for preorder and it's going to be starting shipping in February. And you can also support Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness by finding us on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. On Patreon, if you support us at $10 a month then you can join the Zine of the Month Club where we'll mail you a zine which is a feature that we put out every month. A lot of our...a lot of the features come from listeners and followers of the show and other podcasts that we put out. So find us at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And in particular, we would like to thank these Patreon subscribers who have joined another club. And clubs are cool. I think. I don't know. I don't know if clubs are cool. But these people are cool and they are Patoli, Eric, Perceval, Buck, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixster, Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, Funder, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, SJ, Paige, Nicole, David, Dana Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Michaiah, and Hoss the dog. Thank you so much for everything that you've helped us with. And we hope that everyone's doing as well as they can with everything that's going on. And we'll talk to you next time. Okay, bye.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn is joined by Sophie and Parker from No More Deaths to talk about the militarization of the US-Mexico border and the most recent installment of the "Disappeared" report series "Separate & Deadly."
The Disappeared report can be found at www.thedisappearedreport.org. No More Deaths can be found at nomoredeaths.org, on Instagram @nomoredeaths_nomasmuertes, or on Twitter @nomoredeaths.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
No More Death on The “Disappeared” Reports & Border Militarization Pt. I
**Inmn ** 00:14 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcasts for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today, Inmn, and today we have some folks coming on that I've really wanted to get on the podcast for a while because I think that the work that they do is just really incredible and I want more people to know about it. So we have two folks from No More Deaths, or No Mas Muertes, coming on. And No More Deaths is a humanitarian aid group whose goal is to, you know, prevent death and suffering in the borderlands. And they work primarily in southern Arizona in response to rampant border militarization. And I'm really excited that they have this new report coming out in their series of reports called the "Disappeared" series. And their new report, "Separate & Deadly", just came out. And we'll have links in the show notes to where to find it to read the whole thing. And I'm really excited to have folks from, specifically, the abuse doc, or abuse documentation, working group, coming on because I think a lot of focus gets put on the physical doing, the putting out water, and all of that, and that stuff is really important, you know, obviously, but I also think it's great to really highlight the work that a lot of people have been doing to document the reason and the need and the reactions from Border Patrol and other governmental bodies in response to this humanitarian aid. And so yeah, I don't know, I'm really excited to highlight this particular aspect of that work. But before we get to that, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo.
**Inmn ** 03:19 And we're back. Thanks, y'all so much for coming on the show today to talk about this thing. Could y'all introduce yourselves with your name, pronouns, and I guess what your role is with No More Deaths and this report?
**Parker ** 03:37 Yeah, I can go first. My name is Parker. I use she/her pronouns. I have been involved with No More Deaths since about 2015. I came down and started volunteering in the desert. Moved to Tucson a little bit after that. So I've been involved with desert aid and then also involved with the abuse documentation working group producing the Disappeared report that we're going to talk about. Sophie and I were co-coordinators for several years working on that project and then have both been involved as volunteers.
**Sophie ** 04:10 Hi, my name is Sophie and I use she/they pronouns. And I've been a volunteer with No More Deaths since 2011, volunteering with desert aid and also with community-based search and rescue and I'm a co-author for the Disappeared report series and co-coordinated with Parker on this report.
**Inmn ** 04:29 Cool. And for folks who don't know, what is No More Deaths? What does No More Deaths do?
**Parker ** 04:49 No More Deaths is a humanitarian aid organization whose mission is to end death and suffering in the borderlands. No More Deaths was formed in 2004 in response to rising deaths of people crossing the border. There's a number of different working groups and projects under the No More Deaths umbrella. So Sophie and I have been a part of the abuse documentation working group, documenting the kinds of things we're seeing in the course of the work. There's desert aid. They do water drops, where we bring out water and food and leave them on migrant trails in the remote borderlands. We maintain a humanitarian aid camp where people can come and get food and water and respite. We do a community-based search and rescue project where there's a hotline and we get reports of people who have gone missing while crossing the border and can send out volunteers to do search and rescue. We also do some support in Northern Mexico for post-deportation or pre-departure support. Yeah, so there's a lot of different projects under this umbrella but all for humanitarian aid trying to provide support for people who are crossing the border in southern Arizona.
**Inmn ** 05:59 Cool. Yeah, y'all do so many different things. And I've been wanting to get someone from the group to come talk about stuff for a while now. I used to volunteer with y'all and I reference border-aid stuff on the podcast a lot. So I'm just really stoked to have you all here to talk about this. And the new report was a great opportunity to wrangle some folks into coming on. I was wondering, though, if y'all could share a little bit about like the...I guess the context of the border and, specifically, border militarization and Border Patrol's role in that to kind of build a little foundation for what we're going to talk about today.
**Sophie ** 06:51 Yeah, so, when talking about the militarization of the US-Mexico border, usually, we're kind of looking at a time period of the last 30 years or so starting in 1994--which certainly wasn't the start of border militarization--but was a signal year in terms of the enforcement strategy on the border really shifting gears. So in 1994--many people remember that year because it was the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which had really huge consequences for migration. We know that NAFTA contained neoliberal economic reforms that took away tariffs and barriers to trade and lead things like US subsidized corn to flood the market in Mexico which drove down prices and then spiked this labor-driven migration of people who had historically been able to make ends meet through farming heritage corn and no longer could compete. So we know that NAFTA sparked this labor-division migration. We know that's not the first time that US policy has sparked migrations across the border. But what was different in 1994 was at the same time the US Border Patrol came together to come up with a policing strategy of how they were going to control the border given this expected rise in labor-driven migration from south to north. And so Border Patrol met with security heads from the Department of Defense, who are versed in conducting regime change and low intensity conflict doctrine throughout Latin America in the 80s. And they produced a new strategy for how they're going to police the 2000 mile southern border. The strategy that they came up with is called Prevention Through Deterrence, which is kind of a technical and clunky title for a really nefarious strategy. So the theory was that the southern border couldn't be sealed off entirely despite all the rhetoric we see about, you know, border walls, sealing the southern border. The Border Patrol observed that the border couldn't actually be sealed from migration, but that the flow of migration across the border could be controlled. And so Border Patrol sought to concentrate enforcement resources--so, personnel, vehicles, infrastructure like walls, surveillance technology--in and around ports of entry in urban areas along the border where migration had historically flowed as a mechanism that would then push people attempting across the southern border without official permission out into remote areas along the border between ports of entry between cities. so especially huge expanses of desert along the border. And the strategy document--which is public, you can look at it online--specifically says that the strategy intends to push people out into remote areas where they can find themselves in mortal danger as a consequence of being exposed to the elements without access to food, water, or rescue. And the belief was that by pushing people into these remote areas, a certain number of people would not make it. They would be deterred, either having to turn back or they would perish and that this would then dissuade others from attempting the journey. It would prevent rising levels of migration. This was the theory, Prevention Through Deterrence, that by making the border as deadly, as costly as possible to cross, that this would deter others...it would prevent others from attempting the journey. And so what happens is that Border Patrol puts up walls, installs surveillance technology in and around ports of entry in places like El Paso/Juarez, in places like Nogales, in places like San Diego/Tijuana, all at the end of the 1990s. And indeed, this shifts patterns of migration, undocumented migration, out into these really remote regions of the desert, where people are having to undertake multi-day journeys on foot through really rugged geography. And immediately we start to see hundreds of remains, human remains, recovered from remote areas of the border by 2000, 2001, and 2002 as a result of this policy, people who are dying from things like exposure to the elements or whose death cause is actually not able to be determined because their remains have decomposed so much before they've been located because they're perishing in such remote areas. So this humanitarian crisis opens up on the border in the early 2000s. And this is what humanitarian groups like No More Deaths and others start attempting to respond to. And this is still the policy that we see on the southern border. Of course, it's been bolstered by things like the 2006 Secure Fence Act, which really increased the number of Border Patrol agents on the line dramatically and allowed agents to start to patrol remote areas and rural communities in addition to being stationed in cities, to push people out into the desert, and also extended funding for walls. We also have seen more recent walls go up under the Trump administration. And now Biden's also funding that, But this is still the strategy under which Border Patrol is policing the southern border. And, again, this was never a strategy to close the border but to try to control the rate of crossing by making it as deadly or dangerous as possible. And so the thing about Prevention Through Deterrence is that it's been incredibly successful in pushing people out into remote areas where they find themselves in mortal danger, that that, indeed, was a prediction that that did come to pass. We know that the remains of at least 10,000 people have been recovered from the southern border. And experts estimate that the true number of deaths are probably three to ten times higher than that number, because so many people are perishing in such remote areas that their remains are never found or if they're found they're never identifiable. So we call this a crisis of death and disappearance on the border due to that phenomenon. But we also know that Prevention Through Deterrence has been a real failure in terms of preventing undocumented crossing on the southern border. This policy has coincided with a lot of measures to cut off legal paths of entry, shrink asylum programs, refugee programs, and further criminalize migration. And as a consequence, more and more populations are being caught up into this system. And more and more families are moving to the US permanently rather than risk multiple crossings to migrate seasonally for work or things like that. So this is the same system under which a lot of people fleeing conditions in the Northern Triangle as a consequence of US policy in the hemisphere, they're being caught up in this system of migration too. And we know that there's at least 13 million people now residing in the US who don't have documentation or full status or protection or rights as a consequence of this. So this is really the context in which humanitarian groups are trying to respond by providing food, water, and even improvised emergency medical services in these remote areas. And it's also a context in which, in terms of abuse documentation, there's a real need for witnessing and documentation of what's happening on the ground out in the back country where Border Patrol agents are operating daily with no witnesses and virtual impunity. So this was really kind of the context that gave rise to the abuse documentation project in general and these reports more specifically,
**Inmn ** 15:38 Cool.... Or I mean, you know, not "cool," but thank you for walking us through that. I've heard a lot...you know, over the years, I've heard a lot of...been to a lot of trainings where there's like a border militarization context and I don't know that I've ever heard it put so succinctly and neatly. So that's...that is incredible. And, yeah, it's funny, because when I was putting together notes for the show today, I had like a little note, like, "Oh, make sure to talk about the Deterrence Through Death strategy." And then I was like, "Wait, is that what it's called?" And then I couldn't remember if that's like, what it was officially called, or not. And then, yeah...remembering that it was maybe not called that--
**Parker ** 16:33 No, that's just what it is.
**Inmn ** 16:34 Yeah. That's just what it is. Okay, well, could y'all, I guess, maybe with that foundation, what is the abuse doc working group then do? And like how did the "Disappeared" report series come to be?
**Parker ** 16:52 Yeah, the abuse documentation working group, it's been, you know, around through a number of different projects with different volunteers leading them. A lot of the earlier reports that No More Deaths was putting out were focused on detention. So we put out a report called "Culture of Cruelty" that really focused on really inhumane conditions, abusive conditions, within Border Patrol custody--so short term Border Patrol custody before people are deported or turned over to ICE--and focusing on things such as denial of food and water, denial of medical care, psychological abuse.... Just yeah, really horrible conditions, people being held longer than they're legally supposed to without being given phone calls and things like that. So that report primarily was done through interviews with people who had been deported and just kind of arose out of the conversations people were having with people through our support work at shelters there and hearing the conditions that they were being held under. So "Culture of Cruelty" was one of our earlier reports. We put out "Shakedown," which focuses on Border Patrol's, seizing up people's belongings when people are in Border Patrol custody without returning it. And both of those reports really focused on advocacy and trying to, you know, push for policy changes in response to these patterns that we were documenting. And I think people sort of had the experience of, you know, providing really clear documentation and then seeing that Border Patrol is still just denying the same things that, you know, we're showing proof of and not seeing the changes that they wanted to see come out of those reports. The "Disappeared" series, I think was a shift, organizationally, in wanting to really document what's happening in these remote borderlands areas and really push our messaging to call for the abolition of Border Patrol and really just say what we wanted to say politically and document things that there was really no documentation of at that time. So the "Disappeared" report series, it's focusing on the actions of Border Patrol in remote borderlands areas where there's, you know, there's no transparency whatsoever about what's happening, because there has been this intentional push to push migration into wilderness areas and really focusing on Prevention Through Deterrence but also the way that the day-to-day actions of Border Patrol agents are consistent with this logic of increasing the risk of death to people who are migrating in the ways that that logic is carried out on the ground. And it was a collaborative project. So the "Disappeared" report series started as a collaboration between No More Deaths and another organization called La Coalición de Derechos Humanos, who has been really vocal against militarization from the very beginning. At the time Derechos Humanos, they were operating a missing migrant crisis line, similar to what No More Deaths operates now, so they were receiving this huge volume of calls from family members reporting their loved ones who were missing. And No More Deaths started to collaborate with them with doing search and rescue in the field when they received a call where there was a viable possibility that that person was still alive and could be rescued. So that collaboration led to the "Disappeared" report series. And, yeah, so we've put out, this is the fourth installment of the "Disappeared" report series.
**Inmn ** 20:32 So what have the other parts of the "Disappeared" reports explored?
**Parker ** 20:37 Um, yeah, so the first report focuses on deadly apprehension methods, particularly on the practice of Chase and Scatter in the wilderness. So this is documenting a practice that, you know, we see and hear about every day in the course of this work, where Border Patrol chases groups of migrating people causing them to scatter and become separated from each other in the remote wilderness, often not detaining a lot of the people who have become separated. And this is really the beginning of a cycle of death and disappearance because when people are scattered in the wilderness like this, they can become injured in the chase, they become separated from their group, which may include family members that they were traveling with, separated from a guide, they become lost and disoriented, you know, people are crossing in this area that have no familiarity with the landscape. So a lot of the time when we encounter people who are, you know, in a life threatening situation, it's because they've been chased and scattered by Border Patrol. And so they're now lost and alone in the wilderness. People lose their belongings in the chase, lose their food, water. And so this is something that, you know, with the hotline where we receive calls from family members, a lot of the time they're saying, you know, "My loved one was chased by Border Patrol. They don't know where they are. They're separated from their group. They need to be rescued." This is so routine Border Patrol really doesn't see it as an abuse. They see it as the way that they are enforcing the border. But it is an extremely dangerous enforcement practice.
**Sophie ** 22:10 In the practice of chase and scatter that we examined in part one, we looked at surveys conducted in Nogales as well as the Derechos hotline cases and found that chase and scatter by Border Patrol agents is incredibly common, as Parker was saying, that we found that 40% of people who had been chased by Border Patrol became injured or even killed through the process of that chase. 40% of people who had been chased and scattered became lost. And 35% of the emergency cases that we looked at that involved chase and scatter ended in the disappearance of the person who came into distress after that enforcement context. So it's really a way in which Border Patrol's daily activities are reinforcing the strategy of Prevention Through Deterrence on the ground by sending helicopters and vehicles and agents on foot and dogs after people in remote areas who run in every direction often late at night when Border Patrol agents have night vision goggles. And, you know, we looked at the way in which they've actually documented this activity themselves on the Cops-style reality show, Border Wars, that has many scenes of chase and scatter. So we looked at some of that in which Border Patrol is actually documenting their own crimes and using it as propaganda for the agency.
**Inmn ** 23:55 I didn't know that that TV show existed. That's...yeah...that's absurd.
**Sophie ** 24:02 I don't recommend it. But it was helpful in kind of...you know, we're interested in the way in which these agencies are providing evidence of their own abuses.
**Inmn ** 24:20 Yeah, and I like for.... I guess, for the chase and scatter protocol, like, you know, not that I would prefer that people get apprehended, but why.... I guess, why do the chase and scatter thing instead of apprehending people, which seems to be what Border Patrol like tells the public they're trying to do versus like what they actually do.
**Sophie ** 24:48 I mean, I think that chase and scatter is part of a more general pattern where we're seeing migrating people being treated as enemy combatants, enemies of the state, against whom it's somehow appropriate to deploy all the weapons of war. And I think watching Border Wars, you really do see this as war games to an extent. And I think that, you know, the other piece of that, beyond just wanting to, you know, use the kind of military-style equipment that they're given--and we're talking about this, by the way, in the context of like, we're on US soil where this is happening. This is like anywhere from the border line all the way to 100 miles within the US interior is the terrain in which Border Patrol is operating. And when you look at death maps, you can see recovered remains kind of scattered far into the US interior. But really, you know, from Border Patrol's perspective, whether they apprehend a person or they scatter them so that they become lost, disoriented, and in harm's way, either of those outcomes reinforce the strategy of Prevention Through Deterrence, right? On the one hand, you have increased apprehensions as a way to, you know, in their minds, deter others from attempting the journey. And on the other, you have injury and death as a way to build up that deterrent. Again, we see that that deterrence ultimately doesn't work when measured against the conditions that people are leaving or fleeing from in order to cross the border. But both outcomes absolutely serve the overall strategy of Prevention Through Deterrence. And I think it's just another way in which we see people's lives, who are crossing the border, being treated as disposable and not deserving of the kinds of protections afforded to us, right, that it's not important to them whether they apprehend everyone, whether people become lost, and those people are not even counted. So I think that that sort of a deeper structural violence at play in these scenarios.
**Parker ** 26:56 Was gonna say the same thing. I think there's sort of just like an institutionalized lack of concern for the outcomes that people face, especially because the outcome of someone potentially dying is baked into the strategy. I remember one of our co-authors talking about when they released the "Chase and Scatter" report, talking to a Border Patrol agent, who I think at the time was the head of they're Missing Migrant Initiative, just saying, you know, "Oh, yeah, I never even thought about what happened to people after we chased them." So, you know, they scatter a group, they arrest a couple people, they call it a day. They don't think about it, and if that person is lost and alone and doesn't have water, well, that's consistent with their enforcement anyways.
**Sophie ** 27:37 Right. And the border is just a kind of erratic and contradictory zone where on the one hand, the US-Mexico border zone is one of the most heavily surveilled places on Earth, right, in which enforcement can consolidate in these moments and become incredibly violent. You can be, you know, killed by a heavily armed agent with all these weapons of war, treated as this enemy combatant, on the one hand. On the other hand, you can die of exposure and dehydration and, you know, being in an area where you don't see another person for days at a time. So there's sort of these two forces of, you know, militarism and direct violence, on the one hand, these kinds of really violent kind of events, and then on the other, the forces of abandonment, right, where there's no one to help you. And these things work together. Which is sort of difficult to grasp when you're in that zone, right? If you're circulating in the border zone--and I mean, all of us know this from volunteering--you can see no one the whole day and then suddenly come up upon a heavily armed agent who wants to point their AK47 at you. You know, both of these kinds of forces of indirect violence, of abandonment, and direct violence exist in this geography.
**Inmn ** 28:56 Yeah. I know this is maybe a little outside the scope of what we're going to talk about today but I was wondering if y'all could briefly just talk a little bit about the legal systems that people are facing when they are apprehended? Like what is the process of like being...going from like being apprehended to being deported look like?
**Parker ** 29:22 Yeah, well, so people are, when they're detained in the field, they're held in short term Border Patrol custody, where, you know, like I was mentioning before, we've documented all kinds of abuses that people face in custody. I remember early on in Trump's presidency, there was this really high-profile news story about a seven year old who died in Border Patrol custody, who, you know, hadn't received water or medical care. And I remember us, you know, just calling attention to the fact that we've been documenting that same pattern for, you know, like over a decade. So people are held in Border Patrol custody, which is supposed to not be any longer than three days maximum. It's supposed to be shorter. Some people at that point are rapidly deported. And then we also saw, you know, these last few years, under Title 42 people being just rapidly deported immediately upon being detained in the field without any sort of legal process. And then other times, you know, people are held in ICE custody or they're held in detention centers. And then there's also Operation Streamline where people are--some people--are given criminal charges. And then they are, you know, fed into our regular criminal justice system. But they have, you know, it's this total farce of justice where they call it Operation Streamline and they'll bring 70 people a day and just charge them all at once. And that's for Criminal Entry or Re-entry. And people just have to, essentially, plead guilty to the lower charge of Criminal Entry instead of Re-entry so that they can face six months instead of two years. So we're also just feeding people into our prison system as well as into the ICE detention system.
**Inmn ** 31:02 And do charges like that preclude someone from being able to apply for asylum or other kind legal processes for documented immigration.
**Parker ** 31:16 Yeah, I imagine they do. I don't think it's really my or Sophie's wheelhouse, the legal immigration system. I do know that, you know, theoretically, people who are detained by Border Patrol could request asylum, but there's a lot of documentation of Border Patrol, you know, not asking or ignoring people when they do say that they want to make an asylum claim after detaining people in the desert.
**Inmn ** 31:35 Yeah, yeah. Um, I guess to shift a little bit more into the current report, I was wondering if y'all could talk a little bit about, I guess, like the third report "Left to Die" as a prelude to what we're going to talk about today?
**Sophie ** 32:00 Should we talk about Part Two really quick before?
**Inmn ** 32:05 Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's Part Two. Sorry, we skipped Part Two. Yeah, what happened? What happened in Part Two?
**Parker ** 32:11 Part Two documented interference with humanitarian aid. So pretty early on, when No More Deaths started to do water drops, we started to find that our water drops would sometimes be vandalized or destroyed. People would stab water gallons, dump them out. We put out cans of beans. People would dump those out or stab them so that they rot. And we anecdotally believed that Border Patrol was responsible for at least some amount of this destruction, just from seeing them near the drops and then finding them vandalized or just the drops being out in areas where Border Patrol is the only other person out there. But to document this, we started to put out game cameras on a lot of the drops that were regularly vandalized and trying to capture footage, which is pretty difficult. The game cameras, like they turn on anytime, you know, the wind blows and the grass moves. So a lot of the time we would come and find the battery dead, but the drop had been vandalized, but we didn't get any footage. But over the years, we did collect footage. And we got several instances of Border Patrol on camera destroying these water drops, stabbing them with knives, things like that. So we wanted to document this pattern in that report. So in addition to that footage, we did an analysis of all of the logs that we keep from every water drop that we go to, where we mark instances of vandalization and just kind of looked at the scope of it, if there were any patterns and where it was happening and when it was happening. And Sophie, do you have some of those findings handy?
**Sophie ** 33:47 So just for context, the main part of No More Deaths' work over the years has been mapping migration trails. People undertake anywhere from three days to over a week of a journey through the deserts through really labyrinthian topography, especially in southern Arizona. It's high desert. So it's really mountainous with a system of canyons and there's just thousands of trail systems that have been created over time in the back country that are routes that people are taking across into the United States. So we've located, you know, certain areas of high concentration where we'll place drops of water and food and other supplies, like Parker was mentioning, to try to mitigate death and suffering in those areas. So we looked at the records that were kept by No More Deaths volunteers over three years in which over 30,000 gallons of water were left in the backcountry. And within that we were seeing that 86% of the water that we put out does get used, that this is a really important harm reduction measure to support life in the backcountry as people are on their journey. But we also found that at least 3,586 gallons of water, so over 3000 gallons of water, had been vandalized or destroyed in at least 415 different destruction events. And as Parker was mentioning, you know, really early on we got footage of Border Patrol destroying water. There's kind of an infamous video that we put out of a Border Patrol agent kicking gallons of water that had been put out at a water drop. We got more footage and, you know, have a lot of anecdotal evidence reinforcing this. And that report also then looked at Border Patrol action on humanitarian aid stations, attempts to repress or prosecute volunteers with non-governmental organizations like No More Deaths and others doing this kind of harm reduction work. And so that report looked at a series of attempted prosecutions. There were cases in which volunteers are given littering tickets for putting out water on migration trails as if water is somehow trash in the desert among other cases. I don't know if Parker wants to speak to that more directly. But we're looking at kind of that as, you know, both the destruction of water and the charging...the attempted criminalization of volunteers trying to prevent loss of life as kind of a repressive campaign that Border Patrol is leading against humanitarians coincident with the agency really trying to up its PR and branding as itself, somehow, a humanitarian actor on the border. So this report was being written at the same time that Border Patrol is doing things like publishing the number of border deaths, according to them, versus the number of "rescues" that they apparently conducted. And we'll get more into it in part three, but really trying to say...make these claims that overall, somehow, they're humanitarian actors in this gauntlet of their own making. So that was sort of some of the spirit behind that report was to provide evidence, direct evidence, to the contrary.
**Parker ** 37:31 Yeah, I guess just to the interference with humanitarian aid, the interference with volunteer humanitarian aid, one thing that we do focus on in that report too is the raids of our humanitarian aid camp. So I mentioned we maintain a constant presence in the desert at our humanitarian aid camp. And Border Patrol has a history of conducting raids at this camp. So coming and surrounding it, providing a lot of like intimidation, as well as a few times when they have entered the camp and arrested people who were there receiving care. So really just like creating this atmosphere of intimidation, specifically at a humanitarian aid camp. And in one of those raids, they mentioned that they had tracked people for 18 miles until they got to the camp, at which point they surrounded the camp for multiple days until they came in and arrested people. So directly interfering with the provision of humanitarian aid. The charging of volunteers, actually, a note about the timing of that is that this report actually came out before a lot of criminal charges were filed against our volunteers. And in fact, the day that this report came out and the day that we released this footage of Border Patrol destroying water gallons, Scott Warren, one of our volunteers, was arrested six hours later that same day,
**Inmn ** 38:45 Which spawned like a multi-year legal battle, right?
**Parker ** 38:50 It did result in him being acquitted by a jury.
**Sophie ** 38:55 Yes, Scott Warren was charged with multiple felonies, felony harboring and smuggling, for volunteering at a No More Deaths aid station in the area of Ajo, Arizona, where he provided first aid and care to patients who had sought help at that aid station. Right. And that, you know, was a huge court process. There were multiple trials. The first one ended in a hung jury and the second one he was acquitted on all charges. But there is a lot of discussion in court as to, you know, to what extent was his arrest retaliation for the releasing of our second report. There was evidence that Border Patrol agents had knowledge of the report that morning. So we really saw that as retaliatory. But at the same time, his acquittal then provided, you know, important case law within the district to provide a certain, you know, measure of protection for providing humanitarian care to people in the borderlands. So it was really important ,kind of, instruction to us regarding the legality of our work, the kind of defense that can be waged in support of volunteers. So ultimately, it was a victory that really kind of reinforced the foundations of our work in that way. There was a huge effort, huge struggle for Scott personally and, you know, really aimed to have a chilling effect on the work in the desert overall.
**Inmn ** 40:27 Yeah, that trial was...that trial was crazy. Like, I don't know, I went to the...like, I attended a couple of days of the court process and I just remember listening to the prosecutor try to make absolutely absurd claims in court, that drinking water might be harmful to someone as like a reason for why humanitarian aid organizations shouldn't leave water in the desert for people. And I was like, this is like a highly paid criminal prosecutor who's trying to argue, and like get doctors to agree with, the absurd claim that drinking water might be harmful to someone who's experiencing dehydration. And I'm just like...this is a farce.
**Sophie ** 41:24 Some of them were so bizarre. Well, and the smuggling charge was only based on him being seen, not heard, outside of the aid station, seen pointing to the mountains while talking to the patients. And because he was pointing north, that was considered an act of smuggling, which I thought was incredible. And there was this really powerful moment where Scott did take the stand and said "I was saying, 'There's one highway going through this huge expanse of incredibly deadly desert. And so don't walk towards those mountains because there's no help if you come into harm's way to the east. To the west, it's another 20 miles before you'll hit another major road. If you're in trouble, find the highway, right?'" So given, you know, knowing that these two patients were planning to reenter the back country and trying to give, you know, life saving information was considered to be an act of smuggling. And then I also remember the prosecutor in his closing arguments on the last day, putting up a picture that had been taken of volunteers with the patients after they'd recovered to a certain degree, where they were smiling and claiming that these patients were basically on vacation in the United States, who had gone through, you know, life or death, kind of, harrowing circumstances traveling through one of the most deadly corridors along the whole border. And they were so lucky to be alive by the time they reached Ajo. And somehow, the prosecutor wanted the jury to believe that they were just hamming it up and having a great time on vacation. And it was incredible at that trial to sit in on and relieving to see that those arguments didn't really hold water in the end.
**Inmn ** 43:23 Yeah, and...but also, I don't know, it's frightening to see what the legal system can bring charges to bear on someone where they have absolutely no evidence and that it can then take multiple years and obscene amounts of community resources to defend these charges. I don't know. It's...which I don't know, is maybe maybe purposeful by them. I don't know. Just...this is also a little bit outside of the scope, but I feel like people are a little...or might be a little curious...if.... Like, under the law, like what...for people who live in the borderlands, if someone comes to your door what aid can you offer people without legal complications?
**Sophie ** 44:25 Yeah.
**Inmn ** 44:28 Or, I guess, like, what does the law define as aiding and abetting or smuggling or human trafficking, right, as we've seen people get charged with?
**Sophie ** 44:38 I mean, I'll say that I'm not a lawyer. Parker is on the way to becoming one. But I can say to--and I think Parker will have something to add to this--but first of all, under US law, there's no obligation of any citizen to report on the status of anyone else to law enforcement. So if I know that someone is undocumented, there's no law that says I must report their status to the authorities. So there's that to begin with, that if someone comes to your door who you know is crossing through the desert, you don't have any obligation to report them to law enforcement under the law. And then, I mean, this is interesting because there's the kind of word of the law and then there's its interpretation, right? And a lot of what we.... I think what Scott's case provided is some really important interpretation of the law. So we know that, you know, there's a specification that it's illegal to further someone's illegal presence in the country. That's the language. Which means that, you know, things like food, water, shelter, medical care, rest, meals, clothing, none of that's actually furthering that person's presence in the country. So there's kind of a wide range of harm reduction that you can provide perfectly legally, right? And I think I've heard a lawyer once be like, you know, "Is taking your friend to dinner furthering their presence in the country? You know? No." So really, we get into issues of like, are you actually attempting to conceal that person from law enforcement? Are you hosting them as a guest? You know, what is the intent behind your actions? And in any felony case, it's not just simply that you're...you can't be convicted.... Part of the conviction of a felony involves your mens rea, it's your mental state when committing whatever act you committed. So it's not just that you, you know, invited someone into your house. It's what was the intent behind you inviting them into your house? And so a lot of these cases hone in on, were you hiding someone in your basement? Or were you having them in your guest room? Right? Were you driving the person as a passenger in your car? Or were they hiding in your truck? Things like this, when we get into smuggling cases, intent indicated by the way you're interacting really matters in these cases. And that was really at play and in Scott's trial, right, there was an argument that because people had been provided shelter in an indoor aid station that somehow demonstrated concealment because they were behind four walls, right? Which doesn't hold up, right? I have guests at my house and I'm not concealing them from law enforcement just because they're inside. So we get down to the nitty gritty of interpretation with these kinds of statutes. And that's why these cases really matter in how they play out in court, how further answers are being defined. Parker, did you have thoughts on that?
**Parker ** 47:54 Um, I think a lot of what I was gonna say is the same as what you said, the language of furthering someone's presence, I think, has been one that in No More Deaths, sort of, like analyzing our legal exposure, have focused on. For example, if you do encounter someone who is in critical medical condition and the nearest hospital is Nogales, you know, you can drive them there. That's not furthering their presence. But, you know, I think ultimately, it comes down to I think this is sort of like a perennial question in No More Deaths as people try to define what exactly is and isn't legal. And as we all know, that doesn't necessarily have bearing on, you know, what the State will try to argue is illegal. And, you know, Scott, what Scott did was perfectly legal in all of our opinions. If we'd had a different jury, he still could have been convicted regardless. So I think the language leaves a lot open to interpretation. And, you know, with the repressive State, they can say that it's illegal. In fact, I think, even in the...we also had a number of misdemeanor charges that volunteers were facing and some went to trial for. The State in that case, was trying to argue that humanitarian aid itself is interfering with the government's compelling interest in enforcing the border. So when their enforcement tactic is to try and increase the threat to people's lives. They can see humanitarian aid, as you know, a threat to that border enforcement and furthering people's illegal presence by simply helping them to survive, which that particular argument that the State made was specifically addressed on appeal and the judge said, "This is grotesque. This is horrifying logic on the part of the government." but they still tried to make that argument.
**Inmn ** 49:42 Yeah. Cool. Well, thanks y'all for getting into that a little bit. I think as like a tie in to a general theme of the podcast is, you know, community preparedness. And I think something that like...I think something that like, you know, people who don't spend time thinking a lot about community preparedness or aren't radical leftists, or like whatever, think about these questions of like, "Oh, if like I encounter someone who needs help, like, what am I going to do? How am I going to help that person?" versus like, "What is my fear of doing something illegal that could get me in trouble?" And I worry that like...I worry that people having myths or misinterpretations or listening to whatever propaganda Border Patrol is spewing, that people won't act to help people or to save someone's life because they think that they're doing something that could get them in trouble. And that fear of legal trouble is greater than the desire to help people, which I don't think is true, but like something that I think people worry about, if that makes sense.
**Sophie ** 51:06 Yeah, I mean, I can say, I live in Arivaca, which is the town that No More Deaths bases a lot of its work out of. It's a rural town 11 miles from the border. And residents, they're sitting in the middle of this migration corridor and everyone who lives there has had a knock on their door of someone who's lost, often extremely sick or injured and looking for help. And it's also a town that's under virtual, you know, it's actually...it's not unique in the sense that all these towns along the border are now, you know, living under virtual Border Patrol occupation. They're surrounded by Border Patrol checkpoints. You can't go to the doctor, you can't go to the bank without passing through a checkpoint and talking to an armed guard. And there's a heavy presence of Border Patrol in and around town, which has the function of, on the one hand, they're doing these things like chase and scatter and on the other, this kind of high visibility is really intimidating to the public, right? You feel like you're up against this virtual domestic army and intimidation is real. And they're coming on to people's property without notice, often pointing guns at residents, harassing locals, especially people of color. So education and Know Your Rights trainings have been so paramount because at the same time, you know, Border Patrol policy has put these communities on the front lines as the first responders when people are coming through incredibly remote areas. And the first lights they see, the first roads they come to, the first buildings are these residents in these rural communities. They're kind of a natural source of support. And I think Border Patrol has a vested interest in trying to break apart the historic practice before and beyond organizations like No More Deaths of residents opening their door and giving a hand, getting water to anyone who's out in the desert and in trouble. So I think what you're saying Inmn has been like a real focus of organizing and I know it has been an Ajo where Scott lives as well, where they have a local project also doing Know Your Rights education and providing humanitarian resources and things like that to try to break apart Border Patrol's attempt to recruit the local population into their really deadly enforcement regime. And I think that there's been this really vibrant history of border communities, offering that support and facing down the really intimidating presence of this incredibly well resourced, militarized enforcement agency in and around their communities. You know, so I think it's critical.
**Inmn ** 53:57 Yeah. And it's like seeing communities in Arivaca and Ajo and the Tohono O'odham Nation really band together to combat these narratives that Border Patrol or the government are trying to really make people think are true and I don't know.... Yeah, that has been one of the most inspiring things to me about doing border aid work or anything like that is seeing the communities that have really like sprung up to...or the communities that like have forever been doing this kind of work and like how they maintain that work and use that to build community rather than divide community. I don't know. I don't know. I just.... Like, God, I remember hearing someone once say they were like, "I don't care what the government says. I'm going to give...if someone comes to my door, I'm giving them food, dammit." And I was like, hell yeah. You're awesome. And this is like someone who I like don't expect to have any other political alignment with. But like, we agreed on that. And I was like, that's awesome.
**Parker ** 54:02 No, totally, I've had a few similar experiences in Tucson of just, you know, meeting...like talking to my Uber driver or someone, you know, that I've come into contact with completely unrelated to any sort of political work, you know, and then talking to them and them saying, "Oh, yeah, I ran into someone who was crossing once and gave them a lift to the gas station so they could buy some food and water," you know, like, just thing like that, where it's, you know, there is, on the one hand, this real fear of criminalization that like Border Patrol has created, but then on the other hand, there's just such a natural impulse for humanity for people to, you know, give someone water or lift or, you know, whatever it is that they're needing.
**Inmn ** 56:12 Yeah, yeah. And I know I'm just riffing off a specific organization's name right now. But it's almost like, it's really important for people to help other people and to just treat them like people because they're people. We're all just people trying to help people. [There's an organization called People Helping People]
**Sophie ** 56:33 Yeah, and it's part of this kind of longer, you know, history of social movement, I think, you know, whether we're talking about Germans sheltering Jews or underground railroad or, you know, it's always been that when you have a general population get caught up in these kinds of violent campaigns that are trying to, you know, discriminate and punish people based on identity, there are always locals who won't comply. And I think that it's heartening to see that tradition, you know, continue on the border in southern Arizona, like you're saying, Inmn against really, you know, among really unlikely actors. Like many people I know in Arivaca might hold really racist beliefs but still are always going to give a person water and food a bed to stay in because they're people, right? So it's a really kind of interesting moment in which ideology sort of doesn't hold up to the needs...to the human needs of the present. And I find that really heartening.
**Inmn ** 57:46 Yeah, it makes me really curious. And like, I want to try to learn more about this part of this specifically, but it's like what's going on in Palestine right now is I'm really curious about what people in neighboring regions are doing that are very similar to this kind of work right now and what people...and like what people...hearing about people in Israel who are like...who are like getting indicted with pretty scary criminal charges simply for like, speaking out against what Israel is doing right now? I don't know.
**Sophie ** 58:34 Yeah, it's so important.
**Inmn ** 58:39 But as a kind of unfortunate segue, so like, you know, the community is really holding it down for trying to help people who are experiencing being lost and scattered in the desert. But Border Patrol is doing the opposite of that. Could y'all talk a little bit about, I guess, the third installment of the report?
**Parker ** 59:04 Yeah, the third installment is called "Left to Die," and it focuses on search and rescue. And so this is another report that came out of our experiences with the missing migrant crisis line and providing search and rescue but also out of Border Patrol's sort of propaganda, styling themselves as humanitarian and putting out a ton of PR about their search and rescue. You know, they hold these PR events every year where they show, you know, their fancy helicopter tricks. And they put out these statistics about how many people they rescue every year with no sort of explanation of what that means. Meanwhile, as they were doing that, you know, our personal experience and the experience of people with Derechos Humanos' missing migrant crisis line and with No More Deaths was complete inaction when they would try and request a search and rescue from Border Patrol. So when someone does call the missing migrant crisis line, a family member or someone who's lost, we want whatever resources possible. That's almost always what the family is asking, is for whatever resources possible to go to try and rescue their loved one. And so we would call Border Patrol. And a lot of the time, we would get no response, a refusal to respond to go in search for someone, or, you know, these really vague, just sort of like, "Yeah, we'll look into it," and then they never call back. So we were experiencing a lot of inaction in response to requests for search and rescue from Border Patrol. And we wanted to document that with this report. So the report draws primarily from the case notes, from emergency cases received by the Derechos Hunmanos missing migrant migrant crisis line. So there were I think 456 calls that were classified in a two year period as emergency cases. So these are cases where the person had been heard from within the last three days, there was some information about their location, and there is a possibility that they were still alive in the desert and in need of rescue. So in contrast to a bunch of other calls that were received from the Derechos crisis line where someone was known to be in detention, but they were missing a detention, or it had been months since they disappeared, these were the cases that were potential search and rescue.
**Sophie ** 1:01:19 So like Parker, said these are cases in which the family or the person was requesting a Border Patrol response or consented to us advocating or organizations advocating for a Border Patrol response. And we'll talk a little bit more about why Border Patrol for these cases. But we looked at the outcomes and Border Patrols is kind of a notoriously opaque organization. There's so little public reporting or transparency about what they do. So like Parker mentioned, they'd publish these rescue statistics but with no information about the cases from which they were deriving them. And we looked at, you know, press releases where the headline was, "Border Patrol Rescues Man," and then you read the article and it's about them chasing someone into a pond where they almost die and then the agents pull them out of the pond, right?
**Parker ** 1:02:20 And then arrest them and deport them.
**Sophie ** 1:02:21 So this really kind of farcical phrasing of "apprehension as rescue." So there really wasn't data to challenge that with. So that's part of why we really wanted to look at this data set. And we found when we looked at those 456 cases that 63% of the time, so two thirds of those cases, where Border Patrol was pressed to respond to a person in immediate distress, we had no confirmation that they took any measure to mobilize a search or rescue in response to them. So nothing. No confirmation of any action being taken in two thirds of the time, in hundreds of cases, right? And then in the 37% of cases in which there was indication that Border Patrol took some action to prevent loss of life, we found that their responses just severely, severely diminished when compared against the measures that Pima County Sheriff's Department search and rescue would take if they were coming to save my life, right, if I was lost in the same area. So in particular, we saw Border Patrol, when they did deploy to search for a person who was lost in the desert and in distress, we found that the duration of those efforts and the resourcing was just really diminished when compared to the measures taken to search for a citizen or a foreign tourist. So a lot of those searches lasted less than a day and we had some that lasted less than an hour without locating the person. And then just lack of resources. Like a lot of those deployments were simply a helicopter flyover. When you look in the newspaper at the case of a missing hiker, right, a citizen hiker, you'll see that those searches will take two weeks and that the search effort and area and resources will expand with each day that the person is not found, right? More and more resources are added because it's more and more urgent. Instead we see that if the person isn't pretty quickly located in the 1/3 of the time that Border Patrol deploys at all, they will call off the search. And so as a consequence of that, we found that out of these 456 cases that a quarter of the time, the person in distress was never located. So that's not a quarter of the time that they died, that's a quarter of the time that they disappeared, right? So the person was never located one in four cases and yet the search was called off. And we can see that's just absolutely an indication of deadly discrimination that, you know, if that...those are not the numbers that citizens see. And I think this was really important in combining these observations with that first report "Chase & Scatter," to really put together a full picture in which we found that looking at the kind of critical role that Border Patrol is playing in putting people into a life or death situation by chasing them and scattering them in the wilderness compared with the frequency with which they would deploy, to search for and rescue or distressed person, we were able to say that Border Patrol is two times more likely to take part in causing a person to go into distress, causing an emergency, than they are in participating and attempting to rescue them. So really, they're just always responding to these emergencies of their own making and they're much more heavily focused on their enforcement priority, right, in putting people in harm's way as a matter of policy.
**Parker ** 1:06:06 Yeah, it really is this sort of twisted rebranding of Prevention Through Deterrence and the fact that people are being pushed into danger. It's like, you know, someone at Border Patrol's office was like, "I know, we can call these rescues now," because everybody who's crossing through the borders is facing a huge threat to their life. They're in wilderness areas. They're lost. They're in distress. And then because of that, Border Patrol can rebrand any arrest of somebody as a "rescue" by saying, "Yeah, we arrested this person, you know, who was like, lost, and therefore, we rescued them."
**Sophie ** 1:06:42 And then use that number to somehow offset the death statistics, which is incredible to me to publish these numbers, you know, Border Patrol saying, okay, there were 300 human remains recovered this year, but allegedly, they rescued 700 people, as if there's something legitimate about, you know? That death statistic needs to be zero, right? It's sort of trumpeting, it's own death statistics, you know, in a way as a way to them comparatively have their rescue seem even more significant. And it makes you sort of forget that that statistic should be zero and that those numbers are, you know, again, hugely partial, because so many people are disappearing and never ever recovered. The other part that the report looked at was what happens when the County doesn't deploy a search and rescue like they would for a person with citizenship status or a tourist, which we'll talk about more, Border Patrol doesn't deploy, and someone is in distress. Their family knows about it. They received a distress call, right, from their child, their brother, their loved one who's crossing and we found that really often, families and communities will mobilize and improvise search on their own based on the information that they have from the person who's calling them. So we were really interested in what happens when families and communities mobilize, sometimes with the partnership of community search and rescue organizations, sometimes on their own, and Border Patrol's reaction. So another kind of focus of part three was looking at systematic Border Patrol, obstruction and interference with family and community-based search and rescues when all systems kind of failed them and found that a quarter of the time, 25% of the time, that communities and families deploy to search for their loved ones Border Patrol obstructs those efforts in some way. So we tracked a number of those issues, like refusal to share critical information that Border Patrol might have about the person's point-last-seen, denying access to eyewitnesses who might be in custody, harassing families and volunteers on the ground. So a number of really serious kinds of obstructions to anyone being able to access a search area and have adequate information. Often Border Patrol will have coordinates of where they attempted to apprehend a group and people were scattered and the person you're looking for was scattered by the apprehension attempt and needs those coordinates to go to the point that they are last seen to start the search, right? And Border Patrol refusing to share information and even cases in which Border Patrol is sharing false information with families and communities. So again, we see this as another measure that's meant to just increase the number of people who are dying and disappearing in an attempt to cross through the borderlands.
**Parker ** 1:09:50 Yeah, and within that, I think one thing that we really tried to highlight in this report too, is the bureaucratic runaround that families and volunteers are met with trying to report an emergency. So like a lot of people have probably, you know, had the experience of trying to call Verizon and getting bounced around between different voicemails but that'll happen in these moments where there is a life threatening emergency that someone is trying to report. And there's no functional system. It'll happen between, you know, a county run 911 and Border Patrol where the county is saying, you know, "That's not our job, it's Border Patrol's job," and then Border Patrol will be saying, "Well, no, you have to call 911." It'll happen within Border Patrol agencies where you call one number and you're told you have to call this other number and then you get transferred to the other number. And it's, you know, a non-working number. Border Patrol will say you have to call the consulate. The consulate will say you have to call Border Patrol or the consulate's closed on the weekend. So it's a completely non-functioning emergency response system. And I think we just want to capture that and the experience that, you know, families will go through just spending like hours and hours just trying to even get someone on the phone who they can report the emergency to. And then, you know, half the time you do that and you don't even get a call back. So it's just a really infuriating system.
**Sophie ** 1:11:05 Yeah, and just to add on to that as well, we have a lot of cases where Border Patrol refuses to deploy, saying there's not enough information to search and then families and/or humanitarian organizations will deploy their own search and immediately locate the person, right? So some of those efforts also reveal that even minimal effort is so significant in preventing loss of life in these cases, and yet we see agents, you know, Border Patrol, really reluctant or refusing to deploy at all.
**Inmn ** 1:11:38 Thanks so much for listening everyone. This interview was unexpectedly much larger than we thought it was going to be and we're kind of just cutting in the middle of it. And we'll continue the interview next week. So tune in next week, for now that we've finally laid a lot of groundwork for what the new "Disappeared" report is about and then we can actually now talk about the new report. And yeah, it's going to be, you know, "fun" isn't the right word, but it's going to be an interesting finish to the conversation. So if you enjoyed hearing about border militarization and the other reports then tune in next week to finish the conversation. And I'm just rambling now, because I didn't write a script. And it turns out I do really well with scripts. But we will see you next time. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, then go do border work, go do humanitarian aid work, find ways to plug into these networks wherever you live because I'm sure they exist and because, unfortunately, the border is everywhere. And there's.... Which you know, is horrible. And it also means that wherever you are, there's something, there's some way for you to plug in to deal with it, or whatever. You could also, if you liked this podcast, rate and review and like and subscribe, or whatever the nameless algorithm calls for. Feed it like a hungry god. But if you want to support us in other sillier ways that don't involve feeding a nameless and mysterious entity then consider subscribing to our Patreon. You can find us at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And if you sign up at the $10 a month level, then we will mail to you a zine version of our monthly feature every month. It's called the Zine of the Month Club. It's really fun. And you get a nice little letter from us every month. I think it's delightful. And you can also support us by supporting our publisher, Strangers, in a Tangled Wilderness. Strangers publishes books, zines, comics, podcasts, obviously, and a whole bunch of other stuff. And we have some exciting stuff coming out this year and next year. And in particular, we would like to thank these Patreon subscribers who have just been, you know, really great. Y'all are really.... I mean, all of y'all are really great. Everyone who listens to this show is great. But we are going to highlight these folks in particular. I'm not feeling awkward about anything right now. But thank you so much, Patoli, Eric Perceval, Buck, Julia, Catgut Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, Funder, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milicia, Boise Mutual Aid, Theo, Hunter, SJ, Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Michaiah, and the eternal Hoss the Dog. Thank you so much. And your support has allowed us to do so much. And tune in next week for part two of this interview, now that we've laid the kind of groundwork for the "Disappeared" series and the context of border militarization. On the next episode, we're going to dive a little bit more into talking about things like search and rescue and the newest report, "Separate & Deadly." So we hope you're as well as you can be and we'll see you next time.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Eleanor Goldfield comes on to talk about her film, "To the Trees," a documentary that highlights forest defense tactics in Northern California. The film is meant to call into question our current relationships to nature, how we might reframe them, and why that reframing is vital to our survival and having a livable future.
Eleanor Goldfield (she/her) is a filmmaker and journalist who works to highlight different movement and struggles. You can find her work and her film "To the Trees" at tothetreesfilm.com and artkillingapathy.com. Eleanor can also be found on Twitter @RadicalEleanor and Instagram @RadicalEleanor
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Eleanor on "To the Trees" & Forest Defense
**Inmn ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today, Inmn Neruin, and I use they/them pronouns. Today we are talking to a filmmaker about a really beautiful film called To the Trees. And I'm really excited for you all to hear this conversation. We're going to talk a lot about logging and forest defense and just kind of like the extraction industry in general, and then just about some, you know, cultural or psychological paradigms that we have around resource extraction. But first, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here is a jingle from another show on that network.
**Inmn ** 01:40 And we're back. Hi, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Could you introduce yourself with your name, pronouns, and a little bit about your background, and what you're here to talk about today?
**Eleanor ** 01:55 Sure, thanks so much for having me. My name is Eleanor Goldfield. She/her. I'm a queer creative, radical filmmaker, and journalist. And I've been doing frontline--I hesitate to say activism--I've been doing frontline actions and journalism since 2010 together. And before that I'd been doing organizing and community organizing since about 2003, before the second Iraq War. And I'm here today to talk about my latest offering in the film domain, which is called, "To the Trees," and it's about forest defense tactics in so-called Northern California and also about our relationship to nature and the necessary shift that that must take for us to have a livable future.
**Inmn ** 02:50 Cool, um--I mean, not cool that a film like this needs to get made but cool that a film like this now exists and can teach people a lot of really awesome things. I highly encourage everyone to go out and watch the movie. It's really wonderful. It's really beautiful. But could you kind of give us just like a recap of the movie.
**Eleanor ** 03:17 Sure. Yeah, and the films available at ToTheTreesfilm.com. And all of my work is also available at ArtKillingApathy.com. So kind of a general overview of the film is that I went out there to do.... This is kind of how I work. I ask folks if they need any support--and I'm ground support, by the way, because I don't do heights. Although, I did climb a redwood when I was out there, which was a terrifying experience. And I'm never doing it again.
**Inmn ** 03:49 They're so big,
**Eleanor ** 03:51 They're ginormous. And that was my first...that was the first tree I decided to climb because...yeah, whatever. And it took me 45 minutes. And it's 200 feet up in the air, and I was terrified. And it took me like 15 minutes to get up the courage just to step off the platform. And the tree sitter, they were like, "You just step up," and I'm like, "What do you just step up? I'm gonna die," and they're like, "No, you're not. You're gonna be fine. I swear" and I'm like, "Oh God, this is so terrifying." And they're like, "Yeah, maybe you are ground support."
**Inmn ** 04:20 Ground support is crucial.
**Eleanor ** 04:23 It is crucial. Yes. And it's very much.... That's very much me. I was built to like just be grounded, I think. So I went out there basically saying, "I would love to help you all and do support and also, if it's cool with you, I'll bring a camera and I'd love to just hear some of your stories." And so folks were cool with that. And so there I go, traipsing into the woods. And it's a beautiful tree village. And the redwood forests, if folks have never seen them, I mean it's like Narnia. You know the forest floor is Like this plush, you know, soft and welcoming space. And then you look up and it's like the trees are so tall that you can barely see the crowns. It's just kind of like this green haze above you. And so I just started talking to folks and talked to a couple of tree sitters. I also spoke with somebody who does more of the judicial side of things, like trying to get forest...or like logging companies in court and how that kind of works with tree sitters. And then I also spoke to an indigenous woman, Marnie Atkins, who is a member of the Wiyot tribe, spoke to her a lot about perspectives on what's going on in these forests and the paradigms that are different between her people and the colonizers who came. And so it's kind of a.... [trails off] I call it at the end, I have this, I have this slide that says, "To the trees: It's a dedication, a call to action, a promise, and a militant apology." And I wanted folks to feel that, that it's an offering and it's also an invitation, not just to act in whatever ways we can but also to question the way that we think about these beautiful places, whether they be the redwood forests or whether they be the the ecosystems that are outside your front door.
**Inmn ** 06:42 Yeah, yeah. And it's.... I feel funny that this is one of my first questions, but it was one of the pieces of the film that kind of really got me--it's like always knowing that Capitalism uses things for really silly things--but learning that the main use of redwood trees is to just turn them into kind of crappy decks. Is that right?
**Eleanor ** 07:12 Yeah, yeah, it's based on market forces. The best use of a redwood tree is decking. And not only that, but redwoods can be 2000 years old. And of course, if you were to chop down a 2000 year old tree--which by the way, there's no law against it in California or anywhere else in the in the United States--if you were to do that, yes, that deck would last a while--it wouldn't last 2000 years--it would last a while. But the way that they cut down trees at the rate--because of course, no one's gonna wait 2000 years--they cut down these trees in their infancy. So the strong heartwood of the tree has not had a chance to develop. And so you're cutting down these trees, you know, destroying any future that they might have to rebuild an ecosystem, and you're turning them into a deck that is not even going to last like a decade because it's just not made of wood that has had a chance to mature. And so you're literally destroying burgeoning ecosystems for the sake of a deck that is going to last less than, you know, the length of a Britney Spears' single. It's just...it's ridiculous.
**Inmn ** 08:35 Yeah, yeah, I feel like that's one of the harder things that I struggle with when really thinking about industrial Capitalism is just the...it's like the cost of what it...like what it costs to do to the planet versus what is gotten from that. And it's not even like, oh, you're gonna get something that's like, "We cut down this tree and it's gonna last this family multi-generations," you know, it's like a piece of shit that's gonna rot and fall apart in a decade.
**Eleanor ** 09:12 And that's the whole, you know, that's one of the primary issues with Capitalism is that it treats things that are finite, like trees and clean air and clean water, as if they're infinite. And it treats things that are infinite, like ones and zeros on a computer, as if they're finite. Like, "Oh, we don't have the money." And, I mean, it's like--I can't remember who it was-- maybe it was Alan Watts, who said, "That's kind of like saying, 'You don't have enough inches to build a house.'" Like that doesn't make any sense. Like of course you have more money because you just make it up. It's all a fairy tale. Whereas the things that we can't just make up like a 2000 year old tree or a clean river, you treat as entirely disposable, and that is one of the primary issues with the paradigm of Capitalism and thereby colonialism, which was the battering ram of Capitalism.
**Inmn ** 10:08 Yeah. Yeah. I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what are the life cycles or growth cycles or logging cycles like in places that are being [testing words] harvested? Destroyed? Whichever word.
**Eleanor ** 10:34 Yeah, that's that euphemism, right? "Oh, we're just harvesting." No! So, basically, there are several different cycles that can be used. I think one of the shortest ones for redwoods is 45 or 50 years. So if you clear-cut and then you--and redwoods are actually one of the few trees that can sprout, like from a stump. Like it's self...I can't remember what it's called. Self-sprouting or something? And so you have to wait 45 or 50 years. Now, whether they always do that or not, is up for debate, especially depending on what they're hoping to get from the products. But it's 45 or 50 years. Some will say, "Oh, we're gonna leave this plot for 100 years," or whatever. And again, whether that's done or not, is up for debate. And it's also difficult because industrial logging has only been around since like, you know, 120 years or so. So when we talk about the amount of time you really need to grow these forests, it's like we're going back to a time before this was even a conversation because you couldn't possibly tear down the forests that quickly. And so we're in this kind of odd liminal space where people are talking about, "Oh, we're gonna have to let this grow again for 100 years," but 100 years ago this wasn't even a contemplation. And so the cycles are based on, again, like the market forces. LIke, okay, well, at 45 or 50 years these trees will be ready to be harvested and then can be used to do whatever we want with them, you know? Truck them off to the sawmill. And that, again, is it.... Well, I could go off into so many different tangents, but I'll pause.
**Inmn ** 12:36 I do.... We love tangents. We love rants. So this wasn't surprising to me, but I've spent like a little bit of time in the coal fields of West Virginia, and it seems like there's this kind of similar thing in logging where there's a strong guidance to preserve the cardboard frame of what things look like from a road or something, you know, so it's like the devastation appears a lot less impactful. I am curious what kind of lengths or strategies logging companies go to--or the State goes to--to make it seem like nothing all that bad is happening?
**Eleanor ** 13:25 Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny you brought up West Virginia because my first documentary was actually about West Virginia. And I talked a lot about the coal fields. And I actually did a flight above them because you can't--I mean, to your point--you can't see it from the roads. And you can really only see the vast devastation if you're up in a plane. Or if you have a drone or something like that. So in California, they call it the 'visual impact' or commonly called 'the beauty screen.' And it's this idea that, particularly Inmnorthern California--because Northern California, unlike West Virginia, which is very proud of its coal, Northern California doesn't want you to think it's proud of logging--it wants you to think that it's super proud of the trees, which is really twisted.
**Inmn ** 14:21 Yeah. Yeah.
**Eleanor ** 14:22 It's like being a serial killer and then being like, "I have a human rights organization." So they will.... Right before you get to a lot of these THPs, that's timber harvest plans, you're driving through, for instance, the Avenue of the Giants, which is part of a redwood forest, Redwood National Forest, and it's gorgeous, right? And you would never think that just a few miles up in the hills there are these vast bald spots. And so they want to ensure that that stays the case, right? So you just keep driving and you keep driving up the one on one and you just see trees and then the Pacific Ocean is over here and you're like, "Oh my god, California is amazing!"
**Inmn ** 15:06 "We love trees!"
**Eleanor ** 15:07 Right. But it's being destroyed. And you can't see that. And it's very important that you can't see that because the companies that own this land--because most of it is privately owned logging land--and the companies have this like...one of the guys in the film says, "This eco groovy PR campaign and this facade." And they want you to think that everything is done respectfully and sustainably when, of course, you can't clear-cut sustainably. So they want to make sure that you can't see it because that would fly in the face of their 'eco groovy facade.' And part of that is also that they have a certification, which is called FSC, Forest Stewardship Council certification. Which if you've ever been to a Home Depot or Lowe's, oftentimes FSC wood will be more expensive because the idea is that it's sustainable. And so you get to feel good about yourself, you know, like, "Oh, sweet, this isn't from a clear-cut," but it is. And the Forest Stewardship Council, even if it started with honorable aims, is a complete...it's just a rubber stamp for the logging industry. And there's been a long list of horribleness, including stealing indigenous land, clear-cutting old growth forests, and you know, and yet they have that little FSC stamp. So people think, consumers think, that this is done sustainably. But of course, it's not. And so this is all part of that greenwashing campaign, whether it be the 'beauty screen' or the FSC stamp, it's all part of that push to ensure that the consumer remains in the dark and thinks that, particularly, Northern California is sustainably harvesting their, in quotes, 'harvesting' these trees and ensuring that they will be around forever.
**Inmn ** 17:09 Golly, yeah. And I imagine people also...like the consumer on the end of like...they, you know, they go into Home Depot, or they're hiring a contractor to build their crappy deck, I'm sure they're really ecstatic that they have this...are getting this redwood deck. Like, I feel like it's just the name, you know, "Redwood," it sounds so majestic. It sounds so like, "Wow, this is gonna last me a really long time." Is that kind of like part of it too, do you think?
**Eleanor ** 17:44 Yeah, I think it sounds.... You know, I was in bands for years, and people used to talk about the wood that went into their instruments like, "Oh, it's mahogany neck." and someone's like, "Oh! It's a mahogany neck."
**Inmn ** 17:57 It's an electric guitar...like it doesn't matter.
**Eleanor ** 18:01 And sure, I mean,as a former audio tech, I can be like, okay, I've heard the difference in acoustic guitars where you're like, "Okay. That. Yes." But it is also pretty.... I mean, mahogany is not endangered in that sense. But still, it's pretty twisted to be like, "Yeah, the best way to use this tree is to turn it into an instrument or a deck or whatever. It's that like, again, in Capitalism, nothing has inherent value in and of itself. Nobody's like, "Oh, wow, an oak tree! That's super cool!" Everyone's like, "Hmm, what can I do with that?" It's like, maybe you could just leave it the fuck alone. I don't know, Maybe that could be a thing? But nothing in Capitalism has inherent value in and of itself. So it always has to be twisted and contorted into something. And that carries with it a certain status, right? Like, oh, if you have this deck made out of redwood or if you have that guitar made out of mahogany, it becomes a status symbol. And so that is also part of like the poisoning that is Capitalism, psychologically, I feel.
**Inmn ** 19:06 Golly, I wish--I know, this is a recurring theme on the show--but if only our lives were more like those of hobbits. I mean, they just have a Party Tree, and that's a community resource. And they're like, "We need a party tree. It needs to be like 3000 years old and that's a party tree." If it's not 3000 years old. It's not a Party Tree. Or, yeah, the forest on the edge of town that everyone's like too afraid to go into.
**Eleanor ** 19:40 Yeah, well, and this is actually something that I think is funny, too, that we have so many stories, whether that be through, you know, Lord of the Rings, or like when I was growing up, I partially grew up in Sweden, and there's so many stories still today about the Forest and its power. And I feel like that's also an interesting relationship that we have with the forest is that we are a little bit afraid of it. And that also...that also pushes us into this relationship where, okay, well, I'm gonna conquer my fears, right? As opposed to the stories--and there are these stories even in European cultures--that talk about the beauty of the forest and what the forest gives us. But that's also an interesting dynamic between a lot of Indigenous stories that I've heard where, yes, there might be like some being that lives in the forest that you don't want to interact with. But a lot of it is also about how, "Oh my gosh, look at all of the beauty and the life that we get from the forest," as opposed to, "Woods are terrifying. Don't mess with them at all. Just don't go there." It's like, but that's also going to dictate how you feel about cutting down a bunch of trees.
**Inmn ** 21:04 Yeah, it's wild that fear of the forest means we have to destroy the forest. It's a bad mentality. As much as I love a story about the Dark Forest, you know, and wish that that was like a more sustainable option, growing a more deep connection to the forest is probably a more sustainable way to go about things. Did you ever see Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind?
**Eleanor ** 21:33 Yes, I did.
**Inmn ** 21:34 Yeah. Incredible movie about a toxic forest that will fucking kill everyone who comes into it. Because it eventually was like, "No humans. You can't. No, I can't take anymore. Here's poison."
**Eleanor ** 21:50 Don't blame it really.
**Inmn ** 21:52 Yeah, and it's like, "No, I need several thousand years to recuperate from the harm that you've done and eventually I'll be a forest you can come in again."
**Eleanor ** 22:04 Right. Right. Well, and I think... We talk about that in mutual aid spaces, or in organizing spaces, like, okay, if harm has been caused and there needs to be time to recover then possibly we can get to the point where we can be in community together with that person who did the harm.... It's like, we do that as humans. And it's necessary, right? And that is exactly what ecosystems need too. Like, the idea of--this is also how we fuck it up in terms of the Capitalist mentality--the idea of like, "Oh, we're going to leave that to grow for another 45 years before we cut it down again," that's not allowing a relationship to recuperate, right? That is, once again, treating something in that violent way, like the violence of ownership versus stewardship, right? Like, ownership is a violent relationship--I mean, just look at slavery--but stewardship suggests a respect. And I think there's also space for fear there, too, right? I think that, you know, when I was a kid walking through woods, I would feel a little...maybe a little scared, but I would also feel safe, like, "Oh, I'm safe within the woods." So I think we can carry both of those at once. And I think that sometimes when you have a deep respect for something, there might be a moment where you're like, "Oh, that's, that's creepy." But there's also this feeling of like, "I'm safe here." And I think that, you know, I think that carrying multiple truths at the same time and multiple thoughts is just beneficial. But yeah, I think that the idea of allowing places to recover is super important, while also recognizing that we have a role in that. And that's something that Marnie talks about in--and actually one of the tree sitters as well--talks about in the film is this idea that the relationship we need to have with nature is not removing ourselves from nature. And I always think of...I spoke with somebody who does work in Africa with the Maasai, and she was saying that the Maasai were removed from their ancestral lands in order to create a conservation park. But what happened with the ecosystem when they were removed is the ecosystem started to fall apart, because the Maasai were an integral--and had been for 1000s of years--an integral part of that ecosystem. And so it belies that notion that we are somehow outside of ecosystems. No, we are super reliant on them. And I think that kind of that kind of thinking is also super important to remember that like, you know, Indigenous peoples have used, for instance, wildfires, as a way to steward the land, because they're not the wildfires that we see today. They were wildfires that were able to replenish the soil and the land, get rid of invasives, and things like that. So the idea that humans are a part of these ecosystems, and that we have to learn those ways of being and rid ourselves of the notion that we can somehow be outside of, and other than, the ecosystems.
**Inmn ** 25:29 I mean, it's like, it's.... I feel like, it's the same thing with most struggles out in the world is we have the tendency to want to remove ourselves from those things. And it is usually detrimental to those causes for us to think of ourselves as outside of everything--which, you know, obviously, there's struggles that we should send our specific voices around and that we should...like certain people should like not make about themselves--but like, for the most part, we are entrenched in all of in all of the thing. And we have to be an active part of them to fix them.
**Eleanor ** 26:13 Totally. And I think that, you know, the idea of like, we should always be a part of these struggles, and not make them about ourselves, right, like the struggle to defend redwoods is not about us. It's just that in our own space, we can have these conversations about what it means for us humans to be in the struggle, just like I think, you know, right now, I've been in conversation with several fellow Jews about what's going on right now and what what we're dealing with as Jews. That is not something that I want to put out into the world like up on, you know, I don't want to spend a lot of time on it because it takes the focus away from Palestine. But within our Jewish community, I think it's an important conversation to have. So it's like...It's that...It's that way of being in the struggle. And then if you--just like I think white people need to have conversations with each other about what it means to...like what does Black Lives Matter really mean? And what does dismantling racism really mean? Don't do that at a Black Lives Matter protest, okay. That is not the time, but in our own space and time. So I think, again, you can hold both of those, and I think it's important to.
**Inmn ** 27:29 Yeah, golly, to go tangent for a second on that, like, I don't know, I read this article yesterday, I think, about this.... It was an interview with this Palestinian man who was talking about being asked about antisemitism and like his response to it was like, Israel is.... Israel as a State. Israel displaced Jews living as Arabs in Palestine. Like, Israel is bad for Jewishness and Jewish people.
**Eleanor ** 28:15 Yes, thank you.
**Inmn ** 28:16 And this is like all part of this, like colonizing myth, and any colonizing myth, is to create these others to create a "side," or whatever. I don't know.
**Eleanor ** 28:29 Yeah, that's so true. Israel is the greatest threat to Jews in the world right now, I think.
**Inmn ** 28:37 Um, too.... Not that I don't want to talk about this stuff more but to veer back towards the movie, I am curious about the collaboration between different...like attacking the problem from different angles. And in the movie, there's kind of this triple-pronged approach that is presented as there's people on the ground doing stuff in the trees, there's people doing legal work, there's indigenous people doing stewardship, and then there's people coming in to make movies about it. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about how, like, all of these things interact and like help each other.
**Eleanor ** 29:32 Sure. So, it was actually Tom Wheeler, who works at Epic in California, who said that we exist in an ecosystem with each other, which I liked. And he was talking about how--and he works on the legal side--and he was talking about why the tree sitters are important. And I really appreciated that because I think a lot of times we get, you know, the classic saying that like, "When anarchists meet, we meet in a circle. And that's also how I do firing ranges." And unfortunately, like it's true--not just with anarchists, it's just that my anarchist friend happened to say that. I think it's everybody on the left, regardless of what...if you have a title for your preferred angle. But I think it so often is the case that it's like, "No, my tactic is the most important. If you don't want to do my tactic then you're wrong and you're an asshole and you're standing in the way," and it's like, but not everybody can do the thing that you're doing. Like, I can't climb--I mean, I can climb a tree, but I won't, there's like, you know, the floor is lava or some shit--and not a lot of people have the ability to get up into the woods, to take that space and time. And a lot of people don't have the expertise to do legal battles. You know, we need a lot of good lawyers out there. I think the Lakota Law Project taught us that. Look what's happening in Atlanta. Like. you need good lawyers. So I think instead of getting on people's cases, about tactics, I think it's really important that we recognize that whatever your passion is, whatever your expertise or your drive is, there is a place and a need for that in our movements and in whatever struggle. And so I really appreciated that about the folks that I spoke with, is that they all were complementary and understanding of the other people in the struggle and understood that the goal was the same, was to protect these spaces and protect them out of this feeling of love for these spaces. And I think that's the other thing that's really important is that nobody was doing this for the, you know, the Instagram likes or because they thought it...because it paid the most money or because anything like...they were literally like, "Because I love these spaces," either because I have a strong ancestral connection to them or because I've just fallen in love with them from being around them. And so I think that that's the other thing and that this diversity of tactics is necessary when confronting something so vast and so disgusting as colonialism and Capitalism. We have to do whatever we can. And these folks are doing whatever they can. And Pat, one of the tree sitters, actually talks about this too in the film, like, sit wherever you can, do whatever you can in the ecosystem that you know, in the ecosystem that you love. Like, it doesn't have to be in a redwood. Cool if it is, but we don't have to choose the most superlative ecosystem or the most superlative place to do this. All ecosystems are worthy and Inmneed of our collaboration and protection. And again, in whatever ways we can.
**Inmn ** 32:57 Yeah, yeah. It's really disheartening to watch spaces kind of rip themselves apart in being upset that everyone is not doing the tactic that they want. And that is something that I've always really appreciated about, especially, forest defense campaigns or like other kinds of extraction industry defenses--I can't think of words right now--is just the recognition that we need a lot of different kinds of people to do this work. And, you know, I feel like maybe part of that is people maybe having gone and done things and then gotten in a lot of legal trouble and being like, "Oh, fuck, we need lawyers," and then like, realizing like, "Oh, lawyers are really cool!" But, yeah, that's something I just really appreciate about those campaigns. Um, yeah, I don't know, maybe this is a funny question. Say I'm some random person--or not random--just I'm a person listening to this podcast who's been like curious about forest defense and doesn't really know where to start or how to get into that. Like, I want to.... I've never done forest defense and I want to go get involved in a forest defense campaign, either one that's near me or one that's, maybe, far away. Do you have any advice for someone like that?
**Eleanor ** 34:48 Sure. I mean, I think just start digging into folks who have the knowledge that you're interested in. So like Inmnorthern California, there's the tree sitters union, I think they're on Instagram @thetreesittersunion. There's also, like down around where I am, close to Appalachia, there's Appalachians Against Pipelines. Greenpeace does a lot of like trainings, like climbing trainings and things like that. And those are also spaces where you might be able to meet folks that are like minded. But honestly, like in terms of getting started on a campaign, like.... You know, in the film, again, they just say, just, you know, I" walked up...we walked up and we saw that there was a chainsaw at the bottom of this tree And were like, 'Oh, I guess we'll sit in this tree.'" I think people feel like there has to be this, you know, there has to be the war room where you got all the plans and you got the poster board and you got paper clips and all that. But you don't! Like yes, plan is good so you have water and shit, but it doesn't have to be this really elaborate. campaign to start with. And earlier this year, I was in Germany because I was doing a tour of my film about West Virginia coal in the coal regions of Germany. And I went to this tree village that is absolutely gorgeous. And folks were still living there, even though the campaign had kind of moved on, and I was asking them, like, "Okay, so what's the story here?" And it was the same thing. It was like, "Well, we just didn't want them to cut down this forest." I mean, it really is that simple. Like, I think, again, there is this...there's kind of this mystique to the idea of frontline defense. And, yes, it can build to something where you've got several tree villages or you have, you know, a resistance camp blocking a pipeline that's also like a food forest. Like, sure it can become that. But you don't need to start with that. You just need to start with yourself and some comrades, and this, again, this feeling of love for this place that is threatened. And again, like looking for organizations or like minded folks--and the ones that I mentioned are good places to start--but there are definitely others that I don't know of personally.
**Inmn ** 37:14 Yeah. I'm having...I guess having witnessed campaigns in a lot of different places, I'm curious about this. Are there any kind of differences that you noticed between forest defense campaigns here in the United States, or like Turtle Island, versus in Europe, or any kind of like other places that you've been? Either in terms of repression, tactics, or just like how people organize?
**Eleanor ** 37:52 So, I'd say in terms of the repression tactics, I mean, people in Europe--I can only speak to, currently, Germany and Sweden--but people were very shocked and disgusted at what happened to Tortuguita and what happened down in Atlanta in terms of facing terrorism charges and Rico charges. But there is also, I mean, in Germany, earlier this year, the cops brutally beat people who were trying to save a small town, Lützerath, from being destroyed for an open coal pit mine. So in terms of the direct pushback, the violence, they're not getting shot, but they are getting the shit beat out of them. And so there's absolutely that understanding that, you know, fascism is on the rise across the globe. And neither Europe nor the United States have to look very far in their history, or their present really,to find ways of emulating the fascist state that they are moving towards. And so, in terms of repression, I think it's mostly like the legal battles that are the main difference between the US and Europe. And I think in terms of organizing, I do see a lot of similarities, basically, because it's the same story. It's people who were like, "Actually, you know what, no, you can't fucking do that. I'm not gonna let you ruin this." And I do find a little bit of the same problems in terms of organizing. Like, for instance, Inmnorthern Sweden--which a lot of people don't know that Sweden, Finland, and Norway have indigenous peoples that were then colonized--so the Sami are the indigenous people of the far-north and their ancestral lands blanket across what is now Norway, Finland, Sweden, and parts of Russia. And that's also where a lot of forests are. And it's up in the Arctic Circle. And there's a lot of still culturally important practices, like reindeer herding, that happen there that are being disrupted by deforestation and mining. You know, like Sweden announced recently that, "Oh, we found lithium in the north." Oh, great!
**Inmn ** 40:24 Oh no. Leave it there!
**Eleanor ** 40:26 Yeah, exactly. Don't tell Elon Musk. So, yeah, there's a push to protect these spaces but also this difficulty of like, okay, how do we, as non-indigenous people in Sweden make these inroads. And the Sami are historically very reticent of working with Swedes--I don't blame them--or Norwegians or what have you, because of what's happened in the past. And I noticed that here, too, right. It's difficult sometimes for people who are not indigenous to make those connections in indigenous communities. And so I see a lot of that struggle as well. But at the same time, again, when you are coming at it from this place of, "Well, I too want to protect this out of love. And not because I'm looking for some kind of accolade or whatever," that I think that you can make those connections and you can make that struggle collaborative, as long as you're coming at it from that space. And, so I do see that happening in places outside of the US and I think it's rad.
**Inmn ** 41:43 Hell yeah. That's really great. Golly, this is a really weird question, but, you know, my brain's always on a tangent. Are there any forest defense influencers? Is this a thing in the internet and the internet world? I'm imagining the person who's just there for, you know, Instagram likes, or something, and I'm like, is that real?
**Eleanor ** 42:10 So like, not like the straight up forest defenders, but there's definitely like the Sierra Club type that are like.... You know, so, again, it's like this kind of gray area--I'm a big fan of recognizing nuance--it's like this nuanced space where the person cares and doesn't want to see it destroyed but also wants to virtue signal to people that they care. And that gets all gummed up in the whole Capitalist shit show. So yeah, it's a gummy area.
**Inmn ** 42:48 Yeah, and this is--golly, whatever, I love funny questions--so I'm curious about this from, you know, I've had my own experiences with different with different organizations, but is there any kind of tension or like problems that you do see between on the ground direct action campaigns versus these larger NGO or like nonprofit structures like the Sierra Club or Greenpeace? Yeah, I don't know. I'm not asking for a shit post about these groups or anything, just some of the nuances or complications that can come up?
**Eleanor ** 43:38 Yeah, I mean, again, Capitalism fucks everything up. There were a couple of organizations that I reached out to when I was in California, and they were first happy to talk to me, but then when they realized that I was there supporting and speaking to tree sitters, who are, by definition, breaking the law, because it's private timber land, did not want to speak to me anymore. And I think that's very clearly--like whether they personally wanted to or not is not the point--but as an organization, I think they realized, "Oh, well, our donors are, I don't know, some rich asshole over here. And if we do that, if we engage with people who are very overtly breaking the law, then that's not good for our bottom line. And we need our bottom line in order to keep protecting the forest.: So in their mind, they were doing that so that they could continue to protect the forest. But of course, this creates that splintering that is so useful for the system. In reality, they should be working with the tree sitters. Like, you have the ability to work together to protect these spaces but because you have to make sure that you get the foundation money or these rich donors or whatever, you can't. And so I absolutely see that and I think that's also a global problem because a lot of this does cost money, you know? Like, rope is not cheap. Just making sure that people have supplies and food and things. Like shit costs money. And it's not like tree sitters get paid. So it is difficult, but I tend to--I shouldn't say...I don't want to be prejudiced ahead of time, but I've I find that I often am--be prejudiced against a big organization that says, "We are protecting the forest." It's like, are you? Or are you doing like forest walks and shit--which is cool--and like picking up trash. But that is not the same thing as standing between a chainsaw and a tree. And that's not to say that like, "I'm more radical than you." It's just a necessary context, I think, for understanding, again, this ecosystem that we're a part of. Like, we need more people to be the ones standing in between the trains on the tree. And I think we need fewer people being the ones, you know, typing up newsletters about this forest walk where you can plant a sapling or some shit, just in terms of what we need. That's what I would say.
**Inmn ** 46:25 Yeah. Yeah, It's weird how similar the idea of an NGO or something being getting donors to lead a forest walk.... It's the trap of building an organization that gets too big and has too many dependencies on Capital to sustain itself. It's, yeah, it's.... I don't know. I think about this a lot with different projects that I've been a part of. Like I'm part of this community theater group and I'm like, we can't get too big or it's gonna cause huge problems. We can't be too successful or else it all falls apart. Yeah, I think that would be my biggest thing with some larger NGOs is it's cool if y'all's thing is like bringing in money, that's cool. But it seems like the real problem is an organization like that's inability to accept a diversity of tactics or donors to really look past--and maybe this is a shitpost--but the idea wealthy donors who want the experience of like donating to an environmental nonprofit and want that experience of like bringing their kids on the forest walk, this is the same thing as getting a like, quote, "heirloom redwood forest timber deck that is sustainably 'harvested'" Like it's the same thing.
**Eleanor ** 48:15 Yeah, it is very twisted. And of course I think that's the problem is that there's no such thing as money without strings. And so when you have these big donors--and I know this from just other spaces that I've organized, even outside of the environment--okay, well, so-and-so is gonna give this much money, but then they also want us to build the website this way or they want us to make sure that the action looks like this. And it's like, but also these people don't know anything about organizing. So then their ideas are shit and you're like, "Look, the whole entire campaign is falling apart because you want this sign to say something completely stupid," and it happens all the time. And that's why, unfortunately, we as organizers have to have this balance of like, "Okay, we need this much money, but if we just get it from one or two donors, what do they want in return for all of this cash?" And there's always going to be something. They're not just going to be like, "Hey, really happy that we can support you in whatever you're doing," like, that's never the case. So yeah, it sucks. But yeah, until we can just, you know, pay rent in good deeds or something, that's gonna be the problem.
**Inmn ** 49:35 Or like shift our cultural mindset beyond like...you know, if I'm a wealthy donor or something, then the important thing is that the people have the money and resources to do the work, not that I get anything in return from it. I don't know, I feel like--and maybe this is my bias, having not traveled much outside of the States--is that we have this very individualistic mentality around everything, and that that extends to forest and extraction resource defense and like.... I don't know.
**Eleanor ** 50:15 It is a.... And one of the people in the film Marni, a member of the Wiyot tribe, talks about this individualistic paradigm that has perpetuated, that we as children of Empire have, because it's been passed down to us. And even those of us who have been radicalized, I like to say that there's no way that you can ever be like 100% AntiCapitalist. Like it's a daily struggle, just like you have to be antiracist everyday and antifacist. Like, there is no like, "Got it! No, I'm done." So she talks about this like this--and you know, to go back to Lord of the Rings--
**Inmn ** 50:18 The real goal podcast, right? It's not. But...
**Eleanor ** 50:27 It all has to do with Lord of the Rings. She likens it to Gollum. And if anybody listening has not read Lord of the Rings, first of all, please do so. But secondly, Gollum is not a character that you want to emulate. Like, that is not how you're supposed to read that. Like, oh, Gollum is cool? Like, he is literally driven to mental anguish and dismay and physical like breakdown because he's so obsessed with this one ring. And that is not a good thing, right? It's not something where you're like, "Yeah, Gollum!" and he loses like all his community. Like, he's just by himself. And yet, we have built an entire system on the paradigm of Gollum. Like be by yourself. Fuck community. Care only about the thing that you can own and that can thereby, of course, own you in return. It's so fucked up. And yet, that is like the foundation of Capitalism. And so of course, when we step into a forest...and is one of the lines that I have in my first film about West Virginia is "How can you look at a mountain and think 'mine.'" Which is, of course, a double entendre. Which, I'm a sucker for those. But it's like, that's what we do. We've been programmed into stepping into these beautiful spaces and thinking, "Oh, I wonder how much this would be worth if I destroyed it?" Like, what kind of fucked way is that to look.... And it happens, you know, I have a toddler and people will kind of laugh when I'm like, "We go outside and we hug trees together," and they'll laugh. And I'm like, "So that's kind of weird that you think it's funny in like a derogatory way, because wouldn't it be more fucked up if I had like a toddler axe, or some shit, and I was teaching him how to destroy these things? Like, why do we have this paradigm where it's weird to teach your kids to love nature but totally cool to give a five year old a hunting rifle or something. Like what in the hell? And I'm not saying that you shouldn't hunt. But we hunt for fun. Like we don't hunt because we need food. We hunt because it's fun.
**Inmn ** 53:17 Or for the trophy.
**Eleanor ** 53:20 Right, for the trophy, which you can say is the same with the redwood deck. It's a trophy. It's something to show off to people. You don't need it. Like you could, you could stack stones and have a deck. Like, you don't need the fucking redwoods. And she also made...Marni makes this point in the film too, like, of course, people have used wood for generations, to use for firewood, to widdle sculptures, to build things. And she's like, "I totally get that, but you can't do it at this scale. You have to have this relationship with nature so that you only take what you need and make sure that there's enough for the next time," and you see this throughout indigenous cultures. You know, Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about it in "Braiding Sweetgrass," the idea that--and I don't remember if it was her tribe or another one that she's talking about--would go out and get fish, but then they wouldn't get all of the fish. They'd just get the ones that they needed, right? And they would know that there's all these fish 'getting away'--in the white perspective--but they're not 'getting away,' they are surviving so that you can go fishing next time. And so again, it's like this...it's a very short sighted paradigm that is totally individualistic and totally destructive, that doesn't.... And again, like Gollum is totally destroyed but he doesn't see it himself. It's only people on the outside that are like, "Oh, God, that guy's not doing well." And yet again, we don't, we don't see it from the inside. And so I think that's why it's so important to step outside of that programming and just see the logic or the illogic of these situations and allow ourselves to fall in love with nature and question why that sounds corny when we say it out loud. Like, why is it corny to fall in love with a tree or a river or what have you. I mean, like, that is actually really beautiful. And it is necessary if we are to get to the space where we can say, "Defend what you love." Because if you don't love something, you're less likely to defend it, right? Like, you know, of course, that's why parents always defend their children because you have this natural need, like you love your child so much, or your partner, or your friend, or what have you. You're less likely to defend a total stranger. It's just like a human thing, or an animal thing. And so if we don't love these places, these spaces, then we're less likely to be moved to defend them.
**Inmn ** 56:01 Yeah. Golly, so don't be like Gollum. Don't hoard ultimate power and destruction. Be like a hobbit and enjoy the 3000 year old party tree because it's a beautiful tree.
**Eleanor ** 56:19 Amen.
**Inmn ** 56:23 Well, this seems like a great place to kind of tie it off, and because we're also almost at time, but do you have any final thoughts or questions that I didn't ask you that you wish I'd asked you? And then after that, anything that you want to plug?
**Eleanor ** 56:43 Just, I mean, it was something that I included at the end of the film, my good friend Carla Bergman co-wrote a book "Joyful Militancy," which I also recommend to everyone.
**Inmn ** 56:53 Oh, yeah. We had Carla on not too long ago.
**Eleanor ** 56:57 I love Carla so much. So one of the things that they talk about in that book, Carla and Nick, is this idea of rigid radicalism and the need to be fluid but not flimsy. And I think that that's something that...that's another practice that I'm trying to get more into, because I think a lot of times when we have a stance or when we have a perspective, we can get stuck in it. And then, we can let it weigh us down. And I think it's really important, no matter what fight we're fighting, to be able to be fluid because it will allow us to confront the next struggle, the next shitstorm, the next fire, or whatever. But if we are too rigid, we will get caught up in the flood or the flames and be carried away. And so I think it's important to stay fluid but not flimsy. And yeah.
**Inmn ** 57:59 Sick. Are there any places that you can be found on the internet where you would like to be found or where your work can be found? I know you plugged stuff at the beginning but we'll throw stuff in the show notes.
**Eleanor ** 58:14 All of my work is at artkillingapathy.com That's where my films are, my music, my poetry, and journalism. This specific film To the Trees is at tothetreesfilm.com and I am on Instagram and Twitter @RadicalEleanor.
**Inmn ** 58:32 Wonderful. And are you working on anything? Got anything coming up soon that you're working on?
**Eleanor ** 58:38 I think I'm going to work on some of the footage that I got in Germany as kind of like an addendum, or a compliment, to my first film about coal regions in West Virginia. I have footage from coal regions in Germany that I think I'm gonna put into something.
**Inmn ** 58:58 Great. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show today.
**Eleanor ** 59:01 Thanks so much for having me.
**Inmn ** 59:08 If you enjoyed this episode, Defend the Party Tree. You can also tell people about the show. You can support the show financially by supporting our publisher, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. And you can find us on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. You can also go to tangledwilderness.org and check out some cool books that we have for sale, because we are a publisher. We put out books, we put out zines, we put out podcasts, obviously. And we're working on all kinds of really fun stuff. So, go check it out and get a cool book. We also do this zine of the month club where for like 10 bucks a month, you can get a zine version of our monthly feature mailed to you anywhere in the world. You can also listen to the feature for free on our other podcast Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, where we do interviews with the author And that's really it. We would like to have a special shout out to a few of our Patreon supporters. Thank you, Patoli, Eric, Perceval, Buck, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixster, Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, Funder, Janice & Odell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, Theo, Hunter, SJ, Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Macaiah, and Hoss the Dog. Thank you so much. And we will see everyone next time.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Elizabeth talks with Brooke about running a small scale farm, including what goes into feeding over 700 families year-round, the importance of community accessible farm space, how climate change continues to mess things up, and how taking care of the soil really matters.
Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Elizabeth on small scale farming
**Brooke ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host Brooke Jackson. And today we're going to be talking with Elizabeth Miller, a farmer, about her work in having an organic farm and some really cool stuff that she does that's worth all of us learning how to do a bit of. But before we get into that, we'd like to give a shout out to another one of the podcasts on the Channel Zero Network. So here's a little jingle from one of our friends. Doo doo doo doo, doo doo. [Singing a simple melody]
**Brooke ** 01:29 And we're back. So as I mentioned in the intro, I have with me today, Elizabeth Miller, a wonderful lady who owns a farm. And Elizabeth, I'll hand it off to you to tell us a little bit more about yourself.
**Elizabeth ** 01:46 Thanks for having me. I'd love to talk about farming and my community. I've been running Minto Island Growers for about 16 years here in South Salem. My husband Chris and I started the farm way back when. We were passionate about environmental science and community food systems when we met in college, and I grew up working on our family farm and it was the kid who always wanted to come back and work with plants. And when Chris and I formed our partnership we were ready to come back here, in 2008, after working at a farm in California and really building a community based organic farm. And I can delve more into what that means to me. But one of our primary works that we do on our farm is centered around our CSA program, which is an acronym for Community Supported Agriculture that's practiced in lots of different ways all over the world, really. Every farm does a little bit differently but you have a subscription based weekly produce box. And we do a main season and a winter season for that. And I can, again, talk more about that if that's of interest. And we have a farm stand where we also do lots of food: woodfired pizza and berry milkshakes and salads, things that we hope reflect all the beautiful abundance and diversity that you can grow and eat here in Oregon. And it's also just a wonderful community hub for families to come and gather and join and connect with nature and really connect with the earth. That's what I firmly believe food can do for us and feed our souls and bodies in all the really most profound ways. We do organic plant starts and we do mint propagation and we used to do native plant work that were projects that I grew up doing, but we don't do any of that anymore. And that's a short summary. And I'll stop talking so we can get into more detail.
**Brooke ** 03:46 No worries, thank you. Now listeners, you're listening to this and you may be wondering why we're having a farmer come on and talk and we've definitely talked a lot about gardening, at home gardening, growing your own garden. We've talked a little bit about community gardens. And what intrigues me about what Elizabeth's doing and what I think is useful to us is that she and her farm operate on a fairly small footprint. They grow an incredible diversity of food. And it's a fairly small staff. And when I think about the future and climate change problems that we're having and the number of food chains, food supply insecurities that we have, I'm concerned a lot about how we grow food to feed a community. And I feel like what Elizabeth does with her farm does feed a large community and there may be parts of that that are replicable for the rest of us. So if we find ourselves in a time in which our supply chains have broken down or we can work together to develop a farm, there's a lot of insights from what she does that would help create those kinds of things and replicate them in other places, because she's not a large scale industrial farmer and is not mono-cropping. And really does, like I was saying, a lot on a small footprint with a small staff. So. Elizabeth, would you tell us a little bit more about some of the specifics of the farm like how much land do you farm? How much food do you produce? How many different crops? What's your staff size? Some of those kinds of things to fill in the details of what I was just saying,
**Elizabeth ** 05:46 Sure, happy to. We lease about 29 acres. A lot of that encompasses non-production areas where we grow our plant starts and have our washing station and a commercial kitchen that supports the food cart. So in any given season, we are probably cultivating between 8 to 12 acres of land and that also includes lots of fallow fields that are either not in the rotation that year or hopefully are being cover cropped to add more nutrients and organic matter to the soil and to just practice good rotation. And one of the most amazing things about growing in the Pacific Northwest is the huge amount of diversity that you can grow here in this temperate climate, even with climate change. And that's going to stay true even within a climate change context. And I feel like having a diverse...a business model based on a high level of diversity can provide a lot of resilience within, you know, socio-political changes, climate change, context environmental extremes, you know, that.... Even though diversity is challenging, because it means you have to have a greater skill set per crop. And the complexity, the number of successions, and the complexity with the number of crops makes it difficult to run as lean and efficient and profitable of a business, it still provides a lot of resilience and it's really what our business model is based on. So we grow, you know, about 30 to 40 different crops and within that, over 100 different varieties. You know, just with pepper, eggplant, and tomato alone there's probably 30 to 40 varieties there, which is a little bit insane, but it's also incredibly exciting because there's so much diversity out there. And as a farmer, you know, it's just...it keeps...it's just exciting to delve into the world of diversity within varieties. And we do that both for fun, to expose our customers and our eaters and for ourselves to more options and things you don't get in the store. That's one of the fun things about gardening at home or working on or buying from a small farm is just getting access to more interesting varieties. We do that also because there's a lot of great plant breeding that goes on and can--depending on what the breeders are focusing on--there can be more resilience within a variety. That's especially true with the hybrid brassicas. So, you know, we love the seed saving. We love open pollinated varieties and heirloom varieties. But as farmers who rely on growing food for our economic living, we do buy hybrid seeds--nothing GMO, of course, because we're certified organic and we wouldn't do that anyway. But we do see it with certain crops like the hybrid brassicas--like the heading brassicas, like broccoli, cabbages, etc--having options with hybrids is really important for just vigor and yield and consistency. And even with tomatoes, we love growing the beautiful diversity of all the open pollinated heirloom tomatoes but, you know, now that we've been farming for over 16 years, we're seeing diseases we hadn't seen before, especially with the extreme.... Well, we had already seen late blight in our tomatoes, but I'm sure that it would have been.... Our very, very wet spring we had last year, we saw a bigger increase in fungal and bacterial diseases and we've seen resistance to those things in different varieties. So that's been an interesting thing we've observed in the last couple years. So yeah, our CSA model, it's changed a little bit over the years but essentially we do 22 weeks of a main season. And then we do about 7 weeks of a winter season. And our main season is June through the end of October and winter being November through February. And we could easily do a year round CSA in terms of what we're able to grow. It's those bridge months, we call them, from like February March, April, May are challenging but we have farmer friends who are really successfully do a year round CSAs because you can grow so much diversity here, especially if you utilize covered spaces really strategically, like hoop houses or even lower tech stuff like caterpillar tunnels--which are also important in a climate change context, even more so than then they have been in the past. So we do a combination for our CSA program of pack [unsure of spelling] shares, where we decide what goes in those shares. and we do two different share sizes to make it more...give more options to the community. And those get delivered to drop sites still relatively, you know, the farthest.... We used to go to Portland and then we realized at a point that we could fulfill all of our CSA shares here in the community. And so we decided to just deliver into the Salem area, which is so much better for many, many reasons. So the farthest we go out is Kaiser. But many of our drop sites are really pretty close to the farm. A few are five minutes away. Some are 10 minutes away. And that's because we really do cater to our local Salem community. And we are so proud of the relationships we've been able to build with our community over time, which I can talk more about because it's really its own thing to discuss. And then we do a market-style option, which again, different farms define this and do this in different ways. But for us it means setting up our produce at our farm stand two nights a week from four to seven. And we have a combination of fixed and choice items. And so the fixed items allow us to just have a little more reliable crop plan and make sure that we're still getting that good level of diversity out to our customers. People have to try to eat bok choy at least once a year, not five times a year, but once a year. It justifies us growing it too, which is good, you know. You want that diversity. It's good for our bodies. It's good for the soil. It's good in many, many ways. And then they get their choice items which they get to choose amongst. And like we've found that market-style option to just be incredibly popular, both for our customers and for us as a farm. It gives us so much more flexibility. It allows us to.... It justify us growing more specialty crops too because we can pick those really small amounts of like a specialty crop fully and put it out for market-style choice and we know that it'll all get taken and chosen versus like not being sure that that would all get enjoyed in our packed boxes, because we want to make sure that folks are really enjoying their CSAs. One of the big pieces...the most consistent piece of feedback we've gotten over the years, and many other CSA farms we hear this too, is that folks aren't able to fully utilize everything that's in their share. And they're usually joining a CSA because they value that local produce so much. And so trying to find ways to fit different people's needs within the CSA, you know, do the combo and fix and choice and also not...still grow specialty items but not have to grow huge quantities of it, you know. We've really fine tuned our model quite a bit over the years in the options that we've created. And then the winter season's every other week with a bigger break in the winter. And that's a combination of storage crops, but a lot of crops still coming from the field, which is really one of the things I love to talk about when I do tours is talking about just the amount you can still eat fresh from the fields where your nutrient density is still so high because things are fresh. You know, you lose a lot of your nutrients when things are picked and sit on the store shelves or, you know. They can be...not all frozen things are bad, you know. You can capture nutrients with certain types of processing techniques. But if it's not being processed in a certain way and it's just fresh, sitting on the shelf, you can lose a lot of your nutrient density that way. So the winter CSA is a really fun eating because it's still very, very diverse. And a lot of it's still really fresh. And there's some folks that just do that CSA. They might be really avid home gardeners, but they either don't have the scale or the storage capacity but they still want to eat a seasonal diversity and eat local and fresh. And so they'll come to our farm just for the winter CSA which is really neat. Yeah.
**Brooke ** 14:13 And you do garden, or excuse me, "garden..." you do farm year round basically. It's not that you're...you're not working throughout those months when there isn't the CSA, right? Your farmers are still quite busy.
**Elizabeth ** 14:29 That's very true. And yeah, you had asked to talk about our staff. So we--
**Brooke ** 14:34 Yeah, hold on, let me back up before you get into the numbers just because I want to review. Okay, so you're operating on eight or nine acres a year generally. And you're growing how many different crops, not including sub varieties?
**Elizabeth ** 14:48 I'd say 30 to 40. I haven't encountered the actual list in a few years, but it's definitely between 30 and maybe 45.
**Brooke ** 14:58 30 to 45 crops. 8 or 9 acres. You're sort of actively actually farming and yielding stuff from May/June through winter.
**Elizabeth ** 15:10 Well, with our covered spaces, honestly, it's almost February now. February or March through.... We had a really big success last year in growing a much greater amount of food fresh from the soil but in the covered spaces with the addition of the caterpillar tunnels. We were harvesting quite a bit starting in early March.
**Brooke ** 15:32 You didn't say numbers on the CSA, but I just happen to know that it's about 250 families that sign up that get that weekly produce box through the summer. Plus, you still have a farmstand that people come and buy fresh at. Plus, you have wholesale. Do you know how much food you produce? Like I don't.... You know, I know sometimes I hear about tons of this or that, but....
**Elizabeth ** 15:54 You know, I don't know the statistics and I really should. We keep them all in our harvest spreadsheets for our own record keeping and for Oregon Tilth for the organic certification. And I should know some of those stats because it'd be really.... What I really should know is per acre and by crop, you know, per bed-foot yield. But it's changing. I mean.... I have two really talented.... Shoutout to my two head farmers, my harvest manager, Arabella, and my field manager, Justin, are in their fifth and sixth year of farming on our particular farm, which is important to say because you have to really learn how to farm a particular farm. You can be a talented grower, but knowing a particular farm's soil, experiencing multiple seasons of variations, both in disease, pests, cropping patterns, weather patterns, learning that level, you know, you have to know a lot about many different crops. It's a huge breadth of knowledge that you need. And so you only really get that depth by farming many seasons. So they're just at the peak of their game in their trajectory this year. And so many crops statistics that they have reported have been double or more. I mean, just.... And it was a quote, unquote, "normal year," you know, with no big climate extremes. No, you know, heat dome. No raining for the first three months of spring so that, you know, the soil tilth was so much better than last year, for instance, where we had one of the coldest, wettest springs on record. And we saw the effects on crop health, and especially disease, but just crop health generally because of the tilth of the soil. The roots...the plants just were never as healthy, especially the one-time plantings that you would have to establish in the beginning of the year when we were so pressed to get things in the ground. So this year has just been so incredibly positive and more bountiful than normally even so. It's really turning my head of what's possible growing wise, you know, because there's so much variation within a crop year-to-year. And you know that with a large level of diversity, you're never going to grow each crop perfectly. There's always going to be something that's going to have a challenge or be better than expected or have some unusual circumstance. That's the challenge but also the wonderful curiosity of farming is you're always learning something new because soil systems and ecological systems are so complex. So I should...I'll get some of those steps under my belt for the next time I have a conversation like this.
**Brooke ** 18:39 Well and that diversity, you know, another example of why that diversity is so important is that you're going to have some kind of crop failure or problem going on, right? Okay, so the CSA feeds something like 750 families. So if you had to take a guesstimate with, you know, Saturday markets and farmstand and wholesale, what do you think.... Like how many additional families worth of produce do you suppose that you put out?
**Elizabeth ** 19:12 Oh, gosh, I mean, I'd say there's, you know, probably 700 to.... I don't know if we should say 1000 family units that come through the farm. You know, some people come to just have a milkshake with their kids and play on the playground, which is wonderful. My single biggest driving factor in starting the farm was that I wanted to continue a deep, and deeply important to me, and long family tradition of working within natural resources in Oregon. But most importantly, I wanted to keep the soil productive and in agricultural production so that it could be farmed for a few generations because we will need that soil and once.... If you can't afford to keep land in agricultural production and it's developed, you can never really go back from that. And two, was to give people the same opportunity to connect with the land that I had, you know? My family happens to own it. But of course the white people took all the land from the Native Americans and have abused it in many different ways over the years. And thankfully, the family tradition I was raised in, generationally it shifted, of course, because we've learned so much more about how to treat the land well. But there was always a history, like when my family was in timber. And that's where my family got its start was, you know, getting to take advantage, in some sense, of Earth's, you know, capital that it had grown for hundreds of years. And that's given me, in some way, the opportunity to have. But there was always an ethic of conservation and stewardship within my family's relationship to the land or to the natural resource that they were able to have the privilege to get to interact with. And I believe firmly that I'm so passionate about the Earth because I had the opportunity to connect with it. And so many people just don't have the exposure. They don't have the opportunity to either be out in nature or to have a garden. And of course, many people, you know, encounter that and experience it and find inspiration on their own. But it's hard...it can be hard to find that connection and that care for the earth and that perspective if you don't have the opportunity to interact with nature and with the soil. And food is such a fundamental way that we can all do that. And it connects us all. We all have to eat. So I just felt that our farm at Minto needed to be a community farm. People needed access to it. They needed to be able to connect to it and we needed to be able to connect to each other through that mechanism of growing and eating food. So that's always been a driving principle of our farm and our business.
**Brooke ** 22:08 Yeah, and I'll say, you know, as an indigenous woman, how proud of you I am and how grateful I am for your ongoing.... You know, and you don't shy away from the awareness of the privilege that you have and where it came from and then the commitment that you have and have had towards land preservation and restoration and the way you take care of this piece of land. Yes, it is a business. But I think you would do things that would help the land and hurt the business because of your priority structure. Not that you would generally have to make that choice. But like if that's...if it came down to a decision between the two, I know that you're always going to take care of the land and make sure that it's healthy and strong and sustainable for generations. And that's really important culturally to me. So I'm, I'm grateful for that and to be a part of it.
**Elizabeth ** 23:05 And thank you for that comment. I have so much learning to do. But I am so thankful for my family and especially my father for giving me that opportunity. He's my greatest hero and we share the same passion for plants and for soil and really the idea of stewardship that we just happen to be lucky to be able to have this relationship and that it's, you know, really.... I really wanted to examine what the idea of ownership is.... It's never made sense to me that we have the ability to own land, you know, and so there's so much more soul searching and seeking of...questioning of what that means. But I definitely see it as there's a huge responsibility when you do have the opportunity to try to do the best you can. And I'm thankful that my dad's been able to learn from me too. He still thinks we're crazy with all the amount of work that we put in. But he also understands. He sees how responsive the community has been to it. Because I believed...I knew that the community would come for this because it's just so fundamental. It's so fundamental to our wellness to be connected to the earth and to each other and to do it through food. It's like you can't really argue with it. And I am not.... This is not a discovery I'm making. This discovery has been fundamental to how we've interacted as a species since we've been evolving, you know? So um, yeah, so back.... I didn't really get to talk about the team that that makes it all happen because I--
**Brooke ** 24:53 Yeah, you must have a massive staff to produce this much food and be working this long and year round and so much land that you're doing. It must take an army to get that out, right?
**Elizabeth ** 25:06 Yes, I simultaneously feel that it's huge and tiny and huge. And you know, my conception of it, my concept of it, expands and contracts depending on how I'm looking at things. But I just want to say that the people who choose to work on organic...small organic farms--or any farm really--are just some of the best people around there. They're in it because they're passionate about plants and soil and feeding their community. They're not in it because they're trying to make a bunch of money and they're sacrificing. Agriculture is often a lower paid profession. And there are very few farms, unless they're in a nonprofit structure or have figured some things out that I'm really trying to figure out, but there's usually not a benefit package to support, you know, these worker populations. And so it's just, it's a labor of love, the people that choose to do this work, and I am so humbled and proud to work with them every day. So we have a team of year-round managers. That's about four or five. And then we have a seasonal staff that expands quite a bit and quite a bit more so even this year to about between 20 and 30. But that encompasses all the farmstand staff and food cart and our perennial crew. And I haven't yet spoken about the fact that we grow blueberries and strawberries and we also have a neat tea project. Camellia sinensis is the tea plant and all the types of teas, black, green, oolong, ect... come from that one plant. And my dad has a real innovative approach to plants and agriculture, always has, so he, with a partner, in the late 80s planted tea, and so I've gotten to try to move that project forward. And so we have managers that kind of head each part of that farm. We have a CSA manager. We have a CSA logistics person. We have a field manager. We have a perennial manager. We have a farmstead manager, a food cart manager. And often those folks will take on many other roles too on the farm or have done other.... So, it's a small but mighty team. And since we do farm year round, that core managerial staff is often working in the winter still, which is wonderful but also challenging because they work so hard during the main season that then to continue to work when it gets so much colder and wetter and muddier and everything is hard and you can't necessarily warm up and recharge your body during the day, it's.... I'm at a crossroads with our business where I'm really trying to build longer term sustainability. And we've been doing this for 16 years, so that's quite a long time and some big lessons learned and there's still a lot of resilience needed in our business model to keep going. And our managers are really the heart of the farm. I can't physically do all the work as a mother of two younger kids. My husband, Chris, now works as a mint breeder and he still is able to work from the farm but for a totally different company. And he really supports my ability to keep farming because the economics are really challenging with small farms. So I'm just trying to think very creatively with the newer perspectives I have of how people can do this work year round, long term, and what they really want to do during the winter. I think it's an incredible niche for other folks that are interested in this as a business model. There are some beet firms that only do winter farming because so many fewer farms there do it and you can do so much. But I'm thinking of different options and different models for our farm, but that's probably a level of detail we don't need to go into today but it's.... Yeah, I'm really looking at our business model from all angles to try to build in long term resilience, just in terms of the model. Yeah.
**Brooke ** 29:24 Well, I might love to have you back sometime and talk about some specific things like winter farming or maybe.... I would love to do a whole thing on potatoes and I don't know if you want to come back for that but....
**Elizabeth ** 29:35 Well, I might stop throwing them so I don't know if you want me to. Not fully. Not fully. But if there's one crop I know we lose money on its potatoes.
**Brooke ** 29:47 Wow. Okay, that's really interesting because potatoes are--
**Elizabeth ** 29:49 I'm not sure. My numbers will tell me this year but.... Yeah, we could do a deep dive on potatoes, even later in the episode if we have time, but.... People love potatoes, though. So that's a thing. There's like.... You want to grow what people love and you know they'll use. And they're nutritious. And they store. And they're so versatile in the kitchen. But....
**Brooke ** 30:12 Nutrient dense.
**Elizabeth ** 30:16 Yep. But we've had such a difficult time growing them consistently well. Last year, we doubled our yield from the previous year, and grew them better than we ever had. And then this year, it's kind of back down to, "Ehh?" normal yields. We're like, well, did we learn anything? What were the factors, you know. Sometimes there's trajectories in crops and trends and you're like, okay, I'm steadily getting better at this. I'm learning things that I'm applying to a consistently better outcome. Potatoes are not one of those crops. There just seems to still be so much uncertainty and variation in the end yields. And to me, you know, I like to think about what is really unique about a locally grown vegetable. And often there is something really special, whether it be a variety or the fact that it doesn't store well or it's super delicious, or it's more perishable, or, you know, many, many things. Potatoes, in my mind, unless it's a really interesting variety and it's a new potato, to me, potatoes are almost.... There's not that many distinguishing features that make a fresh, locally grown potato that different in comparison to everything else we grow. To me, it's more of a commodity type thing. Same with onions, but I love growing alliums and I will never stop growing them. But I could deep dive into those specific crops if we wanted to.
**Brooke ** 31:43 Yeah, I think I'll save that for probably another one. But that is really interesting to know. And some of our audience members are going to have some strong feelings about not growing potatoes. And I understand that. And we've done episodes around.... Well, I don't know if we did it. I know Margaret, who's one of our other hosts who originally started the podcast, has certainly done a deeper dive on potatoes on one of her other podcasts. Anyway, sorry. If you said it, I guess I missed it, you talked about your management team but then like the harvest staff you have kind of at the height of your season, how many folks do you have?
**Elizabeth ** 32:25 Yeah, I'd say six to eight. I mean, you know, on a...Tuesday is our biggest harvest day, and there's probably, you know, six to eight people out there. Some of the managers come in to do half days, but you know, on a Wednesday, that's the second biggest day of our CSA, we'll have four or five in the morning and then three in the afternoon. So it really...it really varies.
**Brooke ** 32:50 So less than one person per acre? Not that that's how.... That's not a great measure. But, you know, if you're growing eight or nine acres, you have--
**Elizabeth ** 32:59 It's difficult to talk about the stats because you're growing...you have to do.... There's so many steps that go into the full execution of a crop. You know, onions, for instance, your crop planning in November. You're starting the seeds very, very early, actually. We used to do it in February. Now it's March. Because they're relatively slow growing and you have to grow quite a bit. You know, one onion plant is an onion versus a potato plant grows multiple potatoes. Same with a kale plant. You know, so lots and lots of seedlings, many, many flats. And then they are in the greenhouse for a long time. Then they get transplanted out and they grow all season long. They don't get harvested for storage until.... Of course we're taking spring or fresh onions out of the field starting in maybe July, but the bulk of the allium harvest isn't until August/September. And then they're stored all winter. So the labor that's spread across that whole.... You know, it's almost.... I mean, we have onions year round so sometimes an onion will be a seedling or in storage for almost an entire year. So it's difficult to fully, accurately allocate your labor across an acre or crop just because--
**Brooke ** 34:15 Sure. Yeah,
**Elizabeth ** 34:16 You know, but yeah, in peak season from June through September, I would say that there's six to eight people on average that are full time growing those crops. Growing, harvesting, delivering, etc...processing, delivery, ect...
**Brooke ** 34:36 And that's what it takes to grow enough food to feed more than 250 families a weekly box of produce, six to eight folks.
**Elizabeth ** 34:43 It probably could be quite a bit more. I believe, you know, with better farming techniques and, you know, I don't know if we want to go into no-till philosophy and practices on this episode, but from the learning we've been doing about some of these no-till farms that have been in operation for quite a long time. Singing Frog is one in California that's pointed to a lot because they've been farming for so long. The yields that they're getting per acre, it's almost like double or triple or even quadruple sometimes what even the best, you know, organic producers are saying they're getting. So I believe on our footprint we could be growing a much higher density of food per bed foot or per acre than we even are now, but it's very labor intensive. It's a very.... Which I think is good and challenging economically. But it's good that there is the opportunity for people to grow food for a living as their job. It's extremely enriching and gratifying on many levels. I think the economics are the hardest part. And I believe farmers should be making as much as doctors are making. I mean, maybe, yeah. Ehh, maybe not a specialist surgeon, you know, but you know what I mean? It's a very undervalued profession, especially for the crew position versus a managerial position. It's incredibly important and incredibly difficult. And food prices in our country, and across the world, it's just the way that we perceive food value is challenging. And affordability is incredibly challenging too. But there's just many things that should change in our food system to value, you know, to value food better. Not necessarily that it should cost more money for people, but the way that that work and that product is valued, there's a lot of improvement that could be made in that and you know, we could talk all about government subsidies and policy and all that another time. But I believe there's a lot.... I believe the federal government should be subsidizing small to medium diversified organic farms, not just large scale commodity farms growing GMO soy for a stupid faux green biofuel, you know? I mean, there's just so much wrong with our agricultural policy. But, again, another episode in the making maybe?
**Brooke ** 35:06 Yeah, there's so much to get into there. And that's interesting. So you've had 16 years of learning and growing and it's a nonstop process, it sounds like. Partly with just because some crops are fickle and because of climate change. So, I want to rewind for a second all the way back to 16 years ago when you and Chris first started and compare, you know, what your staff size looked like, how much of the land you were farming, what kind of yield you were getting in those first few years as you were learning and developing.
**Elizabeth ** 38:04 Again, I don't have those statistics. They're all anecdotal at this point. The big context for when Chris and I started the farm was that we were both more steeped in native plant and restoration work. Chris did, you know, he did Environmental Science at Colorado College and I was on that track as well but switched to more social sciences and music and.... But, you know, that's what I grew up primarily working with on our farm. We had a native plants nursery, and my dad did forestry research. And you can still see some of the cottonwoods, the native and the hybrid cottonwoods on the farm, which are an interesting thing that isn't active really anymore. But you know, those woody perennials and their kind of environmental uses, you know, from both just standard restoration to bio energy and phytoremediation, like toxic metals and wastewater clean up. And Chris and I were really interested in green roofs and urban use of plants, you know, and that.... So when we started the farm, we were passionate about food systems and we started a small CSA. We started with five people, five shares. And LifeSource was actually our first sale of Romaine. I still have the receipt framed. We sold them some romaine. And we're not currently selling to them right now. But we have sold them quite a bit in the past. And Marion Polk Food Share is currently our large wholesale account. But yeah, we started with five members, one who is still an active member of our CSA, which I love. And we actually had a largely Latino crew. Pedro and Maria were husband and wife. Pedro used to work with my dad doing the hybrid poplar harvest. And Maria and her sisters and her nieces were our core crew for quite a long time. And they are amazing people who I miss on the farm. And that's another whole topic, of just agricultural labor and how that's changed so much. But it's interesting to think back to that because that's a very different population of people. And they are such skilled agricultural workers. And I miss so many aspects of that on the farm. And currently most of our worker population are young students. It's a lot of Willamette students, other students, people who are transitioning to other professions, people who are going into horticulture, you know, who are plant and science based people all mostly in their early 20s or 30s. It's.... How to do this work into your 40s, 50s, and 60s, and 70s is a whole nother thing that I'm thinking about quite a bit now as I'm entering my early 40s. But yeah, very different demographics of people who were working on the farm. And Chris and I were doing so many native, woody plant-based projects at that time. We were in mint propagation, and that was both really positive because we were really passionate about that work and it's really interesting work, and Chris had been working at a living roof ecological restoration company down in California before he moved up to Oregon. And it also spreads really, really thin across the farm and across many projects. And it didn't...we didn't have the.... Now, in hindsight, I realize it. Doing too many things just doesn't allow you to really focus in and hone your skills and get your discipline, especially with the economics, in your key project areas. And so we grew our CSA model and the direct-to-farm model really quickly. I think we said, "Yes," to everything. Like "Yes, we'll do the Wednesday farmers market. We'll do the Salem public market, we'll do the Salem Saturday market. We'll do the Tuesday OHSU farmers market and then oh, while we're up at the Tuesday OHSU market, they want to do wholesale for their institutional bid at OHSU, and they need a new CSA farm for all of their drop sites. And I thought, well, what an opportunity. They're one of the largest employers in Oregon there. They have an in-house nutritionist who is incredible, who's still there and still passionate about food systems, and what an amazing opportunity. And it was. I mean, I don't know.... It felt to me at the time it was, but really, it just, I think, spread us too far and wide and thin. And so that's one of the biggest hindsight reflections I have at this point of just.... And I encourage anyone who's interested in this type of farming model is t to make this model successful, to actually not burnout with an injury, to burnout psychologically, like my husband, Chris did, and physically doing this work, to not get into debt, you know, to have a good business plan, and to be disciplined about your numbers, you just have to plan well, and you have to be diligent about your expansion. And I think we just...we had so much enthusiasm and so much demand for our products, so we just grew really fast without really understanding the economics of that growth. And so there was a mid period where our first really.... Tim, who's now a farmer in...he was a Willamette student and now a farmer in New Orleans. And a very wonderful farmer himself, now. He and his partner, Madeline, also a really talented farmer, they're both from Willamette. But Tim was our first kind of longer term staffer who became a manager. And he really.... He and Lindsey, another wonderful Willamette student, they were so gung ho about scaling up our CSA, and also doubling our market sales at the Saturday market, you know. They had these personal professional goals that they brought to the business. And we had never before had the capacity for that kind of growth because we hadn't had folks that were like, you know, quote, unquote, "like" Chris and I, that kind of had that same bird's eye view perspective and were really interested in the business side of things and the strategy and we're kind of doing the business planning with us and really had the capacity to take on that growth. And so they wanted to expand the CSA by like 40 shares one year and they were in their fourth year of farming. They had the capability. They're both incredibly bright and incredibly hardworking. And they were also young. They had that 20 year old energy. It's really something and it's unique, you know? And so those were some of those mid years of growth, really came from those strategic managerial staffers that really when I look at the peak, the growth spurts that we've had over the business as the business has expanded and also gotten better and more efficient and gained the knowledge and depth, it's because of these...it always has coincided with the peak of these managerial staff that have come into their third and fourth and fifth seasons. And they go in cycles. And they eventually have to cycle through because they want their own farms or they can't physically, they don't physically want to do the work anymore, or, you know, there's a combination of reasons, but it's always a cyclical thing. And that's a pattern that is now known to me, but it also is still a vulnerable pattern. So those are the patterns I've had, yeah, the kind of patterns I've been able to recognize at this point. Yeah.
**Brooke ** 45:49 So if people are doing this model, either for business or, you know, in the context of trying to develop a small farm like this for community support and perhaps a climate collapse situation, knowing that sort of rotation that people will go through and helping make sure that, you know, whoever's.... Even if you're collectively running the farm and everyone sort of equal partners, knowing that there is sort of that learning and burnout cycle to be aware of and, you know, having the members of your community that are doing this together supporting each other and taking some turns with it over time, like that sounds really important.
**Elizabeth ** 46:29 And trying to build structurally into the business ways to prevent that burnout. So even this next season that I'm looking towards, where those two key managers are moving on, and we've known that and we've been planning for and they're going to help us transition at the beginning of the next season, thankfully, but we're looking towards, you know, training a new set of managers. The expectation for that new set of managers is going to be completely different. I want every manager to be able to go on vacation during the peak production season for at least like a week or a long weekend, a Friday, Monday, or four or five days. They need that. They need that physical and psychological break. They need that recharge. Everybody needs it, everyone deserves to go on vacation and to not work, especially farmers. And there was never that.... Our previous managerial staff, they're just, that isn't a common expectation on most farms. You're just sort of expected to to work your ass off, excuse me, and you will anyway. So, it's up to the owners, or to the collective leaders, to find ways to build that structure of balance into the structure from the beginning, but this is the advice I would give. Because the work is hard no matter what. It's some of the most challenging work you're going to do no matter what, especially in a climate change context. The extremes are here. They're not predictable. You might have experienced one extreme, but you don't know what the next extreme is going to be like or what it's going to do in your ecological system. So you can't even really plan for it. That's the challenge of farming in a climate change context is these extremes. I'm sure there'll be some similar ones. Perhaps we'll be able to apply lessons learned. But that's been the biggest challenge of experiencing these climate extremes over the last five or six years is that it's been a new extreme each time. And so the learning curve is immense and it's stressful and it's costly and there's so much uncertainty. So that's a challenge.
**Brooke ** 48:35 So really quickly then as our last thing on this, before we wrap, you've mentioned some of the climate issues that we've had, and I know I've mentioned these on other episodes of the podcast too, that, you know, for instance, last year, we had a really long, cold wet spring that went well into the first part of the growing season and it really screwed a lot of things up in a lot of different ways. And then two years ago we had some really extreme heat in that summer or a couple times over temperatures that have, you know, record breaking heat temperatures here. And so now we're looking ahead at the world and we know that there will continue to be climate issues and to some degree, you can kind of predict for your own area what's most likely to happen and what's somewhat likely to happen and what's not very likely to happen in terms of your individual climate extremes. Is that something that you actively work into your plans or is it something you deal with as it comes up? You know, how much are you looking ahead and planning for that and practicing for that on your own farm?
**Elizabeth ** 49:43 Yeah, I think that we're planning for it to the extent that we can, you know. Like you've said, there is some predictability and now that we have experienced, you know, the heat dome.... The wildfires were so, just almost a completely totally different scenario, because you could hardly be outside safely, you know, but you we had to keep...some crops had to continue to be harvested or else it would make them unharvestable for a period after. You know, farms like ours, you have to continually harvest many crops. And then flooding has been really.... Wet and cold is always something we dealt with, but the extremes of last year were just far and above. And then flooding has been also greater and at times that we had never experienced before. Like we had some really intense flooding in April. I think that was like six years ago now. And so, yeah, ways that we're adapting and planning for that, you know, where we have floods...we have fields that are more flood…that are more.... All of our farm fields are in the floodway, actually. It's a pretty extreme flood plain designation from the Army Corps. But some of our fields are lower and they farm, you know, almost every winter. And so to the extent we can, we plan our rotations so that our winter crops are now, like I mentioned before, we had some crops, some of our first crops of the season in April, flood. So to the extent we can, we try to be cognizant of where that flooding might happen and try to put more vulnerable plantings in higher fields. But that's difficult for us to always do, but we try our best at it. Season extension, you know, through covered spaces is something that farmers have been doing all over the world forever, because it just gives you more flexibility, extends your growing season, and you can control your environment better. Sometimes you have less...you're less prone to pests. Those diseases can be much greater risk. So,you know, we had never had a huge amount of covered spaces. They're expensive to put in. And they're more difficult growing environments. I always like to say that they kind of expose all your weaknesses. And so since we've been spread so thin across so many projects and so much diversity and probably more scale than we should have expanded to too early, we have not always been the greatest hoop house or covered space growers. But our team's really improved in that area in the last few years. And so we've really benefited from partnerships with the NRCS. They administer the organic equip program and they give dollars towards conventional and organic farmers, the organic equip program specifically for organic farmers for many projects like cover cropping, restoration projects, hedgerows, and, most impactful for us, hoop house infrastructure. So all of our hoop houses and our caterpillar tunnels, including two more that we bought that haven't been put up, were all partially funded by the NRCS, which is really, really great use of our tax dollars. We can all at least maybe feel good about that for the use of our tax dollars. Yeah. And so that's.... Those spaces have been really instrumental in our bridge season growing, would you like to call it, especially the early season. Like, we all know Oregon springs can be cold and wet in a normal year and relatively unpredictable, and so because we are building our farm model on a CSA that starts in June, which actually really isn't that early, and people are really ready to eat seasonally from the farm in June. They're coming to us in April and May like, "When does the CSA start?" Like they think it should just all be available. And yeah, certain crops are. But to have the level of diversity and scale in June to feed that many people does take quite a bit of planning and land space. And so having just those extra covered spaces so that we can just fine tune our planting schedule and our planting mix in those early months, has been really key. And then methodologies that were even kind of pre a climate change context but just for better spring farming, like there was a practice that we were following, many farmers are doing, with preparing beds in the fall, tarping with silage tarps, and then that allows you to just pull back those silage tarps in the spring when you have a couple days of dry out. And then you can direct seed and transplant right into those beds, as opposed to having to wait for a one or two week dry window and leaving soil uncovered without a cover crop, which you don't really want to do anyway. So that completely changed our spring growing. And then adding in extra covered spaces this year was what allowed us to have such a wonderful early diversity. And then pushing, being pushed more towards no-till and regenerative practices that are, we feel, can just provide even more resilience in a climate change context, and in any in any context, you know, when you're building up the quality of your soil with the microbiology and organic matter. And from what we've researched and seen, the potential for healthier, happier crops that are produced with less fossil-fuel-based equipment and don't release carbon because of tillage, and just myriad other benefits that we've been seen and been hearing about, we were motivated to start our own no-till experimental plot. And so we had our first crops on that this year and they did well. And the soil--we didn't know how our heavier clay content soil would respond to no-till practices and from what we've read and understood, really the benefits of no-till don't take in massively so until years three to five. It takes a while to do your weed control and for your microbiology to get in there and add all that soil health. It just takes a while for the soils to adjust. Yeah, it's like how to.... How I say this to kids on tours is like, “How do forests feed themselves? How do those big old growth trees get so big? Humans aren't coming in and fertilizing those trees. It's just decomposition and micro organisms and all those amazing nutrient relationships between the micro organisms.” It's like they're just all working in this beautiful, and even more so we know now, because of these really cool scientists that are doing forestry research showing how these forest communities are this huge interconnected network with the root systems and the fungi and bacteria. It's just so much more complex and interconnected than scientists ever even thought. And so it's the same principle applied to annual or perennial farms. So we're only in...this will be year two. But we were already interested in those practices and some folks on our staff, Garabella, had studied that in college at Willamette and was already really passionate about it. We'd been doing some experiments with it, but this was our first year really biting the bullet and saying, okay, this is our no-till plot. And we're really, really enthused by the results and how well the soils responded. It's hard to break that addiction to tillage. I love tillage. I love tractors and PTO shafts and rototillers. But it's also really disruptive. SO it's breaking those habits. Yeah.
**Brooke ** 57:11 And I know you can talk about this literally, for the rest of the week, but we should probably wrap it up here for now. It's been really great having you on and I do hope that we can have you again to talk about some more specifics of this and other things so we can continue to learn how to develop some of this in our communities and encourage the farms that are doing it.
**Elizabeth ** 57:35 Thank you so much for having me and exposing and educating our community.
**Brooke ** 57:40 Absolutely. And, you know, also to the world over because we have listeners internationally as well. And we love you all very much. Elizabeth, is there anything that you want to plug or promote here before we say goodbye?
**Elizabeth ** 57:57 Just in relation to our conversation earlier, just really taking many, many steps back and looking at the communities of people that had a relationship to this land for generations before us. And there's an awesome nonprofit here in Salem run by Rose High Bear, and it's called Elderberry Wisdom Farm and they're an indigenous based nonprofit. And I'm not going to get their mission statement right. But they're educating about indigenous plant communities and knowledge bases and practices of those communities in relation to land. And I'm looking forward to learning more from Rose about their work. And obviously, they're working specifically with the elderberry plant but also indigenous youth. And so if you're in the Salem community, check out their work and support them.
**Brooke ** 58:47 Wonderful. Okay, thanks so much for that, Elizabeth. We also want to say thanks to all of our listeners who check out our podcasts. If it's something that you are enjoying, please like it, share it, let others know about it. That's how we reach more voices and help more folks. If you want to comment at me about any of this you can find me on Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Brook with an E. Especially if you have any follow up questions for Elizabeth because she's pretty easy to get ahold of and likes talking about her farm and so I will probably try to drag her back around. So if you want specific questions answered, I'd be so happy to share those with her. This podcast is brought to you by Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness publishing collective that produces podcasts, zines, books, posters, comics, and many other forms of educational leftist media. You can check us out at Tangledwilderness.org You can find all of our latest publications there. And if you really love our work and want to help us continue, especially with the podcast production, you can support us on Patreon. We do a monthly zine mailing to our Patreon supporters. That's a really wonderful mix of stories, politics, and poems. It's a different thing that comes out every month. And we especially want to give thanks to some of our patrons who support us at the $20 month level. And those wonderful folks include patolli, Eric, Perceval, Buck, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, Funder, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, Paige, SJ, Dana, David, Nicole, Chelsea, Jenipher, Kirk, Staro, Chris, Micaiah, and as always, Hoss the Dog. Thank you so much.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret talks with Sam and Amadeo about their experiences shepherding in the Swiss Alps. They talk about the problems that shepherds are facing in Switzerland with wolves, climate change, city mentalities, and right-wing propaganda.
Margaret (she/they) can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Sam and Amadeo on Sheep, Wolves, and Climate Change
**Margaret ** 00:16 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the times. I'm your host today, Margaret Killjoy and this is an episode about sheep...and sheep farming. Shepherding, I believe we might want to call it, in the Alps. I'm really excited about it. We've been planning this episode for a while, because we are going to be talking to two sheep farmers in the Alps about climate change and about the return of wolves and about ecology and about why the right-wing picks all the wrong talking points and a bunch of other stuff. But first, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network.
**Margaret ** 01:52 Okay, we're back. So if y'all could introduce yourselves with your name...your names, your pronouns, and I guess just a little bit about your background with shepherding.
**Sam ** 02:05 All right, Hi, I'm Sam, my pronouns she/her and we are in Vienna right now. And yeah, I'm an artist and also a bit of a writer, filmmaker. I do a lot of that kind of stuff. Lately I have been working a lot with metal and smithing And yeah, I went with Amadeo on a sheep farm and Alps in Valais in Switzerland. And we want to tell you a bit about our experience.
**Amadeo ** 02:38 Yeah, my name is Amadeo. He/him. I'm 38. Actually, I started to work as a teacher now. I teach biology and some other stuff, politics, and so on. And yeah, This was my third year...third summer, not third year, third season to work as a shepherd but the first time with sheep, actually. Before that I worked with cows and milking and so on. Yeah, and for me it was also the first time with sheep and the first time in this area of Switzerland. I'm Austrian. But the payment in Austria is really bad so we went to Switzerland. So we are also the working migrants. Or what do you call it in English?
**Margaret ** 03:31 Migrant workers, I guess.
**Amadeo ** 03:34 Yes.
**Margaret ** 03:36 Okay, so what brought you all to sheep farming or to farming in general as like the thing to go do with your summers for work?
**Amadeo ** 03:47 Should I?
**Sam ** 03:48 Yeah, you can.
**Amadeo ** 03:50 So, I had this experience in 2020 and 21, I think, and I really liked it in a way. It was very hard work back then, but I learned a lot. And we met after that, actually, and decided we would like to go together. And then we just hit up the internet and looked for work and places to go and then we found this place that sounded pretty ideal for us because it was sheep farming and no milking, which is nice. I didn't want to do the milking job and do cheesemaking and so on again, I wanted to stay outside mostly, like the whole day under the sky and not in the staple. And yeah, we found this place where you don't need your own dogs, which is nice. We were working with blacknose sheep, they're called. It's like a breed that is only bred in this area. Or not only but traditionally there. And yeah, we tried to get the job and we got it.
**Sam ** 05:08 I guess we also got in because Amadeo also already had a lot of experience. And yeah, they were looking for two people there and without dogs. And yeah, I also got...I was really lucky that I was with Amadeo because, you know, like some very daily stuff, he already was prepared for this job. Like, you need a lot of some equipment and know what to take. And yeah, I was really....
**Amadeo ** 05:36 The thing was that, of course, the owners of the sheep, they want someone who has some experience because it happens often that you think, "Oh, it's nice. It's in the mountains. It's beautiful." And then people after two weeks, three weeks, they say, "No way. I can't work here. It's way too hard." I mean, it's like pretty hard work. It's outside all day. With rain, with snow sometimes. And you work from sunup to sundown every day, seven days a week. And many people underestimate it because there's like, I don't know, this idea drawn of what it's like to work in the mountains and it's always beautiful. And it is. But it's also very hard work, actually.
**Margaret ** 06:22 It seems really hard. It wouldn't immediately occur to me that I could just go run out and become a shepherd like tomorrow. But I have two questions. And they're related. And one is, what does an average day look like for a shepherd in an Alpine Valley? And the second question that's related is, do you get a shepherd's crook?
**Sam ** 06:42 Yeah, well, the day starts with sunrise. Around five was when the summer started. We got there in mid of June. I stayed till mid of September. Amadeo had to leave a bit earlier. And the day ends with sunset. And yeah, you bring the sheep back into the night pen. You say, "pen," huh? Like a space where there is electricity on. Pen? [Said with air of not being sure if it's the correct word]
**Amadeo ** 07:15 Do you know what that is? Or, did we get the right word?
**Margaret ** 07:17 Like an animal pen? Or is it a barn?
**Amadeo ** 07:19 Yeah, it's like it has no roof. It's not a barn. It has no roof. It's just a fence. An area fenced. A fenced in area with strong electricity because of the wolves.
**Margaret ** 07:35 Oh, yeah. Okay, it has an electric fence. Yeah,
**Sam ** 07:37 yeah, exactly. And yeah, we would move every two weeks to a new pasture with the sheep. And there were 12 farmers or sheepherders. They're not all farmers. They also have another life. Most of them have another job. They work as bus drivers in heavy industry. And yeah, they also are doing a lot of work. So they're working with us there. We were there most of the time alone, but they come on weekends. They bring us food. They set up the pastures, lines, the fences too. Yeah. And so then we stay out with the sheep all day, any weather. And yeah, also, when we moved the pasture, they came for help because it's hard to change the pasture. You sometimes have to cross a river. And....
**Margaret ** 08:29 Wait, how do you cross the river? Do you just like drive them through the river?
**Amadeo ** 08:33 Yes.
**Margaret ** 08:35 Like , "Go swim!"
**Amadeo ** 08:38 It was not such. It was more like a stream than the river. A river sounds bigger than it was.
**Sam ** 08:48 It was like this, like we always make a plan in the evening. Even a drawing. We were five people planning this. And then it always ends up in pretty much chaos and completely different. And in the end they were screaming, "Sam! Go! Go!" And I was like, I even had shoes on and the first sheep I was pulling, just one sheep, with all my strength through the river. And then all the sheep follow.
**Margaret ** 09:14 Okay, okay. I have friends who keep sheep but in the city. And they just keep like six of them or something. And it's just a very different thing than like a free ranging sheep. And so it's hard for me to conceptualize.
**Amadeo ** 09:30 We had 400.
**Margaret ** 09:32 Yeah, that's more than six. I'm good at numbers. That's amazing. Okay, cool.
**Sam ** 09:38 So part of the daily routine is also to do the basic medical care. So we were introduced to that. Sometimes they have claw problems. [Claws are sheep toes]
**Amadeo ** 09:38 Problems with the claws.
**Sam ** 09:39 Problems with claws. So this was a regular thing. And sometimes using antibiotics against....
**Amadeo ** 09:58 Yeah, and we had to clean the pen every day, which was like three to four hours of work for one of us. Like shoveling shit.
**Margaret ** 10:09 Yeah, okay. But you didn't answer the second question. Did you have a shepherd's crook? Do you know what that is? [Laughing]
**Amadeo ** 10:17 Not a real one. We had like umbrellas. Big ones that were very useful against the sun. And so preparedness thing number one, if you stay in the high alpine areas, the altitude of the higher pastures were 2500 meters [8,200ft], you need something to cover you against the sun and against the rain. So big umbrellas were pretty handy.
**Sam ** 10:46 And also the sheep have horns so it's easier to catch them. You have to learn this also, but you throw yourself on the sheep and then you tackle them down. I got really good at this. And also the blacknose sheep in the valleys, they have very long hair. And, I mean, it's breeding, right? They do it for breeding, the sheepherders. So the wool, it doesn't get any money. It's nothing. It's not worth anything anymore. But for the beauty contests that the sheep go to it's really important. It's a tradition. And they let it grow....
**Amadeo ** 11:26 They have very long face hair so some of them are basically blind. Most of them have like, how do you say something that rings? What is it? A bell? Yes.
**Sam ** 11:39 Yeah, but they get lost because they don't see anything and our job was also to make them hair ties and to tie the hair. And also the sheepherders would come to do this because we could not do this for 400 sheep. Yeah, so that was also part of the job, Yeah, it adds up. There are some different tasks. And yeah, since we would move with the sheep, maybe also that. So also the moving is part of. You're always packing your stuff. You need to think, okay, how much food we need to...how much will we eat and how much do we need to take to the next hut. So organizing this is part of it. And then we had a small hut that was flied in with a helicopter. It was...
**Amadeo ** 12:12 Flown in. Flown with the helicopters for the most remote places where we would stay with the sheep because otherwise you would have to walk a long way, like 45 minutes to the cabin every day. So they brought in a tiny hut for one person, actually.
**Margaret ** 12:47 For you all?
**Amadeo ** 12:49 Yeah, yeah. Flown with the helicopter so we could stay next to the sheep.
**Sam ** 12:55 But it was so small. Like one was sleeping on the floor, the other on this little bed. And also you always need to organize this hut when you come with very wet clothes. You have no space in there. We had a little solar panel. So this was doing.... We had a fridge at least. Very high tech. I guess 20 years before, we would not have a fridge. And some light even in the cabin and a stove. A wood stove. It got crazy hot because it's so small and yeah. So organizing this hut was also not so easy. And we were lucky because there was a lot of water in this valley. Like it's full of water. And so we would get water from the...
**Amadeo ** 13:43 From the springs around. Wells? How you say?
**Margaret ** 13:48 Well, I mean, a well is a hole dug in the ground and then a spring is usually a natural spring or it's like a pipe stuck in the side of a hill that the water comes out of.
**Amadeo ** 13:57 Yeah, it was a natural spring. No pipe, though. Just some moss and it was nice.
**Margaret ** 14:04 And so you can just go straight from that or do you have to filter it?
**Amadeo ** 14:08 It depends. We had, at some points, we could just drink it from there. We didn't filter it. At the cabins we had covered springs, wells. Or springs? So we could...it was okay. But the open ones, we had to take care of where the sheep were. If the sheep can go around then it's not so good. It was better if it was higher up where they wouldn't go.
**Sam ** 14:42 Yeah also good that there were a lot of springs so the sheep would get water. They need to drink. And sometimes there were pastures where they could only drink one time in the day, so they also learn when they have to drink in the morning because we had really hot days also where these blacknose sheep with all the wool, they really get hot. And yeah, then also we learned how the sheep walk in every pasture. They have the same kind of routine that follows the sun also. And you kind of learn their ways. And also maybe when it's time to act to get the sheep back, I mean, without a dog. Yeah, you need to learn this also, I guess, when it's time.
**Amadeo ** 15:33 I always said, if you want to move against their will, you are the dog, you have to run around like crazy. They have their rhythm and they have their ways, you know?
**Margaret ** 15:46 So, did you all use dogs? Like also? Or is it sometimes dogs, sometimes no dogs?
**Amadeo ** 15:54 No, we had none. The thing is that this kind of race [breed of sheep] is very used to people and they're not moving that far. So you can walk with them. It's okay. It's just the problem is you can have two kinds of dogs, right? You can have dogs to protect against wolves, for example. Then they live with the sheep. They're inside of the flock all the time. But it's a problem with hikers and so on. Because they attack everyone that comes near, right?
**Margaret ** 16:33 This explains a little bit about my dog.
**Amadeo ** 16:36 Yeah, and so you can really have them there because it's also like a recreational area. This area, like a lot of people go hiking there and so on. So you can't have dangerous dogs. And the other thing would be like dogs that help you move the flock.
**Margaret ** 17:01 Herding dogs?
**Amadeo ** 17:02 We didn't really need it, right? Because we would have not.... I mean, it was big areas but still we would stay in one area for two weeks and then we would move on to the next area. So you didn't really need dogs to guard them the whole day.
**Sam ** 17:23 But it's really a calm.... The blacknose sheep are really really calm sheep. We learned this also because like certain sheep breeds, you say, right, they run way more. They run all day. And you really need dogs there. Yeah, so we....
**Amadeo ** 17:40 But with the blacknose, no, they are kind of calm. Yes. And they have a long...during the day they have a long break time.
**Sam ** 17:48 Resting time.
**Amadeo ** 17:49 Yeah, because if it's getting hot up there, the sun is very strong. It can be like, I don't know.... Like I mean the degrees don't get up that much like in the flat areas but the sun, how you say...the sun rays are really strong.
**Margaret ** 18:11 Yeah, because when you're at a higher altitude there's less atmosphere to protect you, right? I know what I mean. But I don't know the words for it.
**Amadeo ** 18:22 Yeah, the sheep have some...if it's a hot day, they rest for four hours during midday. They try to find, you know, shady spots and just rest. And so at that time, you can also rest. If it's rainy, you can't rest because then they are moving too. Yeah.
**Margaret ** 18:48 It makes me...the no dog thing, I'm like.... My dog was bred to have a million different jobs. My dog is just a complete mutt of a lot of different working breeds. And so Rintrah, my dog, is never quite sure whether he's supposed to be herding, or chasing, or retrieving things. He just wants to do all of it all the time. And one of the proudest things I've ever had, my proudest dog mom moment, was staying with my friend who has goats and sheep and one of the baby goats just got out of the pen and was running around the yard. And so Rintrah just herded it into a corner and then like calmly barked to inform us that he had trapped the goat. And I was just like, no one taught you how to do that. He wasn't a year old. He just was like , "This is what I do." And so like, I imagine how happy my dog would be as a sheepdog, a herding dog, which isn't necessarily true because he has adhd. This is a complete tangent. I just like talking about my dog. But you all, one of the reasons I want to talk to you, you talked about how a lot of this ties into preparedness and how it feels you've learned a lot about preparedness that you're like taking into the rest of your life by having done this work. I was wondering if you wanted to talk more about that. As a complete, look how expertly I tangented...pivoted from one topic to another.
**Sam ** 20:11 Yeah, yeah, actually your podcast was really a bit with us in this time. It was cool, the topic of preparedness. And yeah, for me in this way, thinking about preparedness, what's also weighed in with this work was to get somehow familiar again with the conditions of doing this work, of ways of living in this open environment, of existing there with the sheep and in this non-human environment. And also, maybe, in this threatened environment that somehow you would.... And also the organization structures, how this work is possible, that it needs a lot of people and it needs a lot of people who do this. I mean, there's the farmers or sheepherders, they do this because they love this work. Because they have done this all the time. It's tradition. And yeah, that they somehow save something.
**Amadeo ** 21:17 I mean, to talk about the practical side, if you stay outside the whole day, every day, seven days a week, you learn a lot of what you really need and what you don't need. I think that was big. Yeah, it was like very valuable to me to see what I really need. And I remember listening to your podcast, and you talk a lot about being prepared in a way, like having podcasts on your phone, for example. Because if you have to stay with sheep for 10 hours a day, you need to...you had a lot of time to think. And I loved having a good book because I could read and then think for hours about it and have like, I think, yeah, more time than in the city where you are distracted from one topic to another. So this really is good to have more, I don't know, space in my head. This was a good thing. And yeah, I think looking at, how you say, like, being outside in nature everyday and witnessing all these little changes from day-to-day. This was very, very, very special. And I think I learned so much about life and also about survival because all the animals and the plants there, they are...like, they have to survive in a very harsh environment with very short growing period, for example. I mean, lots of snow during.... Winter lasts, I don't know, for 10 months, or like, let's see, nine maybe? You know what I mean? Like when we came mid June, there was still snow. And in August before we...the end was the 16th, I think, of September, but we had to leave the higher pastures at the end of August because it was starting to snow heavily. And yeah, it's like very different too.
**Sam ** 23:30 But still to also learn about the fears and the sheepherder have. And also, yeah, it's an environment that's threatened and that will change through climate change for sure. Like it is changing. And I thought also on some days that it gets hotter and hotter every summer. And also last year, the grass was really dry. So the sheep would get this disease called, in German, Lipinkin [cannot translate], which is little bit like herpes. Yeah. And yeah, they had to be treated, every sheep, and give some....
**Amadeo ** 24:05 Some cream. But do that for 400 sheep, man.
**Margaret ** 24:11 Yeah, that sounds like it would take a while.
**Sam ** 24:14 Medication for 400 sheep. So yeah, they have struggles they face. And then the wolf, of course, is a new topic. And yeah, they have to deal with a lot of stuff. Yeah.
**Margaret ** 24:27 Well, let's talk about wolves. Let's talk about--you all mentioned beforehand when we were getting ready to talk about how wolves have maybe either been reintroduced or are coming back in that area to a certain degree and how that threatens this way of life but like not as much as climate change does and how it all ties into the right-wing and I kinda wanna to hear about it.
**Amadeo ** 24:51 Yeah, since a few years, since I was like.... 2020 was really when I was first introduced to this life, to these people in Switzerland. First of all, I came from the city and I didn't know that it's such a big topic already. Because in Austria, we have a few wolves. But not to mention, you know, maybe a dozen. But I learned that in Switzerland since the last, I don't know, 20 years, from a dozen they now have, I think, 250. Around 250. And, like, I don't know, 25 packs or something, or something like this. Which doesn't sound so much, but it's like...it's not such a big country. And they are a lot in these areas. For example, in Valais where we stayed, we knew that the nearest wolves are just two kilometers away. And they have offspring. So for them, they need meat and so on. And I mean, the sheep are puffy, you know. It's like, go get them.
**Sam ** 26:01 Also, on the other side of the mountain, actually, there was another shepherd with a, I think, also around 400.... Fuck, I don't know exactly how many sheep. And there the wolf came. And he killed, I think, seven sheeps. And also one of his dogs was attacked. So it was really close. And also the fear that we might face an attack was also really with us. And also there was a guy who takes care of the area.
**Amadeo ** 26:34 A ranger.
**Sam ** 26:35 Yeah, and he came and told us, "Hey, you really have to watch out. They're really close." So yeah.
**Amadeo ** 26:42 But the thing is, the crazy thing for me is that, of course, this threatens, in a way, people that are used to putting their cattle, putting their sheep just in a meadow and leaving them, you know. Have a look once a week or something. Of course now with the wolves, it's not possible because a wolf would kill many. They start to, you know, get into like.... If they can they kill 10 and then just take one, you know. They just.... If they [sheep] don't run away and they don't run far, you know, 100 years of, I don't know, living with humans and being petted and so on, they don't have--you know what I mean? They don't have it in them anymore to really run. Because normally, if a wolf attacks a deer, for example, the pack can't find any deer for another week or something because they're all alert. They're alert as soon as there is an encounter. With the sheep, it's not so much. So now it's a problem, of course, but there would be solutions. You just, you need to adjust. You need to change the way it works. Yeah, you need protection. You need people to look after the sheep and so on. And for many areas, this is really hard. Because if you have an alpine pasture that is very remote, steep hills everywhere, you know, it's so hard to really fence it off or something. It's not possible. So I can understand it for the farmers. It's hard. And when we talked with them about it, they were always like, "We have to kill the wolf," you know? And it's now protected. It's under national protection. You cannot just shoot them. Even if they kill some of your sheep, you can't. And there was a big--in Switzerland you have more, how you say, basic democracy. So many of the laws are decided by a vote of everyone. So there was a big vote about if the protection status of the wolves should be loosened in a way. Not that you can just hunt them but loosen in a way that you can, I don't know, shoot some if they're attacking cattle or....
**Margaret ** 29:11 Can you shoot them if they attack you?
**Amadeo ** 29:13 No, we had no gun. I mean, they won't attack humans but...
**Margaret ** 29:20 I'm an American, so I'm like....Okay, so like, I think about this a lot. Okay. I'm really...the wolf thing is so interesting to me for a thousand reasons. And one is that the destruction of wolves is such a emblem of civilization. It is such an emblem of the conquest of nature, right? And you have, for example, the no wolves in Ireland thing. You know? And that the British were very into killing all the wolves in Ireland and part of that even.... Like, so you even have the Irish rebels who would be to a certain degree, would be like, "Oh, we are the wolves. Like we are the people that they're trying to conquer," because it's like they are the unconquered, you know, wild folk, or whatever fucking bullshit colonial thing that gets thrown at them, you know? But at the same time, it's like.... So I'm kind of rooting for the wolves here with what you're describing, right? I like sheep. I don't specifically want the sheep to die. And where I live, we have coyotes, right. And we don't really have wolves where I live, but we have coyotes. And they kill, you know, they kill livestock. And they also kill dogs, right? And I have a dog. And I very actively want my dog to not be killed by coyotes. And apparently coyotes will do this thing where they'll befriend a dog, and be like, "yeah, totally, come hang out with us," and then kill and eat that dog, right? And so I have a neighbor who oversees about 400 acres. And he's from France. And he carries around a handgun. And he's so confused by this. He's like, "I came to America and now I have to carry around a handgun." But he carries around a handgun in case he's attacked by coyotes. Right? And it's like, interesting to me because it's like.... The urge to be like, "Oh, we should kill all the wolves so we can happily raise our sheep in peace," like fuck that, right? That, to me, is like the example of a negative form of peace, where you have conquered and like flattened everything. Sorry, it's a little bit of a rant, but I'm going somewhere with it. I promise. And then, but at the same time, there's this balance, right? Like, I'm not going to let a coyote kill my dog. Or if I was around wolves, I wouldn't let the wolves kill me, right? I mean, whatever I...as much as I can control that, you know? The coyotes are kind of on the other side of the hill. So I don't carry a gun around my property. But that would be a thing that I would need to consider in certain circumstances. So, it's just really interesting to me that, like, I get why the sheep farmers are like, "Oh, we got to get rid of all these wolves." But I'm also like, "Whatever. Fuck you. Let the wolves be." But then I'm also like, it's complicated. And I get why you have to defend the sheep. But I don't know. Anyway, that's where I'm going with it. I guess I wasn't going anywhere with it after all.
**Sam ** 32:15 Yeah, no, I think it's a really complex situation. Yeah, there is not an easy answer to like kill the wolf or.... Yeah, I'm also pro Wolf. And there needs to be a different solution. And yeah, like to see what the sheepherders really face, what kind of struggles they face with this was really interesting. And also, I think the problem is that it's super instrumentalized [wonders if that's the right word]...instrumentalized by right-wing people politically.
**Margaret ** 32:55 Weaponized? [Offering a different word]
**Amadeo ** 32:58 Yeah. In a way. I mean, the thing is, it also turned in Switzerland, for example, into a city versus countryside. Because at the vote, most people from the cities would vote for the wolf for what keeps the protection. But many people in the countryside, with also more like conservative political beliefs--and the conservative parties--said, "No, no, no, we have to change that because it threatens our way of living around in the remote areas in the countryside. And so this is somehow so stupid because....
**Sam ** 33:37 Yeah, that's also covering certain other threats, right, like climate change. They don't talk about climate change. The only thing they speak about is the wolf and the wolves. And yeah, that's really.... So it's somehow a weird thing that it's so taken over by this discourse, which is, yeah....
**Amadeo ** 33:57 Yeah, you can shoot climate change. That's the thing. It's easy to say, "Oh, it's all the wolf. We have to kill the wolf. And then we get rid of this problem." But on the other hand, climate change.... [interrupted]
**Margaret ** 34:11 I can think of some ways to solve climate change with guns, but.... Anyway....
**Amadeo ** 34:16 I mean, I got so sad up there because it's so special. I mean, this area was a natural reserve too. And it has golden eagles. It has vultures, it has marmots, it has like....
**Sam ** 34:35 A lot of marmots. Everywhere. [Laughing]
**Amadeo ** 34:38 And some protected bogs, some plants that are really like really rare, like at the brink of extinction. And I know, I stood there and I saw this, I don't know, this beauty and I know in 50 years from now it will be gone. Probably. It's very, very likely. Because.... I mean, some species can move.... Like, seen on a global level, they move north because it's getting warm. But on the on fucking mountain, there is an end. There is no moving more up. Because at 4000 meters or something, it's....stops, you know? Like there's nothing there. And all the farmers there, for example, if you ask them, they see these changes. They witness it. They say, "Yes, it's so much different than it was when I was a kid." And the glaciers, for example, in Switzerland--I read about it--there were since the 70s, 800 glaciers are gone. And there is still 1400 glaciers in Switzerland. And they say 2100 [year], they will be probably most of them, like 95%, will be gone. And it's so sad. But still, if you say something like, "Climate change," even those farmers there, that witness it every fucking day, they say like, "Well, you know, I don't know if you can call it that." It's ridiculous. And it's because the discourse, the political discourse, is framed by conservatives mostly. And they say, "Your problem is the wolf. We can shoot the wolf." So.... [Margaret starts talking and apologizes] No, no, it's, I'm, I'm done with ranting.
**Margaret ** 36:40 No, this is so interesting for a thousand reasons. And one of them is that we always.... It goes back hundreds of years that leftists will be like, "Oh, the countryside are all right-wing. Fuck them." And this is not true, right? This is like.... The most interesting leftist revolutions have generally involved also the rural folks, right? I mean, like, famously, the fucking Russian Revolution was all rural people. And to be fair, Marx was.... I think he owned up to getting that wrong, because he was one of the people who started this myth that "The peasant is not the revolutionary subject, only the proletarian worker in the city is," right? "And the peasants are always reactionary." And I think he owned up to, when he looked at Russia, he was like, "Oh, I got that one wrong. Okay, cool." You know. It's true if we let it be true, because you have this thing where.... I think it is actually a flaw that we have to be careful with in democracy--and majority rule in general--is if people in the cities make the rules for the people in the countryside, and they don't understand the people in the countryside and they don't understand their way of life. And so it's like, really easy--even though I'm still on the wolf's side--I see it as complicated. Whereas it's like really easy to live in a city and be like, "Whatever. Fuck it," you know, because it's not their livelihood, or dog that is being threatened, right? And so I feel like, to me, it's this thing where we can't cede that ground to the right-wing, you know? And I really, I think it's cool that you all.... And that's one reason I want to talk to you about it is that there's like all of these.... It doesn't have to be this inherently conservative space to be in the countryside, to be in a rural area. And then the other thing that I was thinking about with what you're talking about, about mountains and how things retreat, is that mountains are so interesting to me because they're always where people run to, right? And you look at.... I mean, you look at Switzerland as a country and as the history of the country is people fleeing there in order to--well, I don't know enough about how Switzerland was formed--but in World War II, every time I'm like reading about Dutch revolutionaries, or whatever, they're like, "Fuck!" and they all run over to Switzerland and climb up the glaciers with their bare hands, or whatever the fuck. I don't know. I clearly know what I'm talking about. And in the United States, you have. where I live in Appalachia, that is the place that people would retreat to. That is the place where people losing wars against the conquest of the United States would go to. And it is. It's that weird thing where you're always free in the mountains, but there's only so far you can run. And that's just so heartbreaking to think about, you know? There's only so far up the mountain that these plants can migrate. On the other hand, I have a feeling that's what we're all going to be living. We're all gonna be in Antarctica. Antarctica bloomed this year, I think. I think we're being on Antarctica and on the mountains. So...
**Sam ** 39:39 Yeah, but it's interesting how it's idolized and romanticized. I mean, we had like...and how extreme, actually, the weather really changes. I really didn't know. I had never lived for three months so high up. And yeah, but also, they're so romanticized. There's this huge hype around survivalist shows, at the moment on TV, which is also really interesting and comes with this. And on the opposite for me the...Yeah, the question was how does being there in the Alps, what does this really change with me and what does it do to experience this? And yeah....
**Amadeo ** 40:20 Yeah, what does it do?
**Margaret ** 40:23 We're asking.
**Sam ** 40:23 It's still settling in. And it's about reconnecting and really realizing what it takes to do this work. And I have a lot of respect.... Also, to be in a very patriarchal space where the shepherds were only older men. Yeah, they have their ways of acting. They have their ways of being. And for me, this was really difficult. Yeah. And still, somehow to not say, "Hey, I won't enter this space," but to go there and.... Yeah, also see what community they have, you know. Yeah, to also go beyond this, I think, that they have their tradition and they have to face this, but yeah, it was also.... [Interrupted]
**Amadeo ** 41:11 Maybe you can maybe explain a little bit this, I don't know, this group of people we worked for, because it was actually pretty interesting because it's a conservative area, but they were very working class and very, very nice to us. I think. They treated us really respectfully. And I know, in my other place where I worked as a shepherd, it wasn't like that. I was treated, actually, a little bad. And that's...I don't know.
**Sam ** 41:45 Yeah. And to see how they are with the animals. I mean, for them, that's...they are their life. And it's this encounter.
**Amadeo ** 41:50 They love them.
**Sam ** 41:51 And for us, to get to know every sheep personally, it's really interesting what connection you get. You watch them all the time. You learn, hey, they are totally different. They have totally different characters.
**Margaret ** 42:09 Yeah. Okay, my question to you is how do you, when you're working with people who are seeing this climate change happen, how do you--but but can't acknowledge it--do you have any insight or thoughts about how to connect with people about that, about how to talk to people, you know, who want to focus on the wolf instead of the bigger wolf, the climate wolf? What's the name of that wolf that's gonna eat the sun and Germanic paganism? Wow, how do I not remember that. Anyway, whatever, at the start of Ragnarok. Someone's gonna get really mad at me for not knowing this. Fenrir!
**Amadeo ** 42:51 I think we had some very good discussions at times. Right? With the guys.... Sorry? [Margaret interrupting]
**Margaret ** 43:01 No, no, no, I was just...I remembered the name of the wolf that eats the sun and starts Ragnarok. It's Fenrir. Anyway, or Fenris? Oh, God, no people gonna get mad at me. Anyway, please continue. Tell you something.
**Amadeo ** 43:13 I think also, even though some of them were a little bit panicky about wolves, and so on, I think the system with the night pens and with having shepherds like us, since a few years, to look after the sheep, day and night, basically, it works pretty well. I mean, they told us they have one to five, maybe, sheep per year that are getting killed by the wolf. But that's okay. I mean, they're realistic about it, right? And when we talked about climate change, of course, it was--I mean, for me, it's not much different--I mean, they acknowledged that things are changing. They didn't use the, I don't know, scientific vocabulary or whatever. And they acknowledged in a way--or some of them at least--that there are new problems that we have to face. For example, it's too dry, and so on. Water issues. Dying out of certain plants, animals in certain areas, and so on. They all see this. More avalanches in the winter. All of this. But, I mean, they were a little helpless. And I mean, we are also often a little helpless, because it's getting individualized. How should you react? Not drive a car? Great. I mean, we have to, you know, rise up and change all of the economy, you know, and this is hard to do.
**Sam ** 44:53 But I guess, I mean, I also came there with my artistic background and as an artist and I also was filming a lot--more some of the sheeps but also us--and I think for me to show as someone coming there with a city background, but also with our backgrounds as biologists and artists, and showing how this encounter happens maybe from us as city people with also another perspective in encountering this world. I think I find this really interesting. Also showing some part of this being not exactly in this. I think that's an interesting perspective, also, for other people to see. And yeah, I'm probably cutting a bit of a movie out of this. And I think it can.... Yeah, it's good to go to this place and to show our perspective.
**Amadeo ** 45:53 I mean, I'm so grateful for what these people taught us, right, and that we were accepted and we did this job. And I think we did a good job. But also they trust us, right?
**Sam ** 46:06 And what the sheep teach us.
**Amadeo ** 46:08 Yeah, the human and non-human individuals that trusted us. And it was, I think.... I'm very, very grateful. But on the other hand, also, for them, I think it was kind of interesting to have unorthodox people there, people who didn't grow up around the corner with animals, and sheep, and so on. Because for them, they all grew up with this. They inherited this from their parents and grandparents. And we came.... Actually it was a meeting of different worlds, right? We came....
**Sam ** 46:45 And I want to show this, also, this discrepancy that there is some dialog or some encounter that needs to happen. And I mean, many people are so disconnected to this world and don't know. They have lived in Switzerland all their life and they don't have so much connection to this work. Yeah. And it's cool to....
**Amadeo ** 47:05 I think, yeah, it was really...like we came from 1000 kilometers away. But even what made more of a difference was that we live in a city of 2 million people and they live in tiny mountain villages. But we came. We had a good time together, right? They were like helping us. We were helping them. It worked out. And I mean a lot of prejudicism, I had also, as a young radical from the city, dogmatic, and so on, about people back in the days. I mean, it changed over the years, but more and more when I encountered these, I don't know, social places, I have to say, yeah, they were very social with us and very helpful and very, I don't know, cool. Very cool also. Even though they have like strange habits like drinking coffee that isn't coffee but.... [Laughing]
**Margaret ** 48:04 Wait, what do they drink that isn't coffee?
**Amadeo ** 48:07 It's called Lupinion. It's made out of Lupin, I think. I don't know the English word, like some grain. And it has no caffeine at all. And they always say, "Let's have a coffee and then they drink this."
**Sam ** 48:21 But with a lot of schnapps.
**Margaret ** 48:24 I don't drink caffeine. So I'm like, I want to drink that shit. That sounds great.
**Sam ** 48:28 That would be the place for you to go.
**Amadeo ** 48:32 They put Apple booze inside like apple schnapps instead.
**Margaret ** 48:38 Okay, well, are there any last things that we didn't cover that you wish we had? Or things that you're really excited to say about sheep and climate change? Oh, does it make you want sheep? That's my...that was like the question. Like, are y'all gonna get sheep? Do you have a yard? I don't know where you live.
**Amadeo ** 49:00 We live in the city. But we are planning to move in the coming years. And actually, I would love to have some sheep.
**Sam ** 49:10 Maybe not 400.
**Amadeo ** 49:16 Some 20 or something? 15.
**Sam ** 49:18 Or we will continue doing this work. It's cool to also work with them and then for a long time be with them. I guess we're.... And then also say, "Hey, gratz [congratulations], that was the summer." . And give them back.
**Amadeo ** 49:35 Yeah, like sometimes it's nice to play with kids but having your own kids it's kind of a different cup of tea.
**Sam ** 49:42 Like co-parenting. [Laughing]
**Amadeo ** 49:45 Maybe some sheep co-parenting? Yeah. Right.
**Margaret ** 49:51 Alright, well, is there anything that you want to plug, that you want to direct people towards, either your work or something else that's going on that you want to draw attention to.
**Amadeo ** 50:01 I wanted to say, because I always said while I was there, that it needs more people to help the little farmers deal with the wolves, because if we don't help them then they will always tend to the parties that say, "Oh, let's just get rid of the wolves." And I found out that there are some NGOs to do that, that come from an environmental side. There's one group called Au Pair. I think they're in the French speaking part of the country, mostly. And they actually sent volunteers to alpine pastures where there are wolves nearby, to help, to guard, and also monitor the wolf activities. So it's for research and also to help the farmers. And if I can't go next year to work as a shepherd, I will volunteer there. And I think it's a great, great thing and somehow a solution for how ordinary people can get in touch with the small farmers and help with maintaining the alpine pastures that are also so important for biodiversity. Yeah. And to help save the wolf from people.
**Margaret ** 51:22 Yeah. No, that's so good. Because instead of just abandoning people to being like, "Whatever, the wolf is good and you suck," just being like, "Hey, what will it actually take? Like what resources do you actually need in order to be able to continue to do your work in a world full of wolves?" That's cool.
**Amadeo ** 51:40 Yeah, I think it needs a lot of growing together, the countryside and the cities, in understanding and talking and like supporting each other.
**Sam ** 51:51 Hey, thanks for having us, Margaret.
**Margaret ** 51:54 Yeah, thanks so much. And good luck next year with the sheep season. And I'll talk to y'all at some point soon I hope. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, go try to convince sheep and wolves to be friends. No, that's not going to work. Hang out with sheep and then separately hang out with wolves. Actually, you probably just shouldn't even hang out with the wolves. You should probably leave them alone. That's pretty much what we want. But that's what you can do. You can also support this podcast. You can support this podcast happening by helping us pay our transcribers and our audio editors. I say this is if there's a plural of each, but there's actually one of each. And thanks to those editors. And thanks to everyone who helps us do that. And the way we do that is through Patreon. This podcast is published by Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. We have several other podcasts, including one called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, as well as one called Anarcho Geek Power Hour. And if you support us on Patreon, we'll send you a monthly feature that we put out. We'll send it anywhere in the world. And if you pay us $20 a month, I'll read your name out right now. In particular, I'd like to thank Eric, Perceval, Buck, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, Funder, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milaca, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, S.J., Paige, Nicole, David, Dana Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Machaiah, and of course, Hoss the Dog. I hope everyone is doing as well as you can and don't let the people divide us along cultural lines because we just shouldn't let that happen. Talk to you all soon.
This time on This Month in the Apocalypse, Brooke and Inmn talk about revenge, strikes, bad decisions about water, the economy, interesting victories around water, and funny things about tanks.
Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: This Month in the Apocalypse: October
**Brooke ** 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. This is your monthly installment of This Month in the Apocalypse, where we talk about the shitty news from around the world.
**Inmn ** 00:28 But also some cool stuff. and some funny stuff.
**Brooke ** 00:32 And some funny stuff. I am one of your hosts today, Brooke, and with me is....
**Inmn ** 00:40 I'm Inmn and my brain is in a horrifying state today, which only comes from researching heavily about, unfortunately, mostly bad things that happened but also some cool things that happened in the last month.
**Brooke ** 00:58 Alright, let's talk about those. But first, let's give a shout out to one of the other podcasts on the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts to which we also belong. But here's some words from some of our friends. Doot doot doo duh doo doo dooo. [Singing the sounds like a simple melody]
**Brooke ** 01:54 And we're back. Welcome back. So many fun things to talk about. I'm sorry you've also had to spend the morning reviewing all sorts of terrible events in the world.
**Inmn ** 02:30 You know, I ran into a friend last night and they made a joke, they were like, "Oh, what have you been up to?" And I was like, "Oh, I dunno, mostly just work, you know, doing podcasts and things." And they're like, "Oh, yeah, you've you've really like professionalized doom scrolling. [Both laughing]
**Brooke ** 02:54 Yeah, that sounds about right. Sounds about right.
**Inmn ** 02:59 Yeah, I don't know if I felt good about that or not, but....
**Brooke ** 03:04 It's complicated, right? Like, I don't want that to be my job. But also, I guess it's nice that somebody does it.
**Inmn ** 03:11 Yeah. And I just want to shout out for like a lot of people who have sent us messages fairly recently about enjoying these segments, which I think we were on the fence about them for a little while, I think, about whether we liked them or whether they felt useful or whether they just like inspired dread and despair and a lot of.... Thanks everyone who's reached out to be like, "No, no, I really like these segments, and they do the opposite of despair." So thank you, everyone.
**Brooke ** 03:46 Yeah, I've got something that's the opposite of despair.
**Inmn ** 03:49 Oh, really? What is the opposite of despair?
**Brooke ** 03:53 Revenge travel.
**Inmn ** 03:55 Oh?
**Brooke ** 03:56 Do you know what this is?
**Inmn ** 03:58 No, I have no idea what you're...
**Brooke ** 04:00 Okay. So if I say the phrase to you, revenge travel, what do you assume? Like what would you guess that I'm talking about?
**Inmn ** 04:08 Um, I think what my assumption is--I feel like it is related to remote work. Is it related to remote work?
**Brooke ** 04:18 No, it's not.
**Inmn ** 04:20 Okay. I have no idea what it is then.
**Brooke ** 04:23 Okay. I saw it in the headline. And then of course, it was wonderful clickbait and I had to click on it. And I assumed it meant traveling to get revenge on somebody. Either like taking a trip to spite them or like, going somewhere to exact revenge. I don't know. Like, I've never heard this phrase before. But apparently, it's travel that people have done since covid because they weren't able to travel during the worst of the pandemic.
**Inmn ** 04:23 Okay, I see.
**Brooke ** 04:27 I know, it's way less exciting. And like the article that I read about it mentioned revenge travel multiple times but it never specifically explains it. I had to like glean that from the rest of the text of the article. So it's not the fun thing that you think it is but maybe we should make it a fun thing. Revenge travel.
**Inmn ** 05:15 Oh, okay, so now that you say that, the thing that it reminds me of is--which I'm totally guilty of--have you heard of bedtime revenge procrastination? I think that's what it's called.
**Brooke ** 05:31 I can guess what you mean, but I have not heard of it.
**Inmn ** 05:36 Bedtime revenge procrastination is when you stay up late even though you have to wake up very early because.... It's due to a sense of lack of control over the autonomy of your time. It's called bedtime revenge, meaning that you're revenging yourself upon time, but the cost is still your time and energy because, you know, you get less sleep.
**Brooke ** 06:08 I psychologically understand that, you know, resting control thing, but at the same time I'm a person who really needs my full night of sleep consistently or else I quickly deteriorate and also become a horrible human being so I also can't imagine doing that to myself. Because that sounds awful.
**Inmn ** 06:27 Yeah, I did it to myself for like the entirety of high school because I had an absolutely unreasonable schedule. Like, I got on average five to four hours of sleep a night for like the entirety of highschool.
**Brooke ** 06:46 Wow, I feel bad for young Inmn.
**Inmn ** 06:49 Me too.
**Brooke ** 06:50 Sorry, you did that to yourself. Okay, well let me finish saying this about revenge travel. It's nothing major, mostly the headline's hilarious and the phrase. But there was a huge boom in travel and 2022 as covid restrictions eased and people were able to travel again. So, they were taking their, I guess, revenge against covid, maybe, is what they were taking revenge on? Or just revenge on not being able to travel. Anyway. And that continued to get into 2023. But the boom seems to have slowed and we're kind of back to more normal pre pandemic levels, especially places that do surveys of consumer demand to figure out, you know, people's intentions to travel and their plans for it. And people are sort of back to normal, i.e. pre pandemic levels of intention to travel, so.
**Inmn ** 07:39 Okay, golly, can I do a little mini rant about that? I'm replacing Margaret's rants today.
**Brooke ** 07:50 Okay, good. What would this episode be without a rant or two?
**Inmn ** 07:57 It's just like the.... I don't know, like I remember after, you know, like the summer in the northern hemisphere after mass vaccination occurred and people feeling like they could move around, travel, and do a lot more in what felt like a safer way to do that. And I don't think--this isn't targeted revenge travel as much as it's targeted at a lot of people's mentalities throughout COVID were like being upset at like things the government or being upset at like society for making them like be cooped up in their houses or whatever, or making them have these like lower modes of travel. And it felt really weird to hear it from a lot of people, like people who were like, really angry about it. And it's like, I get it, it was hard, and it sucked for a lot of people but like, I don't know.... I remember when lock down started that I was like--you know, I'm never thrilled for a government imposed lockdown--but what I was thrilled for, I was like, people just have the chance to like--or, you know, some people--just have the chance to chill a little bit and have some space from their lives. But like, I'm not upset that we were doing the right thing by slowing down. You know?
**Brooke ** 09:39 I feel like in that first couple of weeks too, you know, there was at least a couple of weeks that pretty much everyone stopped doing everything and we all got to slow down for a minute. And there was something special in that time before all of the, you know, rage and conflict and conspiracies and everything blew up. But there was a brief moment, I think, for pretty much everyone. Maybe a little bit horrible but also special.
**Inmn ** 10:00 Yeah. And, you know, obviously it's way more complicated than that, but I'm like, I'm never upset that like, yeah, it was a hard year and a half and it continues to be really hard for so many people and I'm thrilled to have been doing the right thing.
**Brooke ** 10:25 Yeah, for sure. No, I hear you.
**Inmn ** 10:28 Anyways, you know, who doesn't do the right thing?
**Brooke ** 10:32 Oh, boy. Do you want a list? Should I? Or should I just do a whole rant here on? Maybe you should just tell me. There's too many options.
**Inmn ** 10:43 Okay, so, hypothetical situation, you're faced with a problem. So here in Arizona,
**Brooke ** 10:51 Who you gonna call?
**Inmn ** 10:55 Here in Arizona, there are weirdly not that many regulations around groundwater usage and stuff.
**Brooke ** 11:04 That's wild to me.
**Inmn ** 11:05 It really is wild. But, if you lived in a town that had halted new construction, new development, but you really wanted to build a mega city, what would you do?
**Brooke ** 11:24 Oh god, I'm a billionaire, aren't I? Aren't I? I'm a billionaire in this scenario.
**Inmn ** 11:30 In this scenario, no, you are actually not a billionaire. Although, there's a weirdly similar thing happening with a billionaire.
**Brooke ** 11:39 Okay, well, then I would do the right thing if I'm not corrupted by having way too much money.
**Inmn ** 11:45 Okay, would you but would you consider building a 1000 mile pipeline to the Missouri River?
**Brooke ** 11:53 Oh, fuck. No, because? No, no. [Laughing]
**Inmn ** 12:00 Or would you...
**Brooke ** 12:01 Water is sacred. It should not be forced to travel like that. That's wrong.
**Inmn ** 12:08 Okay, so your other alternative is to build a 200 mile pipeline?
**Brooke ** 12:13 Nope.
**Inmn ** 12:14 To the Gulf of California.
**Brooke ** 12:16 Nope. It's also not.... The water's not supposed to travel that far. We go to the water. The water is not supposed to be made to come to us. That's how it works.
**Inmn ** 12:28 I’m waiting for a Qanon person to comment, What about rivers?" [An uncomfortable silence].... Anyways, so the town is...
**Brooke ** 12:31 I'm just going to sigh in anger and sadness for a while. I'm gonna mute myself and just sigh for an hour while you explain. [Audibly sighs]
**Inmn ** 12:50 Okay, so this is where normally a rant about the city of Phoenix would occur. But this is a rant about a city that is literally adjacent to Phoenix, which some would argue is actually a part of Phoenix, but is really hell bent on not being a part of Phoenix because they want to be their own mega city. And this is the city of Buckeye, Arizona. And Buckeye, it's basically a suburb of Phoenix and they hope.... Their population's like, I think it's like 170,000 right now. And they aspire to grow the population to over 1.5 million, which is about what the population of Phoenix is.
**Brooke ** 13:43 I was gonna say, that's a lot of people.
**Inmn ** 13:47 Yeah. Yeah. And it seems to be just because the local politicians and city council, or whatever, want to be like big deals. Like they just want...
**Brooke ** 14:01 I'm sorry, if your city is called Buckeye, I think there's not hope for you. You need to start by rebranding the name of your city if you want just a chance in hell. But Buckeye, Arizona, I think is never going to be No, just the name, just that's it. It falls flat on its face on the name.
**Inmn ** 14:20 Yeah, but they, for some reason, want to grow their city. I think it seems to be wrapped up in like those local politicians wanting to be big deals.
**Brooke ** 14:29 Capitalism and ego.
**Inmn ** 14:31 Yeah, but they can't. They're.... So the state has kind of halted construction, like new construction, or new development, in those areas because the groundwater use has hit a limit. And this comes after some developments in Phoenix were halted because of a lack of water security. So, there's very little regulation about groundwater in Arizona, but there is this thing where water has to be guaranteed for 100 years in order to build a new house, for example. So like if a new housing development is going up then water has to be guaranteed to be at that house for 100 years.
**Brooke ** 15:17 That sounds great, but I have a lot of follow up questions for Phoenix and Arizona and how that actually maths out. But do go on.
**Inmn ** 15:24 Yeah, yeah. I mean, how it maths out is that, you know, Phoenix heavily relies on the Colorado River for water usage. And the city of Phoenix--which to put in proportion to what the city of Buckeye is aspiring to do--is the city of Phoenix uses about 2 billion gallons of water a day. Like a new fun thing--because the more that we talk about water on the show, the more I'm like trying to visualize what water looks like--what do you think 2 billion gallons of water looks like?
**Brooke ** 15:25 I'm trying to imagine some body of water that I am familiar with in order to conceptualize that and I'm wondering how big Crater Lake is because that's maybe.... Wait, wait, well, wait while I inefficiently Google things. Okay, that's way too much water. Okay. Tell me. I can't.
**Inmn ** 16:37 It is one inch on Lake Mead. One inch of water is 2 billion gallons of water.
**Brooke ** 16:43 Okay, I don't have a good reference for how big Lake Mead is but I hear you.
**Inmn ** 16:47 Yeah, you know, that lake that everyone references when we're talking about water scarcity in the West is the constant depletion of Lake Mead. It's weird how that has become the gauge, it's like our gauge for fear and disparity is what the water levels in Lake Mead are. But do you want to know a fun thing about Lake Mead?
**Brooke ** 17:13 I do.
**Inmn ** 17:14 Um, Lake Mead, the water has.... There was like this crazy low point in 2022. And this is actually a fun thing, but the lake has risen 23 feet since that low point in 2022.
**Brooke ** 17:29 I mean that's normal, right, because of the season that we're in?
**Inmn ** 17:33 Yeah, yeah. And after like, you know, a recent pretty dry spell this summer, in August, due to record snowfall, I guess the previous winter, the lake rose 13 inches in seven days. Which, is like, you know, 27 billion gallons of water sounds like a lot.
**Brooke ** 17:58 Yeah, that sounds a lot. Like a lot, a lot.
**Inmn ** 18:03 But to like put that.... 27 billion.
**Brooke ** 18:07 Like a foot and stuff? No, two billion is one inch? Is that right?
**Inmn ** 18:13 Yeah, two billion's one inch.
**Brooke ** 18:14 And 13 inches, a foot. A footish?
**Inmn ** 18:17 Yeah, right. A footish. Which is only like seven days of water for the city of Phoenix.
**Brooke ** 18:24 [Laughing] Okay, I'm like a foot of water in the lake is a lot. And then yeah, you say.... Just kidding! Do go on.
**Inmn ** 18:38 No, yeah. Sorry. The city of Buckeye story is jumping all over the place. But in one of the more weird moves that they're considering is they want to build a pipeline from Puerto Penasco in Mexico to Phoenix, which it's about a 200 mile pipeline that would be built. And it would go right through the Organ Pipe National Cactus Monument.
**Brooke ** 19:12 No big deal. National monuments, no big deal.
**Inmn ** 19:20 But this is being heavily pushed for not just by the city of Buckeye but by a contractor company called IDE, which is an Israeli company, who thinks it's a really great idea to build this 200 mile pipeline between Puerto Penasco and the city of Buckeye. And it's part of this like growing, seemingly growing, trend of instead of like, instead of dealing with water resources on a, you know, a local level, or any kind of resource, on a local level, we're in this age of industrialization of like, "Well, they have this other resource 1000 miles away or whatever, what if we move to that resource so that we can sustain this absolutely unreasonable population growth in...." And not like a natural population growth. Like the city of Buckeye is like, "We want to grow the population." This is not what the city's naturally doing, you know?
**Brooke ** 20:29 So they're bringing in water to support and.... You know, sorry, I want to go off on a whole side tangent because I have many questions about Buckeye, but I'm going to stop and we can talk about it another time. Sorry, I'm just so curious.
**Inmn ** 20:44 But yeah, so some of the bigger problems with the pipeline are that it would.... They don't have a plan for dealing with...the desalination plants, they don't have a plan for dealing with the salty material that they remove from the water, except to dump it back into the Gulf of California.
**Brooke ** 21:09 Oh, my God.
**Inmn ** 21:11 You know, people in Mexico are not stoked about this because it will destroy ecological centers in the Gulf of California. Oh, okay. I remember the other bit. So IDE, the Israeli company that's building...who wants to build the pipeline, they also build desalination plants in Gaza.
**Brooke ** 21:32 And that's where the money is.
**Inmn ** 21:38 And yeah, it's just...it's a very strange idea. They want to put it through the Organ Pipe National Monument, which, like, there's a lot of pushback because that's a national monument. It's this federally protected wildlife area. And there's a lot of pushback from an environmental perspective. Do you know what else is in the Organ Pipe National Monument?
**Brooke ** 22:05 Besides the cacti?
**Inmn ** 22:07 Yeah.
**Brooke ** 22:08 Let's see. Are there birds? Flowers?
**Inmn ** 22:10 What is a great thing to have near a federally protected wildlife area?
**Brooke ** 22:18 Oh, wildlife that needs special protection?
**Inmn ** 22:22 A bombing range.
**Brooke ** 22:23 Oh, shit! I see. You were being sarcastic. Here, silly me. I was trying to guess the real answer.
**Inmn ** 22:35 Yeah, It is a bombing range.
**Brooke ** 22:38 Of course. Of course it is. Yes. That's what Arizona's for is blowing shit up.
**Inmn ** 22:44 Yeah, blowing shit up. And....
**Brooke ** 22:49 I just saw Oppenheimer, sorry.
**Inmn ** 22:51 Okay. It only gets worse because the other thing that goes on in the Organ National Monument is that it's like a heavily trafficked corridor for migration between the US and Mexico for, you know, for animals and for people. And it is also one of the most deadly corridors along the US Mexico border for undocumented migrants coming from Mexico, South America, Central America, like up through Mexico and the US Mexico border. And so it represents this strange thing where the government, or people, or like whoever, they have large problems with things like a pipeline going through somewhere, but they have--and Organ Pipe National Monument as like an agency--has no problem with ramping border militarization or a bombing range that's like right next door. So.
**Brooke ** 24:00 Man, I will never make sense of people's priorities.
**Inmn ** 24:05 Anyways, that is a very long rant on city of Buckeye,
**Brooke ** 24:10 That's more attention than Buckeye deserves, ever. But here we are.
**Inmn ** 24:17 What else is happening in the southwest? There's some stuff that happened in Vegas.
**Brooke ** 24:23 That's right. There's some looming...there's a looming strike in the hospitality industry in Vegas. I don't know how well known this is amongst people but Vegas has a very strong union for various hospitality workers. It might be multiple unions. Forgive me for not knowing exactly. But your housekeeping workers, your bartenders, your food servers, all of those service industries that are so central to the hospitality industry, which is central to the economy of Vegas, and a lot of Nevada, have very strong unions there that do a great job representing them and getting them fair wages and those kinds of things. So one of the major contracts expired in June of this year, 2023, so negotiations for new contracts started back in April. They did not reach an agreement in June. So they extended the contract deadline to September and that has now expired, and they are still negotiating. But the union has voted to authorize a strike if necessary. The union is asking for higher wages, more safety protections, and stronger recall rights, meaning rights to return to their work. So on the issue of safety for the union's, abuse of hospitality workers is on the rise in the US and particularly in Vegas. And I like to think that all of our listeners are the kind of folks who have had a service industry job at some point in their lives and would never ever throw something at a housekeeper.
**Inmn ** 26:10 Oh, God.
**Brooke ** 26:11 But, you know, just in case it needs to be said, If your room is really dirty and you're upset about it, don't throw things at the housekeeper who's just trying to clean. It's not...it's not a great way to go.
**Inmn ** 26:23 Yeah, don't do that.
**Brooke ** 26:27 Yeah, there's increasing reports of housekeepers getting yelled at, having things thrown at them, being threatened with abuse. Because there are--it's a complicated thing--so this also ties into the recall rights that they're asking for. Hotel workers, hospitality workers, saw significant decline in the number of people doing those jobs during the pandemic, partly because there was significantly less travel and then also restrictions on how many people you could book on a floor or in a hotel, or etc, etc, etc. So, hotels, you know, laid off a lot of their workers. And then, like many other places, have had a hard time rehiring. So they're not back up to the staffing levels that they used to be. So there's fewer people spread around, you know, a wider workload. And then part of that, the reason for the lack of rehiring, was because they didn't have recall rights. So, there was no reason for people to assume that they would be able to go back to their jobs or get their jobs back. So they, you know, left...stayed or left the industry or what have you. So, there's fewer workers to do the work, especially cleaning work. And then also, consumers are demanding less frequent cleanings for the most part in their hotel rooms. I don't know about you, when you travel, or the last time you went to a hotel, I am the kind of person that does not want housekeeping at all during my stay, whether it's one day or five days. I put out my Do Not Disturb sign. And I guess that's true of about 40% of hotel guests, they choose not to have housekeeping. The downside of that is that when housekeeping does come in after someone's left, the rooms are usually messier than they would be if they had a daily cleaning so housekeeping asked to do a deeper clean and they don't necessarily have--because they're short staffed, and it's a deeper play than they would plan for--they don't have the time to really turn over the room as thoroughly as they should. That difficult contrast between trying to get all the rooms at least a little bit versus doing a few rooms and doing them well and then not having some rooms. Yeah. So that's the other thing, if you're a person like me out there in the world and and you're staying at a hotel and you don't like to have housekeeping, do try and do them the kindness of whatever bits of cleanup you can on the way out so it's faster for them to turn over the room. Anyway, so they are continuing negotiations, but the union has...the union workers have authorized a strike or intermittent work stoppages if needed, and, you know, we fully support them doing that if that's what they need to do. Yeah, yeah, they would not be the only ones that have done that even in the last year or even super recently. Kaiser Permanente, you may have heard about this, had a three day walkout at all of their locations, appointments canceled. That kind of thing. So the Kaiser Permanente Health care workers went on strike and they've reached a tentative deal. And also somewhat recently, but a little bit longer ago, was the Writer's Union in Hollywood went on strike. And they were on strike for quite a bit. But they are back to work, having gotten a lot of what they wanted. The United Auto Workers Union is in negotiations for contracts with the major....sorry, with the major car manufacturers in the US. They have had some work stoppages throughout the negotiation process and may have a full stoppage or full strike at some point as well. So, yeah, lots of worker strikes going on, or have gone on and have been successful, in recent times and we support those workers, not only in their right to strike, but also in treating them well when we are traveling. And encouraging others to do the same.
**Inmn ** 31:03 This kind of relates to my mini rant earlier about, like, you know, things shutting down or being less available, which is like, one of the really cool things that I saw out of the Writers' Guild strike was people whose like, you know,--whether it was talk show hosts, or like, whoever, who were like, during the strike, and then like, after the strike, are like, "Yeah, it was hard to not do the show for however long, but like, what is far worse and much harder, is that these very simple demands were not met before the strike or on day one of the strike." And like, I don't know, just like...it's like shifting this mentality from like, I'm sad that the new season of Stranger Things is on hiatus with that these strikes are very important and these people's lives matter and them getting the things that make them able to continue doing their work and surviving is like, incredibly important. And that's more important than my desire to see a fucking TV show, you know?
**Brooke ** 32:24 Yeah, and it was really great to see, you know, a lot of actors and so forth, who weren't necessarily striking but were standing in support of, you know, their fellow Hollywood workers going on strike and getting their demands met. It was really cool.
**Inmn ** 32:41 Yeah. Is there some other stuff that got shut down recently?
**Brooke ** 32:46 No, the government talked about it, like they do.
**Inmn ** 32:51 They always talk about it.
**Brooke ** 32:54 Yeah, and we talked about this last month, and we said, hey, if it happens, we will follow up and talk more. At the last minute a continuing resolution was passed right before the deadline of when the government would have shut down. And I'm being overdramatic, because it's fucking every single time, basically, with very few exceptions. The downside of the continuing resolution form of passing a budget is that it's basically like buying them another 30 days, or however long the continuing resolution was for. So they still haven't passed a budget. They've just agreed to continue operating based on the old budget for a limited period of time. And I think their next deadline, I want to say, is mid November or so. The whole situation is complicated a little bit by the fact that they outed...the Republicans outed their speaker of the house. They don't have one. But they did pass this continuing resolution without having a speaker. So it is possible, it's just that they're dealing with the other chaos of trying to elect a new speaker and they have, at least, their fourth person that they put up for a vote, is up for vote. So they're focusing on that a lot rather than dealing with the budget issues they need to deal with. So I still, you know, I continue to say the same thing that I have said about this, which is that the government shutdown is very unlikely. If it does, it's likely very short. And even if it is very short, it probably won't affect very much because they have plans and programs set up to automate a lot of their stuff for at least a short period of time. It's only a major problem if there's a longer term shutdown like we saw back in 2019, which is very unlikely. And if it happens, we'll talk about it.
**Inmn ** 34:48 Yay, talking about stuff.
**Brooke ** 34:52 So that's about them not shutting down. I hear you have some good news, though, that we can talk about.
**Inmn ** 35:00 I do have some good news. But I kind of have like a question about the economy for you while we're like on the subject,
**Brooke ** 35:11 Give it to me, baby, you know I love talking about economics.
**Inmn ** 35:14 I read this article this week about this growing trend, which is not surprising to me because it's like seeing...because it's something that a lot of us are just seeing in the world, but--or experiencing ourselves, depending on where you live. But there seems to be this big growing trend in large cities, especially like, you know, the Bay area where there's been a huge, huge housing crisis for a very long time, which is driven by the tech industry being horrifying. Um, but I read this article recently talking about this thing where it has reached such a crisis that cities like Santa Barbara, and like some cities in Oregon, have opened up parking lots that are there for people who live in their cars. And it's catering to like a very specific like demographic of people, which is like people who make too much money to apply for government assistance, like housing assistance, food assistance, anything like that, or even Medicaid or Medicare--I always forget which is which--but they do not make enough money to afford rent. And it's this growing thing in the economy where like, like.... And these are people who make like $72,000 a year at government or state jobs who can no longer afford to live somewhere. And so they have to live in their car. And that is, yeah.... That's less of a question and more of a what's going on? What's going on?
**Brooke ** 37:20 Yeah, that level of problem where someone is making that much and still can't afford is definitely more specific to larger cities and places where housing costs are significantly higher. And housing is expensive everywhere right now. It's out of control. But you do have some places like the Bay Area, LA, parts of Seattle, where it is just ridiculously inflated. So yeah, making $70,000 a year is definitely way too much money to be getting any kind of assistance. You're well above the poverty line, even in your allegedly high income area, but it's nowhere near enough to afford a housing payment for how much houses cost right now. And I think there's always been some amount of people that live in that strange margin place of above the poverty line, can get little or no assistance but below what it takes to afford where they're living. That's not an entirely new phenomenon. But it's definitely much larger than it used to be. You know, because we've seen this astronomical increase in the house of pricing...in the price of housing. And inflation, overall, has increased the price of a lot of other things as well making it harder to afford all aspects of life and living.
**Inmn ** 38:47 Yeah, and, you know, it's like this.... It's the thing where it's horrible to me that it's something that people are paying attention to now that it's something that is affecting middle class people. Where it's like this, you know, this has been a lot of people's like realities for, you know, decades and decades, is living in this nebulous zone of like, for whatever reasons, not qualifying for government assistance or for qualifying for government assistance but that assistance not being enough to actually change anyone's life or get them housing or things like that. And that's more what interested me about the article, was like less than that this is like a newer growing thing and more that it's something that is starting to shift up the wage scales and stuff, from something that has always affected lower income people and is now starting to affect people who like would have not considered themselves low income before.
**Brooke ** 40:01 Yeah, the poverty line, what the government defines as being, you know, what they call the poverty line and then they use that to measure, you know, how far above or below it you are and then different services say you qualify based on your income relative to that position, that poverty line does not change rapidly. The government does not make big changes to that. They make very small changes to that. But meanwhile, we've seen in the last few years very rapid changes to the cost of living. And it costs so much more for so many basic things right now but that has not been accurately reflected in a higher poverty line, particularly with houses.
**Inmn ** 40:42 And wages. But yeah, I don't know. I feel like my hope for articles like this are more hoping that it like increases the amount of empathy and compassion that like more people have for other houseless populations. Which it sucks that it takes.... It sucks that that's what it takes for people to have empathy, but we live in a hell world.
**Brooke ** 41:18 Yeah, we do.
**Inmn ** 41:19 But you know, sometimes in this hell world that we live in, cool things can happen too.
**Brooke ** 41:27 Are there wins sometimes?
**Inmn ** 41:28 There are wins sometimes.
**Brooke ** 41:31 Like union workers winning and also...other things winning. What are they? Give me hope.
**Inmn ** 41:36 Hope. So this was a fun thing that I came across this month. And this has been less like this month and more like a thing that's been happening for over two years. So in 2021, in O'ahu, in Hawaii, there was a fuel leak from, you know, naval bases.
**Brooke ** 42:02 Wait, I was there in 2021.
**Inmn ** 42:05 Oh, yeah. Well, depending on where you were 93,000 people had jet fuel laced water introduced into their homes and their water drinking supplies.
**Brooke ** 42:22 I feel like I would have known that when I was on my little vacation there, if that was when I was there. But damn.
**Inmn ** 42:28 Yeah, the symptoms for ingesting it were people having migraines and nausea and vomiting. And while for a lot of people, those were short term symptoms, for like huge amounts of the people who were affected by it, a year and a half to two years later people are still experiencing symptoms and complications from having ingested jet fuel laced water. And some of those symptoms include severe anxiety and depression.
**Brooke ** 43:08 Maybe I did ingest some. Wait, I already had those symptoms, but they're worse. Okay, go on.
**Inmn ** 43:14 Yeah. And this sounds like it's grim, but there was recently a victory, which is that this initiative led by, I think it was like the Sierra Club and O'ahu Water Protectors have been waging this battle against the US military to drain these fuel reservoirs, which it's like miles of tunnels underneath O'ahu that are like filled with jet fuel, you know? So it's like the possibility of leaks are just astronomical. Like, it's so easy for it to...for that shit to leak.
**Brooke ** 43:55 I'm gonna guess they were rapidly built in World War II or something like that as well.
**Inmn ** 43:59 Yes, they are World War II era jet fuel tanks. That after like an extreme period of inactivity are finally being drained. And this this was a quotation from someone from the O'ahu Water Protectors, who said, "We got here not because the US Navy woke up one day and said, 'Oh, we're gonna do the right thing,' we got here because of the collective voices of the people who are calling for a shutdown." Which is like, you know, time and time again, the thing that we find in these situations, is like if there's an environmental catastrophe that is also a human catastrophe, it's like...it's not...the government isn't like, "That's bad. We should do something." It takes like it takes thousands of people for two years like screaming and yelling at people and fighting for a change. And this is like...you might think too, that people exposed to jet fuel laced water who are having like pretty severe reactions to those things, that the local government might offer--or the US military--might offer some kind of help with that immediately, you know?
**Brooke ** 45:27 No, come on now.
**Inmn ** 45:29 It took a year and a half for the Navy to set up a clinic to treat people who had been exposed to these chemicals. And, you know, it is 100 million gallons of petroleum.
**Brooke ** 45:47 Holy shit,
**Inmn ** 45:50 That is sitting in these tanks. That wasn't the size of the leak, but like.... And like, yeah, two years later residents are having their water in their houses tested. Because a lot of people's houses weren't flushed, the system wasn't flushed. It was never really dealt with. And so like two years later there's these low but persistent traces of these chemicals in people's water. But hopefully, that is.... At least the larger threat of another leak is hopefully not going to happen because of this victory from indigenous water protectors in O'ahu to like, get the fuel tanks drained. And unfortunately, you know, they're not just like.... I'm happy for O'ahu, but they're just moving the fuel to Singapore, the Philippines, and San Diego. So.
**Brooke ** 46:51 So, yeah, it's just gonna spill somewhere else. I mean, what do you do though? Is there a safe way to dispose of it? Probably not. Use it up, create more carbon emissions? I mean, yeah, lose-lose. Lose, lose, lose. Pour it down a volcano? What could go wrong? Pour jet fuel into a volcano, I'm sure that'll be fine. I do. I just want to say I never trust the federal government when it comes to drinking water and people. I just don't. That's one of those important things that we, you know, as we live like the world is dying here, that we all have to prepare for and plan for on our own and collectively. Do not ever trust the government to keep your water supply safe and consistent. It's just not going to happen.
**Inmn ** 47:47 Nope. Yeah, we protect us. It turns out.
**Brooke ** 47:53 Turns out. Alright, other water things: El Nino. So this is funny to me--I'll tell the shortest version of the story that I possibly can--when I was growing up, there were heavy rains in 1996, in the town that I--well, not just the town but this whole occupied Kalapuya territory that I live in, suffered from extreme rainfall. It's the Pacific Northwest, so we have a lot of rain anyway, so when I tell you there was extreme rainfall, that tells you something about how much rain there was. And lots of flooding, lots of water damage. There was a point when it rained for, I don't know, like, I think it was 16 days straight or something like that. Just...anyway. And it was ascribed to El Nino weather events. And so for most of my life until like the last few years, you say El Nino and I think lots of rain. That's all I understood about the El Nino weather events. But we've been talking a lot about it this year because globally, we have been in one since the springtime. And it actually has to do with water temperatures in the Pacific and airflow and stuff. And actually has very diverse effects on weather patterns around the world, really, especially right now in North America and parts of Europe, too. So we may be heading into a winter that is colder for some and warmer for others. And it was really funny in reading the reports on this that came out from NOAA and then were disseminated by others with input from this or that meteorologists, climatologists, whatever, about what was going on. And it's...you look at the maps and it's like, "Oh, the northern US is going to be much warmer or it's going to be slightly warmer. It's going to be in the Northeast. No, it's going to be the Northwest. The southern US is going to be colder in the southeast. No, in the southwest. No, actually it's going to be close to average. So all that I'm really getting from any of this as I read multiple sources is that we really don't quite know what the winter is gonna be like. No one is being consistent. And we're also in the middle of...we still have a polar vortex that's pushing cold air down from the Arctic. But also average temperatures are on the rise globally because of climate change. And this year, we're higher than average for much of the year. So all of that is to say, who knows what winter weather is going to do? Whatever winter weather prediction you've read, it might come true. But there's another one out there that will say the opposite thing. And, you know, who knows?
**Inmn ** 50:36 Golly, yeah,
**Brooke ** 50:39 Just funny things. So many headlines about it. And then they're all being totally contradictory. Yeah. Except that possibly, the central so-called United States of America--not like what we call the central US but if you literally draw a swath through the middle of the country--that seems to be consistently predicted to have roughly normal winter temperatures. So Kansas...Kansas, everything is probably going to be normal for you and maybe Colorado too. I don't know about the rest of us.
**Inmn ** 51:14 Hell yeah. I'm excited.
**Brooke ** 51:17 Isn't that great?
**Inmn ** 51:18 It is. To kind of get towards the end of the episode, I did remember this other thing that I wanted to tie in, which was we talked a little bit about like border militarization and like how that relates to this water pipeline, and this is in no way a new thing but like just to build this larger linkage. So, I, you know, I live here in Arizona and like border militarization is absolutely ridiculous. It's terrifying. And I was thinking about this thing that I've encountered a lot. And people who live here have encountered a lot, which I realized a lot of other people might not know about, which is that one of the big defense contractors that the US military uses here in Arizona is Elbit Technologies, which is this Israeli defense company. They designed shit for the IDF. And they, you know, a long time ago at this point, they started to build this virtual wall here in Arizona. And it's this...it's this series of fixed towers that build this AI controlled map of the entire border in Arizona. And the development on this is that we used to, in doing humanitarian aid work out in the desert,we used to joke that the towers that monitor infrared and shit would get set off by a cow or a hot rock or something. And since the development of AI technology, that's shifting. So they are now plugging into these monitors a lot of AI technology. And I think the effectiveness of it, which like at different points was laughable, is going to change a lot soon.
**Brooke ** 53:41 Okay, that's a lot.
**Inmn ** 53:43 Yeah, it is. It's just wacky and terrifying. And it's like a thing that's being felt especially by people on the Tohono O'odham Nation who have these towers completely covering the reservation. And, that makes people who.... You know, these are people who also faced large amounts of government repressio, becoming fearful to leave their homes and shit. Because they're like, "Well, I can't go to that place that I normally go to. Because all those towers are there now." All of this is to connect this thing that we aren't.... We're not going to talk a whole lot about it, but as I'm sure everyone knows, Israel recently invaded Gaza and.... Or, you know, their continued invasion of Gaza has reached new and horrifying levels. And, we're not going to talk about it too much, or we didn't cover it too much, because there's so much information. And there are a lot of really great sources to get a lot more information than we can responsibly provide on a segment on this show. I have been reading stuff from Jewish Currents and I've been reading some stuff from the Palestinian Youth Movement. And those have been really awesome places to see more like.... Like if you want updated timelines and things like that of events, or like ways to support people in Palestine through this genocide then highly recommend people like learning more about this and finding any way that they can to support people on the ground in Palestine. But some kind of cool things have happened because of it. Like, in Eugene, over the weekend, there was this big pro-Palestine march.
**Brooke ** 57:04 Eugene, Oregon.
**Inmn ** 57:05 Yeah. Eugene, Oregon. There was this big pro-Palestine March. And this guy and a fucking Guy Fawkes mask gets out of his pickup truck in the middle of it and pulls out a handgun and, you know, starts firing it into a crowd. And then two antifascists come up with their own handguns and to like successfully deescalate and disarm this person.
**Brooke ** 57:33 Awesome.
**Inmn ** 57:34 You know, without shooting him. And,you know, it was later revealed that the gun this person was firing was like a.... it was not a live ammunition gun. It was called a splatter gun or something. But if you see the pictures of it, it looks like a fucking hand gun. So like, hell yeah to the people who intervened in that situation to like, hopefully prevent, to prevent something that's become a horrifying regularity.
**Brooke ** 58:06 Yeah, it could have been a real gun. Yeah, we protect us. Yeah, speaking of war and conflict, can I tell you a funny thing from war?
**Inmn ** 58:19 Yeah, you have another funny thing. O, you know, these previous things weren't funny. But let's end on a funny thing.
**Brooke ** 58:26 Well my first thing was funny. Okay, I hope this will brighten up everyone else's day too. So, of course--this is not happy--there's a war going on against Ukraine right now. We're at, you know, 20 months, 22 months, getting close to two years on it. Ukrainians are continuing to fight and be bad asses and still doing things stealing equipment from the other side, including tanks. I don't know how much that they're still doing that, but we heard about that a lot in the beginning that the Russians would abandon tanks and Ukrainians would take them. So there was a Ukrainian officer, this was earlier this month, early October, who was driving around in his captured tank and started having technical difficulties with it. So he took it to local experts, whatever that means, and they weren't able to fix what's going wrong with it. It had some oil leakage and it was doing some other things. So he called the manufacturer of the tank, which is a Russian manufacturer, and he called them--and they're in Russia where they make them--and they called the Russian people for tech support. And they answered. And the person tried to help him problem solve the problem going on with the tank. He just called up and said, "Hey, I'm driving, you know, I'm involved in the war and I'm driving such-and-such type of tank and I'm having these problems." And he was...he was generally having the problems with a tank but the call to tech support was just to troll them. I mean, he didn't really expect them to answer or get help, but they did. And then they were trying to help problem solve through the issues that he had and let him file a complaint about the issues with the tank. And also passed him along to a manager at the manufacturing plant so he could further discuss the problems that he was having with this stolen Russian tank.
**Inmn ** 1:00:19 Oh my god. Did he get the...did he get the tank operational?
**Brooke ** 1:00:24 It doesn't sound like it because I think that really wasn't his end goal. He was really just, like I said, trolling them. And yeah, so he ended up talking to a manager about it. And then, you know, finally let them know, "Oh, by the way, I'm Ukrainian. I'm fighting against you guys. This is a tank that we captured, you know, earlier this year, that's giving me trouble. Thanks."
**Inmn ** 1:00:48 Oh my god. That is one of the biggest, hilarious, you know, whatever, modern technology society things that I've ever heard.
**Brooke ** 1:01:02 Yeah, and you know, he's speaking Russian. They have no idea. It's just great. It's really.... So there you go, troll the bad guys. When all else fails, just maybe, maybe troll them a little bit for the lols.
**Inmn ** 1:01:19 Okay, well, I think that about wraps it up for This Month in the Apocalypse. Thanks, everyone for tuning in.
**Brooke ** 1:01:32 Yay October! What joys will November bring us?
**Inmn ** 1:01:37 So many more.
**Inmn ** 1:01:44 If you enjoyed this podcast then live like the world is dying. Because it probably might be. Um, but you can also tell people about the podcast. You can support us in a bunch of other sillier ways, but you should really just tell people tell people about the podcast and talk to people about like, you know, if stuff like this happens where you are, if you are affected by any of these things, like figure out ways to deal with it as a small community that can help your larger community. And you can also support the show by supporting the publisher, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. Strangers is a media publishing collective. We put out books, and podcasts, and zines, and a bunch of other stuff, and zines [said to rhyme with "dines"], and you can find us at tangledwilderness.org And you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And that money goes to paying our audio editor. It goes to paying our transcriptionist. And it goes towards supporting the publisher so that we can do lots of other cool stuff. And in particular, we would love to thank these folks. Thank you, Patolli, Eric, Perceval, Buck, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, Funder, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, S.J., Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Michaiah, and Hoss the Dog. Thank you for growing this list to such an extent that I'm out of breath by the time that I am done saying it. We hope that you're everyone's doing as well as they can with everything that's going on and we will see you next time.
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret and Patrick talk a lot about covid, public health, the role of anarchism in public health, and the weirdly similar origins of the names of two projects.
Patrick (he/him) can be found hosting the Last Born in the Wilderness podcast. You can find it at www.lastborninthewilderness.com or wherever you get podcasts. You an also find Patrick on Instagram @patterns.of.behavior or on Twitter @LastBornPodcast
Margaret (she/they) can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Last Born in the Wilderness on Anarchist Public Health
**Margaret ** 00:14 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today, Margaret Killjoy. I say it that way because there's other hosts now and I'm very excited about that. But sometimes, apparently, we have the same voice. And so people think that we are each other, but we're not. We're different people. And you can tell because my name is Margaret Killjoy and Inmn's name is not Margaret Killjoy. It is instead, Inmn. But that's not what we're talking about. What we're gonna talk about today ... Well, we're gonna talk about a lot of stuff today. I'm really excited about it. We're gonna be talking with the host of a podcast you should probably be listening to if you're not already called Last Born in the Wilderness. And it's like the [laughing] smarter thinking version of this show. And so we're gonna talk about that. And first, here's a jingle from another show on the network, which is ... the network is Channel Zero Network, which is a network of anarchists podcasts, and here's a jingle. Buh buh bah buh buh bah [singing like a simple melody]
**Margaret ** 02:09 Okay, we're back. Okay. So if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then kind of maybe introduce this other podcast, this project that you do.
**Patrick ** 02:18 Yeah. Thanks for having me on. My name is Patrick Farnsworth. Pronouns are he/him. I'm the host of Last Born in the Wilderness. It's a podcast I've been hosting for quite a long time now and I ... I don't know how to describe it. Someone described it once as a podcast about death and dying, which sounds rather bleak. It's an interesting way to describe it. I mean, it's, uh, you know ... I certainly come from a radical leftist and anarchist, or as someone else has said about me, "anarchistic adjacent perspective." I'm talking about collapse. I'm talking about the implications of global climate change, climate disruption, the so-called sixth mass extinction anthropocene, like these kind of big, heady, huge global subjects around, you know, extinction and mass extinction events and so on. And I kind of also explore the history of settler colonialism and issues around whiteness, or I should say, white supremacy. I talk about a whole bunch of stuff. And I think the point of it is to really get at the question of: what are the roots of these kinds of broader biosphere crises that we're in the midst of? Why is it that human beings, or the dominant culture of human beings that we are part of, producing a mass extinction event? And what does that portend? What does that lead to? What can we expect to happen in the coming decades? And kind of wrestling with really deep ... "Deep." [said with an introspective laugh] I mean "deep" in the sense emotionally and spiritually with the question of what does extinction mean for our species? And how do we grapple with that? It's a big question. So yeah, that's more or less what the podcast is kind of addressing.
**Margaret ** 04:03 Yeah, no. Okay, wait, so with extinction, do you run into this thing .... Okay, well, no, first I'm gonna ask about your name, then we're gonna come back to extinction. Where did you get this sick name? It's such a sick name. It's obviously ... As someone who is part of a project called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness and then has a show called Live Like the World is Dying, I'm clearly a fan of this slightly long and poetic style of naming. But Last Born in the Wilderness is a sick name. I'm curious about its background.
**Patrick ** 04:28 Sure. I mean, the name itself came--it's a funny origin story really--when I came up with the name, I was homesick and I didn't know what to call this thing. I didn't even know what I wanted to make. But I was thinking about what my father would call me because I'm the youngest of this large Mormon family. No longer LDS but grew up in this LDS family, LDS environment. He would call me his "last born in the wilderness" because being kind of ... he's kind of a lovely but very quirky man who would have these very strange nicknames for his kids, including me being the youngest, being the, quote, "last born the wilderness," meaning he was paraphrasing from the Book of Mormon. There's a verse in the Book of Mormon about this family going through the wilderness and something about being the "last born in this wilderness of mine afflictions." Like it's really dramatic kind of bleak Mormon scripture stuff and it's weird. So, I don't know, I guess I thought of my dad, I thought of that, I thought of my history, I thought of ... it sounded like it could have multiple meanings. And it does because as I did the podcast more and more I started to really think about the other layers of it, of, "Okay, are we the last generation?" Like is this the end of this idea of wilderness. Wilderness itself is kind of an interesting idea. And the kind of colonialist notion, the dualism of civilization versus wilderness, and that in and of itself is a problematic idea. Like, there's a lot of layers to it that I've discovered, which is actually what I love about really cool names or titles of things is when you name something and you realize over time that it actually has other meanings that kind of come up, and you're like, "Oh, that actually means this as well. I did not know that." So that's where it comes from.
**Margaret ** 06:13 Okay, I really like that for a thousand reasons. One of the things you talked about ... I've been reading more and more stuff that's critical of the idea of "wilderness," right? Because you're creating an artificial distinction between humans and everything else, right? As if, like ... I mean, we're not capable of doing things that are not natural because we're literally, natural beings, right?
**Patrick ** 06:33 Yeah, exactly.
**Margaret ** 06:35 And the idea of untouched wilderness as this very colonial concept where it's like, actually, a lot of forests are managed by people and we're .... And it gets humans off the hook if we treat ourselves like we're bad, like, inherently, right?
**Patrick ** 06:51 Yeah.
**Margaret ** 06:51 Because like, "Ahhh, well, we're human, so of course we clear cut." And we're like, "Well, that's not true. A lot of people lived here for a very long time and didn't clear cut everything," right?
**Patrick ** 07:02 They didn't. No.
**Margaret ** 07:03 Okay. And then the other reason I like it, it's kind of the same background as Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness.
**Patrick ** 07:09 Oh, really.
**Margaret ** 07:10 I was once, when I was a weird "look at me, I'm so strange, oogle kid" running around and pulling books out of the trash, I dumpstered the Christian Science holy book. I don't know what it's called. And I just started cutting it up to make new assemblages of words and things, right? And one of the pieces that I cut out of it and then put on this piece of art I was making just said "strangers in the tangled wilderness." And I really liked it. And so I named my first zine I ever made like 20 some years ago--well not the first zine--but the first zine that I called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness because that's how I felt is like this wander, right? And then but since then I've learned, I think, I'm not an expert on Christian Science, although I can claim, my great grandmother was raised that way and then she was like, "This sucks," and then she just became an agnostic atheist pagan person. She was cool. It was like 100 years ago. She applied to college and she got so mad that they asked her what her religion is and she wrote "Sun worshiper," on the thing, which is complicated. But for a woman in the 1910s, I'm fucking into it. Anyway, the next line in it is "strangers in a tangled wilderness, wanders from the parent mind." And so it's using wilderness as a negative conception, I believe, in the traditional thing. And so yeah, it's like this interesting thing where Christianity ... Like, okay, so this "last born in the wilderness" seems to be implying this negative conception of wilderness. Which is this very negative version of Christianity producing such a thing. I don't know. That's what I've got.
**Patrick ** 08:46 Yeah, I think the wilderness in scripture and Christian literature, or whatever, it's very much this .... Like, if you're wandering the wilderness, you're not in a good place. You've kind of either been banished or God is leaving you alone, giving you distance to figure your shit out for a while. Like, there's good things and bad things with that. But I think that the wilderness can .... Yeah, there is this implication in it of it being symbolic, or whatever, of it being not the best place to be in. You're not in paradise, that's for sure. You're not in the Promised Land, that's for sure. You're maybe on the way there, but you're not there. Yeah. And certainly, in that passage, if I remember, it's like, "In the wilderness of mine afflictions." Like, it's very, it's not ... you know, it's not a good place to be. But they were on their way to the Promised Land, I guess, in that scripture. So ...
**Margaret ** 09:42 Okay, so you're like the last one before we reach paradise or whatever?
**Patrick ** 09:46 I guess. I don't know
**Margaret ** 09:47 Like you're the last people who have a concept of wilderness and everyone else is going to live underground growing their food in very controlled environments because everything's hard.
**Patrick ** 09:55 I guess so. I mean, yeah, I don't know. I think that certainly the world as we know it, the world that you and I were born into, is like kind of no longer here and we've entered into a new earth, which is not one that is hospitable to human, or much of the more than human life, unfortunately and it's gonna get progressively more and inhospitable. So, being the last born is really ... it's not a ... it's all of us. It's not like .... You're not the last man on the Earth, or whatever, or the last person on the Earth. You're one of a generation, or several generations, that really remembers what it was like before the climate was completely chaotic and everything was on fire and everyone was coughing in your face with a plague. You know, that was a nice time. Remember that? That was cool. And now we're in this new place, or this seemingly novel place for us at least, of, kind of, amplifying crises. And it's .... Yeah, so anyway, sorry, that's rather bleak. But it's a little bit of what I talk about, I guess, or bring up in the podcast. The overarching sense.
**Margaret ** 11:04 No, no. Okay. Well, let's talk about coughing in people's faces with the plague. [Laughing] One of the topics that we wanted to talk about was kind of a little bit of where we're at with Covid. And not just a like, "Hey, there's a new wave coming. And there's new ... or here." And there's also like, you know, "Time for your yearly booster," and there's the non MRA [struggles with the letters]
**Patrick ** 11:27 Non MRNA.
**Margaret ** 11:28 Yeah, thank you. Vaccines that just got approved and like all this other stuff. But, more about, I want to kind of ask you about what you've learned through your work about the fact that we are living in this place where community care has been left to individuals and smaller organizations, by and large, with some larger institutions trying to do good, while the, at least, federal level care and things like that have largely abandoned us to fend for ourselves.
**Patrick ** 12:00 Yeah. You know, it's weird. This has been a disillusioning period, I think. Pandemic has been really rough for a lot of reasons. And I think I've talked about it a lot through a variety of lenses. I think there's a baseline of trust that's been lost among myself and a lot of other people. Like, I feel like to kind of continuing to keep up precautions and to avoid catching Covid is really a difficult thing at this time. And it's weird because there's been a normalization on such a broad level. And there's people on the left who really have given up and don't really care about it anymore. And seemingly, it sort of seems like we've kind of turned a corner. It feels like culturally, socially where it's kind of unacceptable to continue to care about it in this way. But I think if you are a leftist, in the broadest sense, not just a radical anarchist, or whatever, you really need to kind of get the facts straight about what Covid is and how it's still impacting people. How many people are becoming effectively disabled as a result of Covid infections? And then normalizing it is really fucked up. It's eugenicist, frankly. It's ableist. It's wrong. And I was just thinking, I don't know if I want to call .... I don't want to .... I don't know. I was thinking recently about how my partner and I moved up to Canada. Actually, we're in Victoria, BC right now, the city that is called Victoria, on Vancouver Island. There was an anarchist bookfair here. No mask requirements at this fair. And I think at other book fairs around, I don't know if around BC or just in the US in particular, masks were a requirement, like respirators were required. It's just a basic thing I think we need to kind of do now as leftists or anarchists is just to have, if we're gonna have a public event, these types of things just need to be kind of there. Like we just have to do them. Because there's a lot of people who are immunocompromised or disabled that just can't show up because this is not a safe, "safe," these [unhearable word] words, but like literally, it'll harm their bodies.
**Margaret ** 14:09 Yeah, it's like full of spikes that are shooting out of the ceiling. You know, it's not...
**Patrick ** 14:14 Yeah, exactly. So I think just the act of community care on that level--I mean, you don't have to be an anarchist to do this of course--but I think particularly for anarchists that are supposedly about communal acts of care and mutual aid, like this is a really basic one, a pretty easy one. It's interesting how it's not-- you know for anarchists, there's no like ... I don't know if there's a global anarchist Federation that has doled out some kind of guidelines. That would never make sense. But it's interesting how in every place around North America there's different kinds of cultural temperaments, or certain attitudes, around certain things and particularly around Covid. It's interesting how in Canada, how maybe anarchists in Canada don't maybe care as much about it. I don't know. I guess I can't speak for them, but it's an interesting thing to experience the ways in which the normalization of Covid has affected different regions. And it's ... Yeah, so anyway, I just wanted to kind of bring that up because we are still in the midst of this thing. I can get into reasons why it's still a problem, why it is still a threat to people's health, but it shouldn't be. I don't know. I just think it's really imperative that anarchists kind of get with the program if they haven't already.
**Margaret ** 15:26 Yeah, and like, I've been fairly proud of the fact that overall I've found anarchists and punks and different sorts of subcultural folks and political folks to be more on top of it than the average person or place, but not .... I haven't been blown away either, you know? And we have had .... Most of the book fairs that I've been aware of or gone to, or whatever, this year have had some kind of masking requirement. Sometimes it's a rigid requirement. Sometimes it's like, here's the masks at the door, and someone's going to kind of be like, "You should really wear one of these," but not like kick you out without a mask. Like, I .... Shout out to the anarchist space called Firestorm in Asheville, North Carolina that during COVID, they actually moved into a new building, and part of why they picked the building, as far as I can tell, is that it used to be an auto shop so the doors open all the way, like one wall is open. And they still have a mask requirement inside of the store because they're like, "Well, they're still a pandemic. So you should wear a mask. This isn't complicated," you know? And like .... Okay, have you ever seen the TV show The 100?
**Patrick ** 16:42 I think I've heard of it.
**Margaret ** 16:45 I watched the first two or three seasons a while ago. And I .... But there's this thing that I think about all the time. It was not a particularly important TV show to me. But there's one thing that seemed kind of hackneyed at the time where basically almost no one can live on the Earth because there was a pandemic. And a lot of people live in space. And then some people come back down from space. And then there's people who have "lost their minds" and "lost civilization" who, you know, have adapted. And then there's these people who live inside a mountain. And they're like, "Oh, we can't go outside the mountain except with, you know, full suits that protect ...." I forget the word for this, like the chemical suits or whatever.
**Patrick ** 17:23 Like hazmat suits or something like that.
**Margaret ** 17:25 So yeah, you can't go outside without a hazmat suit and a gas mask. And like, you know, when you come back in you have to go through decontamination and all this stuff. And I remember watching it and being like, you just sort of take it for granted. You're like, yeah, you know, if there was a thing in the air that killed people or made people disabled, people would like, take it seriously, you know? And then now I'm like, "Man, that was a utopian piece of fiction right there." Like, within the first week someone would be like 'Fake news. There's nothing in the air outside," and then the whole mountain would have been destroyed.
**Patrick ** 18:00 Speaking of like pop culture .... Like, sometimes it is. I watched that film Contagion a while ago. It came out before Covid. It's like what, a Stevens Soderbergh film? Whatever, it doesn't matter. It came out. And it was like "What would happen if a really, really dangerous, very contagious virus just started spreading? Like, what would the agencies do? What would the CDC do? What would global world governments do?" Whatever. And, you know, it was fairly .... It tried to be realistic while also being kind of dramatic. And it was a really nasty virus. Everybody is locked down, quarantine, blah, blah, blah. They make a vaccine, they do a lottery, people get it at the end, and it's over. Like, that's the end of the movie. Everybody gets the vaccine. Everybody gets the vaccine, everybody's happy to get the vaccine. And no, you know, I mean, yeah, certainly .... Covid is in this weird, I feel like it's in this weird space. And I've said this before on an interview with somebody, this epidemiologist, I was saying it's this weird space where it's like, it's obviously really, really bad to get it, but it's also like a lot of people get it and it doesn't seem to affect them that much. They kind of feel like, "Oh, it's kind of like the cold or kind of like a flu." It isn't, though. I mean, looking at the actual virus and how it affects the body, it is not like those viruses. So it's very different. But the fact is, is that, you know, percentage wise, you know, most people get it, they don't die from it. So what's the big deal? So, I think it's in this weird space where it's a very contagious, very nasty virus, but it doesn't have the mortality rate of like Ebola or something so people aren't going to take it seriously. So, it's weird. It's a weird thing. And we're, you know, almost four years into this thing. So, people are obviously quite weary. We've been talking about it. So yeah, it's hard.
**Margaret ** 19:53 No, totally. And like, I mean, it's funny because it's like I also get the ... I get why people are over it and have to live their lives. And I think I talked about this in a recent episode, I can't remember. I was talking to someone about it. I no longer have real conversations. I only have podcast conversations. It was like, okay, we can't not have live music as part of our human experience of the world, or whatever, right? But to me it's all about looking at these cost-benefit analyses. And by and large, with exceptions, like if someone's doing hard manual labor all day I can see why wearing a mask is particularly hard, or like, you know, there's complicating factors. But, overall, it's just not a fucking big deal. Like to--Covid is--but to wear a mask--
**Patrick ** 20:38 Yeah.
**Margaret ** 20:39 --for, I think, most people in most situations, And I think the main reason people don't wear masks is because of the social aspect of it. Because they are afraid of being the only person wearing a mask. And I just like ask us to not act out of fear. I ask us to do what's right. Or I think we are asked by being alive. I think that we are asked to be ... to do what is right, not what is popular, or whatever, right? And, so that's what's so disappointing to me about it. And I mean, this is part of why everyone gets so mad at people who .... Because I also try not to be like .... You don't really like gain a lot when you tell people like, "What the fuck? What's wrong with you? You can't do that." It's not a very effective strategy, you know? And so I do think it's like, overall, I really appreciate a lot of the phrasing that I've seen about being like, "Hey, even if you stop masking, here's like a good reason to start again." And like, you know, there's no harm in just mea culping and just starting to mask again,
**Patrick ** 21:46 Yeah, no, for sure. And I don't know, there's a lot of other things going on too. When you .... It really is fascinating to be like .... You obviously want to be like, you want to encourage this level of care and I think what's sort of hard is there is a real lack of public .... Like, good public health messaging has been terrible. So, it's an interesting dynamic. I feel like anarchists are people who are more on the ground organizing at grassroots levels. At a grassroot level, you are trying to fill a void, which is the government doesn't really want to fucking deal with this shit. They just don't want to deal with it. They have, they've learned enough. And they know that they can move on warm, more or less. And so they're not going to do anything about it anymore. And so you have to take care of yourself, The rich are taking care of themselves. They have all the tools, They know exactly how to run a Covid-safe event. They've been doing it for a while now. And they have really good like .... In the way that you would pay for security or catering at an event, they pay for Covid Safety coordinators. Yeah, they're really good at it. And if they're doing that, and they understand this, then we should be doing it for ourselves because we as the poors, we need to take care of each other, take care of ourselves and learn basic information that unfortunately a lot of people don't have. And actually .... I understand that by doing my podcasts or doing this kind of work that I am able to delve into some of these subjects more closely. So, I might know a little more about Covid than the average person. And honestly, the more I learn about it, the more I don't want to get it and the more I would encourage people to avoid reinfection more than anything. If you've had it before, you don't want to get it again. There's so many intersecting issues here. I guess I just, I just really want to emphasize community care is the most important thing right now in regards to this. Need to really get on top of that, if we haven't already. And a lot of people are. It's amazing, actually, how many people are doing it, like mask blocks. There's all kinds of people organizing around this subject. And they don't have any particular, seemingly political ideology that's animating it. It's just they're doing it because it's right.
**Margaret ** 23:57 Yeah, totally. One of the things you were saying about realizing like the government has abandoned us, so the government has moved on and things like that. It's one of these ... at the beginning of Covid, it actually kind of challenged, in some ways, it challenged a lot of my own anarchist thoughts, right? Because I try not to assume I'm right. I try not to look at a problem and say "What's the anarchist solution?" I try to look at a problem and say, "What's the solution?" I have a bias that lends itself towards non state, non capitalist solutions. But I try to earnestly look at every problem and say, "What is the best solution?" and so far in my life the answer is usually nonstate, anti capitalist, anti oppression, right? Well, and some of those things are also moral, you know. But at the beginning of Covid, you start being like, "Well, shit, someone needs to .... This needs to be organized on a massive scale, right?" And then, now what we actually saw instead gave me the opposite, whereas at the beginning of Covid mutual aid groups popped up everywhere, you know, and mutual aid groups like stepped into the void of what was not being met. Because people were locked down, they were like, not able to meet a bunch of other needs, and a lot of them, in the US, at least, we have, you know, we got stimulus money or whatever. And it wasn't enough for most people. And, but I think that it becomes really clear that you look a year on and as soon as Covid is over, you're like, "Oh, you're running some cold math about dead people in the economy, or disabled people in the economy, and you are deciding that getting people back to work makes the country more money even though a bunch of people will die or become disabled as a result," you know? And so it's like one of those things, to me, it just lays bare the reality of government, that governments exists to make this kind of cold calculation, not take care of people.
**Patrick ** 25:57 Yeah, no, I think at the beginning there was a lot of ambiguity. We didn't know what this would really be. So obviously lock downs--or what we would call lock downs but really just kind of stay-at-home orders--or just tell people, like, "Please just avoid social gatherings for a while." And then the masks came into the picture and things like this, that was implemented just because there was, you know, there was a lot of ambiguity. We didn't know everything we know now. And once the, kind of, the cold calculus really came in, and there's a lot of other things too, but really when that came in and it was like, "This is hurting the economy. This isn't gonna work. You know, we have to really focus on jobs over, you know, everything else, over our lives. So, yeah, let's just get back to work." And I don't know. But I think it is kind of an interesting thing, though, because the anti-mask thing is very much an aesthetic choice. It's not as much a practical, irrational thing, because we could have jobs and all this stuff running exactly as before but people are wearing high quality respirators. Sure, we could have all kinds of things implemented. It would take an investment. From a cold capitalist perspective, it's rational to put an air filtration, it's rational to have people wear respirators, and yet from .... I don't know what it is, but just the idea of actually providing public health infrastructurally on that level is just not possible at this point for some reason. It's just not feasible. I was thinking about the kind of origins of public health, as it were, and like John Sn--I think his name was John Snow in England--he kind of figured out where the cholera outbreaks were coming from. And that really helped kickstart this movement to, you know, kind of figure out how to provide clean water for people on a massive social scale, on the scale of a city, right? It took a long time and a lot of deaths for something to finally change. And now we just take for granted that when you turn on a faucet in most places around, say, North America, you're gonna find you're gonna have clean water. Like it's pretty not always the case, certainly, but, you know, it's kind of taken for granted that that's almost like a right that we have. But clean air has not really entered into that same, that level of feeling like an entitlement that we have as human beings for a quality of life issue, that this is important. So, I don't know, it's interesting to witness how this has been playing out and also sort of an anarchist, or whatever, thinking about it from that level of like, if we want to move away from States and governments, how would an anarchist society deal with this issue? How would non-Statist, anti-Statists deal with this? And it's interesting. I don't know yet. I haven't really figured that out. And, I was kind of thinking because you do a history podcast as well. And I'm wondering if there was anything you came across as, you know, kind of radical leftist movements that were like, "How do we apply the values of public health and health care from a maybe communal collectivist sense that does not rely on the institution of states and bureaucracies? Like, I don't know, I wonder about this because we're trying to just fill the gap of what the State isn't doing. It's almost reactionary, right? What would it look like to be proactive in that sense? I don't know. I don't have an answer to that. I just think it's interesting.
**Margaret ** 29:26 Okay, no, that's interesting. From a history point of view, there's a piece that I read right near the beginning of pandemic--that I haven't read in a while and I don't remember as well--this Italian anarchist, Malatesta, wrote a piece called like something like "Anarchists and the Cholera Outbreak," and it was about anarchist public health responses to a late 19th century health crisis. But I also know that anarchists have been doing a ton of stuff on public health since the beginning. I think that like .... I mean, you can look at like ... it's anarchists who, at least in the US, pushed birth control and pushed information about sexually transmitted diseases and like sexual health. And it's like, people are like, "Oh, yes, early feminists," and I'm like, "Yeah, they were early feminist anarchists." I mean, there's some exceptions to that. And then of course, you have bad examples where Margaret Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood, was, like, a "complicated figure" who embraced non-racialized eugenics. And that is bad. But it is spun to mean that she was different, that she believed in something different than what she actually believed. And, but it's still bad. And she started off as an anarchist. She, actually, by the time she was really doing the eugenics because a lot of like--a lot of eugenics, you kind of need the State for, right, especially like the evilest parts of it or the like who gets to decide who has babies are whatever, right, and all that shit. But Margaret Sanger was an anarchist when she first started doing a lot of the birth control stuff. Emma Goldman got arrested a ton of times. The person who's at the longest in jail in US history for advocating birth control was this guy--I just did an episode about this, I don't normally have all these facts in front of me--was this guy named Ben Reitman, who was mostly an anarchist. He spent most of his life fucking around with the anarchist scene. But the anarchists scene didn't like him because he was super horny and he kept cheating on Emma Goldman, which is impressive because they were in an open relationship. Yeah, but he still managed to sort of piss her off with how many people we slept with, even though it was supposedly okay. He spent the longest of anyone in history, in US history, in jail for advocating birth control. And he was also a ... he was a hobo doctor. He was a doctor who went to medical school, became a physician, specifically so that he could treat STIs in the poorer classes and people who didn't have access to public health. And so a lot ... As far as I can tell, I see this thing, this pattern happen a lot where things come from the bottom up and then the top is like, "Okay, cool, we got that." And you can see this benevolently where you're like, "Oh, it comes from the bottom up and then the State comes in and takes charge and everything's okay." And, and there's some advantages that have come up through that, but overall, I think it is to the detriment of these systems. And I think that... I don't know, I guess I'm like, I think that decentralized networks that have some forms of centralized information sharing, are very capable of doing these sorts of things. Also, sorry, I'll stop spitting out anarchist history in a minute.But the legalization of abortion, the first Western European country... Soviet Russia was the first country to legalize--I could be wrong about this--was one of the first countries, if not the first country, to legalize abortion in Europe. But then Stalin was like, "Just kidding. You must make babies," because he's a bastard. Then Federica Montseny, the woman Minister of Health in revolutionary Spain, who was an anarchist--which is really complicated and there was a lot of arguing at the time about whether Federica Monseigneur and some of her peers should have joined the coalition government--she legalized abortion. And so it's like, funny. So even the State idea of public health came from an anarchist who was part of the State, you know?
**Patrick ** 33:30 I don't know, I think that it's this thing where when we're thrust into these big crises, like a pandemic, we start to really... we do have to reevaluate our ideological stances a little bit like. Because for me, you know--I think this is something we talked about when you were on my podcast like three years ago, or whatever--something about, like, it's not our position to tell people how to do things. Like, if it's another country and other people they're going to figure out how to solve their problems in their own way. And, you know, I think a lot of revolutionary movements do lead to certain types of, obviously, State kind of action or States.... It's directed towards the State or the State itself's kind of response to it in a way that is actually beneficial to the people. But that's not because the State is good. It's just under enormous amounts of pressure. It's just.... It's complicated. I don't think it's one thing and I think that it's a good thing that the government was able to mass produce or help mass produce vaccines, but I also think it was really fucked up that it was then decided that that was the end of the pandemic because everybody was vaccinated. It's kind of this... It's this thing. It's not one thing. It's very complicated. But I do think overwhelmingly, absolutely, if public health is being administered on this sort of ground level where the feedback between the actual public and the sort of people administering public health, if that feedback loop is shorter, where you're able to actually hear what people are saying and you can actually see what's going on in the ground, there's an actual connection and it's done democratically and collectively then you actually can administer public health in a way that is going to help people and not being imposed on people. Right? So yeah, I think there's been, for me, a lot of questions and lessons learned from this pandemic up to this point. So, and also, I don't know, I just throw this in there, they're not necessary anarchist, but like the Black Panthers and the Young Lords, you know, they were very much about health care and administering health care on a community level and did forward a lot of things that even today...like I think it was something like the Young Lords were really pushing for patients having access to their own... like that the doctors had to explain to them what....Is that right?
**Margaret ** 35:44 Yeah, they introduced the Patient's Bill of Health that has since been used internationally.
**Patrick ** 35:51 So you know, and they were radical, you know, they took over hospitals, they occupied, you know, they did a lot. So, yeah. Anyway, I just, I think in regards to the pandemic, right now, whatever major breakthroughs that we're gonna have in regards to dealing with cleaning the air or, you know, actually making sure that people have access to resources and information, it's gonna have to come from the ground level, in pressure from the ground level because it ain't good right now. It really isn't.
**Margaret ** 36:22 No, and that, I really liked that. I think that's a really good point. And when I think about it, the Young Lords are the perfect example of this. And they're, you know, yeah, they were Marxist Leninists, but they were doing something from the bottom up and forced the city of New York City to take action. Like, for example, in the neighborhood that they lived in--they moved all over the place, but they first started in, I want to say, the Upper East Side in a Puerto Rican neighborhood in Manhattan--and no trash was coming. No trash pickup was happening there, partly because of some racism of some white labor unions and the trash union and partly due to just systemic poverty and other forms of racism. It wasn't all just the trash workers problem...fault. But, you know, they just started dragging trash in the middle of the street and setting it on fire. And they did it in the parts of their neighborhood that rich people have to drive through. They did it in the through fares. And it worked. Trash pickup became a major issue in the next mayoral election. And then trash pickup, like they like, revolutionized how trash is picked up in New York City. And it was this major health issue. And then the other things that they would do is they would go door to door to do tuberculosis screenings. And they would also like--they're so fucking cool. At one point, they hijacked an X-ray van that was going through these neighborhoods to like X-ray people for tuberculosis but wasn't going to poor neighborhoods of color. And there's like some arguments about whether that was because of what time the schedule was and didn't work for people's jobs or if it was a straight up, like, "Nah, we're just hanging out in the white neighborhoods." But what happened was the X-ray technicians, they were like, "Sick, we don't give a shit. We just want to fucking help stop TB." And that's what's so interesting to me about government workers versus non-government workers is that the people doing the shit, whether it's for the government or not, they just want to get the shit done. They don't care which system is doing it. Like the X-ray technicians were like "Sick, fuck yeah, we're still getting paid. Like, it's a little weird that you came in with guns, but whatever, it was necessary. You take us up there." And then they started. And they ended up with a fucking X-ray van parked outside the Young Lords headquarters several days a week, paid for by the hospital. And so it.... I got really worked up.
**Patrick ** 38:37 Yeah, no. It's cool, though.
**Margaret ** 38:38 But I think that these questions about anarchist public health, one of the things that is so interesting to me is that it's like systems allow things to happen but people are who do it. And so often people will ask, will be like, "Well, how will an anarchist society produce insulin?" or whatever. And like, well, part of the answer is, I don't know how we make insulin now, but that's probably how we'll make it then too, right. You know? And so like, anarchist public health can look, in some ways, really similar in terms of like, well, we'll have people who know a lot about public health directing these things, you know? Because it's not the government that regulates things, it is people who design the systems of regulation. And anything that people can do, we are people, and also I'm not trying to disclude those people from my society. And I just want it to happen in a system that is actually anti-oppressive, that is horizontal, that is anti-capitalist, you know, that is all of these things. And so yeah, so what if instead of we build shit from the bottom up and the government swoops in and then kind of makes it shitty and watered down, we build things from the bottom up and then keep building and just keep those buildings that we make horizontal and keep them like.... Yep, I got totally worked up.
**Patrick ** 39:51 No, you're good. No, you're right, though. That's exactly it. Like, there are, at every stage of the way, I think...sorry, I'm also kind of worked up.... I feel like health and healthcare is actually is a core and central component of any sort of revolutionary movement because it is so integral to everyone, obviously, our health and well-being is such an integral part of everyone's lives. So how we treat disabled people, how we treat people of all age groups, how access to care is affect...you know, people's sort of demographic that they exist in, the racial system that we have, it affects how people have access to certain types of care. I mean, all of this is so...it intersects with so many things. So, I think the pandemic has highlighted a lot of this. And I think it's been a very upsetting and difficult time. And I think people kind of need to...they've tuned out. They need to kind of tune back in and I get why they tuned out, but they just need to try to tune in tune in a bit because it's going to--I'm sorry, it sounds bleak and this is kind of my thing--it's gonna get worse unless we make it better. And I think there's an assumption that somehow got better and it really hasn't. And again, this is just because I am, I mean, I am doing this sort of collaborative series right now. But also, I've just learned as much as I can about how Covid is affecting the body and it's a nasty virus. It's causing really wild complications in people's bodies. It is a very strange thing. So, you know, it's not enough to just tell you as an individual, "Please do this thing," or "Please do that." We need actual systems of care that really accommodate everybody. So yeah, to me, it is...and I know, we were kind of discussing how this, you know, what my podcast really addresses is a lot of it's around climate and the implications of climate change. How we deal with Covid is indicative of how we're dealing with...it's like a Russian doll, you know, nested within itself. It's like, "This is how we're dealing with this? Well, this is how we're dealing with ecological crisis and the climate crisis as well." How we adapt to the changes that are coming from this pandemic is how we are choosing or not choosing to deal with the changes that are coming from a rapidly changing climate system. So, this is all related. And I think, again, as radical leftists, you have to catch up with that and to kind of recognize that part of it in my opinion.
**Margaret ** 42:31 No, that makes sense. There's kind of...one of the things that I do, I do a lot of crafting as my main way to decompress and stuff like that, right, and one of the things that I've like been learning as I get older is a random maxim, that's a cliche, which is how you do one thing is how you do everything. And it's not literally true. But I think about it when I want to cut corners. I think about it, when I like... I finished, you know, I'm making my raised beds and I'm like, "I'm going to not sand that corner. It doesn't really matter. I'm not going to see that part" right? You know? But those all build up and more that by learning the discipline of handling things and taking things seriously, it puts me in the position for the parts that do matter, to not cut corners, to go at things systematically, to make sure I do things right. And I kind of liked this, this presentation of how we handle Covid is how we handle climate change. You know, they're not the same problem. They're related. They're part of the interwoven crises we are facing. And so we shouldn't freak out about either because that literally doesn't do us any good. But we should probably be more alarmed than overall we are about both of these things and looking soberly at the problem and what solutions are and running cost benefit analyses but not cost benefit analysis for what saves the economy but what costs benefit analyses feed people. And to be fair, the economy is part of what feeds people, but there's other methods of feeding people, which the government knows and that's part of why they're like "Shit, we got to make sure that we stay feeding people because otherwise people are gonna figure out communism."
**Patrick ** 44:17 Yeah. [Chuckling]
**Margaret ** 44:18 But...No, I like this framework. I like this idea that we should.... You know, I mean, it's a thing that I think I've talked about before on this show where I'm like, well, we should just be installing better HVAC systems. And even if you want to have...like, there's certain things that are not conducive to masking, right? An inside restaurant is not conducive to masking. And personally, I just kind of avoid them because it's not a big part of my life. I live in the middle of nowhere and I make all my own food. But that's me and I can't get mad at other people for making different decisions around that. But--well, I mean, there's certain decisions I can get mad at people about but whatever. But at the very least, you can look at being like, "Okay, we have a restaurant, how are we going to build it for HVAC? How are we going to build it for, you know, cycling the air as much as possible, for keeping windows open, for patio service, for whatever. And this is still within a very not changing that much about society framework. I would prefer greatly to consider larger frameworks. But then again, a lot of things that we talk about within larger frameworks... like when I imagine how I think society would work is that personally, I'd be like, "Well, a lot of food is like people cook at home and eat with their family and friends and stuff, but also, you can just go to the big free restaurant that's kind of probably a food line and they put food on your plate and then you eat it. And it's great. You hang out with everyone. And I'm like, well, how the fuck do you do that in a Covid world? And it's hard to know. And it changes what is possible and what is safe and what is good that we live in this different world. I'm done. This is the end of my rant.
**Patrick ** 45:51 Yeah, no, it's.... I think, you know, while I do, admittedly, succumb to sort of bleak and sad and depressed attitudes around a lot of things, I actually think what you said there is interesting because it's actually...you know, people look at it like it is a--what do they call it--a foreclosing of possibilities, right? And it is on some level. You are foreclosing the possibility of...like, for instance, I miss going to just coffee shops and chilling out and drinking coffee and working on my computer, reading, or whatever, and hanging out with people. And there's this whole like social aspect to that particular thing. But it is also a business where people are probably getting paid too little and being treated like shit by entitled customers. And, you know, I've worked in the coffee business long enough that I know exactly what that's like. That said, that is very much related to the restaurant business and all these other types of businesses and industries that people exist in where they're exploited regularly and people don't really, if they don't have to deal with that type of labor and do that themselves, they often don't really care. And so they just want that experience again, right? They just want to go back to being served again in a restaurant. That's so cool. If you, of course, have a more, I mean, anti capitalist laboratory attitude, you'd be like, "Well, how do we have that experience without it being so fucking shitty for a certain group of people," right? And how do we also make it so that it's Covid safe so that people don't catch awful plagues sitting around and having fun together? And eating, you know, and drinking coffee or wine or whatever? It's like, how can we imagine the restaurant/coffee shop experience without it being through this sort of...as it being a sort of capitalist enterprise? And that's...I think, through crisis, or through this sort of thing of a pandemic, we can reimagine it in a way that is safer and better for everybody that isn't exploiting everyone, or certain groups of people. You know what I mean?
**Margaret ** 47:48 No, absolutely. I...I don't know, I agree.
**Patrick ** 47:53 I think you just said something that kind of brought up something for me because I have this tendency, and it comes through in the podcast that I do a lot, which is I am not a particularly optimistic person. And so I can tend to fall into a.... I mean, there's certain things I'm just always going to have this attitude about, but you know, I think.... My partner laughed when I said that. [A third voice laughs in the background] I...I have the tendency, but I think I can kind of...it does foreclose possibilities and sort of radical action and things that can be done right now and can alleviate some of the suffering and misery that I and others are experiencing if we kind of just...I don't know, it's...I don't know. I guess I just appreciated what you said because it just kind of opened a little door in my head where I kind of forgot, like, "Oh, yeah, like, actually, I don't have to be that way all the time. Okay. Cool."
**Margaret ** 48:47 I think it's really funny that I took the name Killjoy and now I'm basically a professional optimist. I mean, I want to be a realist. But I'm like.... Well, like, I don't know, one of things I learned from cognitive behavioral therapy is they're, "Well, what's the worst that could happen?" and you're like, "Well, I could die." And they're like, "Okay, what then?" and you're like, "Well, then nothing," you know, and they're "Okay, well, what do you want?" Like, you know, and it's kind of like all this really terrible stuff is happening that's absolutely true. We need to take that seriously. But like, well, we're all gonna die anyway, you know? So...
**Patrick ** 49:22 Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, there's even something about..I think that what I've learned from doing my work is that, you know, I do get these responses from people that say, like, "I really appreciate that you're saying the thing. You're not looking away from it. You're just talking about it. There's actually a comfort in it." Because I think people feel kind of--and this word's overused--but gaslit where there's sort of this normalization of stuff that just feels like people aren't quite...like there's a glazed look in their eye when you bring up certain subjects and they're kind of bothered...you know, it's like...Um, it's a difficult thing, and I guess I've always been one to want to talk about those types of subjects. And, yeah, death, if death is the worst possible thing that can happen then, you know, what else? You know, then what? Right?
**Margaret ** 50:12 Yeah, what else you got? Like?
**Patrick ** 50:14 Yeah, exactly. So. But, I mean, Frankly, you know, I mean, you know, some of the subjects I deal with in a broad sense, you know, are about extinction and are about the implications of climate change. And that is a heavy thing. And I do think that it weighs on the minds and hearts of people. And so I don't know if there's answers...There's no answer to how to like.... There's no therapy that will fix that, right? There's no like...You can't go to a therapist to fix this problem. It's just, it is what it is. And so then what? And that's... I don't have an answer, but at least I can talk about it.
**Margaret ** 50:49 Absolutely. Well, we are running out of time, but I'm wondering if there was anything that I should have asked you on this particular topic and then if not, or after that, I'm wondering how people can find your work to engage with it.
**Patrick ** 51:06 Yeah, well, I mean, I'm glad we could talk about Covid and it did kind of open some things up for me, so thank you for the discussion. I don't know, I guess there's a lot to say. I guess I would ask people, if you haven't been masking, start masking again. We are in a wave. Learn more about that. It's actually quite fascinating. So just do that. That'd be cool. It'd be good for your own health and the benefit of others. There's a lot to say, I don't know, I guess I guess we could have talked more about some other aspects of my work. But this is fine because I've been obsessively learning about Covid, so that's probably on my mind more than anything. Yeah, no, I mean, I guess people can learn more about my podcast. I have my website lastborninthewilderness.com. Everything is there. You can listen to it wherever you listen to podcasts. You can support my work on Patreon. All that stuff. I have that.... I mentioned I'm doing a collaborative series with, his name is Joshua Pribanic from the Public Herald. He's a journalist and filmmaker. And we're doing a collaborative series on long covid specifically, so that should be.... We haven't quite figured out exactly how that's gonna play out. But we will have that out in the coming weeks or months, starting to release those episodes. So I would ask people to look out for that.
**Margaret ** 52:18 Hell yeah. Alright, well, thanks so much for coming on. And I have a feeling...yeah, there's so much more that even was on our list of things we're going to talk about, so I have a feeling I'm going to try and drag you back pretty soon.
**Patrick ** 52:29 Okay, good.
**Margaret ** 52:34 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast then take public health seriously. [Said with a skeptically questioning tone] It shouldn't have to be on us. But it kind of always does because everything is always on us because we're all actually equals in this society that we all collectively build. So think about that, I guess, and listen to the Last Born in the Wilderness. And if you want to support this podcast in particular, you can support it by telling people about it, you can do.... You can tell machines about it. Just go to a computer and write on it with a sharpie and say like, "I like Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, and then whoever's computer it is, hopefully doesn't run as fast as you, and then after that, you can also support us financially by supporting us on Patreon, by supporting our publisher, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, whose province of name you now know. Because I was cutting up holy books like a jerk. And you can support us on Patreon and it's patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. If you support us at $10 or more a month, we send you a zine every month. But if you support us at like $1 a month, you're still helping this podcast have a transcript and you're helping this podcast be edited. Those are the people who get paid currently. And one day it'll pay the hosts and that'll be sweet because I like eating food. But I'm not trying to pressure you about that. Also, if you don't have any money, don't give it to us. Just fucking spend it on your own food. Like whatever. From each according to ability to each according to need. It is a slogan that predates Marx, so don't worry. But now I don't remember who said it off the top of my head. In particular, I would like to thank a list of people. I would like to thank Eric and Perceval, Buck, Jacob, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, anonymous, Funder, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, S. J., Paige, Nicole, David, Dana Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Michaiah. And as always, Hoss the Dog was a very good dog. I'm not gonna tell you where Hoss lives, but I've met Hoss. Hoss is great. Okay, I hope everyone is doing as well as you can despite the fact that everything's ending
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret and Tom talk about talking about preparedness and how subculture can work within those communities.
Tom (he/him) is a nonfiction writer and disaster journalist who writes a lot about climate disaster. He is the author of The Preppers Next Door, The Coal Face, and Moron to Moron: two men, two bikes, one Mongolian misadventure. You can find more of his work at Tomdoig.com.
Margaret (she/they) can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
The transcript for the episode will be available soon!
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Elizabeth talks to Margaret about coming into preparedness as an urban PTA mom, building family preparedness, teaching kids about disasters, and flipping the prepping narrative to focus on building inclusive communities and resiliency.
Elizabeth Doerr (she/her) is a writer and parent. You can find her work at https://www.elizabethdoerr.com or her newsletter on Substack at https://crammingfortheapocalypse.substack.com or on Instagram @crammingfortheapocalypse or on Twitter @ElizabethDoerr
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Elizabeth Doerr on Family Preparedness
**Margaret ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host this week, Margaret Killjoy. And this week, I have Elizabeth Doerr on to talk about her journey into preparedness. And, I think y'all are gonna get a lot out of this conversation. I'm really excited to have it. I first talked to--I guess I'll get to that later during the actual interview. But first, here's a jingle from another show on the network Channel Zero Network, which is a network of anarchist podcasts. So here's another one. Dah dah duh dah duh dah [singing the words like a simple melody]
**Margaret ** 01:31 Okay, and we're back. Okay. So if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then maybe like, how you got started on your preparedness journey?
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 01:40 Sure. Um, Hi there, my name is Elizabeth Doerr, and my pronouns are she/her. And, I got started on my preparedness journey mainly because we moved to Portland, Oregon in 2016 where there is going to be a huge earthquake that can devastate the city. And, then subsequently had my son and became--and had already been concerned about climate change, but then that fear of climate change really kind of ratcheted up a lot more with having a kid. And so, over the last few years, I've really been trying to do more to prepare, not just for the earthquake but really for climate change in general, and trying to figure out what that means just in terms of society, in terms of the way we can--not just in personal action--but how we can really just change the entire system altogether. And, so that has turned into a Substack called Cramming for the Apocalypse, which is also going to be a book eventually, as well. But, for the last year, it's been in newsletter form.
**Margaret ** 02:54 Do you ever have this thing where you're like, "But you have to hurry up and make it a book because what if the apocalypse happens before you get the book out?"
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 03:01 Well, it's funny because my agent was kind of...she's like, "It's an evergreen topic." But she's like, "It always feels so urgent. I want to get it out as soon as possible." But then also at the same time it's like ... yeah, I know. Yeah, exactly. I do have that pretty much every day. But, also it takes forever to write a book. So it's...yeah. But, it's amazing even just in traditional publishing how long it takes to get a book out into the world, and it's like, "Well, in three years, what could the world be like?" So, yeah.
**Margaret ** 03:34 I think about this all the time. I actually--because of the 2016 election and stuff--I, for a while, stopped writing books and started focusing more on music because everything felt so immediate in crisis that I was like, "I don't have time to finish this book, take a year for my agent to find a publisher, take a year for them to publish it, take a year for people to read it and care about it." Like, I just need to make music that people hear tomorrow because, otherwise, what am I doing? And then it turns out, we had more than three years, so it's fine. [Laughing]
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 04:10 And I love that. I wish I had that skill and ability because that would be so...And I actually think that with like, I wish I was a really good artist too because friends who are excellent at, you know, drawing and art--or at least visual art, that is--I'm jealous because it's like, that's something you can see now. I mean, you can do with writing too but it's just a little more visceral immediately. But yes, totally.
**Margaret ** 04:37 No, that makes sense. Okay, so one of the reasons I wanted to have you on, one, is that you were working on an article that we might talk about later, and reached out to me, but one of the things that I'm really excited to talk to you about and that I think that people might get a lot out of hearing from is you're like...you are not the stereotypical prepper in the traditional sense, and you're also not necessarily the stereotypical, like, what people might imagine when they imagine the leftist prepper, right? Which might look more like me. I don't know. I don't know what people have in their minds. And, you know, when I asked you how to how to describe this, you were like, "Well, you're a white middle aged urban mom who has progressive values, who is learning...is getting more and more interested in anarchism and more radical values beyond that, but you exist within the mainstream culture. And then also you're a PTA mom, for example," right? I'm really excited to talk to you about all this shit. It's like, this is the stuff that like...like people who like...I really love that you found--Well, I guess I want to ask you more about how you found your way into radical politics from this, like you mentioned that like your study of preparedness has like led you to being like, "Oh, what if we, what if we need to structure society differently?" Like, what has that journey been like for you?
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 05:53 Yeah, I mean, I guess the question is how far back to go? I mean, so I, you know, it really...I mean, I'll give you a little bit of a snapshot kind of like before this whole journey, but I, you know, it started as, I was a Peace Corps volunteer after I graduated from college. And, so I lived in Malawi, in southeastern Africa. And I had gotten in with a very, like traditional, like, I guess, liberal views about what international development being good for, you know, developing countries and then came out of it with a vast nastily different perspective, that actually, you know, that's a part of imperialism and we're doing harm. And it's, you know, it's just a, you know, it's just a holdover from colonialism, and that I still, you know, a belief that I still hold. But I had a really hard time, I guess, articulating what that was until I went to graduate school for International Education Policy at University of Maryland. And it's pretty radical...I didn't know this going into it, but it was like the perfect program for me, because the way they viewed international development was very much aligned with the kind of critiques that I had.
**Margaret ** 07:06 Oh cool. was,
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 07:07 Yeah, so like it was more...I would say they took a more like, Democratic Socialist view of it. I don't think that they had[unhearable] .... That's my perspective that, you know, we needed more community based solutions happening and that kind of stuff. And so that really started that on that path, and I worked in higher education, working in social justice education. And at that time, had really--and still I think I have some of these...you know, that's when I kind of started calling myself a Democratic socialist and probably, you know, in theory would call myself that now, although it's a little blurrier. But yeah, and so, you know, so and then it's, you know, I think becoming a parent actually radicalized me even more, because, you know, I just, especially with what's going on in the US about how our school choice system really perpetuates segregation, racial segregation. And I really didn't want to be a part of that. And, but it's also like, you know, especially like being in my role as a PTA, like a middle aged PTA mom, with my kid going to public school system, it's like a conversation about, you know, "Which school should I send my kid to?" as being kind of this constant, yet nobody points out how racist it is. And so that's a big part of it. And then, these are all values that have really been a part of me in most of my adulthood. So it really was, as I embarked on this whole process, like anti racism, social justice, you know, these kinds of radical values, were always going to be a part of this project, that Cramming For the Apocalypse art project. I think I wasn't completely prepared for all of the things that I was going to learn, which I love. Like, it was really new to me. You know, I don't think I ever really questioned the kind of, quote "definition" that everybody, you know, every mainstream person in society from left to right deems anarchists, as, you know, being a kind of chaotic force, whereas as I was diving into this project, I was like, I started to realize that, one, that we have the definition completely all wrong.
**Margaret ** 07:07 Yeah.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 07:09 I'd say the majority of people in society still get it wrong. Even just hearing it in, you know, from quotes on the news, I get kind of triggered. [Margaret laughs] And then also knowing that I was like, "Oh, well, there are aspects to this that I really think could be the solution, and especially the solution to things like climate change, or at least get to, one, averting climate change but also in just recreating a completely different society that can thrive in that post apocalyptic environment. And I, do you want me to talk a little bit more about my kind of like--you know, because as we were talking about this, I have this kind of like...I live in mainstream society. I'm very much a PTA mom. So like, I think that I hold this interesting role because I, you know, I'm very active in our PTA. I mean, we are a PTA that's pretty social justice oriented, very diverse. My kid goes to a school with majority kids of color, which can be unusual in Portland, Oregon. But then also, I don't know, like, I like, you know, I like to do things that the average white American middle-aged mom is like, "I like to go to drinks with my friends..."
**Margaret ** 11:00 Do you like to eat brunch? So that's the only cliche I can come up with.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 11:06 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, yes. Yes. I love brunch.
**Margaret ** 11:10 I'm sure it's great. Yeah.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 11:14 Although, with a kid, it does make it a little bit more challenging to do like Sunday morning, Saturday morning things that are not soccer related. Yeah. Soccer mom. There, that's another cliche.
**Margaret ** 11:27 I could have led with that. Yeah.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 11:29 Yeah, I know. I didn't even think about that. I should have. But anyway, I think that what's been kind of cool about it is that it makes me relatable in that way to people who might be questioning, you know, who exist in this mainstream environment, but also I'm also really vocal. I'm a very loud person. And I don't have much to hide. And so I'm like.... So a lot of people know my values. And so, you know, I've had friends who will text me being like, "Okay, how do I approach this situation? How I approach that situation?" and that kind of stuff. And so I think that that...and that's actually why I think this book and this newsletter can be really useful in that, like, you know, people who might be really questioning what's happening in the world, really worried, but they can see themselves in me and my journey and know that it doesn't have to look one way and that you can do these really weird things. Like, weird to like this environment to me, like learning how to hunt when I haven't ever seen a gun in real life.
**Margaret ** 12:37 Yeah. So, no, okay. So this is like...there's so much here that I'm really excited about. But okay, so to start with your newsletter, Cramming For the Apocalypse, you just hit a year of it, right?
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 12:52 Yeah, yeah.
**Margaret ** 12:54 Okay, so what are some of the--besides the sort of political angle--what are some of the directions that it took you that you didn't expect? Or like, what are some of the things that you've learned by writing about preparedness from your perspective for the past year?
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 13:07 Oh, gosh, yeah. I feel like I should have better formed thoughts on this.
**Margaret ** 13:13 It's okay. Whenever anyone asks me, like, "So, what books do you like?" I'm like, "I've never heard of a book."
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 13:19 God, I know.
**Margaret ** 13:19 "What's a book?"
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 13:23 I know. Well, you know, I think that.... Okay, well, I can say that...let me just say that I started the newsletter because I had been working on the book project, still trying to get it out to publishers--I have an agent now, which is exciting--but I really...I was doing so much and I wanted to just get the journey out there in some way. I needed to be writing about it. And so I...and it's been...I mean, I.... What has been really interesting to me is that.... I mean, my idea of what a prepper is has changed. I mean, I think I had preconceived--I mean, a lot of mainstream media and all of us in society probably have a preconceived notion of a doomsday prepper--and, you know, I had already pushed past that a little bit by the time I started the newsletter, because that's the whole reason...I mean, that was the whole reason of doing this book is really kind of flipping the narrative of what a prepper is or could be, but I still think that, I realized how much I had to learn about what that even means. And, you know, I mean, we could talk about this too, the story that that I interviewed you for, for The Progressive. That kind of shows a little bit of where I kind of have come through with this is that, you know, I think that we...you know, prepper exists.... The term "prepper" exists in a variety of different ways that just might not be called "prepper." I mean, I think that the idea--or prepp-ing--you know, talking about mutual aid and even, you know.... And even you, I think, really helped me see this too even more, is that we have a lot more in common with those kind of on the right wing who are prepping than we might think. And, you know, there's a way to find common ground. There's a way. You don't have to....
**Margaret ** 15:28 Depending on where they're coming at it from, you know, but yeah.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 15:31 I mean, I would say not everybody. Like in the political realm, that, I think, is maybe not where we're going to be finding common area, but I do think that the values of: you just want to have...you want to protect your family, you want to be safe, you want to have community. Everyone wants community most. And so, how can we find common ground about that? And I think that's something I've been really trying to come around about is like not to be too judgmental off the bat when that, you know, when somebody expresses these views that might shock me at first, but I mean it's still tricky when you get down the political realm and the humanity of all humans.
**Margaret ** 16:16 Yeah, exactly. It's like, when someone's being bigoted, that's different than when they think that different laws should apply to rural people about gun ownership than or, like, you know? Like, there's different takes on different things, you know?
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 16:33 Exactly. Like, yeah, I'm not gonna be debating the humanity of other people. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, I think that's one big one. You know, and this is like, I feel like this kind of gives away some of my book, but it's alright, people can still read it. But the idea of it is that it's, you know--and I don't think this is a secret--but it's less about the skills than--because, you know, I started this because I wanted to learn how to do things like grow food and, I don't know, fix things in my house, just practically speaking, because my husband and I are always joking about how I'm going to die in the zombie apocalypse because I don't know how to fix anything. And, um, but, you know, what I've also discovered is that it's not just the things you're learning how to do, it's the people that are around you and the community that you're building, and the collective gifts that everybody has, and that we all have something to contribute. Which, of course, is something that can help you survive an apocalypse, but it also is just a better way to live in community and that maybe we can strive for that now and not wait until the world is over.
**Margaret ** 18:00 Yeah, yeah. No, that's what... I feel like when we do anything right, like anything for the future right, it also makes our present better, you know? And I've been enjoying getting better at cooking and growing food and stuff, right? You know, and it's like, if all I care about is making sure I don't starve to death in the apocalypse, I can just keep buying dried rice in buckets, you know?
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 18:29 Totally.
**Margaret ** 18:30 But I'm like...no, it's really nice to like...I finally made bread for the first time a couple months ago. And now like every week or two I make a couple loaves of bread and it just feels amazing. You know? I haven't figured out how to make it so that it freezes well, because my favorite store bought bread, when you like freeze it and then you toast it, it's really amazing. I really like that. If I was gluten free, I'd be in trouble. But okay, but to go back to what you're saying, one of the things that I've been thinking about a lot while I talk to people for this show, and also the history podcast that I run, I think a lot about how stuff gets done. And it's organizing. Nothing gets done unless someone organizes and makes it happen. And so, like even just like oh, okay, you might not know how to fix a toilet, but you know how to run a PTA meeting.-- [Both laughing] I don't know fuck all about PTAs. But like you operate in a volunteer organizational situation on a regular basis and that's an incredibly useful skill, you know?
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 19:31 Yeah, totally. Yeah. No, I mean, that's.... You're right. And I think that that's something that I've also like played out, or is going to play out in the book as well, is that is my superpower is bringing people together. It's also like, I mean, I can't even tell you since my son was born how many Facebook groups I've created based on certain shared interests or whatever. I mean, some have continued, some have not, but, even, I'm a co-founder of an organization for moms who write and so we're having a retreat pretty soon. And so it's like things like that, any small thing people have this idea to rally around and I think that that is something that I've especially appreciated in the last year in that like I do.... You know, I don't have to bring my terrible gardening. Although, they have gotten better. It is working. And I have grown way more tomatoes this year than I did last year.
**Margaret ** 20:33 [Laughing] I was gonna guess tomatoes. It's the easiest....
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 20:40 Well, last year was a failure. I decided to grow--I mean, I know this is a tangent--but it was a funny thing. But I grew only heirloom tomatoes. And I mean, they don't...they don't.... Like, they grow so slowly. So I did not get tomatoes until almost November. It was like late October.
**Margaret ** 21:03 Which means that there's no sun on them because you live in cloud land.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 21:07 Well, yes, but last year was like a crazy....
**Margaret ** 21:11 Oh, that's right, the rains didn't come till really late.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 21:14 But I got 15 tomatoes that were just okay. But this year, I grew different kinds and I have had abundance. So I've learned my lesson. That lesson at least. Yeah. So I do think that I bring...I bring different kinds of.... I think that another value is that soft skills and hard skills are equally as valuable and we need to honor those as well. And that's kind of the evolution of how I see the book going is that it starts with the hard skills, but then it really gets into the soft skills. And then also, you know, re-envisioning society, how do we do that?
**Margaret ** 21:16 Yeah. Okay, but are you gonna do the opening chapter where it's gonna be, when you finally go out and hunt, right, and it's gonna be like, the blood and the thrill and the not sure how you feel about it, and then the like, grizzled, you know, anarchist lady who's handed you the rifle. Like, it's gonna be a really good opening chapter. If you do this.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 22:16 Yeah, that's gonna be a good one. I don't know if it'll be the opening chapter. But it will definitely be in there. I have to bring some blood in there. I haven't done the hunting yet. Which part of...
**Margaret ** 22:25 I don't hunt yet. Yeah.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 22:26 Yeah, well, and part of the reason is that the hunting season is so short that I keep missing it. And I'm like, okay, I'll wait until I have the book deal. Then, I can hunt.
**Margaret ** 22:38 Yeah, okay. Well, like, so one of the things that you're talking about like building the mom's who write thing--and in some ways that seems unrelated to preparedness--but one of the things that--and I'm kind of curious...this will be a different question that I'll ask later about what kind of questions you get from people--but one of the main things that I get from people is people being like, "But I don't have friends," or "I don't have community," or like, you know... And I actually think a lot of the preparedness that focuses around you and your family and build your bunker and blah, blah, blah, sometimes it comes from a reasonable place where it comes from a place where it's like, "I don't.... I am alienated by our capitalist society and I don't know how to interact with other people." And so, I mean, it's funny, because when I lurk on center or right wing preparedness spaces, all of these people are building community with each other. But, they're building a community about how as soon as everything goes bad, every man for himself and like, "No, you can't come over to my house. You're gonna be a, you know, mooch off of all my stuff," or whatever, you know. And I'm like, y'all were so close. You're like building community. But when I think about having a moms who write retreat, you know, you're talking about people who are alienated by their position in society--and, you know, moms have a very specific role within capitalist society that alienates you--
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 24:02 Yeah.
**Margaret ** 24:03 --and getting together to build this thing. And it's like, the communities that I find that are the strongest and most interesting to me aren't necessarily politically focused communities but instead, communities that are focused on something else that then have a shared political vision--or even if it's not a like ideologically labeled one--overall, you can have kind of a like, "Well, we build a community where we take care of people and where we, you know, hate the fact that there's murder buoys in the rivers on the southern border." And, you know, without it being about that.... I don't have a question. Yeah.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 24:38 Yeah. I think I got what you were.... Yeah, well, and just to put a little plug in, we're called Scribente Maternum, which is the writer moms group. And we.... Yeah, I think it's worth actually noting when we formed our group we had--my friends who I co-created this with, Carla Duprey, who's in Baltimore, and Rachel Burkeshearer, who's in Minneapolis, we had known each other before, but it really started because of the pandemic. And a lot of that like alienation as mothers because so many of us, you know, took on the extra child care roles left, you know, when schools closed and when daycares and childcare closed. And, you know, we.... I mean, all of society really lost a lot of like women and moms from the workforce because of that. And so, we were like, you know, we so started these as virtual retreats and now we're doing it in person because it's safer to do so. But yeah, you know, and that has been so transformative and valuable. And last year, during our inaugural retreat in Baltimore we knew it was gonna be great, but it was like--I don't think we realized how much this community of people was craving this. And it was transformative. Like, it really felt like just... We all needed to be in a space that acknowledged those really important identities that we had. And I should note, too, that we have kind of--I guess it's like political--but we've been very focused on ensuring inclusivity, too. And so like, we say, "moms," but it's kind of, you know, it's an inclusive... You know, it's inclusive of, you know, gender and also of role. Like sometimes aunts take mom's roles. And there are some people who can't become moms, you know. And so it's just like.... And that also was part of the ethos that we bring to it. But it really...like sometimes you just need somebody to create it. And sometimes you didn't know that you need it until it's there. And you're like, "Oh, my God, where has this been my whole life?" And I don't know if I would have created it by myself. I created it because there were two other, two friends of mine, who also saw this need, and we were like, "We can do this. We can do this together." And I think that that.... But yeah, to find that.... I mean, I think it really is--I mean, and I'm an extrovert so it's really just more natural for me to be in these spaces, but being married to an Uber introvert, I know the need for anybody, regardless of the community that they have around them, to have that connection with other people. And so sometimes you just need somebody to kind of create it and also find you. And that.... I mean, that's hard, because it's kind of out of your control a little bit. But like I do think that that.... I mean, I guess maybe it's an advocacy for like, if you are the kind of person that is good at creating these communities, do it, and find the people who need to be found. I don't know.
**Margaret ** 28:12 No, that all makes so much sense to me. And it's funny because it even ties into...there's this sort of anarchist cliche, "The secret is to really begin." And it's an impetus to direct action. It's an impetus, if you have a problem, figure out what needs to be done and start doing it. And I like that this is a...I mean, this is a life skill. It's not just a go get involved in the following conflict kind of thing. You know, it's.... And yeah, I guess that is, like that kind of almost answers the question when people are like, "Well, how do you build community?" And the answer is, like, well you find people based on like, a similar level of interest, or whatever, like, a specific interest. And then you do in person things together and you organize making that happen. And one of the things that I've found, if you're the kind of person who goes to events and you don't know how to talk to people at events, like if you're an introvert and you are going to these events, if you get involved in the organizing, now you have a reason why you're there and now you are talking to people, you know? Instead of fly-on-the-wall, you can just go and be part of it. And even if it's like, if you go to a thing and you volunteer--a lot of the activist type things I'll go to have like a kitchen, right--And you know, everyone gets fed. And like, if you don't know how to cook, just go prep cook or even just go wash dishes and then by volunteering into this organization, or even if it's a temporary organization, this thing that is existing is a really good way to meet people.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 29:38 Yeah. Oh, I think that's such a really good recommendation. I think that that's something I've struggled with, like you know, being an extrovert, like seeing it from the side of introverts. It's less awkward when you've volunteered for the kitchen or... And also that relates to the climate activist and writer, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, she has this venn diagram of climate action that I think about a lot where it's like, "What needs to be done and what gifts do I have that make me feel good?" And like, it's such a simple thing, but it really is profound because you don't have to legislate at the policy level, or you don't have to do certain things that feel really out of your realm of comfort, but you can do things that are something that makes you happy and you're good at and also needs to be done. Like I'm a writer. That's my form of climate action is this book and this journey that I'm on, that I'm really good at sharing things about myself. And so this is the climate action that I've chosen. I mean, I do other things, too. I work with climate justice organizations here as well. But like, it doesn't have to be one thing. And I think that that's the same thing with finding community and also finding your place and community is that it doesn't...you don't have to be the leader. You don't have to be...or the fly on the wall even. You can find your place in that.
**Margaret ** 31:15 Yeah. Okay. It reminds me of a different Portland writer who I care a lot about, Ursula Le Guin, the science fiction writer that used to live there.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 31:23 I love Ursula Le Guin.
**Margaret ** 31:25 I interviewed her when I was 26, or something like that, and it changed the way I think about a ton of stuff because I interviewed her about anarchism and fiction. And I was trying to find my place as a writer. I was moving more and more into being a writer after having been just like a direct action, protest organizer, and squatter, and all these things for years. And, and what she said was basically, she was like, "I like hanging out with people who let me do what I'm good at, which is being a writer." But then she also talked about how she was like, "Don't get me wrong, I still will stuff envelopes for Planned Parenthood and go to every peace March that I can," you know? And it was like, oh, that's the perfect...you're like, I feel like you have your like organizational level skills, or like your main thing you bring, and then there's like grunt work, and you're not excused from the grunt work because you're like... Like, the really amazing musician still has to like wash his own dishes, you know?
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 31:27 Yeah, exactly.
**Margaret ** 31:30 But maybe the really amazing musician focuses on being a really amazing musician and doesn't figure out how to structurally develop the dishwashing system, you know?
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 32:37 Yeah, like, totally.
**Margaret ** 32:40 Yeah, no, no, I just, I really liked that. It's been a really useful thing for me as I've tried to figure out like...
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 32:47 I love that. I love Ursula Le Guin. And actually her book, "The Dispossessed" was really, I think, what transformed my ideas of anarchism the most because it's the most coherent and clear and comprehensive description of an anarchist society that, you know, you can find anywhere that really gets you to actually understand what that is. But also on a personal level with Ursula Le Guin, I had...I wrote...I read a book and I interviewed the author of--actually her biographer--It's called "The Baby On the Fire Escape" by Julie Phillips. And so Julie does a really beautiful job of talking about the motherhood and the identity of various authors. But Ursula Le Guin was pretty fleshed out because she's also her biographer, which is pretty cool. But she, but what was real...but like, kind of, I think what I relate to Ursula Le Guin is that she was like, you know, a soccer mom of her era.
**Margaret ** 33:50 Yeah.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 33:51 And like, she really had this similar identity that I feel like I have now but like, was really radical in her beliefs and expressing it in the way that she was doing it. And so I feel really like connected to her in that and also I live in Portland. I don't know.
**Margaret ** 34:07 Yeah, no, she's really.... We really, we really lost something when she passed and like...
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 34:16 I'm so jealous that you got to interview her. That's so cool.
**Margaret ** 34:20 Yeah no, and honestly one of the reasons I'm so grateful to her is that by giving me attention, she helped my career substantially, literally just by being like, "Oh, yeah, no, this person seems cool." You know, and talking to me, and we did a talk together at Powell's a million years ago. And it completely changed the course of my life. And I really will be forever grateful. And I like to think about that a lot when I'm like...just like small acts of kindness that change people's lives and like.... No, I think...I love the way she writes about anarchism. I love that she talks about the marriage of responsibility and freedom and how they go, you know. And then one of my other...it's been a couple years since I read "The Dispossessed," but I just like, I think about this a lot. One of my favorite parts of "The Dispossessed" is the love story, because it's a love story about why monogamy is totally chill in a polyamorous world. And basically, this refusal to have these two forces be antagonistic to each other. And instead be like, "No, like, free love includes choosing to be like in this..." And so like, I only once watched her interact with her husband but it was just so beautiful to me. There was a point where--uh, now I'm just, whenever, I think about this all the time--there was a point where, you know, someone was coming up and being like, you know, "Oh, let me get the microphone set up." And she was like, "We're not doing anything until my husband has a comfortable place to sit." And then so they like, switched all their priorities to make sure he has a comfortable place to sit. And then she was like, "Okay, great. Now, what did you need for me?"
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 36:02 Oh, my gosh, I love her. I love that. That's a really good point. It's something I remember thinking about when I was reading it, but I don't know if I really processed it because there is so much to process in that book. I need to--I mean, it hasn't been that long since I read it, but I want to just go back and read it again because I, you know...I don't think I knew what I was getting into when I started reading it. And then we're like, yeah.
**Margaret ** 36:29 Well, she didn't know what she was getting into when she started writing it. It was like the thing that kind of made her more into an anarchist, was writing that book.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 36:35 I love that.
**Margaret ** 36:36 So
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 36:37 Well, and also same. Me. What made me more of an anarchist was reading the book. So there we go.
**Margaret ** 36:44 Okay, wait. So, to back up one step, you're talking about, like, for example, your role as an extrovert--and I know that we are going to have all these other things talk about but I want to talk about this building community thing and ways of including people because this is one of the things that comes up so much. I think I pointed that out. And like one of the smallest things that I've seen people do, there's like a culture.... I go to a couple different types of gatherings with very different types of people. And one of them is science fiction conventions, and specifically the ones for like writers and stuff, and there's this culture that's been developed where if you're standing around in a circle of people talking, and there's someone kind of just hovering at the back who's like doesn't know whether or not they can come in and join, you open the circle up. And it doesn't matter if anyone there knows them. They are now part of that circle. And like, obviously, then sometimes people get really annoying and they talk too much and whatever. But like, it's a culture of introverts. And so they've developed these like habits about how to take care of it. And the reason that I wanted to bring this up and ask you about it is that I'm kind of curious, how do we anti-gatekeep? How do we invite people in? Because one of the things that you've talked about is by being in the position you're in, you're able to talk to people about ideas. And so I actually, I guess, I'll ask this about specifically preparedness to kind of bring things back to what we're supposed to be talking about. How do you work to help people feel welcome in preparedness communities? Or like preparedness...concepts or something?
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 38:20 Yeah, well, it's hard because I don't know if I really have a ton of experience in that because I feel like I'm still pretty new in the preparedness circle, which I think is part of what makes me kind of accessible in that area. And so what gave me my--I mean, I'm still, you know, even though I'm an extrovert I get really nervous going into spaces that I'm not originally a part of. And so, you know, anyone from introvert to extrovert is going to feel out of place in new scenarios.
**Margaret ** 38:59 I thought you all just have these superpowers. Extroverts have the power to talk to people.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 39:05 No, no, no, but I get nervous too. And sometimes to a fault. But at the same time, I'm.... But what I do is like, I think.... Gosh, I don't know if I can answer that as far as preparedness goes, but I can tell you how we do it in other things. And then maybe I'll get back to the preparedness part. But yeah, so I mean, this is a thing with our writer moms retreats. I mean, one of the things that we really have been grappling with--I mean, because it's a retreat and it kind of falls into that wellness industry category, which is really white and affluent. So how we've done it is really just, especially in particular, reaching out to moms of colors and just trying really hard to create partnerships with communities of writers of writers of color. And trying to really, you know.... Last year we did get some funding to support five Black writer moms. And I think that that was a big starting point to that, but we didn't have that this year. So I don't know, I think that's one. That's kind of an inclusivity thing. But also, regardless of who came, nobody really knew anybody coming into that. So, I think there was such bravery on the part of these people to attend something that they're like, "I don't know anybody." But kind of like with the science fiction community is that we created, you know, we facilitated it in the way that it's not...you don't need to know anybody to get something out of this. And like, you know, circling up, like making it, you know...and creating an environment where we have small groups where you can really make individual connections and that kind of stuff. And I think that like that is... I mean, that comes from like my.... I was in higher education. I was in higher ed doing social justice education. And so I kind of employ a lot of these facilitation skills where we're creating experiences that are good for extroverts and then some that are good for introverts. So ones that let you think before you have a conversation, or have one-on-one interactions before having a group discussion with everybody where not everybody's going to feel comfortable sharing. So as far as like--let's see if I can bring this home to the prepper thing. I mean, for me trying to like kind of get into this and like.... I mean, I guess part of it is I don't know if I really found myself in traditional prepper circles yet. I think in some ways I'm kind of.... Like, what I mean by "traditional preppers" is I mean kind of from the stereotypical, the stereotype, that we would think, but.... Yeah, but coming at it from an individual skill level has been useful because everybody has a different reason for being in the place that they are. And so, kind of remembering that when I go in and being like, "Okay, you know, everyone's here for their own reason and maybe your goal is to find out what those reasons are." Yeah, I get nervous, even if I have a friend with me, I get nervous every time I take a new class, because it's like, not something that I.... But I have felt really welcomed so far because the communities that I have sought out are people that are really excited to share the skills that they have and really don't care where you're at with it. And so I think for me, it's like, and I think that maybe is.... I, that's what I would emulate is like that excitement for the skill and not necessarily looking for a type of person to be joining these circles. It's really like I'm excited to share this idea. I'm excited to share this skill because it means something to me. And so I think for somebody who's creating a group or creating an environment for that, that's what has helped me feel a part of it. And with each class I take, the less scared I am for the next one. Although, I haven't gotten to any gun related things yet. So we'll see.
**Margaret ** 43:27 My recommendation, I try not to be super--let's say gender essentialist or something--my recommendation is that some of the more macho type skills that lean towards machismo, getting people who aren't cis men to be your teacher can be really useful. And there absolutely are a lot of women and other folks who train in firearms skills. And I've even had this experience where even when someone.... It's not even necessarily the fault of the instructor sometimes. Like I've been.... Like, I've taught a decent number of people how to shoot firearms and sometimes the other co-trainer who often is the more knowledgeable person for fine tuning skills and things will be a cis man. And, you know, and I will find that I have.... I'm so great is what I'm trying to say. I find that sometimes people have an easier time learning from me than learning from the other person who's teaching about specific parts of it. And it's not even like a mannerism difference. It's just kind of like...there's a... You know, when you're used to a culture of being like, "Oh men are gonna gatekeep this skill from me," you know, or like why is exactly the following thing happening? And like I think about like--well, I used to think...I used to pretend to be a boy for a very long time--and so I would go to these climbing camps when I used to do more forest defense and I'd learn how to climb trees and stuff. And then, and I wasn't particularly good at it, right. And I like learned it. And I kind of, you know, I've treesat a couple times successfully and haven't died. So, I feel like I'm doing alright. On the other hand, I think--I don't know what percentage of the trees I've sat in are still around--but, you know, forest defense is a heartbreaking task. And then I went to, you know, there's this group called TWAC, Trans and Women's Action Camp, and it's forest defense skills taught--and it's an exclusive space where cis men are not allowed, right. And exactly what that looks like has changed over the years as our terminology and understanding of different things has changed, right? But I could climb so much higher there because instead of like...instead of people...because I would get up to like 20 or 30 feet and then I'm like, "This sucks. I'm scared. I'm coming down now." You know? And when I would do it around men, I'd be like, "Oh, I don't even want to climb the tree anymore." You know? And instead, it's just like, all these women being like, "You can do it! Or maybe you can't do it, in which case you should come back down."
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 46:12 I know. "We're here to support you in whatever you decide!" I know, I mean, that's actually the thing that I've really.... And I had to kind of make that decision early on too, about what kind of spaces that I want to be in for this. And I really, I was, like, I am gonna stay true to my progressive values. And I really just don't--I mean, and that doesn't mean I can't interact with people who have different values--but I don't want to be.... Yeah, I want to actually learn these skills. And that's not going to happen if I'm feeling emotionally threatened. And so I really have been trying to seek--and I still don't know if I've found the right search terms, [Margaret laughs] especially for like hunting and that kind of stuff. But like, you know, so you know.... And part of that comes out with reaching out to people who I trust that can kind of give me recommendations, like you, you know, that know where I'm coming from. It's easier with things like foraging than it is for hunting. Because, like, you know, it skews a little bit more lefty, but not always. Not always. But yeah, no, totally. I think that that's.... Yeah, I'm a different person depending on who is gatekeeping and then being just aware of that in myself. And maybe that's just, you know, the age, when we get older and want to actually, you know, exist in the world, we're like, "Okay, how do I do that in the best way I possibly can?" And that's being surrounded by people that make me comfortable.
**Margaret ** 48:00 Totally. And, you know, there's lots of ways to do that. And I would also just say, like, okay, cis men, if you want that kind of experience, you just have to do it. You know? And I've seen folks do it, where they're like, "Oh, it's okay. We can all do this together. And like, you know, I've seen good, positive.... But I've also, even in otherwise good spaces, I've seen people being like, "Oh, we don't have time to like, stop and put on sunscreen." And you're like, "Why?" How can you teach a first aid class then? Like, what are you doing?
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 48:35 Yeah, I mean, it's funny....
**Margaret ** 48:36 And if you're the person that I'm accidentally saying this about, I believe you that you heard me when I had this upsetness and I think you're doing better and I'm not mad at you at all. Yeah. Anyway.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 48:49 You know, it's funny, I keep bringing up the writer moms retreats, but my friend was at one of our--she was at an event advertising it--and she kept getting these, like, "Well what about the space for writer dads?" And she's like, "Well, one, you can create it. And second, that's everywhere."
**Margaret ** 49:09 Yeah, no, totally. Yeah. It's like.... You know, and they might need it. And that's great. They can do that.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 49:17 Yeah, but that's not my job to create that for you.
**Margaret ** 49:20 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. Well, I have one main other topic I wanted to ask you about. You know, you've written about a lot about parenting and preparedness and we've talked about it sometimes at different times on the show in different ways. But, I kind of wanted to talk to you about talking to your kids about preparedness, like creating a family plan. Like I'm kind of asking for almost--not hard skills--but like some like how-to-ish stuff. Like, how do you create a family plan? How do you talk to your kids about disaster and uncertain futures? Not a small question.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 49:58 No, it's not but it's an important one because we have to. And, I mean, so I.... I've written about it and I struggle with it kind of constantly because it's like talking to.... Any parent.... I have a six year old son and he, you know, he's his own person and has his own desires. And so it's such a fine line trying to talk to your kids about big topics that we're...they're, you know, they're going to.... If you drone on about it, they're gonna get bored and just walk away. Or, you bombard them too quickly or are like too intense about it, they're, you know, you're going to develop this pattern where they're not going to want to talk to you about certain things. And so it really is a challenge. But I've done a lot of, you know, since he was little, I've listened to a lot and read a lot about also talking to kids about race, especially white kids who don't have to worry about it because the world is built for them. And, that, I think, the tools are similar to talking about race, and racism, and systemic racism as climate change. And so part of it is that you.... For me what has worked--and and I'm not saying this as like I'm a perfect example because I'm still learning a lot--but is that putting him into an environment that prompts a discussion about it. So, like going to a racial justice protests, and we're talking about racism. And, you know, he will bring up the questions that kind of leads the way. And if we're talking about climate change, it's the same thing. So, I took him to--we live in the-- our science museum OMSI, which is wonderful and they have an orca exhibit, which talks about climate change and talks about healthy oceans and a lot of other things. And, you know, I took him there and we had some conversations there, but then as we're driving home, he was asking some really specific questions about climate change, questions about like, "Okay, well, you know, why can't we stop it? Why can't we do this, this and this?" and all of these kinds of things. And, you know, he asked questions for like...we had this conversation for about a half an hour, which is a long conversation with a six year old because usually they'll move on to something else. And I think that like that, at least for the age that my son is, is that really is the best way to prompt these conversations. Like you want them to lead the way but you also can't avoid it. So like, you know, books are a really good way to have these discussions, too. I don't know if he's ready for this, but just because I was doing my own research on what books would be good for kids but the YA novel. "Two Degrees" is a great one for young, for preteens and teenagers to read and like something that you can do with your kids, is read. But, the other thing that I have learned from also talking to your kid about racism is really teaching them not to be racist, really. What actually.... Like, those conversations are essential and you need to have them. But what they learn the most from is your actions. So, it's really, you know, going to, for in our case, going to protests, both climate protests and antiracism protests or racial justice protests. It's going...showing, you know, or talking about it. Like I do this. I'm writing this book about this. And, um, you know, it was, as far as like, preparedness goes, I struggled with this early on when I was trying to, when I was writing the book proposal, about how much I would involve him in the preparedness part of it, because, you know, I was like, "Oh, I'll sign him up for Scouts and he can learn all these skills." And there's a great place here that teaches bush skills to kids, which is cool. And he's done a couple camps, but like, I can't.... I was like...I had to be like, this is my journey. Like, I can't.... Like, he's into dragons. Like, if he doesn't want to, you know, go bushwhacking then like I need to be okay with that. And so, you know, I think that that's where it comes in where you can kind of...it's really that showing, being the example. I mean, I still am gonna sign him up for some like one-off camps, but he didn't want to do the year-long apprenticeship and I had to be cool with that. And also, you know, it helped to not have to pay for yet another thing. But, I think that's, I think, the challenge for a lot of parents for any kind of skill that they want them to learn. And so it is.... So as far as the like family plan goes, you know, it's funny, I don't know if I've actually involved him in that because ours has--I have to say that we have a pretty basic plan. I think of it in terms of the earthquake because it's easier for me to.... It's very familiar. Like, we have a river that bisects the city and my husband works on one side, and we live and my kid goes to school on the other. And the bridges are all gonna go down.
**Margaret ** 55:46 So you need the "How does your husband get home?"
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 55:49 Or like, if I am at a meeting across the river, who gets the kid? And so, this is how I've said to my son is like, you know, if something happens, I have--I'm very lucky to have family nearby--so my sister, I will just text them and be like, "Hey, I'm going to be across the river." And they're not like, weirded out by me being like...
**Margaret ** 56:13 Because they're used to you? [Both laughing]
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 56:15 They're used to me and like.... Yeah, and that's the other thing, I've had other friends who I've had this conversation with too, is that they think about it all the time but they haven't employed anything. Yeah. And so just talking about it has helped them be like, "Okay, if I'm at a meeting across the river, I'll text so-and-so be like, 'Okay, you're on. If there's an earthquake that happens, you're on for child duty.'" So, you know, like, kind of stuff. So yeah, but yeah, I think it's like involving him in that kind of stuff. And really having.... And having the conversation about like, okay, if something happens, like, these are the kinds of things that can happen. And he knows about the earthquake and we talk about that. And then he, obviously he knows about climate change too, but it's tricky because that's, you know, that's a series of multiple climate disasters versus like, you know.... So it can be.... And actually maybe that is, that is actually a tool too, is to really think about what is the most likely disaster that could befall your community and your home? I mean, here, earthquakes are one, but wildfires are a constant threat every summer. And smoke is, you know, always there. And so, use that as like a frame of reference to have these conversations with your kid and also to make your plan because it's just easier to do than be like, "It could be anything."
**Margaret ** 56:39 Yeah. If aliens come down, this is what you're doing. Yeah. [Laughing]
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 57:46 Exactly. Zombies. Yeah. So, if we end up in The Last of Us, what's going to happen?
**Margaret ** 57:53 Okay, if dragons come and attack...
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 57:56 Oh, yeah, he'll be really into that.
**Margaret ** 57:57 Yeah, no, it makes sense. There's like some level of preparedness where.... Because I feel like everyone I know who does preparedness has people involved in their preparedness plans who don't care about it and roll their eyes at it, right? And so like, I just put food in my parents basement. And my mom doesn't listen to the show, so I can say that. And like, but I'm able to also like.... Sometimes with people who are gonna roll their eyes at it, you're like, "Okay, well, you're gonna roll your eyes at it, but we'll have made a plan." You know, you could just be like, "Hey, if the following happens, here's the plan." And everyone's like, "Okay, whatever." Mostly just to shut me up. But I'm like, great. No, it's in place. We know the thing. We know the plan, you know? Yeah.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 58:46 Yeah. Yeah, no, totally. Well, and this is something we kind of talked about before is that like when I started this project, there are a lot of people who were like, "What are you doing?" My mom was really worried. She's was like.... I really just.... She was more worried about the perception that people would have about me, that I would be seen as this, you know, kind of a wacko, And I was like, "You know, but, I'm a writer, mom," Like, this is how you like change the narrative is by being very specific about what I mean this is. And she's really come around to it in this conversation and is like--not to the extent that they've made decent preparations--but you know, it's like.... You know, but also like, I think that that's, that's something I wonder if I should have.... And now I'm thinking out loud, like should I be putting...how do you get more people in your immediate community to actually do something. They think it's good that you're doing it, but they're not doing it themselves and....
**Margaret ** 59:52 I find it's like.... I mean, honestly, what I used to do is I just made emergency kits and I gave emergency kits to probably 50 or 60 people. And just was like, it cost me a grand or so. Which is, you know, not...it's a lot of money. But I'm like, you know what, that was one of the best $1,000 I ever spent. And every now and then someone messages me like, "I was at a protest and I really needed the Advil that was in my emergency kit. Thanks!" You know, and it's like, everyone I give it to rolls their eyes like, "Alright, whatever." But then like, you know.... It's just like, whatever. It's, my peace of mind is why I just like...
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 1:00:29 Totally, I love that. That's a brilliant idea, actually. Yeah, that'll be my Christmas gifts this year.
**Margaret ** 1:00:36 Oh, yeah. Okay, the trick that you have to do is--because I give my family preparedness stuff every year for Christmas-- you have to give them other stuff, too. It actually means you have to give them more stuff than you would otherwise give them. You know? Otherwise, they're like, "God dammit, why did....?"
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 1:00:52 To be prepared.
**Margaret ** 1:00:56 Yeah, they're like.... You're like, "Here's a mug that made me think of you and the LifeStraw that you can put in your car. You could just put it in the truck or your car and forget about it. And you'll probably never need it." I don't know. Okay, well, is there any major thing that you wish I'd asked you, or like final thoughts, or anything like that?
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 1:01:20 No, I don't think so. This is really fun. I yeah, I guess maybe just the plug. Yeah, follow my newsletter at CrammingForTheApocalypse.substack.com.
**Margaret ** 1:01:32 Cool. Okay. Well, thank you so much for coming on. And whenever your book comes out, we'll have you back on to talk about it more.
**Elizabeth Doerr ** 1:01:38 Thank you so much, Margaret. This is really a pleasure and always fun talking to you. I'm glad we had the time to do it.
**Margaret ** 1:01:43 Yeah, thanks.
**Margaret ** 1:01:44 Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, well, obviously, go follow Cramming For the Apocalypse and slip food into people's basements. But, it has to be rodent proof. Otherwise, you're actually just doing them a disservice. And then everyone would be really mad at you because you're the one who left dried bread in their basement and now there's rats everywhere. Unless the people become friends with the rats, in which case it'll all work out. But that's usually not how it goes. If you want to support this podcast, you can do so by supporting our publisher, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness on Patreon, which is patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Your funds pay the people who do the thankless work, the grunt work as we were talking about before. It pays the transcriptionist and it pays the audio editor. And we, you know, value trying to make sure that our podcasts are as accessible as possible. So, yeah, and you can support us there and also we send out free zine--not free, you have to pay us, that's how it works--we send out zines every month, but we also do free other podcasts, including a podcast called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which is a free version of the zine that comes out every month. So I wasn't lying to you. And as well as a podcast called Anarcho Geek Power Hour, for people who hate cops and love movies. And in particular, I want to thank some of our patrons. I want to thank Eric and Perceval, and Buck, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, Funder, Janice &O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, SJ, Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jennifer, Kirk, Chris, Michaiah, and as always, Hoss the Dog. All right, well, thanks everyone for listening and I hope you're doing as well as you can
This time on This Month in the Apocalypse, Brooke, Inmn, and Margaret talk about food insecurity, genocide in Armenia, a storm in Libya, battles for abortion care access, the government shut down, the state of water, and how everything can tie back to Lord of the Rings.
Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
This Month in the Apocalypse: September, 2023
**Inmn ** 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying [Brooke cheers] and this is our extra fun This Month in the Apocalypse section in which we talk about, unfortunately, most of the horrible things that happened in the last month. I'm one of your hosts today, Inmn, and I have with me some other folks.
**Margaret ** 00:36 Hi.
**Brooke ** 00:36 The indomitable you.
**Margaret ** 00:40 Brooke is Brooke. I'm...I'm Out-mn [like Inmn, but out] Margaret,
**Brooke ** 00:45 I'll be Margaret, you be Out-mn.
**Margaret ** 00:49 The inverse of Inmn. [Brooke laughing] Or, I'll be Margaret. And then Inmn can be Brooke.
**Inmn ** 01:02 I don't know nearly enough about math to be Brooke, but I will try.
**Margaret ** 01:07 Okay, we'll just switch each other's scripts and so that we each read what the other has researched. And y'all can go with my shitty notes.
**Inmn ** 01:17 Yeah, right. You know, that sounds great. But before we get to all of that, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts and here is a jingle from another show on that network. Bah doo boop doo [Singing the words like a simple melody]
**Inmn ** 02:21 And we're back. And, to start off the show, we have harped a lot on how horrible of a place Phoenix, Arizona is a lot this year.
**Brooke ** 02:38 Oh, I've definitely talked shit too, so...it's at least an "us" and not necessarily a "we."
**Margaret ** 02:42 I really appreciate you making this a "we" instead of me just talking shit on it.
**Inmn ** 02:48 Yeah, no, I mean, it's the place, famously, where propane tanks explode because it's too hot and people fall on the ground and get burned. And, where they're trying to build some giant super future city that Bill Gates wants to trap us all in...or something. But a listener got a hold of me and told me about the history of the name, Phoenix, because it got brought up on the show. And, what he had to tell me about it was that Phoenix is named so because it was built from the ashes of a Hohokam civilization that was literally burned to the ground by white settlers. [Brooke boos] And they wanted to inspiringly build a city in its ashes. [laughing in a horrified way] So yeah, the surprising but not too surprising history of Phoenix.
**Margaret ** 03:58 It's more like the spell Animate Dead where you bring someone back to life but as a mindless zombie who serves you instead of their original purpose.
**Inmn ** 04:04 Yeah, totally. Yeah.
**Margaret ** 04:08 Brooke, what were you gonna say? Sorry.
**Brooke ** 04:09 Oh, just that I think that, as an indigenous person, we should go ahead and re-Phoenix, Phoenix. [Everyone laughs] It's time.
**Margaret ** 04:18 This is just a terrible transitional state that I was in before...
**Brooke ** 04:21 I mean if it rises from the ashes, let's burn that motherfucker down and give it back to its proper people.
**Inmn ** 04:29 It might do that on its own. The way the city is running it, it might...that might happen regardless of intention.
**Brooke ** 04:38 Excellent. I'm glad to help, though. I will help the city towards that goal.
**Inmn ** 04:44 Yeah. But, in a hopeful note for Arizona, I did find out that other cities in Arizona, not Phoenix, do weirdly have a pretty robust aquifer system. Like the city of Tucson, for example, only relies on the Colorado River for like 5% of its water, and otherwise, it's all aquifer driven and there's a lot of cool programs in place for--this is me defending that Arizona is a fine place to live.
**Margaret ** 05:18 I know. And I'm going to talk about groundwater later [Laughing] and how aquifers are all drying up all over the country.
**Brooke ** 05:24 Thank God, because I was going to insert some shit about there right now. So, I'll leave that for you, Margaret.
**Inmn ** 05:28 Great. Well, to start us off today aside from Arizona...
**Brooke ** 05:36 Phoenix getting burned down.
**Inmn ** 05:36 ...Aside from Phoenix getting burned down. There are some bad things happening in the world. I know this is a shock to all of our listeners who came here for a list of joyful things about the apocalypse, right? But, so there's a new wave of activity in the Armenian Genocide from Azerbaijan. And, what's been happening is that on September 19th, Azerbaijan launched a full assault on Nagorno-Karabakh targeting mostly civilian infrastructure. There have been--you know, this was as of September 19th--200 casualties so far. But, there are 120,000 people who are completely cut off from any kind of external supplies or aid. Nagorno-Karabakh, it's been contested for a really long time. It's been the subject of a lot of past conflicts. And, both sides have--there's been a, you know, an unsteady..."peace" isn't the right word, but, you know, non-attacking-each-other time. And both sides are kind of accusing each other of a military buildup. And while there's a lot of physical evidence that shows Azerbaijan amassing troops and building military infrastructure, the same cannot be said of Armenia, who has--there's a local defense army in that area. Because, the area is sort of technically part of Azerbaijan, but is controlled by an ethnically Armenian population. And, so, part of this big military buildup is that there was this blockade put on, essentially, the only route in and out of this area, was just put on full military blockade. And there was a big humanitarian response to it because they're like, "You're cutting off 120,000 people from all external like food, and medical, and, you know, any kind of supplies, and, in some instances, water. And, there was this big mass starvation happening in this area. And, humanitarian aid convoys that were trying to go into the area were literally being shelled by Azerbaijan. Which eventually culminated in this full assault on September 19th. And, as it stands right now, there's...literally 120,000 people have gotten into their cars and are attempting to leave the area since the...
**Brooke ** 05:37 That's a lot of people
**Inmn ** 05:38 Yeah, yeah.
**Margaret ** 05:41 There was a ceasefire or something, right?
**Inmn ** 05:44 There was a ceasefire, which called for the unconditional surrender of the defense army. So, it's now a completely civilian population. And, there has been a call for the reintegration of the Armenian population, which locally is being viewed as a death sentence to pretty much everyone. Because, in the past, reintegration attempts by Azerbaijan have resulted in things like mass torture and rape of civilians and POWs.
**Brooke ** 09:22 Wow.
**Inmn ** 09:23 Yeah. And, to complicate things even more, there's like a...You know, it's in the world view right now. And people are like...Like, other countries are like, "Oh, should we do something?" And weirdly, Russia has been the peacekeeping mediator between the two.
**Brooke ** 09:43 What?
**Margaret ** 09:44 So, it's not good. They're not doing good things.
**Inmn ** 09:47 No, they're not doing good things. And, a lot of people suspect them of playing this double game because Russia has publicly supported Armenia in a lot of the disputes, but they are the main arms supplier to Azerbaijan. So, there's obviously a lot of strange conflict. They're essentially...the world at large is viewing them as playing one side against the other. So...
**Margaret ** 10:19 So, I don't know as much about this part. I've only been learning about some of this stuff recently. But, Russia, in general, has its own kind of equivalent of NATO, like its power-block type thing. But, Armenia is basically being slowly, kind of, shunted out of it or given less and less say in it, is the impression that I'm under. And, so there's a lot of tension of how Armenia is a little bit more looking to the west or whatever in a way that Russia isn't stoked about. That's the--I'm not 100% certain about this--that's the understanding I've been kind of learning.
**Inmn ** 10:58 Yeah, yeah. And so, kind of, one of the big pressing issues right now is what is going to happen to this mostly ethnically Armenian population that is...Like there's a 70 mile line of cars trying to flee the area. And like, yeah, yeah, obviously...
**Brooke ** 11:22 Where are they headed towards?
**Margaret ** 11:25 Armenia.
**Inmn ** 11:26 Yeah.
**Margaret ** 11:27 They're in the border region.
**Brooke ** 11:29 Going into Armenia? Not going out of Armenia?
**Margaret ** 11:31 Yeah. No, into. Because, what it is, is there is a border area and that border area, most of it is now controlled by Azerbaijan and was taken, I believe, during the conflict a couple of years ago. However, several of the cities, or several of the population centers, are primarily Armenian even though they're now technically part of Azerbaijan because of this conflict, right? And so they need to get the fuck out because they're going to be genocided. And, they're very aware of the fact that they are going to be genocided. And a lot of the rhetoric that is coming up is genocidal. And, Armenians are being like fairly blunt that, like, "If the world doesn't do something right now, we're going to die." Like, hundreds of thousands of people are going to fucking die.
**Inmn ** 12:22 Yeah.
**Brooke ** 12:23 Wow.
**Inmn ** 12:24 Yeah, it's...it's really bad. Yeah, but yeah, that's all I have on that. Brooke, I have heard that there's also some pretty bad things happening in India and Libya?
**Brooke ** 12:41 Yeah, well, I can tell you about India, anyway. Well, we talk a lot about, of course, climate events going on. And there's been a lot of stuff that we've talked about this summer with various climate catastrophes, wildness, unusual behavior. And I think it's pretty well known that we're in an El Nino situation right now. One of the countries that has been affected by climate catastrophe this year is India, especially in the northern regions where they do a lot of growing of food. And they have had really unpredictable rainfalls. In some places there's been severe flooding, and other places, there's been less rain than usual, which overall is leading to a lot of problems with a lot of crops. So, some of the food staples in India have seen significant increases in prices. Tomatoes and onions are things popularly used in Indian cooking, and they've seen a five to six times increase in the price for them. [Margaret goes "phew!"] Yeah, yeah, massive increases. And then, and this is then also related to war in Ukraine and wheat and grain prices. The chicken feed has gone up significantly, and chicken is a pretty common meat in a lot of dishes. But, then the chicken has become too expensive--to buy chicken. And to have chickens and feed them and butcher your own chickens has also become too expensive. So, that big source of protein is kind of off the menu in a lot of places too. So, some families are eating, you know, just mashed up vegetables is their whole meal for the day. Other places, they're making just--it's not naan but it's breads that are...roti. Roti breads. They just make some roti bread in the morning and that's all the family has to eat for the day is just bread. A lot of lower income families get a wheat subsidy from the government. They get so many pounds of wheat every month. But, it's not enough to last through the whole month. And of course they're not able to get enough wheat from other sources to even keep up with the levels of demand that people have in the country. So, inflation is making it much harder to buy goods. And, it's due to the climate catastrophe. And in fact, India has gone so far as to ban some exports like rice and sugar. Yeah, they've banned exports on those, which, of course, all of the places that might turn to rice as a grain source when wheat runs out then can't get the rice that they would usually get. Not that they're interchangeable, but, you know? And, in fact, India is looking at importing some things that it historically never has to import, like tomatoes from Nepal. They're looking at having to import those. So, yeah, you know, it's already a very impoverished country. So, India is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, having some trouble with the food staples there. And, not gonna get, you know, better anytime soon because, of course, they're crops that you harvest and that you store. So, rice, you know, being a big one, they're pulling in a smaller rice harvest. There's not enough to go around right now. And then everything that they would usually put in a long term storage, they don't have enough for that. So, there's going to be even more food insecurity down the road, unless they're able to find ways to import some of that and do it in a way that they can afford to do.
**Brooke ** 16:58 One more component of that whole foods situation--it's not like the food supply-but speaking of Ukraine, is that India imports fuel from Ukraine. And I can't remember the kind. But, they haven't been able to get as much fuel as they usually would, and so people that use that for cooking, don't have don't have the ability to do as much cooking because they can't afford it or they can't get the fuel that they need in order to cook.
**Margaret ** 17:37 It's funny because one of the things I'm sort of hoping we can start doing with a lot of things--obviously, we can do it with all things--is to sort of talk about how to mitigate these problems or how to help with these problems, you know? And there's like two different parts of it. And one is like, you know--and I don't have the research and I'm just like thinking about a way to try and do this--but it's, you know, we don't have a way to necessarily impact food prices in India and so then it's like, "Oh, well, there's the things that we can do here." And then it's like, well, overall, not entirely, but, overall, the average person in America is a lot more privileged. But then it's like...just things like how tomatoes and other crops are also being threatened a lot in the United States right now, and we're probably going to see food prices on a lot of these staple crops, like vegetables and things, go up--not to the same degree, not five or 6...you know, 500%, or whatever, in one year. And it's interesting because there's some of these things that are easier to grow at home, as compared to staple crops. Like, large copper hydrates, corn, wheat, rice, can be grown at home, but very...it's way more complicated. And, you're also very unlikely to have a climate where you can grow all three of those things instead of just one of those things.
**Brooke ** 18:54 Yeah, in my heart, I'm like, "Oh, yeah, the solution to this is, you know, everybody should plant a garden." But, that's such a privileged thing to say, to assume that they have space, resources, good soil, you know, with a thousand things that actually tries to do that.
**Margaret ** 19:12 Yeah. Yeah. Well...
**Brooke ** 19:15 But, if you can garden, you should learn how to do something, plant something.
**Margaret ** 19:22 No, I mean, even as a as a prepper, sometimes when something goes wrong for one of my friends, I'm like, "Oh, I'm gonna get the thing that helps me if that goes wrong for me." I mean, I try and help them out first, right? But, you know, driving with someone and the muffler or the whole tailpipe detaches from their car, and they're like, "Oh, I need this metal strapping instead of, you know, I had like P-cord or something, right?" And now I have metal strapping in my car because why not? It's tiny and cheap and light, right? And that's not...this doesn't apply on a global level. I'm sorry everyone who's listening who's like, "Shut the fuck up." You're right. Okay, so we decided what we're gonna do is we're gonna do like foreign--foreign... [questions the phrasing] Whatever, international shit before we do shit that's like a little bit more...the shit that we already...the shit that's closer to home. So, the other big thing that I have from this year...from this month--Jesus Christ, it's been...this year...it's just not even.... [Pauses to rest] In Libya, the...Okay, there was a storm called Storm Daniel. And, it was the deadliest storm in the Mediterranean in recorded history. And, it happened on September 11th. Way higher count of dead people than anything--well, then the famous thing that happened on September 11th in United States. I don't know as much about the coup that happened on September 11th years ago. But, Storm Daniel, it's like...it's not a tropical storm because of like, it's not from the sparkling Champagne region of France or whatever...[Brooke laughs, getting the joke] Like...You know what I'm saying? [Affirmative noises] Like, in order for it to be a tropical storm it has to exist in this very specific way. But, it's like...it's a tropical storm, like in terms of its impact. Like, it's a sparkling nightmare. And, you know, so it's legally distinct. But, it hit a ton of Mediterranean countries, and it fucked a lot of things up. And, it most notoriously killed a fuck ton of people in Libya because there were these two aging dams outside of the city of Derna that broke on September 11th. The death toll is anywhere from 4,000 to 11,000 people with 9,000 people that are still missing, even though it's been several weeks. I believe that that 11,000 number includes those missing people. That's the best guess I can get. And, just basically a third of the city fucking washed out to sea. I'm being slightly hyperbolic. A third of the city was damaged and a fuck ton of it washed out into the sea. And...Yeah, the morgues were overfilled. Bodies were laid out in the main square on sidewalks. Eight people, eight officials have been arrested already over this, which is funny because it's better than what the United States would do, you know? And, we're all like, "Oh, look at these terrible, idiotic countries," or whatever. Like, no, they...So far, as of yesterday, as of recording, they've arrested eight people.
**Inmn ** 22:32 Like on...because of...because of like what? Like preparation?
**Margaret ** 22:36 Because they didn't fix the damn thing. Yeah, sorry. There are these two dams that for decades scientists...The dams were built in the 70's by, I want to say, a Turkish contractor. No, I'm not sure. A contractor from a different country. And, they've been showing signs of aging and they've just been unmaintained for like 50 years. And, in 2012-2013 $2 million was appropriated, like sent to fix them, but Libya has not been an incredibly stable place, and that money did not fix them. And so, yeah. Everyone was like...Scientists were sitting there being like, "There's a crack in this dam that's over the town. We should do something," and everyone's like, "Oh, yeah, totally." [In a tone suggesting they won't fix it] And, you know, I mean, that's, government for you? Like, like, you know? But, on the other hand...Whatever. Glad that people are at least trying to take it seriously.
**Inmn ** 23:45 Sorry. Do you have more on that?
**Margaret ** 23:47 No, no, let's talk about things in the Western world.
**Inmn ** 23:50 Oh, yeah, I'm first. We'll start with the bad, unfortunately. So, the newest battleground for abortion access in Texas is that Texas is...There's this group of lawmakers who, you know, it's the same people who authored the Heartbeat Bill, who are trying to...Instead of making large state or national laws to target abortion, they're trying to target abortion on a very small level--which will have a huge and devastating impact--by building this network of what they call like "Sanctuary for the Unborn" cities. [Margaret scoffs] Yeah, no, it sounds pretty bad. And, so what they're doing is they're going to small towns, especially in West Texas, to try to get those towns to pass local ordinances that would create criminal penalties for traveling through those cities to access abortion care in states where abortion is still legal, like New Mexico. And, this is particularly impactful in West Texas because a lot of--there's a handful of new abortion clinics that have sprung up on the border of New Mexico and Texas specifically to serve people going from West Texas to New Mexico to access abortion care. And, two cities have passed the ordinances so far with as many as 51 cities who are thinking about it. And, the one currently in the news right now is Llano, Texas, which sits at an intersection of six different highways, including a pretty major highway, highway 87, which is a road that a lot of people who are going from Austin to New Mexico might use. And then there's a bunch of cities along I27 that have ordinances brewing for...similar ordinances. And, largely, though, what's interesting about this is that although two cities have passed this so far, there's a lot of conservative apprehension about passing these laws.
**Brooke ** 23:53 Really?
**Inmn ** 24:23 And, this comes from...I think this comes from the intersection of like...these are probably more libertarian-minded people who think that it is an overreach for the government to create penalties based on travel, because they're worried about other ways that travel could be limited and for other reasons that travel could be limited. So, it's libertarians and conservatives who are not like...who are probably antiabortion, who probably support abortion bans, but they think that this kind of larger infrastructural travel thing goes way too far. So, there is a lot of conservative pushback from it, which is interesting.
**Margaret ** 28:53 Okay, about abortion. Obviously, the State should not use--well, the State shouldn't exist--but, the State shouldn't use the Church or religious teachings in order to determine health care. I think that's a fairly understandable thing. However, if you, the listener, are religious in a Christian variety or if you want to argue with these people, this whole concept of being against abortion as a Christian is pretty fucking newfangled, is one of the things. The Church, the Catholic Church--which is a minority religion in the United States and is not a like primarily powerful force in the United States political sphere--the Catholic Church has only been against abortion since 1869. For almost all of the church's existence, abortion was only a problem during the third trimester after the Quickening, the Ensoulment, right, is what people want to argue about is like when a human gets a soul or whatever. And, until the late 19th century, the Ensoulment happened...people would argue either like...Most Jewish religious teaching, I believe, is that the Ensoulment--that's...I don't know if they use the word "Ensoulment''--but, the first breath of life, right? "You get your soul when your fucking born," is a very common traditional teaching. Also...Or, you get it at the Quickening, which is the fucking...like 24 weeks into pregnancy. And so, this whole idea of life beginning at conception is god damn new. All the people that the Catholics venerate didn't fucking believe that shit. And then, more than that, evangelicals, who are the main people pushing antiabortion shit, they didn't get into the shit until the 1970s. And they were like...basically were like, "Oh, how else can we be shitty?" And they were like, "Oh, we can be shitty by hating women. And so we're gonna fucking all of a sudden decide that we're against the following type of health care." I don't have as much of the facts about that in front of me, about exactly how that went, but basically, they joined...It used to be only the Catholics who were the people running around being shitty about abortion. And, I don't know. I, for some reason, I think that this matters...Like, just even in terms of like when you're talking about...Because people act like it's this like, "Well, I'm a Christian and therefore 2000 years of hating abortion," like that's just not the fucking case.
**Inmn ** 31:17 Yeah, and even there was this one person in Llano, who was quoted as saying like--it was like a council person--who was like...she was like, "Yeah, I'm personally not in favor of abortion. But, I remember giving a friend, like picking up a friend from an abortion clinic in high school and like I didn't support it, but I picked them up. And, under this new law, I would be a criminal." So, what is interesting about this overstep to me is that it offers some ground for people to talk about things in a way that might not have been in the forefront before where like...Which is interesting. It's like the more that the government, or, you know, crazy far-right conservatives, overreach, it does have the potential to create these funny little fissures with, you know, just normal everyday people who are like, "Well, whoa, whoa, wait a second. Wait a second. I was against abortion, but this is looking more like Fascism." And, I think that is creating fissures, which is interesting. But...
**Margaret ** 32:37 No, and it's good. That side should have fissures and we should make them...we should embiggen those fissures. There's a different word here.
**Brooke ** 32:46 I love it.
**Inmn ** 32:51 But, yeah, that's mostly it for Texas. In a related note, Idaho recently became the first state to impose criminal penalties on people who help a minor leave the state for an abortion without parental consent, just as another wave of the war against abortion access.
**Brooke ** 33:14 You know, this wasn't on my talking list, but, if I may, speaking of Idaho and abortion, I was reading about a lot of OB-GYN providers who are leaving Idaho in noticeable numbers, especially people who are specialists in like NICU care [Neonatal Intensive Care Unit] or early birth tiny baby death problem kind of things, those sort of high-level baby specialists, because they feel so at risk in Idaho that if something happens to a baby in their care, that they could be criminalized for it. I mean, they're taking jobs in other states and fleeing in such numbers that it's recognizable. And, there's some places that have--hospitals--in rural areas that have shut down their maternity wards.
**Margaret ** 34:06 It's just so awful.
**Inmn ** 34:09 Well, if state-by-state Christian nationalism bothered you, do I have some bad news, because recently it was unveiled that this horrifying thing called Project 2025, and it is a thousand page, essentially, playbook for conservative lawmakers to dismantle the federal government as it stands. And...
**Margaret ** 34:40 Why do they always try to do the cool stuff? [Laughs at the dry joke]
**Inmn ** 34:42 I know. I know. And, most of what they're looking at doing is completely dismantling the EPA and a lot of similar jobs that pertain to environmental regulation. But...
**Margaret ** 34:54 Yeah, the stuff that we want to have keep happening once we have an organizational system instead of a government Yeah, I'm sure they're gonna keep the fucking cops and Border Patrol. Fuckers. Yeah.
**Inmn ** 35:06 Yeah, it's pretty disconcerting. It's like trying...People view it as trying to pave the way for whatever the...whoever the next Republican president is to essentially become, you know a dictator in a more literal sense.
**Brooke ** 35:27 Well, the federal government is trying to fuck itself currently.
**Inmn ** 35:30 Oh, yeah?
**Brooke ** 35:31 If I can transition into that. Because, we are facing another federal government shutdown risk. [Makes an enthusiastic noise]
**Margaret ** 35:42 Once again, they're gonna shut down the wrong parts of it, aren't they?
**Brooke ** 35:44 Oh, yeah. Uh huh. They're gonna keep essential services, which is apparently not shit like OSHA, and Food and Drug inspections, and air traffic control. Those are not essential services. [Margaret laughing]
**Margaret ** 35:58 I'm sure it's the goddamn Border Patrol and making sure poor people pay taxes and rich people don't.
**Brooke ** 36:05 Yeah, shit like that. We talked about it one other time, government shutdowns on the show together, and in that context, it was talking about the debt ceiling, the government's self imposed limit on how much money they can borrow. And so, they were at risk of having to shut down because they weren't in agreement about being able to borrow more money. Well, this is the...now, we're facing the most beloved refuse-to-agree-on-a-budget federal government shutdown and fucking every time they have to redo the budget, it's always in the news, "Oh, it's gonna be a federal government shutdown!" And, sometimes it's more serious than others. So it's super hard to take it seriously. It hasn't really happened very many times that there's been a government shutdown. There was one that was back in like 2018-2019 that was 35 days or there abouts. And that one....
**Margaret ** 37:00 Which is the longest one in history?
**Brooke ** 37:02 Exactly. And that one was actually long enough to have an impact that mattered. If they have one right now, it's, you know, they probably won't have one there. And, if they do, it's going to be one of these stupid two or three day kind of things. It's really, really unlikely, because they just don't have the circumstances to have that long one happen again. If it did happen, and it goes on for a long time, then you get a lot of backups in the federal government. You have subsidy programs that won't send out payments, like SNAP benefits and Social Security benefits and housing assistance and financial aid for students. But again, it has to be a shutdown that's closer to a month long, because they're set up to do all of those payments, you know, for the next month. So, if they shut shut down today, October is all set to go and would automatically do its thing, and then November would be fucked if they stayed shut down. So, most likely not going to happen. If it does happen, probably a minimal one and longer interruptions. I guess if it happens and we're looking at a long one, we can talk about it some more and I can tell you all about what's actually going to go on and all the fucked-up-ed-ness. But, if you're seeing it in the news, it's just because this is the thing that the news likes to pick up right now and talk about this time of year. Yeah, don't stress out about it. Like, they fucking take the exact same article from the previous year and and, you know, move the paragraphs around.
**Margaret ** 38:27 Well, it's like...it's like...Okay, it's like Covid. It's like...When Covid was first coming up, it was gonna be like another bird flu where we were like, "Oh, no, this thing that won't actually materially affect us that's just a news cycle panic thing." And then it's like every now and then it's a Covid, you know? And, eventually, it might be a Black Death and we're fucked, right? But, most of the time, when there's like...Like I still...Like, even as I was skimming there was some like, "new superbug" in such-and-such place and I'm like, "I'm not worried," right? Like, it's either...It's either gonna be real bad or it's not. But, there's a new one of those to worry about every fucking month. And, so, that makes sense about government shutdown being that it could be real fucking bad, but it usually isn't. Yeah.
**Brooke ** 39:19 The worst that it's ever been still wasn't really that bad. I think things got really fucked up for, you know, about a month after they got back online. And then there were some other things that had delays, you know, applications and shit that they didn't process and then had like a backlog of and whatever. But, the biggest thing that could be an impact, that could, even if it's a short one, could be air travel, because the TSA doesn't get paid. And the last time they had a long one, the TSA agents were like, "No, we're not gonna stay here and work for free." And, they fucked off and went and drove Uber. And whatever.
**Margaret ** 39:53 Yeah, I mean, there was a whole constitutional amendment about how you can't make people work without giving them money unless they're in prison.
**Brooke ** 39:53 The government begged them and they're like, "Please, please. We know you'll...We'll figure it out. Please do it for free? You'll get back pay!"
**Margaret ** 40:08 And they're like "Nah, we fought a war over this."
**Brooke ** 40:09 People are like, "I don't need back pay. I need money now."
**Margaret ** 40:11 Yeah, if the economy wasn't trashed it wouldn't be a big deal. Everyone's paycheck-to-paycheck, even the fucking middle class, so what the fuck are you gonna do?
**Inmn ** 40:22 Yeah. Which is...This is a whole thing. But, um, did you know that billionaires are putting a huge amount of energy and time into trying to figure out how to keep security forces loyal to them when money doesn't exist anymore?
**Margaret ** 40:38 I think we've talked about this, haven't we?
**Inmn ** 40:39 I think a little bit. We've touched on it.
**Margaret ** 40:41 Maybe I just talk about it all the time. It just comes up at every dinner.
**Inmn ** 40:47 Yeah, yeah. It's wild. It is a huge thing on billionaires minds right now is not getting killed by everyone when the...when civilization collapses.
**Margaret ** 40:59 Yeah, specifically, how to get to their security...Yeah, how to get their security guards to like...In their doomsday shelter where they're like, "How will I still be in charge of my doomsday shelter when there's no outside world?" Like, well, you won't. You'll be dead and everyone will be glad.
**Brooke ** 41:14 This is why I say "Start early and eat the rich." I've got a solution for India.
**Margaret ** 41:21 Also, it's vegan to eat the rich because...Because veganism is a relationship to power, right? And so it's not actually...It's like you can't be speciesist against humans, right? So, you are not oppressing oppressed animals if you eat billionaires.
**Brooke ** 41:41 Thank you. I feel even better about that.
**Margaret ** 41:45 It might not be vegetarian, but it is vegan. [everyone laughing]
**Inmn ** 41:50 Brooke, do you have any other things to tell us? [Nervously laughing]
**Margaret ** 41:56 Before it goes over to me? [Laughing]
**Brooke ** 41:58 My one other thing to say to you is "Don't talk to cops." Okay, go on.
**Margaret ** 42:02 Okay, let's see. I got some bad stuff, some good stuff. Well, in good news, it was the hottest August on record all across the world. So, get your bathing suits ready, including in the other hemisphere where it was supposed to have been Winter, but it wasn't. Everyone's like, "Oh, yeah, hottest August. I mean, it's fucking August." Like, no, you motherfucker, it's Winter somewhere when it's August.
**Brooke ** 42:28 Margaret, do you know it's September though? Like just checking.
**Margaret ** 42:34 I'll take your word for it. The leaves are turning where I live. Okay, so there's like, we had the hottest August, we had the hottest July, and we had the hottest June. We also had five months in a row of the hottest global surface sea temperatures, like each month it hits a new record that is hotter than the one previously. Overall, our August was 2.25 degrees Fahrenheit, like 1.25 Celsius, I think, over the 20th century average.
**Brooke ** 43:03 We did it!
**Margaret ** 43:04 Yeah, exactly. But, don't worry, all of this rising sea temperature actually will make tropical storms, and sparkling storms, rarer. This surprised me. It'll make them rarer. But, it'll make them more powerful. So hurricanes, more common. But, tropical storms and sparkling storms, less common because a higher percentage of them will destroy things in their wake.
**Brooke ** 43:33 Okay, but on net because there's less of the other kind, we should just average out to be fine, right? That's what I hear you saying, one's worse, ones...not.
**Margaret ** 43:37 Yes, absolutely. It's a good time to get a yacht. And I know who has yachts. They are people who you can eat, ethically. And, if you want to get to the ocean to get some yachts, you can go down the Mississippi River. Except, did y'all hear that? It's not in the fucking national news at all. Did you hear that New Orleans is having a water crisis?
**Brooke ** 43:40 No, I didn't hear about that.
**Margaret ** 43:44 They're gonna have to be shipping in millions of gallons of water to New Orleans for people to drink. Because--and this is not certain. This is looming. This is today's news, like past couple days news. All of the drought that has been happening this year has the Mississippi so fucking low that there's basically backwash from the sea coming up into it. And, so all of the saltwater is going to fuck up southern Louisiana's plumbing, right? And, also fuck up--and you can't, you can't boil advisory saltwater. Off the top of my head, if you are stuck with saltwater, your best bet for desalination is building a solar still or some other kinds of still. Be very careful. If you purchase a still. You can buy them on Amazon. Most of the things you can do with stills are incredibly illegal and will get the ATF paying attention to you. However, I don't know, if I was in New Orleans right now, I'd probably buy a fucking still. Just in case. Because, you can distill water and then the brackish water stays in the bottle. Whatever. Anyway, people can fucking do their own research about that or listen to us talking about this on this very show. So, New Orleans is trying to head this off. And, one of the things that's worth understanding is that there are people who try to stop this stuff and they are worth celebrating, even if they're like the federal government or whatever, right? Like, the US Army Corps of Engineers just built a 25 foot underwater levee to try and stop the backwash of saltwater into the Mississippi. It is not enough. Right? As of this morning's news anyway, it's not enough.
**Brooke ** 43:44 Wait, how much of a levy [misheard levee as levy] was it? Did you say in price or volume?
**Margaret ** 45:45 25 Feet.
**Brooke ** 45:46 Oh, feet.
**Margaret ** 45:48 The height of it. Yeah, it's 25 feet from the river bottom up levee.
**Brooke ** 45:55 And that's not enough?
**Margaret ** 45:57 No. Yeah. And, okay, so that happened. And that's one of the ones that like...Yeah, I've been struggling to find anything about it besides hearing from people in New Orleans. But, it's a big fucking deal. Because, we also within the United States have these places where people don't pay attention. One of the other places that people don't pay attention to is the border. We sometimes pay attention to the border because we care and we're aware of this monstrous humanitarian crisis caused by the United States government and its policies that's happening at the border, you know? And all of this cruelty and racism that's happening. But, one of the things I want to talk about--because no episode could be complete without some micro rant. And don't worry, my weird thing about theology is not going to be my micro rant for this week. Although, this one's actually probably shorter than my one about fucking theology. I've had a weird month of research. So, all of this bad shit's happening at the border. We are still in a border crisis. There's a lot of families that are trapped between two walls at the southern border. And, these are people who are trying to come as refugees, trying to do the thing that right wingers are like, "Well, if they just came properly like my great grandparents, who totally came before there was even fucking immigration policies, then it would be totally fine." Because, P.S., if you're white, there's a very good chance that your ancestors came before there was any kind of immigration. They probably literally just got off a boat. Anyway. So, there's all these people and there's all these people fucking trying to...not trying to. There's all these people feeding and clothing and providing phone charging services and shit for these people. And, what's kind of cool, is I'm aware of three groups that are doing this outside of San Diego right now. And, they kind of run the gamut, right? You've got the Free Shit Collective, whose logo has 1312 in it. And then you have the American Friends Service Committee, the Quakers. And then, in the middle, you have Border Kindness, who are another group. And so, whatever your flavor of mutual aid is, you fucking go support it. I say support all of them. And let's continue to build good interconnectedness between all of the people who are trying to do good right now. Because, much how even though Gondor did not come to Rohan's aid, it was still very important for the Riders of Rohan to show up to support Gondor when Mordor was attacking them. And, even the Ents, who also had been not treated well by the humans, and the dwarves, and the elves, you know, all come together, right, to fight against the United States government, which is Mordor. And...
**Inmn ** 48:49 I'm so excited to transcribe this.
**Margaret ** 48:54 You're the only transcript person who will be able to spell any of these things. And so, to that, I want to say, okay, because I was thinking about how we're always like, "Oh, God, we're gonna go talk about a bunch of bad shit." And I know people who listen to our show but don't listen to this episode every month, right? And because it's a series of bad things. And, the thing that I've been thinking about that is that I'm like, but there's all these good things that happen. But, most good things that happen aren't like, "And then there was 100 years of peace and everyone had happy, idyllic lives," right? That is a rare, random thing that some people are lucky enough to live lives of peace, you know? But, that is not what the average human experiences. And I refuse to believe that the average human experience is negative because bad things are always happening. And what makes our lives good, is how we choose to act against that bad. May we view ourselves as lucky that we are born in these times. May we view ourselves as lucky that we can join in the Rider of Rohan and, "A red day, a blood day. Death, death, death!" Although, that's actually...that's actually...I hate when the movie gets things better than the books, but that's a fucking sick speech andonly parts of it are from the books. And, also Tolkien totally cribbed this way older Norse poem about like, "Shields will be splintered..." Whatever. Anyway. "Wolf Time?" I...Fuck, I can't remember the name of it. Anyway, bad things are always happening,
**Brooke ** 50:33 Margaret, can I just say that I love you.
**Margaret ** 50:34 Aw, I love y'all too. Bad shit's always happening. But, look at these three different groups that are working together to fight this. And what can be more beautiful than that, right? And, they support each other and they talk about each other as all doing good things together. I'm sure that there's some fucking beef between them. And I don't know about it because I'm not there. And that's what you should do with beef, is people should know about it locally, but it's no one's business at the wider world. So, you should support these people, is what I'm trying to say. It's the Free Shit Collective, it is Border Kindness, and it is the American Friends Service Committee. However, if you go to support the American Friends Service Committee, you need to look specifically for their San Diego chapter and for the group of them that is working on border stuff, rather than it just going to the Quakers at large, who are perfectly fine even though they invented the penitentiary, but it's only sort of their fault. Okay, the other thing, the actual just like straight up good news that I have is that the Writers Guild has reached a tentative agreement after 150 days of strike. By the time you all are hearing this, maybe the agreement will probably have either been accepted or not accepted, right? So, either the strike will be over or the strike will be back and everyone's more bitter. But, this is a really beautiful strike and it captured the nation's attention partly because these people know how to write. And, they're also the people who produce the stuff that entertains us, right? And so we're very aware of it. But, that does not make it a less...it actually makes it a more impactful strike because it allows all the rest of us to know that we can strike too. And, absolutely, on the other side, the bosses were out for blood. They were constantly saying like, "We are going to do this until the writers are homeless. We don't care," you know? And, they can say that all they want, but it's a little early to say and you all will either be like "What a naive summer child, saying that." But, it looks like we might win. And when I say, "we," I mean the working class, which is the people who work for a living. It's not about the actual income you make. Middle-class people are often working class. It just depends on whether your money comes from being a fucking landlord or whether it comes from fucking working. Did you all know that "summer child" is also a science fiction reference, or a fantasy reference. Did you know this?
**Inmn ** 53:00 Oh, sort of.
**Margaret ** 53:02 It comes from "Game of Thrones." Everyone thinks that it is an old timey southern saying.
**Brooke ** 53:09 It's not?
**Margaret ** 53:10 It's not. It's from fucking :Game of Thrones.: It doesn't exist before like the mid or late 90s or whatever the fuck that book came out. Because it means...
**Inmn ** 53:21 Sorry, this is maybe dashing a thing, but this has literally happened throughout history, like literature inventing funny phrases. I don't think you're saying something negative about it, but Shakespeare is credited with like...It's some horrifying number of words that are in common use right now that didn't exist before.
**Margaret ** 53:47 Yeah. And all the sayings and shit all come from him. Or, they come from his like social circle and he's the one who wrote them down...
**Inmn ** 53:52 Totally.
**Margaret ** 53:52 ...you know, which also rules. Okay, and then to wrap up news stuff. Okay. There's also, you know how fracking sucks, where people try to get the last little bits of fossil fuels out so that we can turn the Earth into a furnace instead of living decent lives?
**Brooke ** 54:10 Yeah. Defs.
**Margaret ** 54:12 Well, have you all heard of monster fracking? It's not where they use Monster energy drinks. It should be, because that's the only good use for it.
**Brooke ** 54:19 Okay, no, I haven't heard of it.
**Inmn ** 54:24 Is it releasing monsters from the ground through fracking?
**Margaret ** 54:28 Oh, that would be good too. That would actually...I'm entirely in favor of...I mean, Godzilla was originally an anti-nuclear movie.
**Brooke ** 54:35 Do they use monsters to do the fracking?
**Margaret ** 54:38 No, it's just monstrously large. It's this like mega fracking. It's just where they go and dig wells in order to get enough water. They drain entire aquifers in order to get the last little bits of fucking gas out of the ground. And, this is how it happened. And so, water usage in fracking has gone up seven times since 2011. Since 2011, fracking has used 1.5 trillion gallons of water, which is a lot. It's not...It's a fucking lot. That's what all of Texas uses as tap water for an entire year.
**Brooke ** 55:22 Aquifers? Or the amount of water used?
**Margaret ** 55:25 The amount of water used. And, overall, Americans are using up their aquifers very quickly. But, again, it's this kind of like, "Oh, so don't drink as much water." Like, no, it's monster fracking that is the problem. It is growing the wrong food in the fucking desert that is the problem.
**Brooke ** 55:45 But, aquifers are unlimited? [said sarcastically]
**Margaret ** 55:47 I mean, it's funny because I live on a well and that's kind of how I feel. Like, it's not true. And, the water drilling, like water drilling, is actually not federally regulated. It's state-by-state. And, a lot of states literally are like, "You're just allowed to do it until there's no more water." You are allowed to frack with water during moderate and severe droughts, anything but extreme is before they start putting any limitations on fracking. So, you are well past the part where you can't water your lawn--which is ,you know, whatever, fucking lawn--but well past the point where you can't water a lawn or wash your car, they're allowed to frack completely unimpeded. And, in Utah, California, and Texas, there have been buckled roads, cracked foundations, and fissures into the earth because of depleted groundwater. And let's see, one oil region in Texas has seen their aquifer falling at 58 feet a year. Last year was the lowest groundwater in US history. And, this affects everything, right? Kansas' corn yields last year were fucked up because its aquifer wasn't...for the first time, it wasn't enough for the agriculture of its region. So, I think they had to import water but also just didn't get to use enough water, so their corn yields were down. And as we've hinted...we've talked about a lot in the show, we overproduce like cereal grains. Not over produce. We produce a fuck ton of cereal grains in this country. So, we actually haven't seen--we've seen prices go up--but we haven't really seen a ton of shortages and stuff yet. This continues to be a threat. I feel a little bit like the girl cries wolf about this where I'm like, "Oh, like, you know, Kansas' corn yields are down," but you can still like go to the store and buy corn tortillas, right? Here. You know, other parts of the world are not so lucky. Anyway, that's what I got.
**Brooke ** 57:49 Okay, let me roll up my sleeves and go on my indigenous rant about water protection and sacredness. Now we're out of time. I'm going to do next time. I'm going to open with that next time.
**Inmn ** 58:00 Do it. Do it anyway!
**Brooke ** 58:03 Water is sacred. Water is life, motherfuckers. Okay, that's my rant.
**Margaret ** 58:08 That's a good rant.
**Inmn ** 58:09 Solid. I have some little bitty headlines. Does anyone else have a little bitty headlines?
**Margaret ** 58:17 I think I threw most of mine in what I just did.
**Inmn ** 58:19 Cool. Before we wrap up, I have a couple little bitty headlines, a handful of which are good.
**Margaret ** 58:26 Oh, I have two good ones at the end.
**Inmn ** 58:28 Wonderful. So, the first one is a bad one, which is, as Margaret brings up the US-Mexico border...This one actually shocked me. Not because I am unaware of how bad it is, but because I don't know, I think I maybe thought there were places that were worse. I don't know. But, the UN declared that the US-Mexico border is the deadliest land migration route in the world recently.
**Margaret ** 58:55 Jesus. You're right. That's exactly it. Your response is exactly what I thought.
**Inmn ** 59:01 Yeah. With...And this is last year, so 2022, with 686 people or migrants died in the desert last year on the US-Mexico border. And, it's a number that like...it's a number that is vastly under reported on. Like having done a lot of humanitarian aid work along the US-Mexico border, that is a horribly underreported number. But, in a kind of cool thing, a federal judge ordered that the death buoys in the Rio Grande be removed, which is...that's cool. [Brooke yays]
**Margaret ** 59:44 Haven't they not done it yet? They like ordered it removed, but they still are kind of kicking their heels or there was some other....
**Inmn ** 59:52 I don't know.
**Margaret ** 59:53 Nevermind. I only know the headline level.
**Inmn ** 59:56 Me too. A gay couple in Kentucky was recently awarded $100,000 in a settlement over a county clerk's refusal to issue them a marriage license.
**Margaret ** 1:00:08 Hell yeah. Fuck that clerk.
**Inmn ** 1:00:10 Yeah, pretty cool.
**Brooke ** 1:00:11 Gonna be a nice wedding now.
**Margaret ** 1:00:14 I hope it's at the house that that guy no longer lives at. I hope they just gave them his house.
**Inmn ** 1:00:21 There were five cops indicted over the Tyre Nichols murder in September, which is, you know, also pretty cool.
**Brooke ** 1:00:37 Is eating cops vegan?
**Margaret ** 1:00:42 Probably. I mean, you could make an argument that eating any human is vegan because of the speciesism line, but it's certain with billionaires. Cops, like, you know, I mean, I eat honey, so who am I to like really police the lines of veganism? It's like cops are probably like the equivalent of honey, you know? Or, like those sea animals that don't have central nervous systems that can't feel pain. I don't think cops can feel pain. So, I don't think that it's immoral to hurt or eat...This is the sketchiest thing I've ever said on the show.
**Brooke ** 1:01:16 So, I can still make a BLT then. Ethically sourced bacon.
**Inmn ** 1:01:24 Speaking of cops, I have one last headline on cops, which I realized that we track a lot of...we track a lot of death. And, a lot of those deaths are in our communities or in communities that our communities are either in community with or would be in community with, and I thought it might be interesting to start tracking the number of cops that die every month.
**Brooke ** 1:01:52 Oh, that's a joyous headline.
**Inmn ** 1:01:55 And, it was only seven in September, mostly from vehicle related accidents.
**Margaret ** 1:02:03 That doesn't surprise me.
**Inmn ** 1:02:04 Yeah, it doesn't surprise me. And, there were 86 this year.
**Margaret ** 1:02:11 86 cops...
**Inmn ** 1:02:11 Yeah, 86 cops. [Not getting that it's a joke]
**Margaret ** 1:02:14 Eh, eh? Like, when there's no more in the kitchen and we gotta stop serving them...Anyway.
**Inmn ** 1:02:21 And one of them was from a train. That's my headline. Is this sketchy to say? I don't know.
**Margaret ** 1:02:33 I don't know, I mean, whatever. They...It's still safer than almost every job in America. Well, there's a list of the most dangerous jobs and they're like...they're not at the bottom of the list, but they are nowhere near the top of the list. Okay, the two headlines I got...Call me a future-believer person. In July...Okay, last December there was the fusion test where they actually successfully, I believe for the first time ever, got more power out of a fusion test than they put into it. For anyone who's...like nuclear bombs and shit is fission power, right? And it's one interesting way to make electricity that has a lot of side effects. Fusion power is what the sun does. And seeking cold fusion has been like the holy grail of science for a very long time, because that's when you can have gay space communism. Or, knowing our society, slightly gay capitalism in space or whatever the fuck horrible thing they come up with. But, they've been trying since December to repeat that. And, in July, they got even more power out of a fusion experiment. They, I think they more than doubled what they put into it or...I remember exactly. They got a fuck ton of power out. They've also failed numerous times since then. But, this is still incredibly promising from my point of view. I personally believe that deindustrialization and things like that are essential, but I'm not...I think having some electricity around is quite grand. And, if there's a way we can do it ethically, and environmentally sound, and it doesn't explode the entire world...Like, who knows what fusion will do? Maybe people will just explode the whole world? And I'll be like, "Oops, sorry," but, I won't because I'll be dead. And, whatever, that's how we all end up anyway. And then the other one is that--and actually just speaking of sort of vaguely green but not green ecotech news--there have been a bunch of studies about electric cars. Because, everyone's very aware of how shitty lithium mining and all that stuff is, all of the minerals that are used in the batteries, right? And, it started reaching the point where actually, it's actually been stopping the electric car adoption in some ways is because people are like, "Well, it's so fucking bad that I'm just gonna go back to my, you know, my fossil fuels car." And, so they tested it and it is still, in terms of embedded greenhouse gases and like impact on the environment, driving electric cars, even though all of the mining practices are fucked up, is still less fucked up for the earth than driving a fossil fuel car. Obviously, I think that we should be moving towards mass transit models and more local stuff and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, electric cars are better than gas cars is my take and the take of some recent science, at least in terms of the impact on the climate. Kind of wish that wasn't the note I was ending on, but...
**Inmn ** 1:05:36 Wait, I have a cool note. I forgot one. I feel like this is a mixed bag of a thing, but I...Whatever, reform is complicated. But, if there are things that impact people's lives on a material level now like that's cool. Illinois just became the first state to abolish cash bail. [Cheers] Which, I think, is more complicated than a lot of people think. Like, it could have...it could have bad side effects, which is there being...Like, specifically, there's violent and nonviolent...It splits it into violent and nonviolent crimes. And, if you have a nonviolent crime, you basically won't go to jail until you're convicted of a crime that requires you to go to jail, But, for violent crimes you are stuck in jail. And, it's in that, which is how the State defines violence, which makes it complicated. So, you know, for instance, like buddies...like, you know, folks down in Cop City who have been booked on domestic terrorism charges, those people, if a similar thing existed in Georgia, would be stuck in jail throughout their trial without the option of bail. So, this is the kind of complication of no cash bail. But, a really cool thing is that it will get a lot of people out of...Anyone who's in awaiting trial can now petition to be released.
**Brooke ** 1:07:22 Oh, wow.
**Inmn ** 1:07:23 Which is the really cool part about. Yeah, so that's my ending note. Thanks y'all for being here.
**Margaret ** 1:07:37 Yep.
**Inmn ** 1:07:42 And if you enjoyed this podcast, go join the Riders of Rohan, not just for Gondor but for all of the free peoples of Middle Earth. But, if you want...Also, if you liked this podcast, you should, you know, like, and review, and rate, and I don't know what any of these things actually are. I'm just saying words. But, tell people about the podcast. And you can also support this podcast by supporting its publisher Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. Strangers is a media publishing collective. We put out books, zines, and other podcasts like Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, a monthly podcast of anarchistic literature or the Anarcho Geek Power Hour, which is a great show for people who love movies and hate cops. And, you can find our Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And, we would like to shout out a few wonderful people in particular. Thank you, Eric, Perceval, Buck, Jacob, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, Funder, Janice & O'dell, Aly, Paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, S.J., Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Michaiah, and the eternal Hoss the Dog. We hope everyone's doing as well as they can and we'll see you next time.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn is joined by Blix, a river guide. They talk about the utility of packrafting, the joys and travails of river travel, the state of waterways in the western United States, and how river guides might have the best names for the worst things.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Blix on Packrafting
**Inmn ** 00:16 Hello, and welcome to Live Like The World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm Inmn, and I'm your host for today. Today I'm being joined by my friend Blix, who is a river guide, and we're going to talk about something that I've been really entranced by but know nothing about and I'm a little terrified by. And that is, traveling on rivers with boats and why it might be a good or bad idea during different emergent disasters. But first, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Net of anarchist podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo doo doo doo [Singing the words like an upbeat melody]
**Dissident Island Radio ** 01:08 Listen in to Dissident Island Radio live every first and third Friday of the month at 9pm GMT. Check out www.dissidentireland.org for downloads and more.
**Inmn ** 01:58 And we're back. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. Could you introduce yourself with your name, pronouns, and what you do in the world? You know, not in an existential sort of way, but what is your connection to packrafting.
**Blix ** 02:19 My name is Blix. I use she/they pronouns. I am a river guide in Dinosaur National Monument on the Green River. I like to do more things than just river stuff. I'm really into cycling, and gaming, and anything that gets me outside, but river stuff recently has been my main hobby and passion at the moment. Yeah, what was the last one? What is my "what?"
**Inmn ** 02:49 What do you...What is your existential purpose in the world [laughing/joking]
**Blix ** 03:02 [Stammers while laughing] I'd like to survive. Yeah. The last one was my connection to packrafting. So initially, I got into river...I mean, I've been doing river stuff since I was a kid. I grew up in northeast Iowa, which is not known for anything river related. Or I mean, there are rivers there, but not in the sense that...not the big water and rapid stuff that you typically hear about with river travel or river hobbies, but I grew up kayaking and canoeing. And then I got a packraft four years ago and I've done a couple pack rafting trips since then. Overnighters. And yeah, I think that was kind of the gateway craft that led me to wanting to be a guide.
**Inmn ** 04:02 Yeah, it's funny. I can tell if you were being sarcastic about Idaho rivers
**Blix ** 04:08 No, Iowa, Iowa.
**Inmn ** 04:10 Ohhh.
**Blix ** 04:11 Yeah, no. Idaho is very well known for rivers. Yeah, no, Iowa is not...You don't think, "Whoa the rivers in Iowa are amazing." But Idaho, definitely.
**Inmn ** 04:25 Yeah, there is--maybe it's not Iowa that I'm thinking of--that it's bordered on each side by rivers. Is that true?
**Blix ** 04:35 There's the Mississippi on the east and then on the west I think there is a river but I can't remember... Maybe the Sioux River.
**Inmn ** 04:45 Yeah or something. Because there's the...I only know this because of going on bike tour and encountering this bike bro who let us sleep at his house. He just saw us on bikes and was like, "Come over, fellow bike tourists." And we're like, "You know, we need showers." And he told us about something called like, Ragbra...
**Blix ** 05:05 Ragbrai. I like Ragbra better. Yeah, yeah. RagBrai is riding from the west side of Iowa to the east, and it changes...the route changes every year. But, I've actually never done it.
**Inmn ** 05:23 It did not really sound fun. Very drunken.
**Blix ** 05:25 No, I think it...Yeah. As someone who does not drink, it sounds like my worst nightmare. So,
**Inmn ** 05:32 Yeah. But anyways, what...So what is packrafting?
**Blix ** 05:38 Yeah, packrafting...So, it's a very specific type of craft where you can deflate it and it's pretty much...the way that I've used it, I've strapped it to the front of my bike. You can shove it in backpacks. It can be made very small, and then when you inflate it, some models of pack rafts, you can take your gear and shove them inside the tubes of the craft so you don't have like a pile of gear on your boat.
**Inmn ** 05:51 Like inside the inflatable part of it?
**Blix ** 06:15 Yes, yep. So I've had friends who've done the Grand Canyon in packrafts--which is nuts and also very impressive to me--but yeah, you can put stuff in the tubes. When you want to get it out, you have to deflate it, obviously. But, you put it all in there, inflate it, you can take it downriver. I know people who've carried a ton of gear, like 50 pounds. I know people who've gone hunting with them. You can obviously, I'm sure you've seen, you can strap your bikes to the front of them as well.
**Inmn ** 06:50 This was actually my first question is if you can strap it to your bike, can you also somehow take your bike down river?
**Blix ** 06:58 Yeah, yeah, it's...I have a lot of opinions about taking bikes--I think it depends on the river and also your bike. The thing with attaching a bike to a water vessel and then floating down a river is it's really exposed to all the elements. And, bikes and water don't...Like, you don't want to submerge your bike in water. There's a lot of issues that can arise from that. So, it's really hard on your bike. And also it makes the packraft hard to maneuver--obviously because you have this big heavy weight in the front--but you can take the front wheel off your bike, put it on top of the frame, and then you can use straps, and they have strap loops, and--trying to think the word of it--they have places where you can take straps and like loop your bike around so it is fully attached to your packraft.
**Inmn ** 07:51 Cool. My first impression from hearing about packrafting is, one, that is exactly what I was hoping it would be. But, I guess some questions within that are that it seems highly versatile or mobile. Which, the the thing about boats that I've always thought is boats are really cool and they're really big and you're kind of tied to a boat, and you're stuck on that body of water where the boat is. But, with this, it seems like you can pretty easily be on the river and then decide to leave the river and take the boat with you?
**Blix ** 08:35 Yes, yep. And I think that's why they're so popular. I think they're also more affordable. But, it's a multimodal way to navigate places. And yeah, they've exploded in popularity. And it's kind of funny because packrafts themselves--like there's always been smaller crafts like kayaks and inflatable kayaks--but the packraft is kind of this new concept that's come about where you can pack your gear in the tubes and it packs up super small. Whereas kayaks are this big hard thing of plastic that you have to lug around. You know, same with canoes or even inflatable kayaks. Like, those don't deflate to a point where you'd want to carry them in anything. They're so heavy. So packrafts are kind of this ultralight thing that's come on to the river scene and a lot of parks and monuments--at least the monument I work in, they're not sure what to do with them. They're very particular about...like if you go pack rafting down the river, you have to have a bigger support boat. Like you can't just take your pack raft down the river because it's a single chamber. So, it's just like one...When you inflate it, the whole thing inflates. Whereas, normal rafts...I have another bigger raft. It has four different...or excuse me, mine has two chambers. Giant rafts, like 18 foot rafts, have four chambers and then the floor that inflates. So, the thing with packrafts is if you like pop it or tear it, it's going to be a bad day. And that's, I guess, my only issue with them. But, everything else is great, like how light they are. The trips I've done with packrafts and bikes and anything else, it's really nice to not be lugging around a gigantic raft and all this gear. And, it keeps you from overpacking.
**Inmn ** 10:26 Yeah, how small is, "small?" and how light is, "light?" Like, does this fit in your hiking pack?
**Blix ** 10:34 Yes, yeah, it could fit in a backpack. Like my handlebars on my bike, it fits in between the grips. Like that's how small it is. I think it packs down to like 8-10 pounds. Like it's, it's still a heavy piece of gear but nothing like a huge 2000 pound raft. You know, to me, I'm like, "Wow, this is very light and small." And then as far as like when you're sitting in it, they make different lengths. But, when I'm sitting in my packraft my feet go all the way to the front of it. And I can't think of how...They would probably be like four feet? Three feet? I don't know. I guess I've never measured mine. I just know that I fit in it. I'm not really a dimensions person. I just know that it's light and it's small. So like really specific stuff--I guess I do know how long my big raft is...But, yeah, with packrafts it's just you in the...Like, there's no room really to put other gear. You can shove stuff up by your feet and behind you, but the main idea is you're putting all of it in the tubes.
**Inmn ** 11:40 Yeah, okay. Yeah, I guess hearing that their downfall, I guess, or thing that makes them maybe not a great idea is that they can get punctured. Is that something that's likely to happen. Like, can they get punctured easily? Like, how durable are they?
**Blix ** 12:00 I guess the story that comes up is that I went on the Salt River this past spring. That's a river in northeast Arizona. There's like a--It's not the tubing section that everyone thinks about. It's like--whenever I tell people that, they're like, "What? You went whitewater on..." And I'm like, "No." There's an upper section that's a solid class 4 river--which, I suppose I should explain classes maybe after...If you're curious. But yeah, okay. But, basically, the story is we were portaging around this big rapid because I didn't feel comfortable running it. It was the end of the day. And portaging is just finding a route that we're able to walk and carry all our gear. Which, wasn't easy because we were in a very steep narrow canyon. But yeah. Someone dropped their packraft on a cactus, which, you know, you'd think--they popped bike tubes--but, their packraft had multiple holes that needed to be patched. Whereas my...I think the rafts are made of different materials...Like, my raft compared to a packraft...Because the packraft is so light, I don't think they can use as heavy duty material. I know people--and from my own experience--one of our packrafts has like gotten rubbed from paddling. Like the paddle rubbed the side and the side could get rubbed raw and then start to leak air. And I do know a lot of folks with packrafts that have a lot of patches. But, I also know...like this is where it comes into play that you need to be good at not just knowing how to paddle a raft but how to like read a river and know how to navigate water and know what hazards are, because, especially in a packraft, it's such...Like you don't want to tear it. Like even in my raft, I don't want to have a tear, but if you puncture your packraft in a significant way it's gonna sink or just be in a really bad spot. And you're going to be...because it is a single chamber and all your gear is in it...Like, that's a huge risk.
**Inmn ** 14:11 So you might just lose every...
**Blix ** 14:13 You might lose everything. And, I think you would have to mess up significantly for that to happen. But, just knowing certain hazards that I've encountered on rivers and things I've heard from other people...The material my boat's made of is this hypalon. It's really thick. Like. I've rammed it into rocks and like, it's been fine, but I also know if you hit things a certain way the like...like it's almost like a knife has cut through your boat. And I just think yeah, it would just be really...I would be really nervous and a packraft because of the single chamber aspect where if it pops, the whole thing is deflating. Whereas with my boat, if one of my tubes pops, I still have another tube that will stay inflated and I could maybe keep getting down the river...and not lose all my gear.
**Inmn ** 15:03 Yeah, yeah. And so I guess with inflatable kayaks, are those usually more durable? Or like have more chambers?
**Blix ** 15:13 They have...Each side is a chamber and then the floor is a chamber. The packraft floor is also...Wow, sorry, I usually take my big boat out, so I'm trying...I haven't taken my packraft out in a minute, but, yeah, it's just a big single chamber. But, I know that they're making very sturdy packrafts that can go down class five, like really intense whitewater, that are super durable and capable boats. And I think the technology is getting better because it's becoming so popular.
**Inmn ** 15:16 That makes sense. Yeah, I imagine in most things, there's the really dinky one that for maybe nothing more than casual water.
**Blix ** 16:02 Yep. No. And it definitely depends. Like, even different companies within the packrafting world use different material. And you can tell just by quality, what's going to be more durable than others. But, inflatable kayaks they are...like you can...We call them duckies. I'm not actually sure why we call them duckies. I've never actually thought about that. Inflatable kayak duckies. But they're very--you can't pack anything in them. So it would just all be shoved at the front of this massive pile. So I think--and also duckies, I don't...They just don't navigate the water as well because they’re so long. They just are very awkward to sit on.
**Inmn ** 16:46 So, what is involved in planning a river trip, whether that's--I guess specifically in a packraft--but in any kind of river transit with camping situation?
**Blix ** 17:01 Yeah, I think it's very similar to backpacking and bike packing in the gear you would take. You can't bring anything super bulky. You have to think about what you can fit in your tubes. A big thing that I look at when I'm planning a river trip are rapids, if there are any, what classes they are. I look at predicted flows of the river, and at what point is it flood stage, and at what point is it too low for me to run it. And this is, I think, more specific for rivers out in the West that are very susceptible to flooding and flash flooding and drying up. And then, I mean, I'm looking at the weather too. Like, do I need to bring rain jackets or food. I don't know. It's really similar to backpacking is the only way I can think about it, where I'm bringing sleeping bags and normal things that I would bring on a trip like that. I think the only difference is water. Like, you're on it so you can just bring some type of treatment to treat it. And then, figuring out where to camp along the river can be complex and complicated as well if there's like private land or, I think again, this is river dependent, if you're in a canyon there's only certain spots you can stop. So, you have to be aware of like, "I have to go this many miles today. I have to," because there are no other places to stop. And, also paying attention to water temperature and how that'll dictate if I'm wearing normal just active clothes or if I'm wearing a dry suit or a wet suit. And then, if it's a multimodal trip, which is if I'm bringing my bike or if it's just solely a river trip to be a river trip. I think also, I mean, you have to bring poop tubes. Like, you're not really allowed to...
**Inmn ** 17:10 Poop tubes? [Confused]
**Blix ** 19:00 Poop tubes. Like a PVC...You can do it yourself, but you can make one out of PVC pipe. Have one enclosed so you can pack out your poop.
**Inmn ** 19:15 Okay. [Realizing what a poop tube is]
**Blix ** 19:16 Yeah, sorry. You have to poop through a tube. [Joking] No, that's not what's going on. But, with bigger rafts and bigger trips we bring something called a Groover, which is this big, basically, toilet so you're packing all that out. Because, if you're all going to the bathroom on like the same beaches and campgrounds and there's not many of them, it turns into a litter box and it's really gross.
**Inmn ** 19:41 I see. I've heard of this on--and maybe it seems like more...Curious on your perspective. So, I've heard of this on especially popular hiking trails and especially multi-day hiking trails that there are spaces where they've literally just become large toilets. And there's so much human shit around buried. It's a big problem ecologically.
**Blix ** 20:12 No, I think I've read a study where I feel like in a lot of national forest and parks the ground is just...they test soil and it always includes human feces, which is deeply disturbing to me. But, I honestly think--and maybe this is a hot take--I think river folks and people who are on the river are really good at packing out feces. And with...Only because--especially in canyons--and maybe this is different out east--but again, there are only these small little spaces that can be used for camping. So again, if somebody shits everywhere, for some reason, people are going to know. And also the National Monument, at least where I work, keeps track of who's camping--because they assigned campsites to people where they can go--so they would probably know the party that like pooped everywhere. And also, they won't let you on the river unless you have a Groover or a way to pack out your feces. Like, they won't let you. They check your gear list. So, it's a highly regulated and permitted activity. For now. That could change. But even then...I...Yeah, you just have to pack out your poop. And then we all pee in the river. That's just what you do. But yeah, I think typically river folks are better than hiking and yeah...There's emergencies, but we're always carrying Wag Bags too.
**Inmn ** 21:49 Wag Bags?
**Blix ** 21:50 It's basically like a dog bag for your own poop, right? Yeah. Yep.
**Inmn ** 22:00 Wow. The river community is certainly, I feel like, better than a lot of other niche sub groups at naming things.
**Blix ** 22:09 Oh, yeah. I think it...Even like rapids where I'm like, "Really? This is...this is what this rapid is called?" Like...
**Inmn ** 22:19 Like what?
**Blix ** 22:22 I think a lot of them are just intense names. But, like one of them's called Schoolboy or like Fluffy Bunny Rapid or whatever the hell. And, it's like this is...Yeah, I don't know. We have, I feel like, nicknames for a lot of stuff, but...I guess it separates us from the other people? [Said unconvincingly] But, I think guides and river folk also get a bad rap for being adrenaline junkie, like really intense, obnoxious people. So, I won't say that it's a perfect community by any means because it's not, but it's definitely creative.
**Inmn ** 23:03 What are some of the dangers of river travel in general, but I guess, you know, specifically we're talking about packrafting or camping as you raft.
**Blix ** 23:13 Oh, man. Yeah, there's a lot. I'm trying to think of what I talk about in my safety talk of things we need to be aware of as people on rivers. I think, in general, with any outdoor activity there's the risks of cuts and bruises and broken bones and infections and just things that can happen day to day even if you're not on a river. So, like camp dangers. Which, I think a big thing with rivers that I see are like injured feet with people taking their shoes off on beaches and then running around and running into the water and getting a stick up their foot. [Inmn makes a horrified reaction noise] Yeah, or cutting their foot on a rock. But, river specific dangers, my own standard is I never want to be in the water. Like, out of my boat in the water. I don't enjoy swimming whitewater. It's a personal project I've tried to work on this past summer by forcing myself to swim in rapids. But, hazards that I think of for packrafting is the same with any other--like even if I was in a big raft I'd be thinking about the same thing--but, Keeper Holes, which is a funny...So think about a huge boulder or rock in a river and there's water pouring over it. There's certain...We call them holes because it creates this like giant space behind the rock where the water is kind of...it can recirculate. And if you fall in, or not fall, but float or are getting carried downstream into one of these, there is a risk that you will not be able to swim out of it where you're just getting recirculated underwater.
**Inmn ** 24:59 I see, yeah.
**Blix ** 25:00 Eternally.
**Inmn ** 25:01 Eternally.
**Blix ** 25:02 Yeah. And, I know you said you have fears about rivers. I don't want to freak you out, but...
**Inmn ** 25:11 No, please.
**Blix ** 25:13 Okay.
**Inmn ** 25:14 Yeah, I have an utter fascination with water and water travel and also a, you know, horrifying fear of water, which is weird because I'm a triple water sign, but moderately terrified.
**Blix ** 25:28 I think it's okay to be afraid of rivers, because when things go wrong, they go wrong very quickly. And you also are on a timeline if someone is in the water, if that makes sense. But, another thing that I think about for hazards is something called a Strainer. So that's when...
**Inmn ** 25:29 Y'all are really good at naming things.
**Blix ** 25:29 I know, I know. It's terrifying. So, it's when a tree or log falls into the river. And, the way I describe it in my safety talk is when you use strainers at home and you dump the water through, the water goes through, but the noodles get stuck, right?
**Inmn ** 26:10 Yeah.
**Blix ** 26:10 We are human noodles.
**Inmn ** 26:12 Oh God.
**Blix ** 26:12 So, when there's logs or sticks, they tend to pile up in the river and create this huge entrapment hazard. So, if you get flushed into one of those, it's pretty difficult to get out. Like, you will probably get trapped. Another thing is something called foot entrapment, which happens when rivers are shallower. And this is when you're in the water and you can feel the bottom of the river and you're thinking, "Oh, I'm gonna stand up to stop myself." So, you stand up. There's tons of rocks and sticks under the water. Your foot can get stuck under them and push you underwater because you're still...like the pressure of the water is still coming on to you. Does that makes sense? [Inmn makes an affirmative sound] So, you don't ever want to stop yourself with your feet.
**Inmn ** 27:01 Okay, that would be my first instinct.
**Blix ** 27:04 Yeah, don't do that. Yeah, that's a huge hazard. It's super easy to avoid. For me, that would be the scariest thing that could happen hazard-wise on a river, as my own person. And...because your instinct is "I'm gonna put my feet down to stand up." Yeah, but I've had close calls with foot entrapment. And, if you have even one of them, you will never do it again, just because of how quick the water will push you under. Super scary. Another hazard...[Laughing. Overwhelmed] I'll just keep going?
**Inmn ** 27:41 Please tell me all of the ways that I can perish on the river. Which will definitely mean that I will try packrafting. [Dry and sarcastic]
**Blix ** 27:49 Yeah. I think you should. It's super fun. I think, again, being aware of these hazards and knowing what to do in situations or read the river. Reading rivers is going to empower you. And I think fear is just a lot of what we don't understand or know, right? And on rivers like--I mean, there's also very legitimate fears of like, "This is fucked."--but, rivers, usually if I can see a log in the river, I know to not go near it. If I'm in the water, I know not to stand up and put my feet down to stop myself. But...
**Inmn ** 28:31 No, that makes sense. That is the line that we keep saying on this podcast is preparedness is all about preparing for things that you're afraid of so that you don't have to think about them anymore because you have a plan. And this seems to just be that.
**Blix ** 28:48 Yeah. No, and I'm terrified of all these things, but I should know what to do if that happens. Yeah, there's... I'm trying to think. Other hazards are like Sieves where it's like rock fall and it funnels you through a really tight space and you can get jammed in there. Undercut walls or rocks is when the water erodes away the space underneath it and creates a pocket for you to get sucked under and into. [Inmn makes noises of terror] I'm so sorry.
**Inmn ** 29:24 You all can't see me obviously. But, I assume I have this look of just visceral terror.
**Blix ** 29:31 Yeah, that's all right. That's...Usually when I give a safety talk, everyone's faces turn from excitement to complete terror. Or, sometimes kids start crying and I'm like, "Okay, let's go have fun on the river today!" Those are kind of the big ones that I can think of off the top of my head besides drowning. Drowning is...You know, cold water is a huge one where if you're In the water and it's freezing, your body is gonna start shutting down. I think you have 10 minutes to like figure it out.
**Inmn ** 30:07 Ten minutes!?
**Blix ** 30:07 Yeah. I think sometimes even less time.
**Inmn ** 30:10 In like what temperature water?
**Blix ** 30:14 Um. Oh geez. I feel like 50 degrees, maybe 60? I think it also is body dependent and how well your body is insulated or able to keep warm. Yeah, there's definitely...Like, the start of my season, I'm wearing a dry suit. Which is...Are you? I guess I could explain?
**Inmn ** 30:38 Yeah, a dry suit keeps you dry. Wetsuit keeps you a little bit wet but in a way that is insulative and warm?
**Blix ** 30:45 Yeah, so like wetsuits work by, you get wet, but the water close to your body, that's contained in the wetsuit, warms up to your body temperature. So, it's keeping you--at least that's how I understand it--so, it's keeping you somewhat warm. Dry suit is a suit you wear that has gaskets over your wrists and neck and your feet. You're completely enclosed in this goretex super suit. You look super cool. But nothing...You could wear street clothes underneath and they would stay perfectly dry.
**Inmn ** 31:17 So you can go LARP [Live Action Role Play] in your like "Dune" LARP?
**Blix ** 31:22 Yeah,basically, it's like a...What is it, still suit? But the opposite. It's not keeping moisture in. Just keeping you dry and warm, hopefully. But yeah. Those are like the hazards I can think of off the top of my head.
**Inmn ** 31:39 And then there's the obvious ones, like anything related to camping or being outdoors?
**Blix ** 31:43 Yeah. And, you know, you probably want to wear a helmet when you're rafting because of impacts with rocks or...You know, like, there's a lot of things that can go wrong once you're in the water, depending on what kind of rapid you're in or anything like that.
**Inmn ** 32:03 Yeah. And there's a thing called swiftwater rescue?
**Blix ** 32:11 Yep, um, I am swiftwater rescue certified. And I think if anyone is doing any type of river activity that you should definitely take the class. I don't know. It's expensive, but the knowledge you gained from it, I think, just keeps not only yourself safe as you can be on the river but everybody else around you. And it teaches you things like wading correctly, you know, throw bag techniques, if you wrap a boat, or how to unpin a raft that's wrapped around a rock potentially, techniques for helping people who are like in a foot entrapment situation, which isn't great, swimming out to people, how to swim in whitewater, or try to swim in Whitewater, how to, if you can't get away from a strainer, what to do if you are coming upon logs and sticks in the water. I will say my swiftwater class kind of terrified me because it just made me hyper aware of everything that could go wrong and then what I would possibly have to do to help somebody. But yeah, super intense class physically and mentally. And, yeah, it taught me a lot. But I do feel like I would be able to help in a rescue situation instead of just being some random person who's like just panicking and being like, "I don't know what to do!" So, that feels good. But I would probably still panic to a certain degree.
**Inmn ** 33:52 That makes sense, because the principle of any kind of first aid or rescue is, "Don't become another patient."
**Blix ** 34:02 Right?
**Inmn ** 34:03 And so, if you're not trained to rescue someone from one of those situations, it might be just more dangerous to try to rescue them.
**Blix ** 34:13 Yeah. And it's frustrating. It makes me think, like, I take a lot of families down the river and there's, you know, small kids. And, parents always make the comment, "Well, if my kid goes in, I'm gonna jump in after them," which is, you know, then me as a guide, I have to figure out in that scenario, possibly, "Am I saving the parent or the kid?"
**Inmn ** 34:14 Yeah.
**Blix ** 34:14 If I can. Obviously, I want to try to save both but...and I always tell parents, "Hey, if you're not trained in swiftwater rescue, I would not recommend jumping out of my raft to help your kid. You're more help to me in this raft than you are in the water trying to help your child."
**Inmn ** 35:02 Yeah. Do you ever just tell them bluntly, "If you do that, then I will be in a situation where I have to choose between which one of you to save."
**Blix ** 35:11 Yeah, no. Yeah, I do tell them that if they're being very serious about it and I also try to remind folks that untrained first responders have a very high mortality rate. Which, it's like, you know, I don't understand because I don't have children, but I've seen people I care about swimming in rapids and of course I want to help them but jumping into whitewater is never a good solution. But yeah, I do tell them, "You're gonna make me have a really hard decision to save you or your child, possibly." So. Yeah, it just makes it more complicated.
**Inmn ** 36:02 To switch gears a little bit, you know, away from all the grim horror...
**Blix ** 36:07 Yeah.
**Inmn ** 36:08 ...And into some more but differently contextualized grim horror. So, one of the big reasons I wanted to have someone on to talk about packrafting is that we have a lot of...I think knowing different ways to travel is incredibly important and, you know, coupled with my fear of water but also my fascination with water and boat travel, is when I saw "Fellowship of the Ring" when I was ten all I could think about was boat travel, boat travel, boat travel.
**Blix ** 36:49 As one does when they watch that movie, more so than anything else in that movie. [Laughing]
**Inmn ** 36:53 Yeah, they really...They really made a fun choice...or Tolkein when writing that and they're like, "And then they got on boats," and it's like holy crap. Incredible. How do I get a boat?
**Blix ** 37:05 How do I get a boat that looks that cool?
**Inmn ** 37:09 How do I get a boat that looks that cool? And, you know, I feel like the boats that they have in that book are, they're made by elves, and so they're kind of packraftish in that they're abnormally light.
**Blix ** 37:24 Yes.
**Inmn ** 37:25 And so they like do--I'm going to use a fun word that I just learned, I think--portage.
**Blix ** 37:30 Yes.
**Inmn ** 37:31 They get the points where they're like, "Yeah, that's a waterfall. I guess we're gonna pick up the boat and carry it around."
**Blix ** 37:37 Yeah. And it's a super light elf boat, so it weighs nothing. I'm sure that one person could carry it, knowing the elves.
**Inmn ** 37:43 Yeah. But, the part that was really interesting to me, too, is the reasons why they took to the river and why I'm interested in learning about packrafting, which is, you know, the big reason that they did that was to sneak past the orcs ,which...or the enemy who had all the roads watched, they had the woods patrolled, and they were suddenly in the situation where they were like, "Well, we got to get there somehow." And so, they took to the river. And so, the thing that I...The piece that I want to bring into the context now is from a situation of preparedness, whether that's preparing for road closures due to the malicious setting of checkpoints or the road is destroyed due to some other kind of disaster...You know, these disasters could be that a right-wing militia has taken over your state, and you're trying to leave that state right, to a more environmentally related disaster has destroyed some kind of key infrastructure, and you are looking for an alternative means to get somewhere. And yeah, I'm curious...I'm wondering if you have ever thought about this and if you have any opinions if...would packrafting help you? Could packrafting be a useful thing in your preparedness kit?
**Blix ** 39:18 Yeah, I've definitely thought about this. I think it...Well, it depends. I think in Arizona, we don't have a ton of rivers that we could--and they all for the most part are like...you know, there is an endpoint. And they are going literally...Like, once you're on the river, you are stuck going that way. I do think because of...Getting to the entry point--I'm just thinking of the Salt river because it's the river that we have here. Also, you could do the Grand Canyon, but that's really intense...
**Inmn ** 39:59 And like maybe our context out here in the west in Arizona is like...It's not specifically what I'm thinking of.
**Blix ** 40:06 Yeah, just in general.
**Inmn ** 40:07 Where, there's obviously other places with much more dense and spread out waterways.
**Blix ** 40:13 Yeah. I think it would be a very quick and efficient way to travel if you had a specific place you're going to along that route because you're not encumbered by like...Like, if people are backpacking or biking, you can't just start cutting...Like, backpacking you could cut right into a forest. But, if I was on a bike, I couldn't just turn my bike off the road and just start riding through a forest. Like, that would be super slow. I'd probably be walking my bike a lot. Whereas with river travel, you can go--I think it's, again, river dependent on the speed of the water and a lot of that stuff...But, I don't imagine that people would be patrolling waterways the way they would do with roads. The only thing I think about is if you're on a river anywhere, you'd have to think about when I need to exit before I get to go past a town or go under a bridge, because I think bridges would be huge points where people would post up at, or entry points into a certain area. So, you'd have to think about when I would need to get off to avoid those places. And then how would I get back onto the river? Can I get back onto it? Is there an access point? I'd be thinking about, you know, are their dams on the way? But yeah, honestly, if I could find a way to get onto the Salt River, I would try to post up in there for a while. Especially during the initial fallout. Because I think, if I can anticipate that and get to the river, I could stay in there with enough food in my packraft to be there for maybe two or three weeks because I have unlimited water for the most part, if the Salt's flowing, but it's a very steep narrow canyon that people can't access very well. But, I do wonder if other people would have the same idea with like, "There's water there. And it's hard to get to."
**Inmn ** 40:14 Yeah, like, that's the interesting thing about it is it provides these weird little--not like short cuts--but these fairly easy routes through a lot of places that could otherwise be hard to access, but you're also then stuck on it. So yeah, it seems like a double-edge sword.
**Blix ** 42:16 It is. And I think, especially with really remote rivers, like even the rivers that I guide on, there's pretty much one way to get in, and then you're in a canyon for a really long time, and there's one way to get out. And like there's a few evacuation points here and there that we've used--they're not great to hike out of--but, I would worry that those sites would also be...Like, would people think to have guards there or set up there to catch people coming down the river? You know? Like, possibly. You know, who knows? I also just...I don't think like...Like, when I think right-wing militia, I feel like they all have jet boats. So, they're not going to be thinking about these little streams and stuff that you can take a packraft on.
**Inmn ** 43:37 Yeah, and there's so many weird small water arrays. You know, not here in Arizona, but...
**Blix ** 43:41 Right. Well, I'm just thinking like Minnesota, there's tons of creeks and rivers and lakes and there's islands in the lakes that are...Like, think places you can get to that you could like...If it's only accessible via water, you could have stashes there that other people couldn't get to.
**Inmn ** 44:02 Yeah. So, a weird dream that I had as a 20 year old oogle.
**Blix ** 44:10 Yes. Perfect. [Laughing]
**Inmn ** 44:15 Was to set up funny little like--I didn't realize that I was thinking about this like being a prepper--I was like, "I want to set up all these like little caches. Like, I want to build these weird sheds with bikes and little like inflatable rafts and food stores underneath them. And so you could just, you know, ride trains or whatever and just end up at the weird little safe house, bunker ,like whatever, cache. I got weirdly obsessed with it. I wish that I had been cool enough to have actually done it, but I absolutely did not. Only fantasized about it.
**Blix ** 44:54 No, I think...I do think it's a great option. I don't think it's the end-all thing that you should completely stick to. I think it should be like a multimodal thing. I think, honestly, backpacking and packrafting is like the best combination. Because, I think about with just backpacking, like what if there is a river you need to cross? Or, a body of water that you have to cross and you don't want to swim with a huge backpack? I don't know. I just...And I don't think people...Like, they're gonna be traveling by road, bikes, cars, like I don't think packrafts are well known enough, currently, that people would be looking for crafts in water, especially in smaller waterways.
**Inmn ** 44:54 Yeah, yeah. And I feel like that is exactly what the Fellowship of the Ring thought.
**Blix ** 45:50 Yes. Yes. I also think...One thing is like, what if the orcs just went to the river edge? They could just pick them off. Like they're moving fast, but I also think you could shoot arrows at them?
**Inmn ** 46:09 So, they did at some point. They only traveled at night to make it harder for them to shoot at them.
**Blix ** 46:14 Yeah, Right. Right. No, it's okay.
**Inmn ** 46:17 But, you know, we do have this dissimilar...We're not on an equal playing field with like bows and arrows in the dark vs the kind of technology that people have access to now with guns and things like that. That would be my first thing is like, if I was going down a major waterway in a canyon, like I would probably not choose this as a way to escape a militia. Like, you're on a canyon wall with a long range gun...
**Blix ** 46:47 Yeah, for sure.
**Inmn ** 46:48 ...And I'm a tiny slow moving object out in the open...
**Blix ** 46:51 Right. No, It's something that I also think about where it would be so easy to just put yourself in a really bad spot if you chose the wrong waterway to go on. Like, I would never be like, "I would use a packraft to travel the Mississippi in those types of times," because I think people would just be near them. I do think though, like, hard to access canyons are still...Like, if you needed to just lay low for a while, would be the place to go. Because, I think the amount of effort it would take to post up on a canyon edge in some of those places is astronomical. Like, no one, I feel like, is going to go--unless you're someone who was really important for people to get to or--like, no one's going to put in that effort, especially in the desert with water being so scarce and like...Yeah.
**Inmn ** 46:52 Yeah, Always fun to think about these, you know...Like, "fun." ["Fun," said in a dry sarcastic and questioning way] These terror fantasies that we might be encountered with in the next decade or...currently of far-right violence and having to figure out creative ways to escape it. But, also always want to think about more environmentally related disasters. Like I think...It's like there's things that I...I get really scared here in the desert. Like, one of the big things that I am scared of is getting physically trapped here if there's like gas and energy crisis.
**Blix ** 48:33 Oh, right. Yes. Yeah.
**Inmn ** 48:34 Figuring out alternative ways to leave--which like, packrafting is not the solution to do that--but thinking about in other places, like, you know, if we're not expecting...like, if our main threat model isn't far-right violence, could packrafting or river travel in general--and maybe we're graduating to the larger raft at this point--could river travel be a helpful thing during other kinds of disasters?
**Blix ** 49:06 I think, well, I think of forest fires, like escaping to a body of water or a canyon is a great way to try to mitigate being trapped in a forest that's literally on fire. Because a lot...hopefully nothing's going to catch on fire in the water. That'd be wild.
**Inmn ** 49:06 Stranger things have happened.
**Blix ** 49:06 Yeah, I know. So yeah, I think as a means to escape forest fires is great. I think the one thing I think about, especially here in the West, is where our water is going to go. And as someone who guides on a tributary to the Grand Canyon, and the Grand Canyon obviously feeding into Lake Powell and Glenn Canyon and all that stuff, people are constantly talking about water and water rights. And, you know, my fear is that we're...People are going to start hoarding. And by people, I mean, companies and government, they're going to hoard water in these giant reservoirs. And, they're not going to release any to fill up canyons and river beds because it's just going to be such a critical resource. And my thought is that when it gets to that point, they are going to shut off the reservoirs from releasing water and they are just going to keep all of it.
**Inmn ** 49:44 Oh no.
**Blix ** 50:18 And, I don't know that river travel will be feasible in the West, except if it's on an undammed river, which there's only...I think the Yampa River, which is a river I guide on, is the last undammed tributary to the Grand Canyon. It is like one of the last wild rivers, which is super susceptible to floods. So, that's another disaster. Whereas with climate change, we're getting these more extreme...Like, they had almost record breaking snowfall in Colorado in the area that feeds into this river. So, the river was flowing at this...It was fine at like 22,000 CFS, which is cubic feet per second. And the way I describe this to people, it's like if I threw a rope from one riverbank to the other, and every second 22,000 basketball sized amounts of water is flowing by.
**Inmn ** 51:35 Wow.
**Blix ** 51:35 Or you could say baby-sized. 22,000 babies are floating by every second. So, it's a ton of water, which being on a river that has that...And so it can be up to, you know, I think the highest flow the Yampa has ever been is like 30,000, which is...I can't even fathom how scary that river would be. But, it can go all the way down to no flow at all. So like, if you can't...if people take out river gauges there's no way of knowing what the flows are going to be for rivers. You would have to show up there with your watercraft and be like, "Well, I hope there's water for me to escape," which I think river travel in the east or a place where there's more water is a better solution than river travel out here in the West. But, as far as natural disasters go and things that could happen, like, if you're trying to escape somewhere due to that, I think we're in a pretty not great place here. Like, the only river I can think of would be going down the Grand. Which is really big water. It ends in...you know, like...You know, like, it's so dependent on...and especially like what if they blow up dams? What if they blow up the reservoirs? Which, what if you're camped along that canyon and someone upstream blows up the reservoir? This is again, all things I've thought about, where it's like, you're gonna get washed away.
**Inmn ** 53:11 Yeah, very true. They did just do that in Ukraine. Russia blew up the largest reservoir in Europe.
**Blix ** 53:20 Oh, wait. Yes. Yeah, I did see that. Yep. So that's something...I mean, it's something I think about where I think people would blow that up, especially if people downstream needed water.
**Inmn ** 53:34 Yeah. Yeah.
**Blix ** 53:38 Sorry this is...[Both making sounds about how grim this all is] But...I know...But, I also think the river lends itself to...You know, like, there's fish. You can eat fish, you can...There's lots of food and really fertile soil that can grow along rivers. So, if you had to post up and figure it out, like, I would want to be close to a body of water.
**Inmn ** 54:03 Thank you for bringing it back to hope and why this could be helpful.
**Blix ** 54:05 Yeah, right. And I think a thing with river stuff as well, and why I love it so much, is it's not an activity that you necessarily want to do alone. In fact, I would like recommend that no one do any river activity alone. But like, you want to be with a community of people on the water, like setting up safety, and sending someone downstream to check that there's no river hazards, and then like having people come through, and you're working as a team constantly. And, you can have people...Like, if someone is injured, someone else could take more gear and like it's...You can carry more things in a pack raft than you could on your back because like--I mean, eventually I think you'd have to carry them on your back--but the water is going to help you with that weight. Or, you can even pull another empty packraft behind you with more gear. Yeah, I think I would very much want to be close to a body or water or a river of some kind.
**Inmn ** 54:07 Cool. Um, I think I...One of my last questions is--I'm expecting the answer to be grim again [Blix makes a disappointing groan]--but I'm curious as someone who like works on waterways in the West, how are they? What are they like with climate change?
**Blix ** 55:26 Oh, yeah. River or the canyons or the water itself?
**Inmn ** 55:33 Everything. Yeah, water and canyons in the West. Yeah, I'm terrified to hear the answer.
**Blix ** 55:42 So, I think I notice...Like, when they had to fill up Glen Canyon, I think it was last year, they did a big dam release from the Flaming Gorge dam, which is up river where I guide. So, I'm kind of hyper aware of when shit is bad downstream because they have to do these big releases. But I know this year was a really good year for rivers, especially the ones I guide on, because of the large snowfall that they got in Colorado. Like, we had really high nice water forever. The rivers were all really healthy. But, I think I've...Two years ago I took a group of politicians from Utah down the river. They were like Congress people. Because my company did it. I wasn't like, "I want to take these people..." No, I would never be like, "I want to take these people down the river." But< the point of it was to show these--they were all men--to show these men that the rivers were worth saving, and not like damming up, not drilling for oil and everything in this area. And the moment we got back in the vans to shuttle back, they started talking about canyons they had seen to dam up along the route we had gone on.
**Inmn ** 57:04 Oh my god.
**Blix ** 57:07 But, I think it's because all the water that I guide on is already owned by somebody downstream.
**Inmn ** 57:18 Okay, like, “owned by” because it gets used?
**Blix ** 57:21 Yes. Like, the Green River gives water to 33 million people. But, it's bizarre to think about water as being something that's owned?
**Inmn ** 57:40 I thought it was like that one thing that wasn't for a while.
**Blix ** 57:43 Same. No, it's coming to light that it has been. Yeah. But, we mention that to a lot of people we take down the river that all this water belongs to somebody else. Like, this is not ours. This is not like our collective water.
**Inmn ** 58:00 Yeah. It's not here for our collective survival.
**Blix ** 58:03 Yeah, no, it's for somebody downstream. Which, I mean, they need water too. But I think it's...honestly the rivers I guide on--and maybe this is again is a hot take--but I am not hopeful that they will flow within the next 10 years. I think as water rights and like water wars become more prevalent, I think states are going to start withholding. Like, I think Flaming Gorge is mostly in Wyoming and they could decide to just not--I think it would have a chain reaction if they decided to not leave water let water out. Because all the farms downstream would die. Blah, blah, blah. People would be without that. But um, yeah. But, I'm also, with climate change, it was odd. Like, the first year I worked there, there was no water, there was hardly any water coming down the river. It was super low. Our boats were getting stuck. And I just became hyper aware of how fucked stuff was for some reason. But then this year was so good for water that I was like, "Oh, maybe it won't be so bad." But then I keep...You know, like I think it really...Who's to say? If they dam up more rivers, which I think they might start, then I think that's going to change the game a lot for river travel and it's going to be really dependent on how much water we have access to.
**Inmn ** 58:03 Yeah, yeah. Which, that's one of the big key problems is not necessarily there being lack of water, but rather that water is being mismanaged or hoarded.
**Blix ** 59:46 Yeah, I think it's a combination of all of that. And where I guide it's desert, but then the valley after the canyon is all alfalfa fields, which is a really water intensive crop. So then and I...Like, they flood their fields. And it's just like this disconnect of this is not like an infinite resource. And, it's interesting to me that that is this...Yeah, there's a whole lot to unpack with water rights and water usage. And, I think that could even trickle to out East. You know, because who's to say that they won't suffer droughts and experience creeks and rivers drying up? But...I know that is kind of a grim answer. But...
**Inmn ** 59:47 The name of the show is Live Like the World is Dying.
**Blix ** 1:00:46 True.
**Inmn ** 1:00:47 Okay. Well, that's about all the time that we have for today. Is there? Is there anything else? Is there anything that I didn't ask you that I should have asked you or that you would really love to bring into the conversation? Or have any last words of hope for the river? Or just like why...Is packrafting fun? Is it just fun?
**Blix ** 1:01:13 It is fun. Yeah, I really want to encourage anyone who's curious about going on rivers or river travel, I love it. Because, I think I mentioned, it's such a community oriented activity versus backpacking and bike packing and other stuff I do that's very, "You're the individual out there fending for yourself," for river stuff I really love because you're always working as a team. You're always trying to keep everybody safe. You learn a lot about yourself. Learning to read rivers, I think, is like a superhero skill. Like, I feel like a tracker. Like, I feel like Aragorn, like, "Oh, I can read this like little miniscule thing that maybe other people missed. And I know..." Like, it's a really cool thing to look at a river and being able to tell what is causing certain waves or currents. Understanding that, I think is...Even if you're just someone who has to cross a river every now then, whether you're backpacking or bikepacking, like being able to figure out the safest place to cross is an important skill to have. But, river river travel and rafting and all that is super fun. Yeah, I would love to have more friends who do river stuff. So yeah.
**Inmn ** 1:01:22 Cool. Well, thanks so much for coming on. And good luck on the river.
**Blix ** 1:02:38 Thank you so much.
**Inmn ** 1:02:43 Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed the show then go packrafting with your bike and then please tell me about it or invite me along to live out my "Lord of the Rings" fantasies. Or, you can just tell people about the show. You can support this podcast by telling people about it. You can support the show by talking about it on social media, by rating, and reviewing, and doing whatever the nameless algorithm calls for. And, you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Our Patreon helps pay for things like transcriptions or our lovely audio editor, Bursts, as well as going to support our publisher, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness is the publisher of this podcast and a few other podcasts, including my other show Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. I'm trying to see how many times I can say the name of the project at one time. But, that is a monthly podcast of anarchists literature. And then there's the Anarcho Geek Power Hour, which is a good podcast for people who love movies and hate cops. And, we would like to shout out some of our patrons in particular. Thank you so much. Perceval, Buck, Jacob, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, anonymous, Funder, Janice & Odell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, S.J., Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Michaiah, and Hoss the Dog. Thank you so much. We could seriously not do any of this without y'all. And I hope that everyone is doing as well as they can with everything that's going on and we will talk to you soon.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn is rejoined by Wōen and Roxanne from the Woven Ends Collective to talk about death, dying, and the work of death doulas.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Woven Ends on Death & Dying pt. II
Inmn 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today again Inmn Neruin and I use they/them pronouns. We're back again this week to finish up our chat with Wōen and Roxy from the Woven Ends Collective to talk about death and dying. I'm not sure exactly where the episode got cut in half, but today we're probably going to hear a lot more about caring for people who are dying and the work of a death doula. Like last week, we're talking about some heavy stuff but in the spirit of building more resilient communities that can prepare for the end times together in all ways. And again, we hope that conversations like this can help shift how people talk about death and dying. And, we don't want to bring this stuff up to either romanticize death or to incite fear of death. It's just going to happen. And I know I would like for my circles to have all the resources that they need when I die. And oh please, god, don't embalm me. I really, really, really want to rot. Does this count as a power of attorney? As we learned last week, no, it does not. Content warning again. At some point we talked about the idea of choosing to die from the perspective of being terminally ill. But before we go into it, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo doo doo [Singing the words like a melody]
Molotov Now 01:48 Yeah, welcome to Molotov Now, a podcast about taking action.
Molotov Now 01:59 In Molotov Now, we analyze and discuss news articles and stories of resistance from around the globe and connect them to our struggles here at home in Aberdeen, Washington.
Molotov Now 02:09 In the spirit of building solidarity between the rural and the urban, we hope to inspire direct action in the face of oppression and to light a fire to find each other in the darkness.
Inmn 02:29 So what is kind of the pathway from like, say that I die tomorrow--I die in a hospital--like what is the pathway between like, I die in a hospital and my friends bury me in our home cemetery? Like, how does the possession of my remains work? Like, in Little Miss Sunshine, are people gonna have to pay to get my corpse? Like, can they get my corpse? Like, how does that work?
Wōen 03:04 Yeah, so you don't...you know, whoever is the designated person, so either the next of kin legally or the legally designated healthcare power of attorney who was also your power of attorney over your disposition, they will have the rights to your body, and you do not have to...If you die at a hospital, you're not going to have to pay to have the body released to you. What normally happens is the hospital will give a family a list of funeral homes, and then from there you'd call the funeral home, then the funeral home will do all the transportation. And then, you often won't even see that exchange from the hospital to the funeral home. You'd go to the funeral home and make arrangements and go from there. But, as the person with the rights, you can do all of that yourself. You can go pick them up and drive them to where they need to be. It's--and this is where like educating around things like bodily care and home funerals is really important--because there are logistical things you need to think about with transportation and caring for the body at home. And so, it can be a little daunting to do on your own, but, you know, if there's a lot of people supporting you, it's actually not very hard. Like, the intimidation factor is the hardest part. And, you know, having a vehicle that can get you home and a space where you can do the burial, those are really the next parts. And we all kind of know inherently how to do these rituals. Like once you enter into that space, it's really beautiful like how people just like fall into these different roles that they feel really confident in. And, yeah. So I would say, you know, if you're not going on that normal mode from hospital to funeral home to cemetery, like having a lot of people involved to care for the process is...Yeah, it's very doable and beautiful.
Inmn 05:52 Cool. Will--this is a weird logistical question, but I feel like this is kind of, you know, what we're here for--like, say, if I die, and I die in a hospital and like, say my family, chosen family, support network, which, you know, whoever it is, and we're trying to do like a home burial and they're not ready to, you know, take possession of my body, like will the hospital hold on to it for a little while? In like a refrigerator? Like, what if they're not ready for it? What if they like...you know, obviously, I just died. Maybe they need a week to deal with it. But, they don't want me embalmed and want to take possession of my remains.
Wōen 06:54 I can't say the exact timeline, I think it's probably a different state by state, but there is a limit on how long a person can stay at a hospital morgue. So that's a good thing to know where you are. But, another good thing to know is that often you can work with funeral homes to just do transportation or cold storage to give you time. And so I think that would be the best pathway is like, "Okay, we're not ready. Let's call a funeral home and just get them to pick our person up and put them in cold storage. And that will give us time to breathe and figure out what we need to do. And then from there, like you can ask them to, you know, transport them to where they need to go or you can pick them up from the funeral home. You can chip away at what the funeral home is offering. And some, you know, sometimes it'll be met with a little resistance. But like, you can have people tasked with advocating, and having more people to negotiate with different parts of the process is really helpful.
Inmn 08:18 Yeah, cool. That is good to know. So I feel like we keep going back to this power of attorney. If I get a medical power of attorney, does that extend to my remains? Like does who has my medical power of attorney also have the rights to the...to my disposition, or?
Wōen 08:50 Yeah, the answer is yes. And, it's important to get a good Advanced Directive. Some Advanced Directives don't have a section for disposition and it's important to get one that does. Because if it doesn't, then that is a situation where there could be like...Yeah, where if it's contested on who has rights, the advance directive could fall short. So, knowing that your Advanced Directive has that part, that section, in it is really important. Not all do and it sucks. So, figuring out that you have the right kind of Advanced Directive, and a lot of them do, but some of the popular ones--like the Five Wishes, which is really popular--it doesn't have that section in there. You can write it in yourself. But, if you're doing it and don't have guidance and have never done it before, that part can be missed. And then yeah. And then you could lose that right if it gets contested or there's a situation. Yeah.
Inmn 10:18 It's so weird that I think that this is like so--and maybe this is part of it is that in my head all of these decisions are these weird legal red tape or I'm like...I'm surprised to hear and, you know, grateful to hear that my friends could just get my body and do whatever...like, do what--not whatever they want with it...Like, hopefully do what I want them to do. [Everyone laughing] But, it's dispelling this myth that I have died and the State owns me, that the State owns my body and the State determines what happens to it. Like, I had this question for y'all where I was like, "Okay, but how do I get my...like...How do I get the name that I go by, and that people know me in the world by, on my tombstone instead of my legal name?" And it's like...it's...because in my head the Social Security Administration is who sends the form to the stone carver to make that and I'm like, "Why do I have these these weird myths in my head about, like, who owns my body?"
Wōen 11:40 I mean, because we live in...Like, when we're, you know, quote unquote, "healthy," we're dealing with that every day. Like people owning our time. You know, the Capitalist...Yeah, the Capitalist greed has infected all parts of our body. Yeah, it's really easy to assume that it will affect us after death too. Yeah. And on your note about your stone, like a headstone, yeah, you can put whatever you want on it, honestly. Like, it's up to you and the stone carver and the cemetery. There's no law or regulation around that. It's whoever has the rights of disposition.
Inmn 12:35 Yeah, yeah. And I know, Wōen, that you have to go in a second, so I just have this one last question. And, you know, maybe this is more of a Roxy question or...I don't know. So, I can have a home burial. Can I? Can I die at home? Are there complications to me--like legal complications for my friends--to like...Say, I'm having some kind of medical emergency, and my friends know in my power of attorney that I don't want anything done, that there are interventions that are...like that I've like excluded, like CPR or anything, and I'm in a situation where I need CPR. If they watch me die, is that legally complicated for them?
Roxanne 13:30 No, actually. Well, I mean, it could be in the way that there would have to be a lot of proving different things. But it's not illegal to die at home. It's also not illegal to choose death. So maybe slight content warning, you know, it's not illegal to choose to die. And, you don't put other people at risk for any kind of weird legal things for being present when, for example, if someone chose to die and you were there, that's not a legal issue.
Wōen 14:20 Yeah, yeah. Just to, you know, be mindful that if there isn't a doctor involved or, you know, ongoing palliative care, like hospice, it's considered to be unexpected in a way. So, whenever, like, say you die at home, whoever finds you or that's there, they need to call emergency services, EMS, and usually, you know, you can tell them to come quietly with their lights off, but they'll need to come. And if there isn't a clear, you know, reason or like you can't, you know...Often the medical examiner, or always the medical examiner, will need to be there if there isn't a doctor involved. And then that often means that police can be there too. So it's, you know, if you have the choice to plan on that, just everyone involved, you know, in planning, like create a complete safety plan around that. Because, that will be the response that EMS will need to come and sometimes the police too.
Roxanne 15:53 And the situation really varies. Like in Washington State, I volunteer doing medical aid and dying support. So I go and sit with people who have a terminal diagnosis that have been given six or less months left to live and they ingest a medication that ends their life. So like in those situations, you know, doctors have signed off on it. People know. But, folks are absolutely dying at home. And, we have loose terms around what "home" is in that case. But yeah, and in those situations, for example, maybe a patient did have hospice, we'll call hospice. Otherwise, you know, we'll call the medical examiners or you like...You have to notify someone. But yeah, dying at home--and honestly, I know that this can also be like an issue of resources, and this could be a complicating statement--but I feel like if it is possible, and you feel safe to die at home, and the people that are in your home feel safe with you dying at home, that to me, that is a really ideal scenario and is a really comfortable and safe and nice place to no longer have to exist in.
Inmn 17:32 Yeah, yeah. Do you have to go, Wōen?
Wōen 17:35 I do. Thank you so much.
Inmn 17:38 Yeah. If there's any kind of last things that you want to say before you go or like anything you want to plug...But also, we didn't really get into this as much and I would love to have you back on to talk about this, but would love to at some point have you back on to talk more about grief and like mourning. If that's something that you want to talk about. Not now but at a later situation.
Wōen 18:09 Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think we both would have a really awesome perspective on that. Probably different. It's all different. So. Yeah, that'd be sweet.
Inmn 18:27 Yeah. Great. Great. Well, thanks so much for coming on.
Roxanne 18:31 Yeah, yeah. Hope you have a beautiful day and that it's not too hot. See you.
Inmn 18:41 So I wanted to kind of double back on this question that came up before and it's...Yeah, I guess that it's a little unrelated to this, but we keep going back to the medical power of attorney. I feel like this is like the golden point of the episode is get a power of attorney.
Inmn 19:08 And does my hospital debt also pass on to my power of attorney or does that? How does hospital debt work? Like, if I die and there are unpaid hospital bills like what happens? Where does that go?
Roxanne 19:08 Yes.
Roxanne 19:44 Yeah, that's a great question. I don't fully have the answer to that. It wouldn't just go to someone because they're your power of attorney. That would be more like the person who has control of your assets. So, yeah, in those scenarios, the person who has financial control would be the one that would then, you know, is supposed to settle up. But I, honestly, that's not my powerhouse. So I'm not totally sure. Yeah. Yeah, I don't have the answer to that. I'm so sorry. Oh,
Inmn 20:46 No worries. You know, I'm here to...I love bringing up questions even if it, even if there's no clear answers to them
Inmn 20:55 I was thinking of the situation where, you know, I do love my family. I don't think I want them controlling my remains, which is...I don't think my family listens to the show. So, hopefully, they didn't hear that. But, let's say I, you know, if I, you know, if I hated my family, then, I'm imagining this situation where I've given my medical power of attorney and the rights to my disposition to, you know, my chosen family. And then...but, financially that my assets are still tied to my next of kin. So, I could give all the good parts to my friends and then shirk that debt off on my piece of shit family. Which, you know, that's a hypothetical. I love my family. All my families.
Roxanne 20:55 Totally.
Roxanne 21:57 Yeah, that's a spicy...That's a spicy suggestion/question. I like it.
Inmn 22:05 Yeah. Or, I don't know. It makes me think about like, I had a friend who--this was years and years ago--and I think we were all 22 or something, and they were like, "Oh, I have to go sign these weird documents today." And I was like, "Oh, why?" And they're like, "Oh, my friend is making me the trustee for their life insurance policy." And I was like, "Oh, a 22 year old is getting a life insurance policy?" And they're like, "Yeah, So, if this person accidentally dies, like, I will get a million dollars." And I was like, "Yeah, that is...Okay. Yeah. How do we,"--not how do we scam death because that's not what's going on--but like, I'm wondering, thinking about how do we set people up for if something does happen to us, that instead of inheriting debt, they're getting money or something? I don't know.
Roxanne 23:09 Definitely. And there are people thinking of that. And I think it's so cool. And yeah, I think that that could be a really great way to resource a community also, you know? Being like, okay, death is inevitable. Some of us are going to die younger than others. As many of us as we possibly can, like, maybe we should be all throwing together and have kind of like a big mass life insurance thing pool where everyone...You know, to make sure everyone can get a policy. And within that you can, you know, ask that those funds go into whatever community project or, you know, or to people that, you know, that could really benefit from that resource. Yeah, I think that that's really smart. And the cool thing, too, is, you know, obviously, depending on state and depending on the policy, it covers all different kinds of death, including chosen death. And that's not always true. But, there are many cases in which that is true. You just have to have the policy for a certain amount of years or, you know, there's circumstances in which that's also the case, which I think is good to remember.
Inmn 24:41 Yeah. Which it's like, obviously, I would...I'm gonna put all of, as many resources as I can, into people in my community not dying. But...
Roxanne 24:52 Yes.
Inmn 24:53 But, we are, you know, like you said, we are all going to die and unfortunately we do live in a rapidly changing world, and a world that has always been, you know, very dangerous for queer people, for trans people, for people of color, for disabled people, for, you know, all of these different kinds of people. And I...It's like, I never...I just never want...I never want to see a mutual aid or crowdfunding request for extreme funeral expenses, you know? And, because it's like that...it's obviously important to be able to mourn someone and celebrate someone in the ways that they want it or in not rushed ways or in ways that aren't financially ripping people's lives apart. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, just some things to think about.
Roxanne 26:05 Totally. Yeah, definitely.
Inmn 26:09 To switch gears a little bit, you have spent a lot of time hanging out with people while they're dying, and I'm wondering if you wanted to talk about that a little bit. I feel like I don't have any super specific questions around that. But, it's something that I'm...something that I'm very unfamiliar with and wish I--I mean, I don't wish that people that I was close to were dying--but, you know, I always want tools for navigating those experiences when they do happen.
Roxanne 26:49 Yeah. So I feel like getting to spend time with people in their last few moments is such a special and specific form of intimacy that can't really be recreated. You know, I feel like death workers tend to--and I've also been guilty of this myself--just talk about, like, how beautiful the, you know, this process is and what a gift it is to get to be in the space. And, I believe and agree with all of that. And, I also know that for grieving people, it doesn't always feel beautiful to watch your loved one...You know, maybe their body looks different than you're used to. Or, you know, like to watch someone go through this, sort of change, this metamorphosis. doesn't always feel special and beautiful to people when they're grieving. So I don't...I don't want to negate the heaviness of it. But, I think, you know, in a way, it is really beautiful and it is really special. And, you know, they say that hearing is the last thing to go, so something that I always urge family members, when they're in the room with someone who seems like, you know, like they can't interact with you, they're just breathing and, you know, you can't really like have much interaction with them, is just to talk to them and tell them the things that either, you know, last words that you wish that you could tell them or I think oftentimes dying people want permission, want permission to die. And, you know, if people can, I really encourage them in those last moments, those last bits, to just like, you know, to release someone from this, from this Earthly existence. And I don't, you know, I have...I am not going to speak to whether or not we just die, whether or not there's an afterlife, or, you know, that's not my wheelhouse, but I do know that it feels so nice to know that someone is letting you know that it's okay to go. You know? And, that, you know, people are going to be okay. Like what a relief and what a gift that can be to someone. Yeah. And the whole point of all of this, including, you know, the Advanced Directives and having your disposition stuff figured out, all of this is just to set us up to be able to provide the people that we love more time and space to grieve in ways that feel appropriate for them. You know, the more decisions we make for them about how to deal with the fact that we've died. That's just offering up so much space. And then, people get to really be in their process if, you know, if they can. Sometimes it takes people years to grieve. But, you know, as much as we can set them up for success, I think that's the best case scenario.
Inmn 31:07 Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I know the answer to this, but just to vocalize that as a question, like, is it important for a death doula to be close to the person that they are providing end of life care for? And...Or how would, how would you phrase those words, What terms? What terms would you use?
Roxanne 31:34 I guess I want to make sure that I understand the question. Like, do you mean physically close? Or do you mean, is it important that the death doula be in relation and community with that person?
Inmn 31:50 The latter. Yeah.
Roxanne 31:51 Yeah, definitely not. I think that that is a wonderful scenario. And when that can happen, like, what a beautiful gift and the depths that you can go to together in like figuring out this process is just like, even better. But I think, you know, sometimes people really want someone who's kind of removed. Because, some of this, sadly, is our transactional decisions. And sometimes it feels a little too close to home or someone can't be fully honest with someone that they know really well and they want sort of...kind of like a stranger buffer, kind of like why some of us choose therapists, you know? Like, you want this kind of like outside resource that you can reflect and say things that you might not want to say to someone that you really love, you know? I think that it can be a similar thing. So, you know, I think it's great when it can happen, that it be someone that you're close to. And I also understand why some people want it to be a stranger. There's benefits to both.
Inmn 33:25 Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's...I feel weird to bring this component into it. And I don't really remember these books. And I've also heard that the author is questionable, like a lot of people in the world. But, there was this concept that, you know, I'm half remembering from a book. Have you ever read "Speaker for the Dead?" [Roxanne makes a sound of negation] It's this book by Orson Scott Card, who...Yeah, I don't know, maybe there's questionable things, I don't know. But it proposed this, you know, this concept of this person who was this speaker for the dead and this person's role was to go around and facilitate these rituals or these processes around people who had died and, you know, they're pointedly like, not even necessarily part of that community. And, you know, they've maybe never...they've probably never interacted with even like the living person. And I, you know, I found that concept super interesting and alluring when I was 12 and reading these books, which is ultimately not really what that book was about, but the concept of a "speaker for the dead" or like...that's maybe not even necessarily like what a death doula is...It was just super interesting and intriguing to me.
Roxanne 35:09 Yeah. Yeah, that sounds really cool. The thing that I thought of when you said that was just thinking about like feeling cautious around some of that, like as a white person, making sure that you are not walking into communities of color and trying to tell them how to grieve and what a funerary process can look like and things like that. So yeah, I think it's interesting to think about, like, the outsider piece. And also, yeah. Sounds like that's not what the book was saying. But that's what it brought up for me. Just thinking about...Yeah, I know, I keep mentioning how death work and birth work are so similar, but I think both things have historically been, you know, really white washed, and have been given to more privileged communities, you know? Like, many good forms of care are saved for extreme privilege. But, hopefully we're changing that.
Inmn 36:44 Yeah, yeah, totally. Um, one kind of like, I guess, you know, post-life death mourning celebratory experience--flailing for words--Turns out our culture doesn't have a lot of words for talking about these things. Maybe that's part of the problem. Yeah. But like, one thing that I've heard about--I've never experienced one--that I was always like...that sounds amazing. And, you know, I'm not part of this culture. So, you know, I'm not gonna have one or anything. I just think it's beautiful, is the idea of second lines, which are a thing in New Orleans. I don't know if they're specific to New Orleans. Do you know much about second lines? I feel like I'm bringing up a concept...
Roxanne 37:34 They're so beautiful. Yeah. I don't feel like it would be appropriate for me to really explain it, because it's also not my culture, but I think that it's such a--I have seen second lines--and I think that it's such a beautiful and, you know, joyous way for community to come together and mourn and grieve together and dance and scream. And yeah, it's such a beautiful ritual. That is what I can say about it, is that it's absolutely such a beautiful ritual. Yeah, and I hope that, you know, we can think of and create more and more beautiful rituals as we go along on ways to both celebrate and grieve at the same time, because those two things really, you know, joy and grief really love each other. We often treat them as opposites, but they are...Because of one, we have the other. And, it's such a beautiful blend.
Inmn 37:35 Yeah, yeah. I feel like this is getting into a territory that I absolutely want to talk about more, but I also really want to have y'all back on at some point to talk about mourning and grieving and kind of like post-death experiences.
Roxanne 39:12 Would love to do that.
Inmn 39:14 Wonderful. So yeah, I don't want to get into it too much. But um...Yeah, are there any other kinds of things about kind of like death doulaing...death--being a death doula, that you want to bring into this into this conversation? I'm sorry, I don't have any...I'm super intrigued by it, but I don't have any super specific questions.
Roxanne 39:39 Yeah, totally. You know, the thing that I think I would talk more about but I don't exactly know how to really get it going is to talk about "Death with Dignity," sort of. Like, "Right to Die," stuff, because it is really changing in this country right now. And, it's really exciting. And, there are definitely aspects of it that are contentious. But, I feel really privileged to be someone that has gotten to experience this pretty extreme form of autonomy and self-direction that I find really inspiring and intense and brave. And, I don't really know...You know, it's like my role and capacity as someone who sits with people making these choices isn't as a death doula. It's just as a volunteer, a member of a community, who deeply believes and advocates for the fact that people shouldn't have to die alone. And I think because of this specialization thing that we've touched on a few times, people don't feel confident dying or sitting with people while they die, or, you know, all...pretty much all of the things that we've been talking about in this episode. And I think the more that we're educating each other, the more that we're talking about these things as a community, asking questions, the more confident we will be in approaching these situations and making autonomous, and educated, and self-directed decisions for ourselves. And, that's really the point here is autonomy and self-determination. And as a queer, as an anarchist, you know, like, all of the things that that feels like such an important place, that we're not just trying to figure out the things in our life, but that we're also figuring out those things in our death.
Inmn 42:22 Do you--God, this is a weird question--but do you have any tips for people who are...who are sitting with people who are dying, or holding space or like caring for people who are dying, who, you know...people who aren't death doulas? Like say, that person's friends and loved ones.
Roxanne 42:46 Totally. Like someone sitting with their grandmother, for just an example or something like that, you know, ask questions, if at all possible. If verbal communication is a possibility, I would ask questions. Touch. Touch each other. I feel like that's such a powerful gift and tool that we can use. You know, I think because we lack the confidence in death and dying, you know, it's almost like, "Oh, somebody just died, Like, I'm not allowed to touch them," like it becomes a crime scene or something. And that's not the case. When my father died, I absolutely climbed into bed and just laid next to him for a long time. And, that felt like such an important part of my healing process. And that might not be true for other people, but yeah, I really encourage people to really, as much as they feel comfortable, to be hands on, ask questions, and if it seems like, you know, if this is a consenting situation. You know, I recorded my dad breathing a lot. Just so that way I could have something when I felt like I really needed that, that I could go back to and listen. And yeah, I think...Yeah, asking questions, inviting vulnerability where you have capacity for, and asking for help. If you need help, that's okay. And I feel like sometimes, you know, sometimes we feel like, "I'm the only one that can handle this." I feel like so often in grief, we really feel like we're the only ones that have been through a situation. And there might be specifics to what we're going through that are specific to our individual situation. But, the more and more people you talk to about this, you know, like, most people have lost someone, have been through some kind of stage of grief. And even if we feel alone, we're not actually alone. And when we find the capacity to open up and let other people into that space of grief with us, you'll find that there are so many people that can share similar experiences with you. But you know, that's all when people are ready.
Inmn 45:27 Yeah. Yeah, totally. I like...I'm gonna have a weird moment of vulnerability and honesty with...the world. But, you know, like, I, when I've had people who I have been close to die, like, I have noticed that I like...I shut down a little bit. And it's hard for me to understand how to interact with someone, I think, you know, because of this, like this weird divide that we have around death, this thing where it's like, "Do we do we talk about it? Do we talk about this person dying? Like, you know, with that person?" And I think this thing that I always wonder is I'm like, "What do people want?" Like that...What have you found people want when they're dying? When they're sick? When they have terminal conditions that everyone is aware about? Like? Yeah, what? What do people want? What I imagine they don't want are these awkward conversations where no one's really talking about it or people are hyper focusing on it. And like, I get caught in the...Like, where's the middle ground between those things? And like, personally, I'm like, I don't know, I can be--not like blunt--but just like super willing to talk about awkward things that are in the room. Yeah, I don't know. That's a weird, broad question. But yeah, what do people want when they're sick? Or?
Roxanne 47:08 Yeah, I think that's a great question. And obviously, it's gonna depend person to person. And because of that, I think really just, you know, use your active listening skills and follow their lead. It's absolutely okay to ask questions. I feel like, in some instances, people really want to talk about what's going on with them, or the things that they're scared of, or resolving some aspects of conflict. And sometimes, people want to act like it's not happening at all, you know? And sometimes...And a part of that is people holding out, you know, some form of hope that at the, you know, at the 11th hour, something's gonna come in and change their situation. And there's a lot of different reasons for how engaged people do or don't want to be. But, I think it's always okay--You know, people are so worried about saying the wrong thing. And I don't really think that that's...I don't really think that that's possible. I think that as long as you're approaching someone with love, and compassion, and you're not pushing anything, if you get the impression, or someone says that they don't want to talk about something, let them be the guide and don't push it. But, I think oftentimes, you know, people might not want to, you know, constantly be harboring on, you know, the terminal cancer that they have or something. So, you can ask them about aspects of their day that brought them joy, you know? It doesn't have to be--just because someone's dying, that's not the end of their life, until they die. So, you know, there's still a lot of room for joy, and connection, and intimacy that has nothing to do with the inevitability of their situation. And, you know, I think that's true for for grieving people too, which maybe we'll touch on in the future, but I feel like when someone has someone close to them that dies, you know, people might not--oftentimes people don't talk to them about that because they're worried about, you know, bringing up something that feels hard or, you know, they just don't--people are scared of not having the right thing to say. And I think that, you know, asking questions and allowing people space to communicate their needs and desires. And, you know, for me, when I'm sitting with patients' families after they die, one of my favorite questions is to ask them about a story or like to ask them to tell me something that they really loved about that person. And that's, that can be like a really special moment because people, you know, we all like to brag on our people and bring that softness into the room and give people the opportunity to just really express gratitude and joy around the thing that they're, that they're gonna miss. Yeah.
Inmn 50:43 Yeah, yeah. It feels like this isn't, you know, too much of a surprise, but from everything that you've just described, it seems like the best way to interact with people is to continue treating them like a person and having these humble and inhuman interactions in ways that you, you know, in the ways that we hope that we're interacting with or treating loved ones in all parts of our life already.
Roxanne 51:18 Exactly.
Inmn 51:20 But, it's like when death is suddenly a factor, when sickness is suddenly a factor, it's like something changes. And I don't know, does that, does that feel true? Or, I guess, that's something I experience, so I guess it's true. But like, yeah, what do you have to say about that?
Roxanne 51:46 Yeah, I think it can change. And I think that keeping our eyes on how those things are changing, you know, is important. Like, maybe you have a close friend who's dying. So, obviously it feels like something is changing. But again, like, as we just said, like treating those people like people, asking about their day, you know, the more kind of mundane things, and yeah, I guess, like...I guess what I was thinking is like, questioning, like, you know, potential for internalized ableism around how things are changing, or why they're changing, and making sure that we aren't projecting that change on to someone unnecessarily. Because things are changing, all the time, every day, in every situation, for all of us. Whether we're facing an imminent life ending situation or not. Yeah, maybe that's not exactly the question that you were asking, but...
Inmn 53:09 Oh, no. Yeah, I think that definitely covers it. I thought of this other thing while you were talking about that that was, I feel like, it's like, maybe the thing that changes sometimes is like, when someone, when we know that someone is sick or going to die, or likely going to die, or it's a question in the room, it's like a--this is not the word that I want to use, but I don't know what other word to use--It's suddenly like they are like...God, I really don't want to use this word. Really gonna try to think of another one. Not like a pariah, but like, it's like they're like...It's like a--I can't think of another word to use, so I'm just going to use it--and obviously this word has like different contexts--but it's like almost like an othering experience where like, this person is suddenly just something else. And--or like an alien. That's also not the word but like...
Roxanne 54:24 Fragile? Is it fragile?
Inmn 54:26 Yeah, maybe fragile?
Roxanne 54:28 Yeah, I think, you know, giving space for the potential of fragility makes sense. But, I think it's also really important to not treat people like they're fragile just because they're dying or just because they're extremely sick, unless they have signified to you that that is a way that they want be interacted with. You know? I think I've definitely heard that a lot, especially from, you know, I was an oncology nurse for a long time. And I feel like I heard that a lot of my oncology patients were just being like, "Yes, I have cancer. Yes, I'm fucking dying. No, I don't want to be treated like I'm, you know, suddenly incapable of making decisions for myself or like everything is gonna hurt me or..." you know? Like, yeah, they're the--I think that it is really, you bring up a really good point about the othering aspect, and I think that that's like, from my understanding, a lot of what disability justice stuff is working on, is trying to shift the narrative of that othering. And, because...
Inmn 56:02 Yeah, because that's like, that's a big thing for disability communities in our society is that they kind of get othered in this way or like...
Inmn 56:15 I don't know, is that...We don't have a ton of time, but I would love to, if you have anything to say about bringing kind of that lens into this conversation of death, dying, and the conjunction with disability. It could be a larger conversation...Yeah, it could be an entire...
Roxanne 56:15 Yeah.
Roxanne 56:36 It could be its own...That is a very very large conversation. But, I think as far as how we treat each other, just yeah, really following people's lead and believing them when they say how they do or don't want to be treated. And that's true for all forms of living. That's true for all forms of dying, you know? Just making sure that we're checking ourselves, not projecting our own sense of urgency on each other, and just letting those people--meaning in this situation, people that are dying--you know, direct how things go. And yeah, there's really so much that can be said on that topic. And I'm so happy that you touched on it.
Inmn 57:35 Yeah, I feel bad just touching on it. But it's kind of like where the conversation ended up flowing. But, which...Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I guess what I would just love to say about in this more brief context is that it seems like a lot of things that are applicable to the world of death and dying are things that disabled people have been talking about for a very long time already and like doing a lot of work around. Obviously, they're not the same things, but they're, seems like there's similar things that come up in both of these situations. And yeah, we should do a different other episode about that whole conversation.
Roxanne 58:34 Yeah, there's so much to be said. And this is a really important thing to talk about. So yeah. Mhmm.
Inmn 58:43 Yeah. Um, with that, we are kind of coming up on the end of our time for this, what turned into a two-parter episode, as much as I would love to make it a three parter episode, I probably can't talk for another hour. But yeah, obviously, I would love to have you and Wōen, and or like other people from Woven Ends to come back on and like talk about grief and mourning and celebration even. Yeah, and I just want to mention this because it's a piece--obviously, we could do a whole episode about this too. There's so many things to talk about. But, so you used to do a workshop about death and dying. And, that's actually what got me interested in doing this episode is that I went to one of these workshops, you know, years and years and years ago. And, as we've been doing this podcast, it's been this constant question in my mind, is like, "How do we prepare for death as a community?" And you know, maybe we can do an episode in the future that's just about that. But, there's this little piece from it that I just want to bring into this conversation that I, you know, probably could have gone in a different spot of the talk. But, obviously, we need to...The important thing is to have conversations as a community about death, about dying, about preparing to die, or preparing to get sick, or preparing to have some large life changing thing happen. And one of the things that that brought up for me was this idea that like, you know, a lot of people, especially queer and trans people, have some amount of separation between their lives and their biological family or the family that raised them, and these worlds can look very different. Like, a lot of us can build these separate worlds where we're these two different people depending on how out we are to our biological families or families that raised us. And, it brought up this big thing for me where I was like, "Oh, one big conversation that I need to have with my friends and my chosen family is how to talk to the people that raised me and my biological family, like two groups of people that I love, but two groups of people that I have very different and separate relationships with. And, you know, for other people, thinking about things like, does your...if your chosen family and your biological family, if they have to interact, does your biological family or the people that raised you, like, do they know what name you go by? Do they know that you're queer? Do they know that you're trans? Do they know that...Like, what gaps in information are there and having conversations with your friends now about like things that they might have to deal with if you get sick or die, in having those conversations with people who might--Like it might be great and civil and wonderful and everything goes really, really well and it's really joyous. Or, it might be incredibly conflictual and difficult. And, yeah, not really a question. Just a piece that I really wanted to bring it into the conversation.
Roxanne 1:02:43 Yeah, definitely. And like, yeah. I think as much information as you can give your chosen family about how you want those interactions to go, you know. Some people are, you know, out to their community, but aren't out to their family and would like to remain not out to their family. And, that's okay. And, I think as a form of respect, you know, people need to use names and pronouns that are consistent with what someone is asking for in those situations. And, again, that is one of the many reasons why these conversations are so important. And again, just to keep plugging Advanced Directives, is why Advanced Directives are so important. And, you know, if we can write down even--if for some reason you don't feel like you can have those conversations with your family or your community, you know, you can write it down and, and give someone a sealed envelope that's like, "In case I die, please read this. This is how I want things...This is how I want to be talked about. This is how..." you know, because I believe and really trust at the end of the day that people want to honor you in the ways that you want to be honored and do really want to respect you and make decisions that are good and safe for the individual as well as the community.
Inmn 1:04:33 Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, do you have any other last last things to say, anything that we didn't talk about, any questions that I should have asked you that I didn't?
Roxanne 1:04:46 I don't think so. I just want to thank you so much for opening the space. I know that it is really a hard thing for people to talk about. You know, when we talk about death, generally, it's hard not to think about death, specifically, in our own circumstances. And, dealing with the fact that other people die means that we have to deal with the fact that we're going to die. And yeah, it just feels really special to be in communication with you about this. And yeah, I just, I feel really grateful that y'all were willing to open the space and this dialogue. And yeah, I just, I really feel like it's important. And, yeah, special. And I feel so grateful. Thank you so much for this.
Inmn 1:05:46 Yeah, totally. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. I love talking about these things. And I'm so glad that there's people doing so much really amazing work around opening up these spaces and maintaining these spaces. And yeah, yeah. I don't know. Obviously, the work that you've already done to do that has made it so that I want to bring these conversations into this space of community preparedness. So yeah, thank you.
Roxanne 1:06:22 Yay.
Inmn 1:06:23 Is there anywhere on the internet that you would like to be found or that Woven Ends would like to be found? The answer can be, "No. Don't find me."
Roxanne 1:06:39 Currently, no for Woven ends, and honestly, no, for me too, I do have an old death doula Instagram account that I used to refer people to, but I don't really use it. It's not a good resource tool. So, no.
Inmn 1:06:59 I love it. I love when people can't be found and shouldn't be found on the internet.
Roxanne 1:07:05 But if people have dire questions--Gosh, we really should have some kind of email or something. Maybe I can send that to you?
Inmn 1:07:18 Yeah. Yeah, we can put some stuff in the show notes.
Roxanne 1:07:21 Some sort of way for people. Yeah. Because I don't. Yeah. If people want to, I don't have a quick like, "Here's my Twitter handle."
Inmn 1:07:35 Thank God. Yeah. Got it. Yeah, if you have anything, send it to us. We'll throw it in the show notes. The episode is not going to come out for a couple weeks, probably. Yeah. Cool. Thank you so much for coming on. And we will see you and Wōen back, hopefully soon, to talk more about this.
Roxanne 1:07:58 Definitely. Thank you. Have a good day.
Inmn 1:08:07 Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please live like you will die. Because we all will. But more importantly, talk to your community, your families, your friends, your ancestors, about death because having these conversations doesn't have to be scary and having them now can really make a difference in other's lives and for our end of lives. You should also tell people about the show, you can support this podcast by telling people about it. You can support this podcast by talking about it on social media, by rating, and reviewing, and doing whatever the nameless algorithm calls for. Feed it like a hungry God. But, if you'd like to support us in other, sillier ways that don't involve feeding a nameless and mysterious entity, you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Our Patreon helps pay for things like transcriptions, our lovely audio editor, Bursts, as well as going to support our publisher Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness is the publisher of this podcast and few other podcasts, including my other show Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, a monthly podcast for anarchist literature, and the Anarcho Geek Power Hour, which is the podcast for people who love movies and hate cops. And, we would like to shout out a couple of our patrons in particular. Thank you, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, Funder, Jans, Oxalis, Janice & O'dell, Paige, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, Shawn, SJ, Page, Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Cat J., Staro, Jenipher, Eleanor, Kirk, Sam, Chris, Michaiah, and the eternal Hoss the Dog. We could not do this without y'all and I love how wacky and long this list is getting. I love it so much. Thank you so much. And I hope that everyone is doing as well as they can with everything that's happening. And I hope that this conversation, I don't know, gets you talking with your community or just instigates some stuff, some good conversations about something that is weird and scary. Take care, and we'll talk to you soon
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn is joined by Wōen and Roxanne from the Woven Ends Collective to talk about death, dying, death work, and everything from how to determine who gets to make decisions about your end of life, to how to have your remains dealt with in the manor that you would like, to how to bring community collaboration into death. Next week, they continue the conversation, focusing mostly on the work of death doulas.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
**Live Like the World is Dying: Woven Ends on Death & Dying Part I **
**Inmn ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host for today Inmn Neruin and I use they/them pronouns. Today we're talking about something that we sort of reference all the time on the show, and that is death, a thing that we should all live like is going to happen someday. Because it is. I wanted to have Wōen and Roxy on to talk about this because I found myself thinking about it more and more as things change evermore rapidly in our world. And, I think it's cool to talk about because it's just another form of community preparedness that we can all engage in to make our end of lives easier for ourselves and for the people that we care about, and in general, just demystify the topic as we figure out how to leave this world, whether that pertains to navigating funerary industries, medical industries, legal logistics, medical interventions, the choice to die at home, how to have home burials, how to care for the dying, and how to have these conversations as a community. A content warning, obviously, we're going to be talking about some heavy stuff, and we approach it with some amount of levity, but we do talk at some point about the idea of choosing to die from the perspective of terminal illness. But before we get into it, we are a proud member of Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts, and here's a jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo doo doo. [saying these sounds like a song melody]
Wōen
**Inmn ** 02:43 And we're back. Thanks, y'all so much for coming on the show with us today, especially to talk about a subject that I feel like is like a little bit more grim than we usually talk about. Or, I guess we kind of always always talk about it, but we never actually talk about it. So yeah, would you like to introduce yourselves with your names, pronouns, and kind of like what you do in the world?
**Wōen ** 03:17 My name is Wōen. I use he/him pronouns. I work in grave care, so burial, and generally any rot-honoring practice that I can help with.
**Roxanne ** 03:41 And my name is Roxanne. I am a nurse and have been doing end of life, and death doula sort of work outside of that, for maybe 15 years or so. Yeah.
**Inmn ** 04:01 Cool. And y'all are part of a collective that kind of specializes in this kind of work. Would y'all want to introduce that now or we could talk about it later?
**Wōen ** 04:17 Yeah, no, we can introduce it now. Our collective is called Woven Ends. We're more recently becoming more outward facing. We're a collection of death care practitioners and community members who are interested in helping the community. We are focused on combating the domination and alienation in our world through making our death rites and the care for the dying more autonomous and a lot more intimate.
**Roxanne ** 05:08 And accessible.
**Inmn ** 05:12 Cool. Um yeah, it's weird how much the State is like intertwined in death. And that's like not...I feel like that's not something I ever realized until I realized it and then I was like, "Oh, like can you die without the State being involved?"
**Wōen ** 05:35 Like the bureaucratic storm is also guided by the industry and a lot of the rituals that we have now and the way that death operates is it's a contrived effort, the funeral industry, to deal with all aspects after death. So, it's a really troubling, difficult thing that families and loved ones navigate.
**Roxanne ** 05:35 No.
**Roxanne ** 06:14 Yeah, it's pretty devastating. It's like Capital will take hold and commodify any and every aspect of our life possible and not even our life but our afterlife as well. Like yeah, it's hard to believe in true freedom sometimes, but that's why we're here fighting for it.
**Inmn ** 06:38 Yeah, I feel like...Whatever, I'm gonna take like a pretty like light hearted and like whimsical tone today because we're talking about something grim, but I feel like we have these ideas that like, "You know, the State's got me in life, but at least when I die I'll be free," and it's like maybe? I mean, your body won't be.
**Roxanne ** 07:14 Sadly, no. Eventually Yes but initially, no.
**Inmn ** 07:22 Yeah, I feel like that is a literal nightmare of mine. Could y'all kind of break down like what is death work? Like what is a death doula? What is the Woven Ends collective kind of like do in like a material or emotional way?
**Roxanne ** 07:50 Well, I can speak towards death doula work. What a death doula is, is a little undefined. And there are powers that be that are trying to make it more defined and kind of like more commodified. But basically, a death doula is someone who helps a family or a loved one sort of like go through the process. So that could look like, before someone dies, helping come up with some like legacy project, some things that people want to leave behind, or how someone wants to be remembered. So, that could be like, you know, if a 40 year old who has three kids dies, kind of legacy work you could do with someone in that situation is like, you know, help them record videos for their kids' future birthdays, you know, stuff like that so that way when their kids get older, like hit those milestones, they can have this video from their parent that has been gone for a while. So yeah, just kind of like, you know, one aspect is focusing on legacy work. Another aspect is just kind of like emotionally helping people with the grieving process, whether that be the person who's actually passing away or the family sort of like talking through the process of all of that with them. And then, you know, other aspects could be more helping set up funerary services, trying to help work on community aspects of disposition. Yeah, death doula is...It's sort of that the individual does different things. And I think if someone's interested in having a death doula, I would really ask questions about what specific services they provide.
**Wōen ** 09:59 Yeah, And I can speak more to like our collective. We definitely, we try to connect the right people to help different community members. So, that could be a death doula or even a grave digger. So, a lot of what we do is like guidance around the whole process. And we definitely want to like expand our scope completely to be able to care for the whole process. But most of what we've been doing in the past, and currently, is helping folks with finding burial options that are accessible and hopefully free. And we've been able to create a network of free home burial grounds where we live. And it's been really awesome to be able to provide this for free. And it usually is in tandem with a lot more care going on with death doulas and generally the radial support that happens when you're trying to create a more autonomous situation.
**Roxanne ** 11:28 I would also say that a part of the sort of intentional death work thing is to really help communities and individuals kind of like shift narratives towards death. We live in a really deathphobic society. And it is a thing that I think...you know, like, even in our introduction, we're like, "Okay, so this is a really grim topic," but it's interesting, because it's one of, you know, aside from being alive, it's the only other thing that everyone is going to experience, like the one thing that even if you have nothing in common with somebody else, the fact that you're going to die is a thing that you have in common. And so I feel like there's a lot of room for connection there. And, a part of the sort of work is to try to like, you know, find connection, find community, and sort of shift the narrative around this very natural and inevitable thing that's going to happen, and open up room and space for there to be beauty and transition in that instead of just fear. Because I think oftentimes, people don't actually...They're not scared to die. They're scared of being in pain. And those are very different things. So I think, yeah, just like...death workers offer a space for us to really intentionally look at that and say, like, "Okay, you're feeling scared? What is it that you're scared of?" You know? And really helping shift that narrative and also hopefully providing a space where nobody has to die alone. You know, sometimes that's just going to happen, but if at all possible, making sure that we can provide space--unless someone wants to--but they don't have to die alone.
**Inmn ** 13:32 Yeah, we do live in a really deathphobic society. And I...you know, obviously it's a sad and hard and difficult thing, but I feel like I have always wished that there...that we as a culture did have different attitudes or different ways that we deal with it, or grieve, or like mourn, or whatever. I don't know, I've just had a couple kind of funny funerary experiences, where I was like, "Are we celebrating this person's life? Or are we mad at them because they didn't tell anyone how sick they were?" And that just like...Yeah, just like a lot of funny experiences like that. Whereas, I wish that we were, I wish we had, that we had a different attitude towards this right now because I'm not sure if this attitude is like helping anyone.
**Roxanne ** 14:43 Yeah, definitely. And I think you bring up a good point too, where because of deathphobia but also because of our obsession with what we consider health, sometimes people are so scared to admit that they're sick because there's so little support and resource around that. And people don't want to be, you know, a burden to each other. And instead of being angry at our friends because they wouldn't tell us how sick they are, it's a great time to, you know, take a moment and be like, "Okay, why do we live in a world in which someone that I loved very much could not tell me how sick they were? And like, how do I fight that world instead of my friend?"
**Inmn ** 15:37 Yeah, yeah, totally. You mentioned earlier--I just want to like hit on this before we get too far away from it--but there being some effort to make being a death doula more of a defined thing? And I'm--I know, this is subjective--but is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? Is that a complicated thing?
**Roxanne ** 16:01 I mean, in my personal opinion, I'm not for that. I feel like the way...like I understand and respect people wanting to figure out how to do this work and still...Like, it makes sense to me that people want to do this work in a permanent way in this world that we live in, this society of capitalism, like people need to get paid for their time in order to survive. Like that makes sense to me. But, I think that there can be a kind of predatory nature to it. And these...It's like the commodification of the death, dying, death doula world is really similar to what happened in the birth community. And I think that's kind of interesting that the link between the two, because people have been doulaing each other since people were...were born about how to do these things. And, if we lived in communities where we were interacting with birth and death in more tangible ways then we wouldn't need sort of outsiders to tell us how to do these things. But yeah, I think that the certification process doesn't make sense. I think it's just another platform of institutionalization and commodification that isn't necessary, you know? It's like, okay, a lot of these certification organizations are offering education, which is amazing, yes. Like, education is so important. But the real education--and I feel like I learned this in nursing school, too--like, you can learn all the ins-and-outs of things, but where you're actually going to learn is through experience. So like, you want to learn how to be a death, doula? Go volunteer for hospice. Like, go watch people die and you will learn so much just from having that experience or like, you know--and not just hospice. You know, there's a lot of ways that people can sit with people at the end of their life. But, you know, like you don't need to pay someone to teach you how to be an active listener.
**Wōen ** 18:37 Yeah, and I think...Like in the realm that I work in--which is what they call green or natural burial--like it's all the same pattern of pushing towards professionalization and specialization, and it's being co-opted by the Capitalist system. Even though a lot of these cemeteries that are providing this like really beautiful practice, they didn't intend on that and they structured themselves as a nonprofit. So they just continued to fall into the trappings of what happens when you professionalize something. And now there's overarching regulatory institutions and it's just...It makes it really hard to get into the process and start a cemetery and...Yeah, and they're walking hand-in-hand with the rest of the funeral industry, so, like annually increasing prices for these rituals that were supposed to be a lot more accessible and ecological, but they're not. They're not accessible.
**Roxanne ** 20:07 Totally. And I feel like this...Yeah, this focus on specialization really, you know, negates and alienates the fact that we have inherent wisdom as to how to handle these situations. And then when we can't accept or like don't have--courage isn't the word that I'm looking for--confidence in our own, you know, kind of inherent wisdom, then we feel like we need a specialist to tell us what to do, but it's all right there inside of us in information that we can pass down with each other through, you know, actually having a relationship with death, and dying, and disposition, and all the things. So I feel like, yeah, the more we can be connected and like with death, honestly, the better we can be with life also.
**Wōen ** 21:11 Yeah, and when we say, "disposition," we mean burial, cremation, you know, being eaten by birds, everything. It's a general term.
**Inmn ** 21:27 Yeah, yeah. I feel like...it's fun to use this as the thing to compare it to, but, you know, I think it's important for us to like have, you know, guides through hard times or like people to...people who are very familiar with or versed in leading these experiences or facilitating these experiences, and it's...like, what you were just describing of kind of like what the Death industry is, it reminds me of a like boutique coffee shop or something. Yeah, like turning death and ritual into a boutique coffee experience that is just another strange industry that maybe people feel better about, but, yeah, I don't know. I don't know how much actual connection or like community building that is doing?
**Roxanne ** 22:36 Totally. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it's a similar thing. Yeah. And again, they did that with the birthing community too. It's, yeah, it's sad.
**Wōen ** 22:50 Yeah, and, you know, like with organic foods.
**Inmn ** 22:57 Yeah. To kind of switch gears a little bit, why is it important to think about this stuff now? Like, why is it important to think about dying? Why should we be having these conversations as a community?
**Wōen ** 23:16 Yeah, I mean, I think it's always been important when you want a culture that renews itself, and especially now when we're facing intense upheaval, developing a deeper intimacy with death, it helps us claim a place, and claim ancestors, and develop a deeper resilience to the chaos in our world. Like when thinking about movements and how under the regime of alienation, and the lack of intergenerational connection, and especially like connection to our ancestors, like, things can really be thwarted without those connections to place or to the people that came before. Yeah, and so being able to be with the unexplainable and unknowable aspect of like...
**Roxanne ** 24:47 I think now, as Wōen was just saying, it's so important because we are living in pretty devastating times. It's pretty obvious, I think, to most people with what's going on with the climate, you know, with ecological destruction getting worse very viscerally year by year and not just in one place but all across the world where people are really...You know, you live in Arizona...Wait, maybe I shouldn't say that...
**Inmn ** 25:33 I've said it multiple times.
**Roxanne ** 25:38 Yeah, well, for example, you live in a place that in the summer if someone accidentally tripped and fell, they would burn themselves on the ground and potentially have to go to the burn ICU. Like, that wasn't true five years ago and it's just only going to become more true for more places across the world. And I think, yeah, just really taking inventory of the trajectory that the world is on right now means that we're...When you're living on a dying planet, you're gonna have to deal with the fact that we are a part of that planet and not separate from that. And I think also, you know, the question of "Why now?" is, like, both a societal question and then also kind of an individual question because I think...You know, I am 39 years old. I think most people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, even 50s aren't really thinking, and hopefully, you know...People even younger than that obviously, need to be thinking about this stuff, too. But I think that, you know, often the more like normative stance--which is also partially a bliss--is just to be like, "Oh, you know, if I have a fine bill of health then why should I be concerned about these things?" And we all know people die unexpectedly. We all know our relationship to health, and all the different forms that that can look like, can change at any moment. We all know that life isn't just inevitable. And so I think really thinking about these things and really starting to prepare for these things is one of the best things we can do to help not just, you know, those around us when we die, but also to help inform how we live our lives. No matter what age you are, I think it's important to be thinking about and talking about. I've been having conversations, for example, with my mom about the fact that she was gonna die since I was like five years old. And then at some point, I was like, "Oh, wait, if you're dying, that means I'm dying too. Shit, I'm gonna have to think about this."
**Inmn ** 28:23 Yeah, what does? You know, this is the fun moment where we get to say the name of the podcast in a question, but how does one live like they're dying? Like, what does that mean?
**Wōen ** 28:40 I mean, I think it's understanding that ecologically and spiritually the dead make the world. Our ancestors are not just like our [uninterpretable. "In our dirt?"]. They're what came before use. They're everything we eat, and breathe, and even conceive of, and dream of. So, it's fully opening our minds to understanding the deep cycle of life.
**Roxanne ** 29:17 Yeah. And, you know, some intentionality, recognizing that the things that we do and how we treat ourselves and each other do matter, you know? Like they do matter because we are people experiencing each other. Or, they don't matter in the way that we are tiny pieces of sand floating around on this huge rock in this ginormous atmosphere. You know? It's like it's both. Both things are happening at the same time. We are a multitude it turns out? Both how we are and who we are matters and also doesn't at all. But I think just like really honoring the fact that it's a limited resource, that life is actually a limited resource, and that the time that we spend together is also limited, and trying to really love people while you can, to be brave enough to really love the people in your life while you can.
**Inmn ** 30:32 Yeah, I feel like we have such a...our culture has such a focus on the concept of "later" and the future that like...And you know, this is maybe obvious because a lot of the society that we live in is founded on this idea of...or like founded by people who are informed by a religion that embraces an afterlife that...and something I've really appreciated about--I'm not necessarily an atheist--but like something I've always appreciated about atheism is that it is weirdly pro life and pro living in this way where it's like, "Yeah, there's nothing after this so you gotta do what you want to do now, not later.
**Wōen ** 31:32 Yeah that's kind of...I mean, I think the Christian worldview is inherently disassociating from your body? Yeah. Not a good place to start.
**Inmn ** 31:53 Yeah, just to switch gears a little bit, I want to talk a little bit more about the logistics of death. So, something that I think about a lot is like, if, you know, if I get sick tomorrow, if I get in an accident tomorrow and like my condition suddenly changes like rapidly, and I have feelings about how I want...like what interventions I want taken or how I want...Let's start with interventions. And then we'll move on to other bits, but how do I prepare for that? How do I prepare for getting the...having the interventions that I want taken or not taken? Or, how do I get to choose who gets to make those decisions when I'm no longer able to?
**Wōen ** 32:59 So, the simplest answer to that would be to complete an Advanced Directive that's legally binding. And so this designates the person who will be your advocate legally, to make choices at the end of life and after death. Yeah, and this ends up...Yeah, this supersedes the legal next of kin, which without designating the power of attorney, will be your biological family. So this is really important if you don't want them to be in charge of what you want to happen to you at the end of life or after your death.
**Inmn ** 34:00 Do you have something to add to that Roxy?
**Roxanne ** 34:02 I do. I think that I just wanted to add that making choices around your health care power of attorney, like who that person should or could be, I think sometimes there can be a lot of pressure from people that are close to you that just because you're close with someone that they should be the one to help make those medical decisions for you. But, I would like to argue that maybe that's not always the best person. What you want in these situations is someone who will follow the directive that you lay out, because just because you have this document stating how you would like for things to go, at the end of the day, the healthcare power of attorney actually gets to make the final call. So maybe you say, you know, "CPR is okay. But I don't want to be intubated." At the end of the day, if your healthcare power of attorney decides, "I want them to be intubated," despite what your paperwork says, they can intubate you. So you really want to pick someone who can...who you think will follow what you've asked for and also someone who, even if they don't have the information themselves, will educate themselves or ask the right questions to make decisions that they think you will want. And it's also I think good to think about, you know, if, for example, you think your partner is going to be so worried and like so in a process of grief, that maybe they're not the one to choose because maybe it's better for them to just to get to be in the grief process and not having to make these big decisions. I've seen so many times in the hospital where the family feels like if they choose to, quote unquote, "Pull the plug," that they're the ones that killed their loved one, not whatever, you know, situation their person was in or just that the bodies can only handle so much. And I think that, yeah, giving someone healthcare power of attorney is--I'm not going to say it's a burden--but there is definitely the potential for weight behind that and it is a serious question. It's not...it's not a popularity contest. It's not about who you like the most. It's about who you really think can help make the decisions when they need to be made or who's going to be brave enough to call it when it needs to be called.
**Inmn ** 37:24 Yeah, yeah. That makes sense.
**Wōen ** 37:27 Yeah, I think that just kind of reveals the need for, you know, models of anarchist mutual aid where we all support each other. And it's like, being able to have these conversations and support each other outside of these really normative pathways of the nuclear family. And yeah, breaking that prescription on...
**Roxanne ** 38:04 I guess I just wanted to add that, for sure, if you want to make sure, as as close as is possible...If you wanted to make sure as much as what's in your capability that your wishes are going to be met with interventions, having an Advanced Directive is the only real way to do that legally. So, if you don't feel like, as Wōen was saying earlier, if you don't feel like you fully trust your family to do the things that you would want to do, you have to have that written down. You have to have it notarized. You really have to go through that process. It's really important.
**Inmn ** 38:45 Yeah, and then it seems what is kind of equally as important is having those conversations with your community and with whoever you're designating as your power of attorney, so that like...Yeah, it's like, I'm imagining in this situation that you've built where like, your partner might not be the best person, so you make this Advanced Directive and you designate someone, who's maybe not your partner, as the power of attorney, and then it seems like you have to then have conversations with that person, or with your community as a whole, about what you want. And then...Like, I'm imagining this situation where you do that and then it's like--so it's not entirely falling on one person--maybe one person has to legally make those decisions, but like other people can support them or like it can be a little like network of support that like kind of helps hold people to like what your best wishes were? Does that kind of make sense?
**Wōen ** 39:53 Absolutely. And it's like…an Advanced Directive is not all encompassing. Like, being able to guide the types of rituals you want and...Yeah, like, every little detail that you want, you should be able to have, but you have to have those conversations and they have to be on going with as many of your loved ones as possible. So, the Advanced Directive is kind of a way to safeguard against the powers that be from taking control of your life and your death. But, it [hard to tell, but probably "lasts"] like a lot of other guidance that relies on being able to talk about it.
**Inmn ** 40:42 So, this is something that I was kind of thinking about with this is like if...So, say maybe that in this hypothetical that I don't have like the best relationship with my parents, or say I have a fine relationship with my parents who are still alive, but I don't think they would make the best decisions, so I designate someone from, you know, my chosen family network to be my power of attorney. But then, you know, I get sick. I get into an accident. And suddenly, my family, my biological family and my chosen family, are in the same room. Is there? I imagine those situations can get pretty contentious, especially for my biological family to find out that they do not have the power of attorney. Like, I guess, obviously, you should maybe have those conversations with your family, but like I...You know, I would rather...I would rather not have that conversation with my family where I'm like, "Hi, I have taken away your medical power of attorney over me." But I also don't want to like necessarily entirely pass that off to my friends to deal with. Like...I don't know, have you like seen situations like that that were contentious, went well, or like, do you have any tips for navigating that?
**Wōen ** 42:24 Well, I mean, in different forms I've seen it. I think it's important to say, once you have your power of attorney designated the family no longer have...like, they don't have control. The power of attorney does. And so like in a situation like you're describing, I think, the idea of communal care comes in, where you can have...Like, maybe the person who is your health care advocate isn't necessarily the one who is negotiating with the family or mediating. Just having more people involved to take care of the situation, I think is the best advice I can give.
**Roxanne ** 43:20 Yeah, I would say, you know, I always push towards tending towards collaboration when possible. So if someone's family is just absolutely unwilling to work with, you know, the chosen family or the person who has power of attorney then honestly that situation actually just hurts them more. So, I think as much as people can collaborate, the better. And recognizing and appreciating the fact that everyone in a situation is going through some kind of fear and grief, and we don't always behave our best in those situations. So, trying to be generous with each other and give each other time and space to--you know, I'm not saying you have to deal with someone using abusive language towards you or anything like that--but just, you know, recognizing that this can be a real space of grief and that collaboration might not seem possible at first and then it is. I've had situations where collaboration seemed really possible. And then the friend's family member flipped out and tried to get us all kicked out of the hospital. This is before I was a nurse and was just a really kind of traumatic situation for everyone but ended up--like this is actually the situation that really got me on the tip of like, "Oh, we have to have Advanced Directives. This is like imperative." But yeah, I think, as Wōen already said, as much as people can work with each other and collaborate, even if you've been told stories throughout your whole friendship with someone about, you know, what a monster their parent is, or whatever, just like focus on the task at hand, which is helping your friend get safe, and accessible, and good care for as long as they can. And if you need the family to be a part of that, great. And if a family has to go--because sometimes the family's gotta go--you get to make that call. And it's like, if they gotta go, they gotta go. But hopefully that won't be the case. I think it's just...like from a harm reductionist standpoint.
**Inmn ** 46:02 Yeah, yeah. Does a family have any legal recourse against a power of attorney? Like, I can imagine a family believing that they have some kind of legal recourse, but like could they sue people? Could they challenge it?
**Wōen ** 46:22 I mean, I'm gonna say, no. I know that that happens like a lot of legal challenges happen. But in the moment, I think, what should guide is that health care and funeral services will honor the healthcare power of attorney. So yeah, I think that that is a risk in a really contentious situation, but it is not likely that the healthcare system or the funeral professionals will dishonor the Advanced Directive.
**Roxanne ** 47:12 And it might be a situation, like in a hospital sort of setting, it might be a thing where they kind of set up a mediation with an ethics board sort of thing. But at the end of the day, the legal document is the legal document. Yeah.
**Inmn ** 47:30 Yeah. And, I'm imagining that the answer to this is along a similar lines, but like, in the reverse situation, if I don't have a power of attorney designated or an Advanced Directive, but I have, you know, my friends that I've had these conversations with about this or I have a journal entry or something about this, I'm guessing that doesn't have...like, at the end of the day, it's the the family or the next of kin, whoever has been legally designated has all of that power to make those decisions?
**Wōen ** 48:07 Yeah, and again, that's where a united community who can help, you know, maybe approach the family to be able to negotiate or collaborate. Yeah, that would be the right place to start. But also, if that's not possible, knowing that you can still hold space for your grief as a community even if you're separated from the actual process of dying and death, and that you can enact the depths of meaning that you need and connection with each other. Yeah.
**Roxanne ** 48:07 Yeah.
**Inmn ** 49:02 Um, to kind of switch gears a little bit, this is a weird question. God. How much does it cost to die? Like obviously, you know, if you do die then that expense is not going to be your responsibility, but I'm imagining this situation like from--I don't know if y'all have seen that movie Little Miss Sunshine. [Roxanne makes an affirmative noise] But like, the grandpa dies, and they're like, "It'll cost this much money to get the body," and they're like, "We don't have that." So, they steal the body. Yeah, how much does it cost to die and have your remains something or anothered? I don't know what...I don't know what a good word is.
**Wōen ** 49:55 Yeah, yeah. I mean, I can definitely speak to after death. I think the national average has risen, but like a few years ago it was around $8,000 to do a really normal funeral service like burial. More and more people are choosing cremation because it is cheaper, even though it is getting more expensive. And the average cremation cost is anywhere from $1000 to $3000 based on what type of package you buy from the funeral home. There's a lot of ways that funeral homes can be predatory. Not all funeral homes are predatory, but the vast majority are. And every year it gets more expensive. So yeah, it just depends on your form of disposition. So like, if you're doing cremation it's gonna be a lot cheaper. But often people choose that because it's cheaper, not because of thoughts of that's exactly what they wanted, you know? They're thinking about the financial situation of the family, and yeah, it shouldn't be that way. They should have the type of ritual and disposition that they want. Yeah, it's a pretty horrifying situation. Yeah.
**Inmn ** 51:28 And, like, what happens to...You know, normally when you go to the hospital there's a bill, but if you die, like who has to pay for the care that you received?
**Roxanne ** 51:44 Yeah, your family will get that debt as far as I understand. They're a next of kin kind of situation.
**Inmn ** 52:00 So, when I think about my own wishes around my remains, you know, one of those fantasies or ideas is that I would love to, you know, not be embalmed. I would love to have my body rot in the ground. Is that possible?
**Wōen ** 52:16 Absolutely. To start, the only federal law around death is that you don't have to be embalmed. It's a strange, actually good law as kind of a response to an exploding funeral industry I think around--I don't exactly remember--decades ago. And so a lot of advocates pushed for that to happen. Yeah, so you definitely don't have to be embalmed even if you go to a funeral home. And if they say like, "This is the only way," they're lying. But luckily that's happening less and less because natural burial, or what they call green burial, is getting a lot more popular. And it's, I think in all states now in this country you can find a place at least within like 100 miles. But, I would advocate that if you have access to land in any way, you should do a home burial, even if that means you have to go through some bureaucracy and like create an official cemetery. You should do that because you've now created a burial ground that others can be buried at in the type of way that you want, to honor rot, to honor the ecosystem. Yeah, so definitely what you want is very possible.
**Inmn ** 54:15 Cool. Um, yeah, can--I'm sure it's complicated state by state--but like, can you if you own land, or you know someone that owns land, they can just designate part of it as a cemetery and then people can get buried there? Is that like? What is that process like?
**Wōen ** 54:39 It really is county by county. Yeah, county by county. Yeah, it's really...I would say where we, where I am in the southeast, as a general statement, in any rural area it is widely practiced still and it's very easy to do home burial. And as another general statement, you just...you can't do this within city limits. And I think that, for good reason, because, you know, they are hubs of capitalism with land turning over and...Like, from where we're sitting even, you know, half a mile down the road, they're desecrating a Black cemetery that they just unearthed that had been paved over at least twice. So it's...I think, like, yeah. So, being able to be outside of the city limits is the best option and most accessible. I know some states are more difficult. And there's more...like there's more red tape. I would say to research where you live. Yeah. And really think about doing this for your community.
**Roxanne ** 55:59 What a gift. We live in a time where land and space is becoming--I mean, has been, is becoming--such an intense battlefield for resources. It's just like a really, really intense thing to have is land and space. So being able to provide that for people for free, even just to put their body in is such an incredible resource.
**Wōen ** 56:34 Yeah, I know there's...I know there's a lot of kind of...I've heard of some wild ways to have your remains dealt with that...Maybe just to add a little bit of fun levity to the situation. But uh, I've heard you can get turned into diamonds now?
**Roxanne ** 56:58 Yeah.
**Inmn ** 57:00 Cool.
**Wōen ** 57:00 You can get turned into a bowling ball.
**Inmn ** 57:03 You can get turned into a bowling ball? I feel like this is a plot to a movie from the 90s.
**Wōen ** 57:10 Yeah, I mean, it's...Yeah, you can do a lot with cremated remains. Pretty cool.
**Roxanne ** 57:18 Mushroom soup.
**Wōen ** 57:19 Uh-huh
**Roxanne ** 57:20 I'm really into the soup, personally.
**Inmn ** 57:22 The mushroom soup?
**Roxanne ** 57:24 Yeah.
**Inmn ** 57:25 What is the mushroom soup?
**Wōen ** 57:27 What the mushrooms do. I would say it is a little...there needs to be more research on this mushroom soup. But, fungus is a late stage decomposer and this mushroom soup is something you're supposed to be buried in. That's what they're proposing. But often initial decomposition is way too hot and will eat up fungus. And so, it's a little bit not completely thought out. Yeah, so I wouldn't advocate for the mushroom soup, but I would advocate for, you know, creating an aerobic environment to be buried in so you rot really well. And you don't have to worry, the fungus will be there. They will be there to eat up your bones and all your desiccated tissue. Yeah.
**Roxanne ** 58:30 I'm picturing like ground lasagna, you know, where there's like dirt, and worms, and things, and then like a layer of mycelial...input.
**Wōen ** 58:47 Yeah, that makes the world go round.
**Inmn ** 58:51 Yeah. And you can, like on a similar vein, I've heard in Oregon you can get composted?
**Wōen ** 59:03 Yeah, I think now it's legal in eight states. It started in Seattle. They call it human composting or natural organic reduction is another term they use. But basically, they're accelerating the decomposition of your soft tissues. I think it's a really awesome thing, especially for folks who don't have access to land because you become soil really fast. And I think a lot of them partner with forest areas where they'll spread your soil. Yeah, I think it's awesome. And I really hope that they make it accessible, you know, like the rest of the Green Death movement. It remains to be seen. But, I hope that that happens.
**Inmn ** 1:00:14 Thanks so much for listening. This turned into a much longer episode than we thought it would, which is great that there's just so much to talk about around this topic. So, that's the end of part one. If you enjoyed the show, please go talk to your community about death and tell us about it. And, think about filing an Advanced Medical Directive and power of attorney. We will be back next week with the second half of this episode where me and Roxy will talk a lot more about what it means to be a death doula. I know these topics can be hard and scary, but I think talking about them helps us to not worry about them as much and offers a lot of hope to our communal resilience. If you enjoyed the show, please go tell people about it. You can support this podcast by telling people about it. You can support it by talking about it on social media, rating, and reviewing, or doing whatever the nameless algorithm calls for, as much as I don't want that to be something that's true. You can also support us in a financial way by following us on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Our Patreon helps pay for things like transcriptions or our lovely audio editor, Bursts, as well as going to support our publisher, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. We put out a few more podcasts including my other podcast Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, a monthly podcast of anarchist literature, and the Anarcho Geek Power Hour, which is the podcast for people who love movies and hate cops. And we would like to shout out some of our patrons in particular. Thank you Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, anonymous, Funder, Jans, Oxalis. Janice & O'dell, Paige, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, Shawn, SJ, Paige, Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Cat J., Staro, Jenipher, Eleanor, Kirk, Sam, Chris, Michaiah, and as always, Hoss the Dog. Thanks so much. We seriously couldn't do it without you. I hope that everyone is doing as well as they can with everything that's happening and we will see you next week for the second part of this episode.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Riley talks to Margaret about building DIY spaces, how to plan events, and how to build a culture around your events of inclusivity and solidarity.
The Pansy Collective can be found on Instagram @Pansy.Colletive.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Riley on DIY Spaces
**Margaret ** 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. I have just found out that my co-host, Inmn, has a voice that's similar enough to mine that people don't know which one of us is hosting. So, you can tell it's me because I am charming and perfect...Shit, so is Inmn...Okay, so that's not really what matters here. What matters here is that today, we are going to be talking about--a lot of people have written in and been like, "But I don't have community. You talk about community preparedness all the time." And obviously, subculture isn't the only type of community, but it's one of them. And we're going to talk about subculture. And we're gonna talk about DIY subculture. And we're gonna talk about fucking doing shit yourself. And we're gonna talk to someone who has a lot of experience of doing that at the intersection of marginalizations and not just reproducing cis white hetero stuff. So, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on the network. Doo doo doo doo doo. Doo. [Singing a simple melody with words]
**Margaret ** 01:34 And we're back. Okay, so if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then why you think I've brought you on this podcast.
**Riley ** 02:06 Hey Y'all. Yeah, my name is Riley. He/him pronouns. You brought me on this podcast because we're friends. And also because we've played some shows together and done some things together. And I'd like to think that we have some shared affinity and maybe even that we are in community together. So yeah, yeah. I think that's kind of why I'm here.
**Margaret ** 02:36 Okay. Well, you have experience...When I was like, trying to think I was like, "Who do I know who has experience building DIY scenes and like punk scenes and musical "subgenric" scenes. That's definitely a word. Don't look it up. Do you have experience doing that? What's your experience doing that?
**Riley ** 03:00 Yeah, you know, I do have some experience doing it. You said "a lot." I would say "limited." But, I organize with a collective here in Asheville, North Carolina called Pansy Collective. We call ourselves the "benefit booking collective" because a lot of what we do is book DIY shows to raise money for either trans people's surgical, or medical, or just living expenses, and also for grassroots projects that don't get funding any other way. Yeah, so we book shows, we throw parties, we also organize popular education and workshops and kind of use the concept of DIY community in a punk way to push people further to the left.
**Margaret ** 03:56 I, I really liked that. I think...I don't know if it was the first time I met you, or just the first time I saw you play, was coming on 10 years ago now. And you were playing this playing this show. And the thing that just like really immediately struck me was how much it felt like...When I first got into when I was like a teenager, I didn't give a shit about punk because...I don't know, the punk on the radio was fine, but it just...Like I liked Sisters of Mercy instead. Well, at the time I probably like Marilyn Manson instead, but we'll pretend like I only ever listened to Sisters of Mercy. And then when I like fell into anarchism and I started going to these like basement shows in Baltimore and there was this shared sense of like urgency to change the world, and that this is a thing that we are doing collectively and a thing we're doing from direct action, even if it just meant that the five foot tall singer was screaming, "I'm going to break a 40 on the motherfucking Nazis face!" or whatever, right? You know, it's like, you like believed her, right? Cuz she was telling the truth. Like, she probably got arrested for that. Well, yeah. And like, a 17 year old from that scene caught 27 felonies for beating up Nazis like two months later...and beat all the charges. She beat all the charges. And so this is what struck me, is that when I went and saw you play, it was like one of the times I really felt that again. And it felt like there was like something there. And I'm wondering if you want to talk about like...well, I guess like punk and about what draws you to it, what keeps you there, and what you're excited about DIY scenes for? Or any of that shit.
**Riley ** 05:43 Yeah, I mean, I can't pretend like punk music wasn't a facet of what radicalized me, right? And, I think exposure to--I mean, I wasn't a punk when I was in high school. And I was into riot girl feminism, specifically, was like a really point--and I feel like almost embarrassed to talk about it now, but let's own that for a second, right?
**Margaret ** 06:10 Yeah, whatever.
**Riley ** 06:11 Or, what brought me into that was also another facet of radicalization, which was seeking resources for being sexually assaulted at a young age, right? So I'm like, getting politicized through finding feminism and having these kinds of first moments of...You know, I grew up in real rural North Carolina. There's not scenes where I'm from, right? There's not even punks where I'm from. And kind of ideas of resistance, even ideas of bodily autonomy, and that what may be happening to you isn't your fault, and that maybe it's okay to be queer, you know, like, these were like, really groundbreaking ideas as a teenager. And so I'm finding these bands that are kind of espousing these ideologies, and carrying energy that I had no outlet for--or maybe just had really unhealthy outlets for--before I started listening to punk heavily. And then, really moving to Asheville as soon as I turned 18 because in this area, the queer and trans people from rural spots are told, "If you want to go somewhere to find where the other gay people are, go to Asheville." And so I just listened to that and went where I could. And I mean, I had some really pivotal moments, both good and bad, you know, and I'm in really this kind of naive idea that like, "Oh, you know, I'm coming into this from a feminist lens, so punks must be not misogynists, right?" [Margaret laughs] And then I learned that that wasn't true really quickly because I started having shitty experiences in mosh pits and, you know, getting groped, and my friends getting groped, and, you know, just having, I mean, just unsafe experiences that also really, you know, pissed me off because it felt so not...like this is inherently against the ethos of what this genre is in my mind because, you know, I know this is what this is, like not even knowing that there's just a whole slew of apolitical [punks]--or people who, you know, who're here for different reasons--you know, but it really...I saw a space that was missing. And it wasn't just me, it was, you know, an entire group of young-really-fucking-pissed-off-with-a-lot-of-trauma-and-something-to-prove-about-it queers who enacted a little bit of a takeover in, I don't know, like the early 2010s. And so, the punk scene in Asheville shifted from really...I mean, dude centric, to suddenly there's like, it's just like, these young mad queers who are wearing pink pink studs. And this is like, a few years before G.L.O.S.S came out but I feel like that era just really, yeah, there was a takeover that we both participated in.
**Margaret ** 09:24 I kind of...I kind of watched it, but I really appreciated it and I...Yeah, okay. So I guess one of the things that people mention to me a lot when I, you know, when I talk about individual and community preparedness, right, all the time, and usually people are alienated by one of those two words. And either people are like individual community preparedness is just preppers doing nonsense. And then, or, community preparedness doesn't resonate with people literally because a lot of people don't have community. We live in this very isolated and isolating culture, right? And so one of the things that people say, you know, the reason that I...I was driving and I was like thinking about this problem, I was thinking about how people write this to me and I'm always just like, "I don't know, just fix it." And I'm like, that's not a useful answer to provide to people. And I was like, who do I know who perpetuates a subcultural space--that's funny. Usually, when we say "perpetuate," you mean something bad. But like, in this case, you know, "makes continue" is actually sometimes a very good word, if it's a good thing being perpetuated. [And I was like, who do I know who perpetuates a subcultural space and] Makes the subcultural space happen and happen on a DIY level. And so I was really excited to talk to you about it. But, so, the core of my question is like, you talked about how there's not really scenes where you're from? So what do you do? I mean, I guess in this case, the answer is you move to Asheville and then take over the scene, but that's not a bad...
**Riley ** 10:53 Yeah. If in places where there's not...I mean, there's a particular context here because it's a small town, but it has a long standing history of punk activity, right? But thinking about the community I'm from, which I'm going to be moving back to pretty soon because I can't afford to stay in the town that I'm in. So, you know, I think about starting small and finding who is around and building with them because deep...Yeah, the way that artists, like rural artists, and the kind of freaky performers that live out in the woods, the way that they move in this area is by finding finding the, you know, the few people around them that they can build with and going from there, even if it's just one, even if it's just one person, or connecting to the internet. But, yeah, I mean, the way that we kind of worked to hit that mark and strive to support everyone is, one, by just casting a wide net. And that's, you know, thinking about how a lot of times, to find, whether it's just connecting with other queer people in a rural area, I mean, you gotta travel far. And so casting a wide net to people who maybe are outside of the friend groups, or maybe are outside of the social networks, and really specifying what your actual affinity is. Like, I see you at shows all the time, but what do we actually have in common? And build from there.
**Margaret ** 12:33 I like that because, actually, one of the next questions I wanted to ask you is about how I know other people who are not interested in punk because they feel like punk is like cool kids, right? And they're not cool. So, they clearly don't belong. And, that's...I'd love to be like, "Oh, it's just not true. Punks are all totally welcoming." And like, you know, you just described a bunch of experiences of punks not being welcoming. My first...The one punk in my high school got really mad. He decided I was becoming a leftist, which actually wasn't true at the time. I was a nothingist. Not in a cool way. I was just a kid. But, he like pulled me aside and he was like, "You have to listen to this." And he put like punk music on my headphones. But it was right-wing punk. And the only thing I remember is--I haven't actually bothered to look up a band that says this--but it's "Down on your..." I remember this very clearly. I was like 16 at the time and it's, "Down on your knees with a gun to your head. You're better off dead than fucking red." And so it's like Nazi punk shit, right? He wasn't a skinhead. He had a big mohawk and like...And I was like, "Man, this was not interested in me at all. Like, what the fuck?" But okay, so punk isn't always welcoming to people. But how do we make it more welcoming to people? Two questions: One, if you're already in the scene, how do you make it more welcoming to people, and two, if you're listening to this, and you're like, a 16 year old or a 35 year old or a 73 year old, and you're like, "This has interested me, but I don't feel...I don't know whether this is the kind of space I can get into." Like, how do you get into it? Or how do you help people get into it? Kind of a tangential question, sorry.
**Riley ** 14:07 I think about...I don't want to say, "Just be fucking nice to people," but maybe maybe part of it is like be fucking nice to people. And don't reenact the high school lunch table drama-trauma of whatever everyone is holding. Yeah, I think about getting kind of like cornered by these kind of like gatekeepy dudes when I first moved here like, you know, it's kind of this typical like, "Oh, do you know this band, do you know that band? Do you even know what you know..." I remember this guy.
**Margaret ** 14:48 [Laughing] People really did that to you?
**Riley ** 14:50 At a show that I booked! Being like, "Do you even know what a mosh pit is?"
**Margaret ** 14:55 [Incredulously] No, what's that?
**Riley ** 14:58 No, no, I don't. Sorry. [dry] I actually said, "Is it like this?" and then punched him...Right in the Pensacola. But yeah, I mean, if you're in a position of power, in a position of, you know, some sort of...Like, maybe you know the people around you and you're seeing people that don't, or...Yeah, just engaging people and, you know, making a point to make people feel welcome is a really easy start. And if you're feeling unsure, I...Yeah, I don't know what to say. Because I don't...I think that attending shows and going out to social things, especially in this day and age, is such a small, small sliver of what DIY community feels like now. And so I'm also pushing back on the bounds of what even counts as a DIY event anymore? I'm like, how about that? How about that workshop? Or how about the trans woman's picnic? Or how about... yeah, the firestorm book club, I'm thinking about so many other spaces that count in my mind under this DIY punk ethos umbrella.
**Margaret ** 16:23 That makes a lot of sense to me, especially as someone who doesn't...My write up about the anarchist bookfair I just attended and played was, "This is great. Why do shows start so late? Some of us are old. Why are there kids on my lawn? Why did I have to walk uphill both ways to get here?" But, what you're saying about like just like being nice to people, it's funny how that sounds like an easy answer, but it's like actually the easy answer. And it's actually not that hard. Like, I think about...I've spent a lot of time in like nerd spaces subculturally. Like, I've spent a lot of time at like nerd conventions of various types, right? And like, one of the things that is a cultural norm that people are trying to normalize at science fiction conventions and shit is that if you're like standing in a circle of people and you see someone standing at the periphery of the circle, to open up the circle, and so that that person is now standing in the circle. And even if they don't say anything, they're now standing in the circle the same as everyone else, right? And, you know, and you don't have like necessarily as literal of a thing, because like science fiction conventions, there's literally people standing around in circles all weekend. Like, yes, it's kind of...
**Riley ** 17:40 Like, I mean, people have a lot of drama on the other side of it about taking people, taking strangers in, you know. Who is this stranger in the wilderness? You know, I'm thinking about how people have been like, you know, "Who is that new person standing over there looking like they're trying to account for something," you know? "That person's a cop, probably!" you know? Or like people start doing all of this in your head speculation and I feel like, you know what's a really good way to try to figure out if someone is a cop or not? Go up and say, "Hi." Go up and have a little conversation. It's really easy to tell really quickly versus just mean mugging the shit out of somebody, you know? You'll never find out anything that way. But yeah, I think people have a lot of trauma on both sides. Like, I don't know that person. It's like, put yourself out there. Or don't. You also don't have to talk to anybody at the show. [Laughing]
**Margaret ** 18:41 Yeah, that's true, too. Okay, so you're talking about like what DIY feels like now and how it's different, right? And, I really appreciate that as, you know, as someone who like...I'll go to shows forever. And I'll ideally, play shows forever, but it's not as much what I'm interested in engaging in. And so with Pansy Collective, do you put on a lot of different types of stuff? Or do you just feel like the larger community that you're part of like you put on lots of stuff? Like, what are some of the things that people could be doing?
**Riley ** 19:11 Yeah, I mean, we...I will say that My only interest these days is booking benefits. And my only interest is, you know...Back in pre lockdown times, we would set up shows for bands that are rolling through town, we would organize a fest specifically for rural queer and trans independent artists of all different, you know, way different genres. And nowadays, most of what we do is just trying to fund our struggling community anarchist projects by booking parties. And it's all over the place. I mean, we recently did a cake sitting benefit where we had someone bake 20 cakes and people sat on them and it raised a bunch of money for the book fair. You know, just like it varies from random, gay, pervy dance parties to punk shows to workshop series. We give the people what they want. But, it's kind of like it's either a gay dance party or a punk show, is kind of what it boils down to.
**Margaret ** 20:25 I think I've been to a like--I don't know if it was you all that put it on, seems like it would have been--like a wrestling competition?
**Riley ** 20:34 Yes, the lube wrestling competition. That was a fun one. That was definitely a pre-lockdown party for sure. But yeah. I mean, something I think about too with booking benefits is you want to hit a good like...So I think about what it takes to book a benefit that is both accessible to our community, who is broke as fuck, and also will raise money for whatever projects. And I mean, the projects that we've been funding lately have been the queer powered prison books project here in Asheville that sends free books to incarcerated queer and trans people.
**Margaret ** 21:18 Is that Tranzmission?
**Riley ** 21:19 Yeah, Tranzmission Prison Project,
**Margaret ** 21:21 Which people can look up and support if they would like. It's been around for decades at this point and often has been one of the only projects doing this work at a time when it's incredibly essential. Anyway...
**Riley ** 21:35 Yeah, they get so many letters in and really just rely on community support to get the books out to people. So yeah, we've been supporting projects like that. And I think about what it takes to, you know, kind of hit this mark of like, okay, we want this event to be accessible to everyone and we also want to make sure that we raise enough money to support the project and pay artists well, right? Because at a certain point, we realized that if we want to book the artists that we want to book, they need support getting...You know, like, booking especially--and we kind of learned this lesson through co-organizing with some Black trans performers and promoters from Richmond in 2019--like, if you want to book Black and brown artists, you need to pay people well because at the end of the day, if you're just asking artists to donate their time and labor to perform a benefit then only the people who have the privilege and access to be able to donate that time and labor end up being able to perform, and those people are, by and large, white people. So yeah, we really shifted our values to like, just because we're booking a benefit doesn't mean that artists aren't going to get paid well. Everyone. And on top of that, hitting the mark to make sure that, you know, the community project gets a little something too, it's a hard mark to hit. But, you know, I think about going back to that lube wrestling event, which was truly iconic, and you know, charging five bucks at the door and five bucks to enter and making everything always, "If you don't have the money to donate it, don't worry about it."
**Margaret ** 23:29 I think...This is really interesting to me. One thing that's changed a lot from like early aughts anarchism, which is as far back as I can speak to personally, was, you know, this culture of, like now we pay people. Like now it's like not bad to get paid for the work that you do. And in retrospect, it almost seems odd, like the whole thing is we come out of this like working class movement, you know? But, I also understand why we had this like, volunteerism thing, right, you know? But, I also...I'm glad we moved out of it. But one of the things that's so interesting to me about like benefits, right, is that it really points out, it highlights to me that there's two points to benefit. One is to raise money. But the other is--well, there's three points. You're raising money. You're raising awareness about the issue. And you're also building community and you're tying the community to activism directly. And when I think about how to fund a project, like the Empire Records model has never been accurate. Like you're never just like, "Oh, we got to save the struggling, small business run by a white guy. But, we are gonna do it, and we're gonna throw a party, and now it's saved because we raised so much money." And that is not the right attitude about benefits. But instead, because I think if I'm like, man, if I really want to fund a project...Well, historically--and I would never recommend this. Anarchists usually do crime in order to fund projects--but, usually people just go out and like are either like get yucky tech jobs, and then just like one person is going to throw down as much money as like the next 50 people who come to the benefit. And that's great. And that's good. And that is a good thing to do and people who have access to work to get a bunch of money should put those resources into the movement, but it doesn't build community the way that a benefit does. And to me these seem like they go really well together.
**Riley ** 25:28 I think so too. Yeah, I think it's...you know, it serves the purpose of, yes, us getting together. And I'm really thinking in this kind of specific queer and trans lens. Like us just getting together is a radical act. And also, to push that a little bit further, we're getting together to support people that are behind bars, that we're trying to break down this barrier and break down these walls, and part of how we can do that and kind of, you know, disintegrate the myth that there's any difference between our queer and trans siblings on the inside versus us is by just naming it every chance we get, and normalizing that conversation and really bringing it to the table because there probably are people in the room present who maybe haven't decarceralized their ideologies, or maybe just haven't had a chance to think about it. And I don't think that, I don't know, college classrooms or, you know, on the internet are the only places that we can kind of have these conversations or draw this awareness, you know?
**Margaret ** 26:37 Because there's also podcasts.
**Riley ** 26:38 There's also podcasts. Or, just listening to me drunk ramble at you at a party. I don't know. I'm sure that I've single handedly turned at least two people onto our side that way.
**Margaret ** 26:56 That rules. And if they all turned two people on by drunk ramblin to them at a bar then...
**Riley ** 27:00 Keep going!
**Margaret ** 27:01 Fuck yeah.
**Riley ** 27:06 I mean, and also I think about, you know, as a promoter, I feel like I need to qualify after saying that I'm drunk rambling at people, that setting up a fucking table with a bunch of harm reduction supplies and just leaving it, setting up a bunch of free shit at a show and just leaving it. If you're thinking about like I want to way to radicalized the party spaces in my town without having to lean in too far, or don't want to be there the whole time, show up with a bunch of zines, and Narcan, and condoms, and leave them on a table and scoot.
**Margaret ** 27:45 No, see, this makes sense to me. And it also is like, as someone who's like fairly...I don't think I'm anti-social, especially since anti-social implies, like, against people hanging out having fun. Although at various points I have been against people having fun. That's how I got the name Killjoy. Right. But, you know, as someone who doesn't go to parties as my like, hobby, right, tabeling is perfect. Tabling is...like going to the space and being like, "I have a purpose. There's a reason I'm here." And, you know, if you're someone who's listening, and you're like worried about how to be...yeah, how to be contributing, like especially if...A lot of people I think struggle to be just an attendee, right? And so yeah, if you set up a little harm reduction distro, or a zine distro, or a combination of the two, or whatever else, you can set up and leave, or you can set it up and hang out and be like, "No, it's cool. I'm supposed to be here. I'm sitting behind a table. That's why I'm not dancing. Everyone thinks I'm not dancing, because I don't like dancing, but it's actually because I'm stuck. behind a table."
**Riley ** 28:49 I have an important job to do.
**Margaret ** 28:50 Yeah, totally. I would definitely be dancing and enjoying dancing, but I'm stuck behind this table. If anyone identifies with that.
**Riley ** 29:00 Exactly. I just I want to push like, one no-fun-insurrecto listening to this to go to like one dance party and have a couple conversations with people. And I want to have...I want to challenge one listener who's constantly at the dance parties to like, I don't know, go to a gun range or listen to this podcast or something. Yeah.
**Margaret ** 29:20 And actually, because you talked about how like punk rock radicalized you, right? And sometimes when I talk to people and people are a little bit dismissive of that, you know, or usually about their own stories. I've never heard anyone be dismissive of other people getting radicalized that way. But you know, it's like people are like, "Oh, like Green Day got me in," or whatever, you know? And I'm like, well, one, Green Day--I don't know if they still do, but they throw...like when the AK Press ware house burned down, they threw a benefit and this is well after they were famous as fuck--but, I think that actually there's like something to the fact that subculture carries the flame when larger social movements have gone away. I actually think that this happened in the 1940s. Sorry, everything I do now has to tie into history because it's what I do, is read history books all day. But, like, there's like this dead period in anarchism and actually most leftist stuff that isn't like purely Bolshevism or whatever, right? After World War II, a lot of us died. And the people carrying the flame were like art movements, and anarcho pacifists in New York City, and Jewish anarchists, who were primarily focusing on the cultural things that they were reproducing in their own culture. And, I think that the same is also true of the like 80s and 90s, that punk and other subcultures carried the flame, not just of anarchism but a whole lot of radical ideas through this very dead period. Obviously, a ton of shit was happening. But overall, there wasn't as much radicalism in the United States as there is more recently. So, I think subculture's a brilliant way to get people in. Yeah, I don't know.
**Riley ** 31:05 Yeah, and the internet, I think, has really played a big role in this too because we think about aesthetics, and social media, and how...Yeah, I think about how Covid and the internet usage in the cultures that kind of arose when everyone was, you know, really not able to get together. Punk aesthetics has maybe been like a unifying point. And that that can be a point of radicalization too. It's like, okay, we're getting together for this. And like, if it's the right people engaging, right, it's like, we're coming together for this need to belong, and kind of unifying around a common interest, a common hobby, a common sound, whatever it may be, right? And it's bringing that, you know, the ethics, and the core values, and the core tenets back up and kind of, you know, passing along, if we're carrying the torch, we're also passing it along, right?
**Margaret ** 32:00 Setting people on fire, you mean? [Joking] Okay, so, what does it look like to throw a benefit? Just like, run me through it. I want to throw a benefit. What do I do?
**Riley ** 32:15 Yeah, first thing you need to do is identify when and what the goal is. So if you, you know, you say, we have this action going down. We want to do this thing. It's going to take this much money. It's going to be on this date, so we need to have a thing say that's gonna happen a month away. We're gonna book thing. I mean, I would encourage people to not start planning an event within one month of when they plan on executing whatever event it may be. Find a location. Things that I encourage people to consider are just general access of that location. If it's a bar? Or is it going to be an all ages type thing? If it is a DIY space, what does the accessibility of that space look like? Think about physical accessibility, whether or not there will be like an open outdoor space or if it will be enclosed. Whether or not you're going to ask people to wear masks at the space, just kind of general accessibility concerns. Once you have your location locked down. And, you know, there's other things that maybe you'd consider. Maybe you have a connection with somebody who has a space. Maybe it's someone's basement. There's a...Maybe it's under a bridge somewhere. I mean, you can do anything anywhere. Whatever it takes. And the more DIY you want to go, and by that, I mean, like, if you want to say throw a party under a bridge, identify your people that are going to help you because you cannot do that on your own, right? And so if you...say you and I are now just throwing a party under a bridge, that's what we decided on. Identify what you need and that's going to look like...
**Margaret ** 34:13 So we need a generator...
**Riley ** 34:15 Find your people who are going to perform. What is this going to look like? Is it going to be...Are we throwing a goth rave and Nomadic Warmachine's is going to play? Great. Okay, so now we communicate with our artists in the totally professional and respectful way.
**Margaret ** 34:32 Promised him that it starts at 7pm and is over by 1am.
**Riley ** 34:36 Yes, yes. Or you don't and you don't hold to that at all. [Joking] Yeah, communicate well with your artists. Figure out what their rate may be. And then, once that is secured, then you have your artists, you have your location, you have your date. You need to make your promotional materials and you need to secure your speakers, PA, fog machine...I don't know, whatever you decide that you need. And I mean, I really encourage people to do whatever they want. So, get your lube and giant pools for your lube wrestling party. Whatever it is. But, I don't know, Asheville loves a gimmick. So, we're always throwing a gimmick in there. You know, I also like...Encourage people to figure out what the people around them like. But yeah, so we're at the point now where we have our artists, and our location, and our venue, and we have a flyer, and we have a PA secured. And then, you just put the word out there. I love to hit the streets with a staple gun. And I think that that is a perfectly fine thing to do. And social media is great as well. We promote online, and we promote in the streets, and we pass out handbills at other events. And that's my three main modes of promoting. Maybe you have a listserv in your community that you can let people know. Maybe you can ask the performers to promote it on their networks as well. Maybe your friends with one of the performers with a podcast who can mention it on her podcast. It's about reaching out. I mean, always, always communal over individual when it comes to doing anything, I guess, but doing this as well. You know, reach out to all of your networks and make it less about who it is and more about what it is and what brings us together. And then you do it. And, I mean, unfortunately, we have to take safe...pretty serious safety considerations into the parties that we throw because of threats of violence in the past. Yeah, Margaret and I have both been doxxed after various things that have happened in Asheville that were just fun little events. And so yeah, maybe there's...and again, this is like where I go to collectives and the people you know and the people you trust because we aren't cop callers. And if something were to go down at one of our shows, we put pretty intentional consideration into safety planning, having a medic there in case someone, you know, breaks their leg at lube wrestling, or if, you know, if something really hits the fan, just having having safety plans in place feels important too. What is the evacuation plan if the cops bust up your under the bridge rave? And how can you make sure that everyone is accounted for and that, you know, the marginalized people present are not just left to, you know...that people have each other's backs. And building that culture does start, I think, with the people who are hosting the event.
**Margaret ** 38:07 No, that makes a lot of sense to me. Every part of that. And one of the...to the not leaving people behind thing, one of the things that I think actually really behooves experienced...People have experience in the streets and have experience with conflict with police. I have a pretty strong sense of self preservation. And I tend to know the best exit at any given point. And I'm pretty good at getting out of situations. What actually behooves me in crises is to use the fact that I have that experience to not be the first one out. But instead, to help the people who don't have that experience to get out. The more experienced people should be the people who are taking a higher level of risk. The organizers should be the people taking a higher level of risk. The organizers will be more in the know. They'll be more aware of when police are coming, you know, blah, blah, blah. And it's a time to be brave. Most, you know, obviously most DIY shows and stuff have nothing of the sort, you know, like but no, I really like....
**Riley ** 39:16 Yeah, I'm just thinking about a time, I'm thinking about a time that some gay college kids here in Asheville threw a house party and some random dude that was a neighbor wandered up on the party and he was being weird. So, he got asked to leave. So he came back with a gun and he fired off a round into the ground, but he was obliterated wasted. And, I mean people people handled it...They responded quickly and handled it as well as they could. But, you know, after that happened, some anarchist homies came through and did porch sitting on their porch for a couple of weeks, but also sat down with them like, "Hey, let's let's make some safety planning for if this happens in the future," and that actually brought like probably 15 or 20 people that I would have never thought they would show any interest in community safety work, you know? And this goes back to just discounting people or not being maybe kind of people like, consider the Yes....
**Margaret ** 40:24 These like apolitical party kids...
**Riley ** 40:27 These a political party kids could be on our team with one...It takes not...you know, it's maybe they already are, you know? And that was a really powerful experience because I think...We felt very grateful on both sides. And there was no, there wasn't really a both sides, which we all really kind of knew each other. But, you know, there was a divide. Oh, those kids aren't really with our shit. Oh, those people aren't really, you know? And it was a really unifying moment. Like, yeah, now these party college kids are really down with the struggle and will show up to do porch sitting for others if they need it, you know? And it sucks that it takes a near tragedy for that to happen. But, what came out of it was we safety plan for everything now. You know what I'm saying? Like, we're running scenarios like it's...you know? I mean, because that's what makes me feel like at the actual event, I can relax, because I know, "Well, if something goes down, we have a plan for it." And actually, I mean, the queer and trans events are not getting any safer, not because of anything we're doing but because of increased violence. So, I don't know what...I'm not gonna stop being with my people. So, at the very least, I can increase safety for them. And for myself. And you can do it for me, like, it's not just... Yeah, we work together for that.
**Margaret ** 41:59 No, I love it. And the ethos of, "We keep us safe," we just have to like actually mean it and we have to actually think about what it involves. No, this ties in so well to one of the things that I talk about a lot on the show where I'm like, one of the reasons I have a go bag is because I live in the woods and wildfire is a thing that exists. And so I prepare for that. And now I don't worry about it all the time. And what you're talking about, like yeah, I was recently at the Asheville Anarchist Book Fair--I don't think this is a surprise to anyone. I'm not doxxing myself by saying this, I did a talk, played a show. It was very fun. You all did a great job. Yeah. And, I didn't worry incredibly about my safety because of that, because I knew that there were people there doing security. I knew that they were not power hungry type people. If anyone listening is like thinking about doing community defense, that's amazing and beautiful and essential, and takes a certain mindset, and it takes a certain calmness, and it takes a certain...the kind of person who is not looking to exert power over other people. You know? Anyone who thinks in their heart is a petty tyrant, you should be the person to distribute condoms for free and instead, which is also essential. And now don't go up to everyone who's distributing condoms and decide that they're a petty tyrant. Unless they're not letting you have condoms. Unless they're like, "You don't need a condom, you're not getting laid," then you should be opposed to them.
**Riley ** 43:32 Flip the table.
**Margaret ** 43:34 That's right. Fuck your safer sex. We live danger...[Joking tone] I don't...No, that's like...I really like how much this immediately ties into all the preparedness stuff, because this is what community preparedness is, is building culture, building community. Because the other thing, the way you're talking about this, this is community organizing. [Riley makes an affirmative sound] And like people, I think sometimes think of subcultural spaces, whether it's queer dance parties or punk shows or raves or whatever, as being outside of...people think subculture is distinct from culture, but there is no culture. There's no mainstream culture. You ever talk to a normal person. They're not normal. Like, they may dress as normal as they want, but everyone's got something. You're like, you're talking to someone and then they're like, "And the aliens..." and you're like, "Huh."
**Riley ** 44:29 I thought you were into a thing by the way you dress, but you're into a thing.
**Margaret ** 44:34 Exactly. And like, we just have a myriad of intersecting subcultures and we shouldn't be...I don't know. I think that building subculture and especially intersecting subcultures, and like...Like I love that at the book fair, there was a lot of different genres and there was a lot of different things happening. It wasn't just punk, right? And I love punk, but not as much as I love goth, and you, you know, like, I don't know, those weren't the only two genres. I'm just...Yeah.
**Riley ** 45:07 Yeah, we had a really great time. And I am thinking more about this safety and what the role of, you know, I think about what my asks are as a promoter of people who are willing to show up to do some role of safety at our events. And I'm back at it again, be nice to people. Like that is one of my main asks over and over again, like, the main energy, I mean...it's a really...And I can usually from talking to someone for a few minutes, gauge to some level, what their ability to do deescalate a situation is. And just like you said, if someone is coming in hot with something to prove, it's like, "No, you're going to be serving beans and rice because that is not the energy we need," you know? And that is...I just have to honor the de-escalation training and the safety trainings that I've received that taught me that, you know, we don't need to reproduce militancy, or ugly masculinity, or yeah...There is no aspect of that, that keeps us safe. And I have been able to do more with my gay voice, and my demeanor, and my just looking someone in the eyes and smiling at them and asking them and like, you know, trying to build points of affinity to de-escalate a situation have been able to accomplish more that way than I've ever been able to accomplish by like, trying to get buck with somebody and trying to like...I'm doing something on a camera that people can't see...
**Margaret ** 46:55 Just imagine, just imagine. Riley. Fist up. Head side-to-side. Shoulders also side-to-side...
**Riley ** 47:03 It looks like I'm doing a bird mating dance.
**Margaret ** 47:09 Well, no, and I, I like that too. Because it's like, it's also like, because most of it is that and then sometimes a bunch of people sit on your porch all week with guns. And while doing that, are not not macho, are communicating, are friendly, are friendly with neighbors, aren't walking around with long guns. I mean, obviously, there are situations in this world where that is necessary. But that's not usually what we're talking about. You know, usually we're talking about people who have specific training that is, especially in medical and like keeping people safe, but also includes like, concealed carry and all of these things. You know, that is a...Whenever non Americans listen to some of the stuff that I talk about, people are like, "Well, fuck, y'all are in trouble." And I'm like "Yeah, we're in trouble!"
**Riley ** 47:58 We really are.
**Margaret ** 48:02 It's the "I'm in danger," meme, but it's like, but it's okay. Like, that's the other thing that you're talking about being like...you know, you don't go to a movie and you're like, "Why are they showing us the fire movie, the fire exit movie." I guess they don't do this anymore. When I was a kid, you would go to the movie and it would show you like, "Please note the nearest exits." You know, it doesn't mean that the fucking movie theaters gonna burn down. It means that it might and you should know what to do. You know? And, so like bad things happen. Still, probably driving to and from things is more dangerous than doing things like that is...I remember I was reading about like wolf attacks, and like bear attacks, and shit, well camping, and everything was like, "Yeah, you know what the most dangerous part of camping is? Driving to the camping spot." And I say that not because it's like, everything's safe, but rather we clearly do accept danger. That is part of living.
**Riley ** 49:13 Yeah, I just want the danger to be like getting consensually kicked in the face during one of your friends sets in a pit and not like someone throwing punches and calling you slurs outside.
**Margaret ** 49:26 Totally. And if I want...if that happens, everyone to know that the plan is to beat that person into the ground and no one talked to the police about what happened.
**Riley ** 49:37 We saw nothing.
**Margaret ** 49:37 We all talked to lawyers instead.
**Riley ** 49:40 Exactly.
**Margaret ** 49:42 No, no. Okay. I like this. This has me excited. Every now and then I'm like...most of the time, I'm happy that I live in the woods and don't do anything. And sometimes. I'm like, wait, sometimes I miss the fact that I did all of these things and I will do these things again. Okay, so you hinted at it a bunch of different times and you talked about different ways to be inclusive, including accessibility of the space for people of different mobility needs, accessibility of letting people know what the Covid risk is, and even like letting people know what the accessibility is, right? Like, own up to it if your space is not wheelchair accessible. And actually, hopefully, by owning up to it, you're kind of like slowly pressuring yourself...Tell me if I'm going about this wrong, but in my mind that you like then kind of slowly pressure yourself to be like, "Oh, I really hate saying that it's not wheelchair accessible, maybe we should..."
**Riley ** 50:30 Right, like, maybe I should find a wheelchair accessible place. Even, because that's something I've really processed. I have to give it to a local group DIYabled to really push for accessible spaces within the DIY community here in Asheville. Because I really assessed it with this person, her name is Priya, who kind of runs that group. Like, I want to find these spaces that are accessible, but it's, you know, it's...We live in the mountains. There are...a lot of them just aren't. And, you know, I feel, you know, all this guilt about that. And she's like, "No, like, disabled people greatly appreciate you just saying it. Like, no shame, no shade, like, just let people know so they're not haulin ass all the way out there to find out when they get there, or having to ask first." Like, yes, it does put that pressure on. And even if you aren't like, I really want to find them accessible space, and the space just simply isn't accessible, naming it is increasing access because it's not forcing someone to travel to a place that they can't actually get into, you know? So, no shade at all, if you can't find that kind of space, but...
**Margaret ** 51:47 And that makes sense. And then like one of the things that I think about...I'm someone who, you know, I'm very Covid careful, let's say. And, like, I really appreciate when places are like honest about like, you know, "Hey, masking is going to be encouraged," or, "Hey, masking..." Like, like, the thing that would make me sad is if you go to a space that's like, "Masking required," and then like the organizers aren't wearing masks and no one's wearing masks. I'd rather you just didn't put that on the flyer at that point, right? Because then you can make...I can make my own decisions around that. And, you know, I'll...And so like putting on the flyer, like, "Outside space is available," you know, or whatever, right? Like, no, that's interesting. And so, okay, so I'm wondering what other inclusivity, not just accessibility, but like inclusivity things are. Like you mentioned, for example, about paying people. Like that helps remove barriers of access, you know, for Black and brown folks and for people who suffer from class oppression as well. What are some of the other hot tips for inclusivity with Riley? [Said like it's the name of a talk show segment]
**Riley ** 53:04 Let me think about that for a second, because I think that at the end of the day, it just boils down to like who is...Maybe it doesn't boil down to who is organizing, but um...Yeah, I wonder like, who is the event actually for and what is the goal? What is the goal? You know, because I think about, you know, how different Pansy Collective might look if the intention was to book queer artists but we weren't in ourselves queer. Or, if I was just like a punk promoter who was like, "I want to make my shows better," but wasn't actually gay. I don't know if it would feel differently. So I'm just like, actually, maybe part of it is...us? We got to be the ones doing it.
**Margaret ** 54:05 You mean, like, doing it ourselves like it is in the name?
**Riley ** 54:09 It's almost as if we're doing it ourselves. They should call that something do
**Margaret ** 54:15 DO. We'll call it DO. [Both are laughing at the dry joke]
**Riley ** 54:18 I actually do remember at some point writing something about Pansy Collective and I like closed it off on this line that I was so proud of that was like, "We call it DIY, but really it's DIT, doing it together." And that rings fucking true. I mean, it's a little doing it together...
**Margaret ** 54:41 That's a little ditty [Makes "Eh, eh" noises to affirm it's a joke]
**Riley ** 54:43 Yeah, exactly. I think about taking the ego out of it. Or I'm like...Yeah, revisiting the...From a promoter aspect, the thing that I really hate to see from promoters, and the thing that we were able to kind of try our best to circumvent as a collective, was this, you know, we don't want it to be about like who it is that's doing the thing, you know? And for a long time, we try really hard to make the face behind who Pansy Collective was anonymous, for safety reasons, because I don't know, I've named this a little bit already, but at the time in 2016 and 17 when we started organizing together, the block was really hot. And white supremacists were told to start keeping an eye on Asheville. And so there was a lot of attention on what we were doing. So, we tried to stay anonymous, partially for safety reasons, but partially because it felt less like...yeah, like a cool kid club, ego stroked. You know, this is me doing this. And instead it's like, "No, this is, this is a collective and this is this collective is you, and it's me, and it's everyone, and it doesn't matter who it is, because it's about the thing. It's not about who's booking it. I think about that approach from a promoter standpoint as a way to circumvent the "cool kid shit" that makes spaces feel really unwelcoming. Because if you're not in it then you're not welcome. And it's like, well, yeah, if it's nothing to be in then we're all here together. And we're all on the same level.
**Margaret ** 56:34 No, that's interesting. So what brought you to move away from that?
**Riley ** 56:36 Um, I don't think that...Well, I got less scared of...I got less..After getting doxxed, I got less scared, I guess, because it's...You know, it's just like, "Oh, y'all aren't gonna fucking bust a grape. Like what?" You know, and like this the...our biggest fear happened. And then we...
**Margaret ** 57:04 And then nothing happened.
**Riley ** 57:05 And then we took a concealed carry class together. I mean, I don't know. Can I say that? Can I name that we did that?
**Margaret ** 57:11 I'm out about…I've talked about how after getting doxxed, I got my concealed carry. Yeah.
**Riley ** 57:15 Yeah. And so like, I mean, I was with Margaret on that. I mean, it was probably like 20 or 30 of us, and big props to the person that helped organize getting us all together for that. But yeah, I mean, we really responded like, alright, like, if y'all wanna fuck with us, we're gonna up our defense and keep rolling, and we did and it's fine. And so I got less scared because I'm like, "They don't want any smoke with us." Like, what, you know, blast our dead names. Do whatever. I don't give a shit. We're really not...We've really been putting up with this shit for our whole lives. So it's not that big of a deal.
**Margaret ** 57:59 Like when they're like, "Oh, we're gonna tell your parents that you're a queer anarchists." And I'm like, "Oh, they know."
**Riley ** 58:05 They know. They already hate me for it. Don't worry.
**Margaret ** 58:10 That's either happened in a good way or bad way already for everyone.
**Riley ** 58:16 Yeah, no, exactly. It's like I'm sorry that you lost your job for being a Nazi--No, I'm not--but it doesn't really work, like what you're gonna tell my leftist coffee shop job that I'm part of antifa? That got me a raise actually.
**Margaret ** 58:30 Yeah, and even like, you know, one of the people who was doxxed who worked at a coffee shop didn't even have a good relationship with the owners of the coffee shop, and the coffee shop was like, "What? That sucks fuck them." You know? Like no one's like mad. Yeah, it's not samie-samie. They think it samie-samie, but they live in a weird bubble where antifa is bad and everyone is aware that Nazis are bad.
**Riley ** 58:55 Everyone knows that Nazis are bad. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that is very well said. So I mean, I still feel..like you know, I still feel like it's important that at whatever event I'm really impressed by organizers, not even just at an event in the streets too, you know. I mean, it's very off putting, and you can tell very quickly if somebody is--my partner calls it "All up in the videos dancin."
**Margaret ** 59:27 Like people who are clout chasing?
**Riley ** 59:29 Yeah. Are you here to, you know, are you here to make a difference? Or are you here to be seen as a good person? You know, and that doesn't run as deep at a party because it's like we're all here to do something. It doesn't matter. But yeah, playing a role, whether it's running sound, doing security, handing some artists some money, working behind the table, whatever. Taking the ego out of it makes the event more accessible for everyone, including you.
**Margaret ** 1:00:03 Yeah. No, that makes sense to me.
**Riley ** 1:00:06 I mean that for artists too. Like, I don't want to book people who are more about themselves than about the community they're playing with.
**Margaret ** 1:00:16 Yeah, totally. Because then it's like, I want to celebrate people within my community doing something amazing. But not in this way that makes me think that they're amazing and I'm not, right? When we put people on stages--I mean, obviously, sometimes stages are useful for literal accessibility, actually, so that everyone can see and things like that--but when we elevate people metaphorically, like, this is what I like about punk, the thing that really got me about punk and why I started liking the music more was the sense of like, someone from our crowd has emerged and shown and been, you know, and it could be about their name, it can be about the thing that they've done, and then they come back into the crowd, and then they are of us, and they're coming from us. And I really like that because then we can celebrate what makes us each individual and exceptional, but not in a way that says that these people are better than us, you know?
**Riley ** 1:01:16 Yeah, definitely. And I mean, that's why I also never want it to get any bigger than it is, right, right? You know, I love when punk projects keep it to a certain size, you know, I don't want to be working with large venues, I don't want to be working with tens of thousands of dollars. I don't want to be working with green rooms. And yeah, there's just...I am of a particular...I don't even know what it is. I just want to do all that, you know? I feel more comfortable in somebody's hot basement or in a shitty dive bar or under a bridge, I guess?
**Margaret ** 1:02:00 No, it makes sense. I think of like...I think of it as like, are there ways where if we get...because I think Chumbawamba rules, right? They did their sell out thing, they got a ton of money, they financed all of these projects, and it was always a compromise. And it like, wasn't an easy thing, right? And then they like blew their, you know, celebrity and like went back to doing DIY shit. And like, that's fucking great. And like, so I think that like...I think we sort of need both. I actually do think we need the stadium stuff. Because if the stadium stuff is also like, financing us? But it's not building the DIY culture. It's kind of like the tech bro who gives tons of money, rules and is great and is amazing, and it is a sacrifice that someone is making to spend all their time working if they are capable of producing...like someone who's capable of getting a lot of money by working I actually think it's like a really good idea for them to do that so they get a bunch of money and give it to things you know?
**Riley ** 1:02:00 Yeah. I'm not mad at that at all.
**Margaret ** 1:02:02 Yeah. I think it's funny. I think Chumbawamba would have...like I think people would have been so much less mad at them if it had happened now instead of...or maybe I just say this because now I get paid to podcast? [laughing] I don't know, maybe I have a bias here...
**Riley ** 1:03:21 Maybe you get knocked down, but then you get back up again. Maybe it's that.
**Margaret ** 1:03:24 I know. Never gonna keep me down. Well, okay, so is there any like standout question that I didn't ask you that I probably should have or do you have any like final words or?
**Riley ** 1:03:40 No, I...Let me think about that for a second. I don't know. I think I just want people to get out there and do it. Yeah, start that project. Put yourself out there. Share it with us. Come through Asheville. We'll book you.
**Margaret ** 1:04:05 Hell yeah. Yeah, the secret is to really begin. Do the thing that you want to do. That's what's so great about DIY is that it actually doesn't matter if it sucks. Like, just do it. And then if you don't like it, do it better next time. And if you do like it, and no one else likes it, just keep doing it. Fuck it. Whatever. Eventually the people who think what you're doing is cool will show up. I never thought there would be a goth night at an anarchist bookfair but I've been in a lot of goth bands and finally I got to play an anarchist bookfair so it all works out. Okay, well how can people either find you or your projects?
**Riley ** 1:04:44 Y'all can check out Pansy Collective on Instagram. It's Pansy.Collective. Um, that's kind of it. Thank you, Margaret.
**Margaret ** 1:04:52 Yeah, thank you so much.
**Margaret ** 1:05:00 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, you should go out and start a band or start booking benefits or go to an event and make friends with people or don't make friends with people or don't be a cool kid at the thing if you're already in the in-crowd. Or, you can financially support us because we don't pay--at the moment we don't pay the hosts which is fine--but we do pay the transcriptionist and the audio editor because they're doing the like completely thankless work. And so, thanks, by the way, both the transcriptionist and audio editor who have to hear me say this. You can support us by supporting us on Patreon. It's patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. We send out a zine every month to our backers at $10 or more. We have another podcast called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness where we do a free audio version and an interview with the person who has recorded the zine or who wrote the zine...Put the verbs in the right order on your own time. And in particular, we would like to thank Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, anonymous--that's a good choice--Funder, Jans, Oxalice, Janice & O'dell, Paige, Aly, Paparouna, Milicia, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, Shawn, S.J., Paige, Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Cat J., Staro, Jenipher, Eleanor, Kirk, Sam, Chris, Michaiah, and Hoss the dog. Thank you Hoss the dog and everyone be as well as you can and we'll talk to you soon.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This time on This Month in the Apocalypse, Brooke, Margaret, and Inmn talk about everything that happened in August, from the apocalyptic weather, to the wild fires in Lahaina, to some recent and incredibly tragic queerphobic violence. But also there's some hope.
Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
We have a delay on the transcription for this episode. Check back soon!
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn is joined by author and activist, Michael Novick. They talk about just how horrible fascism really is. Thankfully, there's a simple solution, antifascism. Michael talks about their work with Anti-Racist Action Network, the Turning The Tide newspaper, and his newest book with Oso Blanco, The Blue Agave Revolution.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.
Michael (he/they) and The Blue Agave Revolution can be found at www.antiracist.org If you want to take over the Turning The Tide newspaper, find Michael at antiracistaction_ la@yahoo.com
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Michael Novick on Antifascism
Inmn 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host Inmn Neruin and I use they/them pronouns. This week we are talking about something that is very scary and, in terms of things we think about being prepared for, something that is far more likely to impact our lives than say, a zombie apocalypse. Or I mean, we're already being impacted by this. It is actively killing us. But, if I had to choose between preparing for this and preparing for living in a bunker for 10 years, I would choose this. Oh, golly, I really hope preparing for this doesn't involve living in a bunker for 10 years, though. But the monster of this week is fascism. However, there's a really great solution to fascism...antifascism. And we have a guest today who has spent a lot of their life thinking about and participating in antifascism. But first, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And so here's a jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo doo doo. [Singing the words like a cheesy melody]
Inmn 02:00 And we're back. And I have with me today writer and organizer Michael Novick, co founder of the John Brown Anti Klan Committee, People Against Racist Terror, Anti-racist Action Network, the TORCH Antifa network and White People For Black Lives. Michael, would you like to introduce yourself with your name, pronouns and kind of...I guess like your history in anti-racist, antifascist struggles and a little bit about what you want to tell us about today?
Michael 02:34 Sure. Thanks, Inmn. So yeah, Michael Novick. Pronouns he or they. I've been doing anti-racist and antifascist organizing and educating and work for many many decades at this point. I'm in my 70s. I got involved in political activism in kind of anti-war, civil rights, student rights work in the 60s. I was an SDS at Brooklyn College. And I've been doing that work from an anti white supremacist, anticapitalist, anti-imperialist perspective. And I think that particularly trying to understand fascism in the US context, you have to look at questions of settler colonialism. And, you know, people sometimes use the term racial capitalism. I think that land theft, genocide, enslavement of people of African descent, especially is central to understanding the social formation of this country. I was struck by the name of the podcast in terms of "live like the world is ending," because for a long time, I had an analysis that said that the fear of the end of the world had to do with the projection of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie feels that its rule is coming to an end and therefore thinks the world is coming to an end, but the world will get on fire without the bourgeoisie and the rulers and the imperialists. Except that because of the lease on life that this empire has gotten repeatedly by the setbacks caused by white and male supremacy and the way it undermines people's movements, the bourgeoisie is actually in a position to bring the world to an end. I think that's what we're facing is a global crisis of the Earth's system based on imperialism, based on settler colonialism, and exploitation of the Earth itself. And so I think it's not just preparing for individual survival in those circumstances. We have to think about really how we can put an end to a system that's destroying the basis for life on the planet. And so I think that those are critical understandings. And the turn towards fascism that we're seeing across the...you know, Anti-Racist Action's analysis has always been that fascism is built from above and below and that there are forces within society. I think particularly because settler colonialism is a mass base for fascism in this country, as well as an elite preference for it under the kind of circumstances that we're looking at, in which, you know, as I said the basis for life itself has been damaged by imperialism, capitalism, and its manifestations. And so the need for extreme repressive measures, and for genocidal approaches, and exterminationist approaches are at hand. So, I think that, again, I think that the question of preparation is preparation for those kinds of circumstances. I think we're living in a kind of low intensity civil war situation already, in which you see the use of violence by the State, obviously, but also by non state forces that people have to deal with. So I think that that's the overall approach that I think we need to think about. And that comes out of, as I said, decades of doing work. I think that there are a few key things that we have to understand about this system, which is that it's not just issues that we face, but there is an enemy, there is a system that is trying to propagate and sustain itself that is inimical to life and inimical to freedom. And that if we want to protect our lives and the lives of other species and if we want to protect people's freedom going forward, we have to recognize that there's an irreconcilable contradiction between those things and between the system that we live in. So that's kind of a sobering perspective. But, I think it's an important one.
Inmn 06:20 Yeah, yeah, no, it is. And it's funny, something that you said, kind of made a gear turn in my head. So, you know, normally, yeah, we do talk about in preparing to live like the world is dying, we do usually come at it from this context of that being a bad thing that we need to prepare for bad things to happen. But, the way you were talking about like fascism and empire and stuff, I suddenly thought, "Wait, maybe we should live like that world is dying and like there is something better ahead." Because, you know, we do like to approach the show from...I feel like we like to talk about the bad things that are happening and could happen but also the hopefulness and like the brighter futures that we can imagine.
Michael 07:15 I think that's right. And I think it's really important to have both of those understandings. I think that, you know, people do not actually get well organized out of despair. I think they do, you know, you want to have...You know, there used to be a group called Love and Rage. And you have to have both those aspects. You have to have the rage against the machine and the rage against the system that's destroying people, but you have to have the love, you have to have that sense of solidarity and the idea of a culture of not just resistance but a culture of liberation and a culture of solidarity. And I think that, you know, there's a dialectic between the power of the State and the power of these oppressive forces and the power of the people and to the extent that the people can exert their power and to the extent that we can free ourselves from the, you know, the chains of mental slavery is...[Sings a sort of tune] you hear in reggae, you know, that actually weakens the power of the State and the power of the corporations. And they [the State] understand that sometimes better than we do. So there is, you know, there's some lessons I feel like I've learned and one of them is that every time there is a liberatory movement based out of people's experiences and the contradictions that are experienced in their lives, whether it's the gay liberation movement, women's liberation movement, or Black liberation and freedom struggle, there's always an attempt by the rulers to take that over and to reintegrate it into, you know, bourgeois ways of thinking. And, you know, people talk about hegemony and the idea that ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class, and I think that, you know, I've seen it happen over and over again with different movements. And so, you know, I was involved with the Bay Area gay liberation in the 80s and, you know, one of the things that happened there is that you saw very quickly a different language coming up and different issues coming up. And so suddenly the question of gays in the military was put forward, or we have to be concerned about the fact that gay people have to hide when they're in the military, and the question of normalizing gay relationships in the contract form of marriage came forward. And those were basically efforts to circumscribe and contain the struggle for gay liberation and to break down gender binaries and stuff within the confines of bourgeois conceptions of rights and bourgeois integration into militarism and contractual economic relationships. And you saw that over and over again in terms of the Women's Liberation Movement, and then all of a sudden you've got bourgeois feminism and white white feminism. And I think that that's really important to understand because it means that there's a struggle inside every movement to grasp the contradiction that...and to maintain a kind of self determined analysis and strategy for how that movement is going to carry itself forward in opposition to what the rulers of this society--who rely heavily on, as I say, white supremacy, male supremacy, settler colonialism, and its manifestations--to try to contain and suppress insurrectionary...And you see the same thing within the preparedness movement. There's the dominant politics of the preparedness movement I think that I've seen over many years are actually white supremacist. They're maintaining the homestead of settler colonial land theft. So you have to understand that that's a contradiction in that movement that has to be faced and overcome and struggled with. I think having an understanding is critical to really trying to chart a path forward that will kind of break...create wedge issues on our side of the of the ledger, so to speak, and begin to break people away from identification with the Empire, identification with whiteness, identification with privilege. And, you know, one of the issues I've had over a long time, for example, what I struggle for is people's understanding about the question of privilege. You know, I come out of the...as I said, there were struggles in the 60s and early 70s about what we called white skin privilege. And I think that it's critical to understand that privilege functions throughout the system all the time. It's not a burden of guilt, it's a mechanism of social control. And anything you have as privilege can be taken away. Privilege is a mechanism of actually obtaining consent and adherence to...You know, parents use privileges with their kids to try to get their kids to do what they want. Teachers use privilege with students to get the students to do what they want, Prison guards use privileges with prisoners to get the prisoners to follow the rules and stay incarcerated. And so, you know, that's a mechanism of Imperial domination, of settler colonialism, and certainly within that context. So, it's not an illness or a...It's not something to be guilty about. It's something to contend with and deal with and understand that if there are things you have as privileges that you think are used by right or by merit, you're deluding yourself and you can't actually function facing reality. So when you understand that they are privileges, you understand that they're there to obtain your consent and your adherence, and your compliance, your complicity, your complacency, and then you have to actually resist those privileges or turn those privileges into weapons that you can use to actually weaken the powers that be. And I think that that approach is important to understand that, you know...I used to do a lot of work with people in the Philippines struggle, and they talked about the fact that, you know, on some of the...outside the US Army bases that were imposed in the Philippines, there was a rank order of privilege, like where people could dig in the garbage dumps of the US military to get better quality stuff that was being thrown out by the military. And so that kind of hierarchy and sense of organizing people by by hierarchy, by privilege, is how the system functions at every level. In the workplace they find different privileges that people have to try to divide workers from each other and get people to struggle for privilege as opposed to actually struggle for solidarity and resistance and a different world. And I think that having that understanding begins to free people. Steven Biko was the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa that really helped propel it moving forward. One of the things he said is that, "The greatest weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the minds of the oppressed." And, you know, I think to the extent that we can start to free our minds of these structures, we can actually begin to weaken the oppressor and strengthen the struggling and creative powers and energies of people to really build a different world.
Inmn 14:00 Yeah, yeah. Sorry, this is gonna seem like a silly question because it feels very basic. But, I love to kind of break things down into their base levels. But, what is fascism?
Michael 14:11 Yeah, good question. I think that an important analysis of fascism that I came across is from Cesare Amè. And what he said is that, "Fascism is the application in the metropole (of the colonizing power) of the methods of rule that have been used in the colonies." I think that that has a critical understanding because, as I said, the US is a separate colonial system, so elements of fascism have always been present within the political, economic, and social structure of the United States because they're internally colonized people and stolen land. So, if you're looking at elements of fascism, there's hyper masculinity, there's hyper nationalism, there's obviously slave labor, there's incorporation of a mass base into kind of a visceral identification with a leader. And all of those things really have manifest themselves in US history before we used the term, "fascism." And so, the US is based on land theft, on genocide, on exterminationist policies towards the indigenous people, the enslavement of African people, and also on the incorporation of a mass base based on settler colonialism and the offering of privileges to a sector of the population to say, "Okay, you know, we're going to participate along with the rulers in this system." And so I think that it's important to get that understanding because people often think that fascism is an aberration or it's a particularly extreme form of dictatorial rule or something like that. But I think that it's really a way of trying to reorganize people's personalities around their role within an empire and within, you know, it's trying to control the way people think, and control the way people see themselves in relation to other people. And so, you know, that's why I think that idea that fascism is built from above and below is important because we do see fascist elements that have some contradictions with the state. And we've seen, for example, in January 6th. You know, the government has gone after certain of these elements because they have moved too quickly. Or, the same way that there were premature antifascists during the World War II period and they went after the people in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Sometimes there are sort of premature proto-fascist in this society that have contradictions with the State, and they're operating somewhat independently. So, you know, I think that it's important to understand that and that there are elements in the State and within the different sections of the State that have their own operative plan. So, you know, when you look at the question of police abuse and police brutality, there's one approach to it that certain elements in the State take, which is about command and control. They want to make sure that they control the police forces and that individual officers are not acting independently but are carrying out cohesive state strategies. At the same time, there are elements within law enforcement that are trying to organize individual cops for organized white supremacy. And, it's the same thing in the military. And so there are contradictions there that we have to be aware of, but at the same time, they're operating within a framework of settler colonialism, of organized white supremacy, So, one of the things that's come up recently, for example, is this idea that there...how can there be non-white white supremacists? And, you know, I think it has to do with the fact that it's not just your identity, or your racial identity that's there but who do you...What's your identification? Are you identifying with the Empire? Are you identifying with the bourgeois? Are you identifying with the settler colonial project that has shaped, really, the whole globe over the course of half a millennium? Or, are you identifying with the indigenous? Are you identifying with the struggling people? And it's less a...It's not a question of your particular skin color but which side of the line are you on?
Inmn 18:12 How does attempts by the State or by society to kind of like assimilate various oppressed people into the Empire? Like, how does that kind of factor factor into this?
Michael 18:24 Well, if you look at the history of, let's say, Central America is one case in point, that there were fascist forces in Central America and their base was not really within their own society. Their base was within the Empire. And so, you had death squads operating, you had mercenaries operating, you had contras [counter revolutionaries] operating in Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, carrying out genocidal policies, in many cases, against indigenous people and people of African descent within their own societies. And so, you know, that's not exactly fascism in the same way, but it certainly is aspects of police state and death squad activity that has to be resisted. So I think that, you know, when you see Enrique Tarrio and some of these people that are, quote unquote, "Hispanic," operating as proto-fascists with the Proud Boys or these other formations in the United States that's a manifestation of the same thing, that there are people who have identified themselves with a system of white supremacy and a system of domination, a system of exploitation, and they're trying to make their own individual piece with it and they have collective mechanisms that reinforce that. And they see...So, you know, I think that the fascism has presented itself at times as a decolonizing element in Latin America and Asia and other places where...For example, when the Japanese Empire was trying to strengthen itself and formed an alliance with Italian fascism and German Nazism, they also presented themselves in Asia as liberators of Asia from European colonialism. And, you know, then they carried out atrocities of their own in China, Indochina, and Korea. So, I think that nobody is exempt from this. It's not a genetic factor. It is what ideology...What's the organizing principle that people are operating under to form their society and generate their power? If that's militaristic, if it's hierarchical, if it's exploitative, then regardless of what the skin tone of somebody carrying that out is, it can be fascistic in its nature.
Inmn 20:44 Yeah, I like something that you said earlier, which I think is an interesting frame. So, I feel like people in the United States, you might hear people like, talk about the rise of fascism, or the like, emergence of fascism, as if it's this new thing, you know? And I like how you read it, in the formation of the United States as a nationalistic identity with this idea that fascism has always been here, fascism has always been a part of the settler colonial project of the United States.
Michael 21:27 Well, I was gonna follow up that is if you look at the countries in which fascism came to power in Europe, they were mainly countries where they felt they were not adequate empires in their own right. In other words, Spain, even Portugal, France, England, you know, had empires. Germany came late to imperialism. And even to the formation of a German state, the German bourgeoisie was not able to really unify all the Germans into a single nation. Same thing with Italy. Italy was, you know, a bunch of kind of mini states and city states and came late to the formation of a national sense of Italy. And so I think that fascism presented itself as a overarching ideology that could galvanize a nation and launch it into an imperial mode where it could compete with other empires. So the US context is a little different because, as I say, from the very beginning it had that element of settler colonialism and cross-class alliance in which not only the bourgeoisie but even working people could be induced to participate in that project of land theft and genocide. There's a famous book called "How the Irish Became White" by Noel Ignatiev who talked about, you know, how white supremacy affected Irish workers. And what he didn't really look at was that there was some Irish involved right from the very beginning and trying to overturn the land relationships between settlers. They wanted, you know, there was a land theft and a land hunger that they had, and so, for example, even before the question of relation between Irish workers and Black workers came up, there were Irish in the United States that wanted to overturn the agreements that had been reached in Pennsylvania between the Quakers and the indigenous people in Pennsylvania. The Irish wanted land and they wanted to participate in taking that land from the native people. And then that had repercussions back in Ireland itself because that the US Empire and those land thefts then affected the consciousness of the Irish within Ireland itself and weaken the Irish struggle for independence from British colonialism because there was a safety valve of the US Empire. And so I think that it's critical to look at these things because it gives us a sense of what is at stake at different times and what's at issue. And I think that looking at the question of decolonization, looking at the question of solidarity and unity, is the flip sides to this. If we only look at the power of the bourgeois, if we look at the power of the fascists, it can be intimidating or overwhelming or depressing. And I think that that's the...You know, when you talk about preparedness and some of these things, you're talking about what are the generative powers of the people themselves because Imperialism and Capitalism are based on a kind of parasitical relationship. They're extracting wealth from the Earth itself and from the labor of people and turning it into a power over the Earth and over the people. And I think that understanding that actually all that wealth that the system has, all the power that the system has is actually coming out of the people who are oppressed and exploited in the land gives us a sense of what our own powers are and what our own capacity to be creative and generative are. To the extent we exercise those, it weakens them. And I think that that's a critical understanding.
Inmn 25:16 Yeah. Are there ways that fascism is currently manifesting that feel different from say, I don't know, like 40 years ago?
Michael 25:29 Well, I think the whole phenomenon of social media and the way in which they very effectively organized these Neofascist forces through the gaming...hypermasculine gaming stuff and, you know, I think...We talked a little bit about the..I think the reason that people approached me to do this podcast had to do with my essay in "¡No Pasarán!: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis." And so that's a piece where I talked about, you know, some of this history of different struggles and how they...what lessons to extract from them. But the other book I've been working on and put out recently, is called "The Blue Agave Revolution: Poetry of the Blind Rebel." This was a book...I was approached by Oso Blanco, an indigenous political prisoner here in the United States who was involved with actually robbing banks to support the Zapatistas in Mexico, and he was getting "Turning the Tide," the newspaper I've been working on for many years that we send free to prisoners, and he approached me. He wanted to work on a book and he said he wanted me to work on the book with him. And he had..."The Poetry of the Blind Rebel" is a story arc and poetry arc of his work that is a story about the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century, the 1910s-1920. It's kind of magical realism. But, he asked me to write some fiction. And so I wrote kind of a short story cycle of a three way fight between vampires, zombies, and humans. And the vampires are basically--I mean, it's Dracula--but, you know, there's one point where there's a woman who has been trying to grapple with this and she forms a cross with two wooden tent stakes and he kind of laughs and says, "Oh, you bought that old wive's tale. We totally integrated into the church and into the State," you know. Basically, the vampires represent the bourgeoisie because they [the bourgeoisie] are vampiric and parasitic and they have powers. The zombies in this story are a group of incels that have captured a vampire and they think that they can create a potion from vampire blood that will give them power over women and make them...you know...And instead, they turn themselves into zombies. And so then there's a sort of three way fight between the bourgeoisie on the one hand, these vampires, the fascists from below, these sort of incel zombies that have to eat brains, and then the humans who are trying to deal with both of them. And I think that that's an important understanding that, you know, there are contradictions between the vampires and zombies but they're both our enemy. And so, I think that that's an approach that we have to understand that they're....You know, it's not a simple linear equation that's going on. There's a lot of things happening. I think that the fascists from below have contradictions with the fascists above, and we can take advantage of that. And then...but, we have to understand that their, you know, it's not...I think there are weaknesses...[Trails off] Let me go back to this. You know, historically, people have talked about antifascism and anti-imperialism, and there's been an element in both of those of class collaboration. A lot of people in the anti-imperialist movement think, "Oh, well, there's a sort of a national bourgeoisie that also doesn't like the Empire and wants to exert itself. And we have to ally with them. And a lot of people in antifascist movements have thought, "Oh, well, there's, you know, bourgeois Democrats who also hate fascism," and I think that those have been weaknesses historically. And also the contradiction between people who concentrate mostly antifascism, the people who concentrate mostly on anti-imperialism has weakened people's movements. I think having a kind of overarching understanding that fascism is rooted in Empire, particularly in settler colonialism, and that there isn't a contradiction. We have to find the forces of popular resistance that will overturn both fascism and imperialism...and capitalism. And, that we have to, you know, have a self determined struggle for decolonization and recognize people's self determination in their own struggles and their own capacity to live in a different way and to begin to create, you know, the solidarity forever, we say, you know, "Build a new world from the ashes of the old." And, I think that in terms of my own work, I've tried to--although, you might think I'm aging out at this point, but I've been involved at every point that there's an upsurge in struggle. I've tried to participate in that as part of Occupy LA. And more recently, I've been involved with some of the dual power organizing that's going on. And I don't know how much your people are familiar with that, but it is a conception related to, let's say, Cooperation Jackson, in Mississippi, where they're trying to figure out ways of organizing themselves economically and also resisting the power of the State. And so I was at the Dual Power Gathering that took place in Indiana last summer and there's one on the West Coast that's coming up in the Portland area.
Inmn 31:06 Yeah, could you explain what--for our listeners--what is dual power?
Michael 31:11 Yeah, so dual power is the concept that we have a power and we can exercise that power, and within the framework of this contemporary society, which is so destructive, we can begin to generate and exercise that power, and that there's, as I said, a kind of dialectic between the power of the people and the power of the State, and the corporations, and the power of the fascist, and that the different prefigurative elements of the kind of society we want to live in in the future can be created now. And, that as we exercise that power, it weakens the power of the State. It weakens the power of the bourgeoisie and the power of the imperialists. I went to that Dual Power Gathering in Indiana--I mean, it's not my bio region, but I did used to live in Chicago--and I felt some affinities with it. You know, they were...To talk about the idea of, you know, what's the relationship between dual power and our three-way fight, with a different conception with what the three-way fight is, that we are having to contend with two different enemies, you know, these fascists from below and the fascist from above, the State, and corporate power, and then also right-wing elements. And I think that in terms of both of those, we have to understand what are the powers that we have to organize ourselves to, as they say, to apply the generative and regenerative powers to...So that people have a sense of what they're fighting for. It's not just anti-this and anti-that. So for example, the newspaper I've worked in for many years, "Turning the Tide," originally, we called it the "Journal of Anti-Racist Action," or "Anti-Racist Action Edcuation & Research," and then we changed the subtitle a few years ago to, "The Journal of Intercommunal Solidarity," in the sense that you have to say what you're fighting for? What are we trying to build? What are we trying to create? What are we creating? And how does that give us the capacity to continue to resist and continue to shape the future, not just react always to what they're doing but actually have a proactive, generative stance. And so, you know, people's creative cultural expressions, people's capacity to do permaculture in urban environments or many other things like that, that say, that we want to restore the biological diversity, you know. We want to restore the capacity of the soil. We want to restore the clarity of the water and the air in the process of struggling for our own liberation. And that, you know, those are things that can happen and must happen now. We can't wait for some revolution that will happen in the future in which you know, we'll create a better world. We have to start in the context and the interstices of the system in the place that people are being pulverized. And so, you know, in Los Angeles, people are involved in various kinds of mutual aid work and working with the homeless, working with people being evicted to take over homes and restore them. And I think all those manifestations, that's the question of dual power there. We're looking at the incapacity of the people ruling this society to actually meet basic human needs and we're trying to figure out how to meet them. So, I think that's where it coincides with this question of preparedness is that I think that is a sense that people have to rely on their own resources, their own energies, and understanding that there's a contradiction between the system, the way it functions, and its implications and impact on us. And it's incapacity, its powerlessness, to really protect people from the kinds of calamities it's creating, whether it's flooding, or firestorms, or, you know, all the other manifestations of this global crisis of the Earth's system that is growing out of Capitalism. We have to deal with that now. We can't wait, you know, till sometime in the future when we have, you know, "power," quote unquote, you know? We have the power to start to deal with it.
Inmn 35:17 Yeah, and, I feel like there have been different ways that people have tried to do exactly that in the past. And I don't know, like, I'm thinking of a lot of the stuff that the Black Panthers were doing, like creating communities that they...like, declaring that they had power and that they had the power to build the communities that they wanted and to preserve those communities. And then they faced an incredible amount of repression, like, as much for arming themselves as for giving kids lunch and breakfast. And I'm wondering, in what ways does the State try to like...or in what ways has the State tried to destabilize dual power movements in the past? And what can we kind of expect them to do now? Or what are they doing now? Does that make sense?
Michael 36:35 Yeah, I think there's always a two-pronged approach by the state. And, sometimes it's referred to as, "The carrot and the stick." You know, it's co-optation ad coercion. And so they always attempt both to control as they modify people's thinking and try to create bourgeois alternatives to liberatory thinking and liberatory organizing. And then simultaneously, they have the repressive aspects, the criminalization of those efforts. And so in relation to the Black Panther Party, for example, they were simultaneously pushing what they called Black Capitalism, and saying, "Oh, yes, you know, we'll give you, you know, we'll find the sector of Black community that can integrate into the system." And then, along with that, they were carrying out COINTELPRO, which was a war strategy of creating contradictions inside Black Liberation organizations, setting one against the other, trying to execute and/or incarcerate people who were not willing to compromise their principles. So I think we have to be aware that you're seeing the same thing go on around policing issues. You know, they constantly want to put forward different reforms and accountability measures and ways that people can participate in civilian oversight mechanisms that really don't do anything. And at the same time, they're, you know, attacking people who are doing Copwatch or groups like the Stop LAPD Spying Network, which has exposed a lot of stuff about this constantly being targeted. So, I think that those, that the two-pronged approach by the State is something we have to be very aware of. It's not only coercion and criminalization and repression, but it's also co-optation and, you know, giving people individual solutions and mechanisms that are...they call it the nonprofit industrial complex, you know, this whole mechanism of structures that are set up to get people involved in grant writing and looking to philanthropists to somehow support them in their work. And I think that trying..You know, one of the things the Black Panther Party did was it had its own self generated funding by going to the base community they were trying to organize in, talking to small shopkeepers, and talking to churches, and trying to integrate that into these Liberatory efforts. So, I think that, you know, looking at that model, when I started doing, for example, People Against Racist Terror, there were a lot of small anti-racist groups around the country and a lot of them ended up going the route of looking for grants and looking for nonprofit organizations that they could fold themselves into, and I think that that kind of denatured them. They became, you know...As opposed to being grassroots, they became board and staff organizations, and individuals would create careers out of it. And I think that that mechanism of transforming popular movements into nonprofit organizations or nongovernmental organizations that accommodate themselves to existing power structures, existing economic realities, is one of the things that we need to try to avoid happening in this current period.
Inmn 40:18 That makes that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it's, it's funny, because I feel like I'm seeing a lot of groups involved in mutual aid, who are, I think, taking that lesson of the nonprofit industrial complex but are also trying to access larger swaths of money than the communities that they're part of can provide, like this model of, it's important to involve your community base in those things and to generate those things ourselves, but there is this problem sometimes of like, you're passing the hat and the same 20 people are kicking into the bail fund. And I don't know, I think maybe this is just me being hopeful, but I'm seeing a lot of mutual aid groups kind of dip into grant writing or dip into utilizing nonprofit statuses more so than structures in order to access funding and things like that. But what I'm seeing is people coming at it from like, hopefully, what is a different perspective of taking these lessons of the past and being like, "Well, we don't want to become some horrifying, large nonprofit, but we do want the State to give us 10 grand so that we can build infrastructure. Like I guess my question is, are there ways to responsibly interact with that? Or is this a trap?
Michael 41:57 I guess I'd have hear more details. I think it's imperative that it has to come from below and from the grassroots. I think that, you know, I've been involved with the opposite, for example, Pacifica Radio, and Pacifica is listener sponsored radio and is a constant struggle about how much can we accept cooperation of broadcasting funding. They cut us off some years ago and we're trying to get it back Or, there's struggles about trying to get some underwriting. It depends who you're accountable to for the money that you're getting. Are you accountable primarily to the funder? Are you accountable primarily to the people who are using that money and the people who are self organizing for community power and community sustainability, and, you know, some of the things we're talking about of self determined strategies. And, you know, I do think that what happened to a lot of the 60s movements is that there was an ebb in the mass movement. And then people made their separate peace. People were like flotsam and jetsam as the tide of people's power movements were negatively impacted because of white supremacy, male supremacy, COINTELPRO, and an inadequate response to deal with it. Then, you know, people ended up in labor unions where they were doing some good work, but basically they became part of a labor bureaucracy where they ended up in government social services/ They were doing some good work, but they became part of that mechanism. So, I think the critical thing is trying to keep control of what's going on in the hands of the people who are actually organizing themselves and their communities.
Inmn 43:55 Yeah. No, that makes sense. What are strategies that we should be embracing for countering this current current escalation in fascist tendencies?
Michael 44:10 Well, you know, I've done a lot of work over the years, and as I say, "Turning the Tide" is a newspaper, we send a couple of thousand copies almost every issue into the prisons and we're in touch with a lot of stuff that's going on in the prisons. And I think that that's a critical place to look for some understanding about how to deal with this because we do see under what are essentially very naked fascist conditions of domination inside the prisons, which are very hierarchical. There's a lot of negative activity within the prisons themselves. There's the power of the guards and the wardens in the system and yet you find struggles going on against racism, against sexism, for solidarity against the solitary confinement of people who have been victims of torture are organizing themselves. And I think that understanding of that capacity and looking at that, those are some of the leading struggles in the United States. There have been hunger strikes, there have been labor strikes, the Alabama Prisoners Movement [Free Alabama Movement] here in California and elsewhere. And I think that sense that people under the most severe repression are actually capable of making human connections among themselves and beginning to actually, in a self critical way, look at how they incorporated toxic masculinity and racism into their own approach to reality, and by beginning to purge themselves of those things, they can begin to create multiracial solidarity among all prisoners to actually resist the conditions of incarceration and resist enslavement. So I think that that's very important to look at. I think that here in Los Angeles, there are, as they say, organizations like LACAN, that are working among homeless people and with homeless people to organize themselves to have street watches. They have a community garden on the roof of a building. They have cultural expression. They have theatrical groups...coral...You know, it's like all those things connect people's love and rage, as I say, people's ability to generate creative cultural expression and to use that to strengthen their solidarity and their unity and their ability to resist the coercive power of the State or the police sweeps or to expose what's going on and begin to put out a challenge to the way that society is organized. So I think that those are some critical things. I think that having the capacity to defend ourselves, both physically and also legally is very very important. I think that if you look at stuff like the Stop Cop City struggle that the escalation of repression and the use of charges of terrorism on people that are obviously not terrorists is indicates that the State sees this as a very, very serious threat and is trying to eradicate it and is trying to intimidate people. And I think to the extent that we can turn that around and use it to say to people, you know, "Is this the kind of State you want to live in? Is this the kind of society you want to have?" is a way to begin to change minds and hearts of people who have been going along with the system. I lived through a whole period where we freed many many political prisoners. We freed Bobby. We freed Huey. We freed Angela. And, you know, even the Panther 21 in New York, you know, it's like the jury met for about 30 minutes and acquitted them all because the power of those organized forces affected the consciousness of the jurors. And I think that understanding that we actually have the power to begin to shape not just own consciousness, to ways that struggle with people, to, "Which side are you on?" and to give people a sense that there is a side that they can identify with and become part of, and transform their own lives, and transform society in the process of doing that. So, I think, you know, for example, the stuff around preparedness is vital that, you know, we're living in a world in which there are incredibly destructive wildfires, floods, tornadoes, and it's very clear that the state is incapable of even dealing with it after the fact, let alone preventing it. And so I think that gives us an opening to talk to very wide sectors of the population in cities and in rural areas as well. I think that, you know, for example, Anti-Racist Action Network in its heyday had hundreds of chapters around the country in small towns because young people were, in their own high schools and music scenes, were suddenly faced with this threat of fascism and said, "Hey, we have to get organized." And so I think that, you know, we need to see these things as opportunities to really very massively begin to engage with people and begin to offer an alternative way of thinking about the world that gives some hope and some prospect of dealing not just with the crises and the repression but a way forward for people.
Inmn 49:48 Yeah, yeah. And that kind of ties into--I love that you use this phrase. We've had this phrase come up lot with Cindy Milstein, who we've interviewed on the podcast before and who we've published their newest book last year, "Try Anarchism For Life," and they talk a lot about prefigurative organizing and prefigurative spaces. And I think this kind of ties into what you're talking about, but I was wondering if you could kind of give us your take on the importance of building prefigurative spaces?
Michael 50:31 Yeah, I think that we have to find ways to bring people together and to give people a sense, as I say, of our own power and our own creative and generative capacity. So I think that that says that whether it's free schools, or it's breakfast for children, or any of the things that the Black Panther Party did and that many other people of color movements did in a certain period are here at our disposal. I know that, for example, there's a crisis in childcare and child rearing that's going on and so organizing people into childcare collectives and people jointly taking responsibility for each other's children and creating trust relationships that make people feel comfortable with that would be one example of that. In food deserts, organizing people to break up some sidewalks and grow some food and I think they're...One of the things that I've come to understand from doing this work for a long time is we live in a kind of fractal or holographic world in which the same contradictions are shot all the way through the system. It's at any level of magnification in fractals. If you look at the coast of Norway, something in the fjords, you know, it's the same pattern is reproduced at every level. And, you know, in a holographic image, any piece of the hologram has the whole hologram in it. So, I think that any area that people want to choose to struggle in, I think as long as they understand that they're struggling against the entirety of the system in that area and that there's an enmity built into that relationship between the system and we see what they're trying to do, I think that's the critical understanding. So if people are engaged in, you know, community gardens, as long as they understand that that's a piece of a larger struggle to create a world in which nature has, has space to reassert itself, and that people can eat different food and better food. And any area that you know, whether it's the struggle over transgender, nonbinary, or anything else, once people see that it's the same system throughout that they're struggling with, it lays a basis for solidarity, for unity, and for a struggle on many fronts simultaneously that says, you know, sort of the "War of the Flea," [A book on guerrilla warfare] the system is vulnerable in a million places because the system is in all those places simultaneously and, you know, they have a lot of money, a lot of power to deal with that, and they're organized in these systems of command and control and artificial intelligence and all the rest of it to keep track of everything, but we're in all those places simultaneously as well because we're everywhere. And trying to coordinate those things, I think, is very important.
Inmn 53:51 This is a little bit of a backup that I remembered that I wanted to ask you about it. So, like, we're currently seeing like a pretty horrific and intense wave of legislation against against trans people and against queer people, and nonbinary people. And, yeah, I'm wondering what your take on that is as a kind of indicator, if we have to imagine like fascism as a spectrum of where we could be going, like what is that kind of legislation and repression an indicator of?
Michael 54:38 Yeah, you know, I think that obviously fascism always tries to target the people they think are the most vulnerable. And also, as I say, I think they want to create what they see as wedge issues that they can use to divide people and segment people off. And so I think, to the extent that we can reverse that and we can try to unite people around a different conception. You know, one of the things that struck me is that you saw that they sort of had this victory with controlling the courts and overturning Roe v. Wade, for example. And, what that revealed was actually how narrow that really was, the forces that were pushing for that. Because then, you know, Nebraska and Kansas and these various states suddenly had electoral reinforcement of abortion rights happening. And I think the same thing can happen here. I think that there's so many families that they're concerned about their own kids or...and the parental rights. It reveals that these fault lines go through the whole system. That's what I'm trying to say is all of their power is based on repression and exploitation, and to the extent that people begin to see that and how it impacts on them, it opens up the vistas of possibility to say, you know, if you're concerned about your child's right to get the medical assistance they need, why is the State coming in to prevent you from doing that? And what are the interests that are trying to pick this as a threat to the stability of society?
Inmn 56:46 And, yeah.
Michael 56:48 So, you know, I think that since every crisis is an opportunity, I think the other thing I did want to talk about a little bit was the whole Covid pandemic, you know, going back to the prepper thing. I think you saw, again, you know, a lot of right-wing exploitation of that issue. And I think that the extent that we can get out ahead of that and look at...Okay, for example, in a society like Cuba, which had a completely different relationship to this because they're organized in a different way and, you know, they actually have a public health system and they actually created their own vaccines, not the ones from big pharma here in this country, and begin to get people to think about that and why Cuba is stigmatized by this society? Why are they embargoing Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, all these countries? You know, the connection to a global sense of what are the possibilities in the world? What are the prefigurative formations that are happening inside imperialism by countries that are actually resisting it? And so, if you look at, you know, the medical care system in Cuba, for example, you know, they have...Every neighborhood has a doctor that lives in the neighborhood--and nursing staff and other people--and [the doctor] works door to door with the people in that neighborhood to be concerned about their health and their well being not just, you know, responding to a particular medical crisis, and they have that systematized and they...So in that context, they were able to vaccinate people, not through coercive measures but through trusted people that were part of their community that could reassure them about the fact that they developed the vaccines themselves and that the Cuban pharmaceutical industry came out of their effort to deal with chemical and biological warfare by the United States. The US was like putting in swine fever as a way to destroy pigs that every family in Cuba had their own little pig to raise and, you know, supplement their food. And so they developed animal vaccines first to protect those animals and then they work their way up from there. So I think that that sense of, you know...I had a good friend recently who passed away from complications of diabetes and the Cubans have developed treatments for diabetes and to prevent amputation of limbs and other stuff. And all of that is unavailable to us because of the US imperialist embargo on Cuba and blockade. And giving people a sense that, you know, there actually are people living in the world in much better conditions. The United States is number one in incarceration, number one in many social ills, number one in overdose deaths, and, you know, on and on and on...number one in evictions. And we can begin to, you know, really give a sense to people that this system has nothing to offer them but destruction and that we have the capacity to create something different.
Inmn 1:00:13 Yeah. Thanks. I have only to say that...yes. Yes to all of that. We are nearing the end...of the recording, not of the world. [Said as a dry joke] And, yeah, is there any any kind of last things that you want to say before--I'll ask you to plug anything that you want to plug at the end--I mean, that was such a beautiful wrap up, I feel like. But, if there's anything else you want to talk about, that we haven't talked about?
Michael 1:00:45 Well, you know, years ago, I was part of a group in Berkeley that took over the California College of Arts and Crafts to create an anti-war poster making facility during the Vietnam War. And out of that group, there was a singing group called the Red Star Singers, and they had a song called "The Power of the People's the Force of Life." And I think we really have to have that sense. It's, you know, it is a dialectic. That's what I think the main thing I want to try to convey is that, you know, to the extent that we can build the people's power, it actually weakens that system. And, you know, just that sense that all the power that they have is actually derived from their exploitation and oppression of people. And that's our power, you know, manifest that against us. And if we take our power back, it actually does weaken them and increases our possibilities of struggling to for a different world. So, I will do the plugs. I, for 35 years, I've been working and I actually wanted to sort of break the story here. I'm looking for a collective that will take over "Turning the Tide." I've been putting it out for a long, long time. Volume 35 # 2 is just about to come out. It's up on antiracist.org. You can reach me at antiracistaction_ la@yahoo.com. But, you know, like I say, I'm 76. I'm currently the interim general manager of KPFK radio in Los Angeles and it's a huge time commitment. And I want I want to see the paper, you know, become, in some way or shape, institutionalized, to continue to meet, you know, send out the 1700-1800 copies to prisoners. And so, if anybody's interested in taking over that project and fulfilling that commitment, I'd love to hear from them. And then, as I say, I have a chapter in "¡No Pasarán!: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis" edited by Shane Burley from AK Press. And I contributed a lot of material archival stuff and was interviewed extensively for "We Go Where They Go: The Story of Anti-Racist Action" from PM press. Two really, really important books and well worth reading. And then I did, self published and co-authored "The Blue Agave Revolution: The Poetry of the Blind Rebel" with Oso Blanco, Byron Shane Chubbuck. And you can get that again from Anti-Racist Action. So it's PO Box 1055, Culver City, California 90232. And online, just Antiracist.org.
Inmn 1:03:27 Wonderful, in "The Blue Agave Revolution," is that Is that where we can find your short story about the three-way fight between vampires, zombies and humans?
Michael 1:03:37 It's a kind of a novella. There's about seven chapters of a longer thing. And there's also a shorter one about a group of teenage mutants called Black Bloc, that they have these kind of minor powers. One of them can, you know, it's Jackpot and Crackpot. Crackpot can kind of break out of anything and Jackpot can just affect the odds slightly in their favor and a bunch of other young people, nonbinary and so on. But they're also some different essays of mine in there and a lot of poetry and, yeah...Just the mathematics of the enormity of social economic inequality. People don't understand exactly what it is, but essentially, about 45% of the US population has the equivalent of 50 cents in assets. You know, people don't understand exactly what the class divide and the contradictions inside the society are, you know. We're we're duped into thinking that this is the richest country on the face of the Earth and the most powerful, you know. There's an enormous, hidden social cost and pain behind that and we have to figure out how to galvanize that into the power that actually those people possess and the creativity that they have.
Inmn 1:05:03 Yeah. Great. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Yeah, of course. And I'll we'll drop links to all the things that you mentioned in the show notes for people to find. And yeah, thank you.
Michael 1:05:23 Okay. Take care. Have a great day.
Inmn 1:05:25 You too.
Inmn 1:05:26 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, then go out and live like the Empire is dying. And then tell us about it. And if you'd like to support this podcast, you can do so by telling people about it. You can support this podcast by talking about it on social media, rating, and reviewing, and doing whatever the nameless algorithm calls for. But, if you'd like to support us in other sillier ways, you can also support us on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness, which is our publisher. Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness is a radical media publishing collective that puts out this podcast as well as a few other podcasts. Our Patreon helps pay for things like transcriptions or our lovely audio editor, Bursts, who is the host of The Final Straw, as well as going on to support Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness and a few of the other podcasts we put out like our monthly anarchist literature podcast Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, as well as the Anarcho Geek Power Hour, which is a podcast for people who love movies and hate cops. And we would like to give a very special shout out to a few of our Patreon subscribers, Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, Funder, Jans, Oxalis, Janice & O'dell, Paigek Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, Shawn, SJ, Paige, Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Cat J., Staro, Jenipher, Eleanor, Kirk, Sam, Chris, Michaiah, and the infamous Hoss the Dog. Thank you so much. We could not do this without you. And I hope that everyone out there is doing as well as they can right now with everything that's going on. And we'll see you soon.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Shane comes on to teach Margaret about distillation and all of the things that one could produce through distillation, like distilled water, hand sanitizer, fuel alcohol, essential oils, and alcohol for drinking. They talk through the science and dispel some myths around the process.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Shane on Distillation
Margaret Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times...and it especially feels like the end times at least as we record this. I don't know when this is gonna come out, but we just had the hottest month on record. Maybe we've just had the hottest month on record when you hear this in October. I don't fucking know. I'm your host. I'm one of your hosts. I'm your only host today, Margaret Killjoy, and this week we're gonna be talking about something that I've wanted to know more about for a long time, although I'm absolutely terrified to have anything to do with it besides on informational and when-the-apocalypse-comes level because this week we are talking about distillation, the thing that should not be anywhere near as illegal as it is...or complicated legally. It's not always illegal. It's complicated legally. And we're gonna be talking about distillation. We're gonna be talking about distillation of alcohol for like...Well I guess all of it's distillation of alcohol, but we're gonna be talking about it from a like medical point of view and like having a good time point of view. And...obviously...don't do any crimes that you can get caught for. And, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on the network. Ba buh bub bub. [Making noises like a song melody]
Margaret Okay, we're back. And if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then just a little bit of your background about what we're gonna be talking about about distillation.
Shane My name is Shane, pronouns are he/him. I'm a hobby distiller. I've been doing it not for that long, but I've been doing a ton of research. I've been learning a lot about it, and yeah...
Margaret What kind of....what kind of stuff....Let's point out that you live in Canada where the crime is a different one. Which isn't to say...I guess it's like...Well, obviously don't do any of the illegal stuff. But it seems like Canada has a very different attitude about this as the United States does. Wanna talk about that?
Shane Yeah. So where I am, it is illegal. It's mostly illegal under our tax laws because they don't want you making it and selling it out of your basement or whatever. It's not really enforced if you...Don't take my word for that. Like, this is always gonna be a risk, but it's not really enforced if you're just doing it for yourself.
Margaret Yeah. That makes sense. Is worth pointing out--I'm going to reiterate this way too many times on the show--that the ATF in the United States has a very different attitude about home distillation. And obviously, people still do it. And before we started recording, we looked it up and it looks like it is federally illegal, but not every state has it illegal and like some states that specifically illegal, I believe. Which, just gets into that weird thing in the United States where there's like some things that are federally illegal but are actually fine state to state.
Shane Well I believe the ATF is a federal organization. So you know, it's still a risk if you decide to do that.
Margaret Yeah, exactly. And I know for my sake, like, I'm literally not going to--usually, I'm like, like...I'm just, I'm not actually going to end up setting up a still. Even though I'm like very curious about the process, just because the cost-benefit analysis isn't going to work for me, but everyone's going to do their own cost-benefit analysis and it's information that I think is very practical and useful for situations in which you don't live under the United State's jurisdiction, whether because you live in a different country or because the United States has a collapse, which is one of the main things that we talk about on the show. So probably no one's gonna be surprised that I think that that's possible. So with that out of the way, what's distillation?
Shane Basically, it's taking everything that's not alcohol out of the alcohol and throwing it away. So, you're just usually heating it up, collecting the steam, cooling the steam down before it escapes your system, and turning it into liquid alcohol.
Margaret The steam is the liquid alcohol? Or the steam is that not liquid...is the everything else?
Shane The steam is the liquid alcohol. You want to...ideally you want to collect that as it comes off your still, run it through some sort of cooling sleeve or condenser of some kind, and then collect what comes out the other end.
Margaret Okay. I like...Whenever someone says like, "And then throw the other parts away." I'm like, "Wait, but tell me about the other parts." Is there like? Can you make like? If you make brandy out of wine, can you have like non alcoholic wine at the end too? Or like, is it just gross weird shit?
Shane It's kind of gross, weird shit. There is some uses for it. I believe you can--you may want to look this up, if you have animals before you do this--I think you can mix it with your animal feed to add some nutrition or some calories to that. I've heard of some people doing that. I think you can--well, I know one thing you can do with it--there are certain traditions around making rum that actually keep that and put it into the next batch. Sometimes they put it in a pit and let it rot to add flavor. So, be careful with that. [Margaret laughing] But that is something you can do with it.
Margaret So much like--this has come up on all the fermentation and brewing episodes--like there's so much stuff that's just weird magic-- [interrupted]
Shane Yeah.
Margaret --involved in food. Like, "Oh, yeah, you put it in the pit to rot. And that makes it taste better." And like, I remember once I was picking grapes for wine at a--like someone was just like paying me eight bucks an hour to pick grapes for wine or whatever at a vineyard--and they were...I was like, "Do I pick the moldy ones?" And they were like, "Yes, that's part of the flavor." And I'm like...I'm probably still gonna drink wine, but I'm going to think more about it as I do it.
Shane There's a lot of weird magic stuff in distilling to, actually. So like this...one thing that your fermentation episode, the the magic spoon thing reminded me--or that was not the bread episode, I can't remember--But...
Margaret I don't remember.
Shane This is just folklore, but there was a thing in Scotland where when a big distillery would get a new still, they didn't really know how the flavor worked, all the chemistry of it yet. They would get a new still, but they wanted everything that came out to taste like the old one. So, in an effort to coax the spirit out of the old still, they would beat dents into it to make it looks like the old one.
Margaret Hell yeah. [Laughing]
Shane And it...that...weirdly enough, that does work. It does, like the shape of the still does affect the flavor. They didn't know why. But that's what they told themselves.
Margaret It is so...I'm so glad I'm not a perfectionist. If I ever like am home brewing or whatever. I'm not going to be like, "I am going to recreate Guinness." I'm just going to be like, "Hell yeah, I made beer."
Shane I'm the same way.
Margaret Okay, so like um...what are some of the things...You know, when you when you pitched this episode to me--I was very happy to hear from you because this is something I've wanted to talk to someone about for a while--you talked about how there's a couple different things that one might want to make with a still. I mean, you're making alcohol, right, but for a lot of different purposes. Do you want to talk about what some of those purposes are?
Shane Yeah, well, first of all, even if you're not making alcohol--and this is part of the way that stills get sold in the States and why it's still usually state by state legal to own one--you can make essential oils with it. You can make purified water. That's actually a huge survival benefit of having a still is being able to make distilled water. The alcohol can be used to make fuel which I believe is legal in some states. But besides that, like I said, the fuel alcohol, alcohol for tinctures, you can make any spirit you can drink, like vodka, whiskey, rum, etc. You can make hand sanitizer. I know that was a big deal around the start of Covid when hand sanitizer was selling out everywhere. People were, both big distilleries and some moonshiners in some areas, were kind of coming out of the woodwork and saying "Oh, by the way, I have a still. Here's a bunch of free alcohol to sanitize your hands with."
Margaret That's cool. That makes me really happy. Like both sides of that.
Shane It's actually one of the things that made me want to get a still was the capacity or the capability to be able to do that...And the obvious reason, but...[Trails off]
Margaret Yeah, I mean...which is funny because I know that...When I used to, I used to shoot tintypes and one of the stages involves heating the tintype over an alcohol stove. And so in order to buy alcohol for that it had to be denatured, and that's when I learned that...I'm going to get the different types of alcohol mixed up. Ethanol is the drinking one and methanol is the one that you can't or something maybe?
Shane And isopropyl alcohol is the other one you can't.
Margaret Okay. And so, Denatured alcohol was alcohol that you can use as fuel. But they specifically add poison to it in order to make it so that you can't drink it, so that it can only be used for fuel? Is that...does that match?
Shane That's right. So that started around prohibition. You used to build by ethanol by the barrel for almost nothing. But, they started requiring by law that you add methanol to it because people still needed alcohol for industrial purposes, but, you know, they added methanol specifically because it was damn near impossible to separate it out. And it's extremely deadly as well. So...
Margaret We're gonna save people from the vice of drinking by murdering them if they drink this alcohol.
Shane And it murdered a hell of a lot of people.
Margaret God. Thanks, Protestants for prohibition. [Said with dry sarcasm]
Shane I think a lot of places are actually moving away from that. So now a lot of alcoholic is denatured with bitterants instead, the same bitterants they put in air dusters. Don't take that as a reason to go buy some industrial alcohol and drink it, [Margaret laughing] because I'm sure many places are still using methanol. But yeah. Also, it's gonna taste bad if you do. So...
Margaret Okay, so let's talk about like...I want to talk about the non alcohol...the non drinky stuff first. Like you mentioned fuel alcohol. What what do people...like to sell our preppers on fuel alcohol. What are you fueling with fuel alcohol?
Shane Well, the first example--and one of the things I thought of when I was gonna get a still--I do a lot of camping and I currently use one of those isobutane stoves with the big expensive, disposable isobutane tanks. I'm considering--I haven't done it yet--but I'm considering making one of those can [like tin can] stoves, which is just a small alcohol stove that cost nothing, weighs nothing, to replace that. Cooking is one big thing you can do. You did mention using the store bought alcohol stove for tintyping. I believe there are alcohol engines, at least very small ones, but I don't know much about that. I know you can add ethanol to gasoline to make it a little bit more efficient, but I wouldn't recommend doing that with what comes out of a home still. Because I'm sure that whatever comes out of your home still is going to have some water in it. I wouldn't recommend combining that with gasoline.
Margaret Oh, yeah, that sounds bad. Okay, so it's not like what you're going to put in your tractor. But, it could be what you're cooking off of. I suspect that there's ways...I suspect that there's like home heaters that can run off of it or ways to use it to heat homes, probably in very sketchy ways and possibly safer ways as well.
Shane Actually, one thing I'm thinking of there is alcohol heaters are...You can actually make them with a mason jar. I've heard of some people, making them as like a mutual aid thing and giving them to people who are stuck in tents during the winter.
Margaret Oh, yeah, there's the ones that--you're right--where you take the copper tubing and you do a little loop and you...Those are cool. And they're not fake like the...There's this thing where people are like, "Take a tea light and put it under a pot, and now you've heated your tent." People have done a lot of tests about this. It is not more efficient. It is not a very good way of heating and also it's a fire danger because the melting point...the flash point of wax is lower than the amount of heat that the terracotta pot can eventually put out. And so, you can you can start a fire that way. So actually, ironically, this like...Yeah, no, that's right, heater block. I need to have them on at some point talking about how people use these things.
Shane They're also fire risk, but I imagine less so than a camp stove going off in your tent. So...People have made chicken wire cages and stuff for them as well.
Margaret What is the like raw material that you're going to be using? Well, let's just talk about how you...How do you distill? Let's use fuel alcohol as like the main--because it's like the neutral one, right? It's not about flavor. It's just a, "Let's make ethanol." How do you make ethanol?
Shane For making ethanol for fuel, if flavor doesn't matter at all, you basically want to find the cheapest source of sugars you can find. If you're already into home brewing, I imagine grain, malted grain, is probably one of the cheapest sources. If you don't have any equipment for dealing with grain, your best bet is probably buying the cheapest sugar you can find at a grocery store, combining that with some yeast nutrient, and some yeast, and fermenting that. That's what I've...That's what a lot of people will do when they start distilling. If they're trying to make a neutral like vodka or fuel or something, they'll make what's called a sugar wash.
Margaret So a sugar wash is basically just fermented sugar with no added flavoring?
Shane Yeah. And well...People will add things that are, like I said, nutrient. And one of the more common, more popular ways of doing it, if you're trying to preserve flavor, is using tomato paste as most of the nutrient. Because if you're adding a very little, very small amount of it, then it's not affecting the flavor when it's all said and done.
Margaret When you say nutrient, I presume you don't mean nutrient for the end drinker. Is this nutrient for the yeast or something?
Shane This is nutrient for the yeast.
Margaret So they need more than just sugar to survive.
Shane Yes, like us, they can't survive on sugar alone.
Margaret But I've tried.
Shane Yes. We all have.
Margaret It's so cheap.
Shane You put that into a bucket, probably the biggest container you can find, with some water. Obviously, don't just try to ferment the sugars alone. And leave that for about a week. If you do have a lot of the home fermenting equipment like hydrometers, and things like that, you can get a little more scientific about it. You probably don't want to go any higher than 1.01 gravity. Which is...Because beyond that, the yeast doesn't really like to be there. If you're trying to preserve flavor, don't go any higher than 1.0...or 1.007. I might be misremembering how to read these.
Margaret Wait, but then why when you make beer, you're like, you're going way higher than 1%, right?
Shane Not 1%. Sorry, when I say the starting gravity, you're measuring the amount of sugar, that's when you get that little thermometer looking thing and you float it in your ferment. So, you actually want to go to about 10 to 12%. So you can do the math to figure out how you want to get there.
Margaret Okay, so the basic...Is the basic idea of distillation...the basic idea is you make a low alcohol thing, like beer, or wine, or just a sugar wash...You make some...alcohol, right? And then you're concentrating it by pulling out everything that isn't alcohol out of it in the still by--I think you already said this--by evaporating--I assume alcohol is a lower evaporation point than everything else is like the reason it works or something--and then you like run it through some cooling and then you end up with alcohol on the other end? That's the high percent alcohol? Okay.
Shane So if you want to get a little more into distillation theory, it is a bit more complicated than that. But essentially, yeah, it is just because alcohol boils at 70 degrees instead of 100. The alcohol is gonna boil off first.
Margaret Is that Celsius?
Shane Yes, sorry.
Margaret Great. No, we can use Celsius. Yeah, just wanted to...Yeah.
Shane Especially when it comes to anything distillation related, I tend to default to that. Canada is one of the...kind of like the UK where we have a mix of units. But uh...
Margaret Yeah, I think Celsius is better for science stuff and Fahrenheit is better for like how cold it is outside stuff, personally.
Shane Especially if you're talking about boiling points of liquids. So...It's kinda made exactly for that.
Margaret Yeah, that is I guess that is Celsius' main thing, yeah. Okay, so you make your sugar mash. Okay, let's just..To run through it, you've made your sugar wash, not sugar mash, sugar wash. Now, what are we...now what are you doing?
Shane Mash is usually...If you're making it with grains, you'll call it a mash. But, after that, you will take all that and put it in your boiler, so the part of your still that's actually supposed to eat. You'll seal everything up, make sure there's no leaks. You obviously want to keep an eye on that. So one quick safety note: The most dangerous thing coming out of your still is vapor alcohol. Ideally, you don't want any vapor coming out at any point. That's why you have the condenser to cool everything.
Margaret Oh shit. Yeah, because it's explosive.
Shane It's very flammable. It's far more flammable than just a pool of liquid alcohol sitting there.
Margaret Oh shit.
Shane Unless you are...unless you have terrible terrible luck and you're in a closed system, it's not going to explode. But, it could cause a pretty bad fire. So I keep a fire extinguisher next to my still at all times. Anyway, so like I said, you want to seal everything up, make sure your water is running through your condenser, if using that kind of condenser and turn on the heat...
Margaret What's a...just tell me what a condenser is.
Shane So a condenser, because you don't want any steam coming out because it's hard to collect, it's kind of...All the steam will go through your condenser. The condenser will cool it all down, condense it back into a liquid, and liquid will come out of the other end.
Margaret This is the like...wrapped copper pipe or some...tube?
Shane Yeah, so there's a few different kinds. If you're looking at like a moonshine still, you're gonna see a copper tube coiled up through a bucket. I personally, I've had one of those. I hate that style. Because unless you're doing it outside by a river, it's kind of hard to control how much water is going through it and prevent it from overflowing. The kind I'd recommend, if you're going the DIY route, is a Liebig condenser, which is...You can look up easy plans online. So, you have a smaller copper pipe, a larger copper pipe on the outside of that with water running through it. So you'll have two, like an inlet and an outlet, and the hose or something running through that. And that's usually enough to cool down however much steam is coming out the other end.
Margaret Okay, so like the big...When people talk about distillation, right, the big things people worry about is the government, obviously, but then also safety, like the food safety level of it, right? How dangerous is it to make ethanol? Are you going to go blind if you drink it? Is it safe to make fuel alcohol, dangerous to make drinking alcohol? Is it all overblown? Are there certain things that people can do? Please, whoever's listening, don't assume that you know how to do things just because you heard about it on a podcast. See this as like an overview and an overall interest.
Shane Well, like I said, the main danger is fire safety. It's very flammable. Especially in the olden days, when they would do this on a propane fire or a wood fire or whatever. If you can avoid it, don't run your still over an open flame. I know your great grandfather probably did. But don't,
Margaret So don't use the fuel alcohol to make more alcohol. [Laughing],
Shane Preferably no. Unless you're outside and you're away from anything flammable.
Margaret Okay.
Shane But as far as food safety goes, there is a tiny amount of methanol whenever you ferment something. The methanol is the thing that makes you go blind, apparently. But the thing is, you're not getting anything out of your still that wasn't in the wine, or sugar wash, or beer that you put into it. There's not really any risk of methanol poisoning unless you really screwed something up with fermenting, in which case you would also get it from drinking whatever you drank, whatever you made from, whatever you fermented. There is this myth that popped up around prohibition because...So moonshiners would make their moonshine and they will try to increase their yields a little bit by adding industrial alcohol. That is where the myth of going blind and methanol poisoning comes from. It's not from people running their still in competently, it's from people trying to pass off industrial alcohol as safe.
Margaret Okay, so like denatured alcohol got it in the mix?
Shane Yeah, exactly. And sometimes there was never even a still involved. It's just some unscrupulous guy bought a bunch of industrial alcohol, threw some juniper berries in it, and called a gin.
Margaret Okay. I'm half convinced that--I'm not from where I live right now, right--I'm half convinced that the person around here who gave me some moonshine, I'm like, half convinced that they just gave me some like,fucking vodka with food flavoring in it, and were like, "Yeah, that bitch isn't gonna fucking know the difference." But, yeah, I do...I like to think that I that they didn't do that, to me.
Shane There's a big trend of you can just buy moonshine in alcohol and liquor stores now. But it's...a lot of people kind of don't consider it real moonshine because it wasn't made in the backwoods in an old copper still.
Margaret Yeah, I mean, in my mind, moonshine means illegally manufactured alcohol that's very alcoholic.
Shane Sorry, back to the like, the safety thing. There is one note. So, a lot of people will tell you when you're running you're still, that first thing you have to do is take the four shots out. And that's the first ounce or so that comes out of you're still...
Margaret What's that called, the four shot?
Shane Four shots. So that's a bit outdated. It comes from....So, basically a bunch of people were dying from from methanol poisoning and moonshiners were--the honest ones-- were scratching their heads trying to figure out what they were doing wrong. And so they thought, "Well, the methanol has a lower boiling point. So we can just take off whatever comes out first and throw that away," right?
Margaret Okay.
Shane Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Methanol and alcohol have very similar boiling points, and they come off throughout the entire run. You're not going to get rid of all the methanol by getting rid of the first shot. But what you...So, you don't really need to take four shots, but when you're distilling for drinking purposes, you're not going to drink the first little bit anyway. So you're going to take your cuts, so your four shots, the first section of cuts, then there's the heads, which has some acetone, some fruity esters, some nasty stuff in it that you don't really want, and you're gonna throw all that away.
Margaret Can you use it as fuel alcohol or no?
Shane Oh, yeah, you can still use that as fuel alcohol.
Margaret Okay.
Shane That's right. I shouldn't have even said throw it away. I don't throw mine away, personally. I use it when I start fires.
Margaret I'm sure it's the way people talk about it. I just have a weird like, "Throw something away?!" But I'm a hoarder...I mean, uhhh, preparedness. Okay. Yeah.
Shane The four shots thing is a bit outdated but that is...some people still do it as sort of a "just in case" or superstition more than anything. But that's the...The main thing is in the heads, there are things that aren't good for you. But like I said before, those things are going to be in your beer or your wine that you're fermenting anyway. The worst thing they're going to do is give you a worse hangover if you drink them.
Margaret Oh, okay. That...I've always wondered why different...I've had some homebrew that has caused everyone in the room to blackout.
Shane Mhmm.
Margaret So, I've had some...I've had some homemade moonshine, also, that caused everyone to blackout. So it was probably heads or just like poorly made or something.
Shane There's a another bit of like folklore. So there's another type of distilling you can do--this is a bit of a tangent--called a freeze...fractional freezing, where you take your--this is commonly done with apple cider--you take your cider, you put it in the freezer, you let it freeze, you scoop out all the ice, and what's left is a higher proof, higher strength.
Margaret Wow, that's cool.
Shane So, that was considered one of the first distilled beverages people would drink because it was called Applejack. And the hangovers from it were so bad that they gave them its own name Applepalsy because you couldn't take cuts when you're doing that. People would get completely sloshed on Applejack and they would...they probably woke up wishing they had methanol poisoning.
Margaret So because you've talked about how all the like methanol and acetone and all that stuff is already in your homemade beer, right?
Shane Exactly.
Margaret But it seems like maybe the distillation process...like Applejack sounds like kind of was giving people a worse time than the apple cider was, is that because it's just a higher concentration, right? It's the literal amount of acetone, but there's like...it's just distilled?
Shane It's mostly because people were drinking more of it and they're drinking it faster. So, if you take like a 500 mil, or a standard bottle of cider, and you drink all of that, it's not going to hurt you any less than if you distilled that and then drank everything that came out of it. But, you know, it's easier to get drunker on spirits than it is on cider.
Margaret Yeah, that's true.
Shane No. I also...the one thing I definitely wouldn't recommend, I wouldn't recommend taking all the heads and just drinking that because then you are getting a higher concentration of the acetone and methanol and...
Margaret Right, so most people are getting rid of their heads also, and then only taking--what's the the opposite? Tails? What comes after heads?
Shane Wait, why are you watering it down? Wait, I'm a little confused. What does, "take your cuts" mean in this context?
Shane Tails is the last bit. You don't really want that either. Hearts is the good stuff in the middle. [Margaret giggles] So when you're taking your...typically, when you're running to still, you'll run it into mason jars, or any other small jar or whatever you can collect a lot of, and you'll just, you'll taste as you go, and you'll just swap out the jars as they fill up. And then the next day, when you got a fresh palate, you'll look at everything, water it down, taste it, and see where you want to make your cuts.
Shane Take your cuts is when you figure out where your heads are, like where the nasty acetone, sickly sweet stuff is. And you water it down because you don't want to be like tasting 70%. You're not going to get much out of that. So you're figuring out what's your heads, what's your heart, the good stuff, and what's your tails, which is where it starts smelling a little weird, wet dog ish?
Margaret Oh, I see. So it's not like, "The first third is this. The second third is this." Instead, you take all of it, and you keep it like all lined up so you know what's what. And then you're like, "Alright, jar three, it's starting to get a little bit less nasty. Jar five, it's smelling...it taste good. Jar nine, it tastes bad again."
Shane Exactly. So unless you have a really well established recipe and you have a very consistent still, you're never gonna base it on how much has come through, or what temperature it's at, or what proof it's at. You're gonna base on taste. So, if you're running an industrial pot still, you're probably running off of an established recipe that your boss made for you. And so you're you're measuring, okay, so the alcohol is at 65%. We're going to start our heads...or our hearts here and separate that out. But if you're running a home still, you're not gonna be able to do that usually.
Margaret Okay. Alright, so I have questions. Is there a way to test for methanol?
Shane Not at home that I know of. But again, if you are the one who fermented the product, and you're the one who put it in your still, I wouldn't worry too much about it. It's...Like I said, it's going to be in your cider or your beer or whatever. Anyway. It's almost impossible... [Interrupted]
Margaret If you're willing to drink your beer, you should be willing to drink your whiskey.
Shane Yeah, it's damn near impossible to get a lethal amount, or even a slightly dangerous amount, of methanol and your spirits.
Margaret Okay. All right. My other question is, what are the variables? Like you talked about, like people in Scotland were like, denting their stills? Or maybe they're fermenting for beer? I don't remember what they were denting.
Shane It was the stills. Yep.
Margaret Okay. So it's like, does the taste and all of that change based on how quickly it came to a boil versus how quickly it didn't? Is it? Like, like, what are the...I assume there's just like a million variables and that makes it fun. So I kinda want to hear about them.
Shane There's so many variables that this is like an active area of study in like industrial distilling. We don't know all the chemicals that are in like whiskey, for example. I'll use whiskey as an example because that's where flavor matters the most for a lot of people. Like when you're fermenting something, what kind of yeast you use matters a lot, what kind of grain, how much of each grain. And yeast doesn't just produce alcohol. Depending on how--people use the term stress--depending on how stressed out the yeast is, like how perfect the environment is for the yeast is going to produce different chemicals.
Margaret How its day at work was and stuff.
Shane Yeah, basically. If you ferment at a different temperature, or if you have too much sugar in your wash, that's going to affect the flavor. And if you use a different species of yeast, etc, but...And then, when it's in the still, all those different chemicals that that yeast made, and there's a lot of them, and also putting things that were just in the grain, not even things the yeast had anything to do with, all that comes off at a different temperature, at a different time. Some of it will come off in the heads. Like, I mentioned, acetone. There's also some...fruity tasting compounds that will come off in there that the yeast made or that were in the grain. The variable there is the fermentation, I guess. The next one would probably be...So you've probably noticed that most people make their stills out of copper.
Margaret Yeah. I think so. I knew the pipes were but yeah.
Margaret That's okay. It seems like we've kind of...fuel alcohol was a good base for now.
Shane The reason for that, aside from the fact that that's probably what you can get at a hardware store when you're making moonshine, is there's also some sulfur compounds that kind of give the spirit a weird taste or smell, and copper supposedly does a pretty good job of stripping some of that out. So the more copper contact the vapor has in your still, the better. For flavor, at least. We're kind of getting away from few alcohol here. But that's for...
Shane For fuel alcohol, you want to run it as high proof as you can. Ideally, don't put anything more than 40%. in you're still if you're running in your kitchen because for safety reasons. You just want to get as high proof as you can. That's the main thing. You want yield. But, for flavor, the amount of copper contact, the shape of the still matters because of something called reflux or passive reflux.
Margaret Oh, I get that...Sorry, that's a joke about heartburn. Anyway...
Shane I mean, it's similar in a still, weirdly enough, but like if you want to get more into the difference between the pot still and reflux still later, we can. But basically, a reflux still is something that does this on purpose. A pot still, depending on the shape of it and the temperature around you when you're distilling, some of the...As the vapor is going up, and before it even gets to your condenser, some of it is going to condense and fall back down. And some of it is going to condense and stick to the side of your still. And that's going to interact more with the vapor. That changes what chemicals come through it. Usually the more volatile chemicals will come through when that happens.
Margaret So y'all are nerds, I'm guessing.
Shane Oh, yeah.
Margaret That's cool. I love that hobbies have like weird deep divy shit. So people like care about what percent of their vapor is coming down the sides and stuff because of how it changes the taste and other things?
Shane Mhmm. And like I said, people didn't know how this worked before. They would literally just say, "Well, that I know that still makes some really good stuff. Let's just beat up this still so it looks like that one." And it works. So. No, you also don't have to get this nerdy with it. You can just buy a cheap Amazon or even there's....
Shane There's a good company called Still Spirits that makes a home still. You can buy one of those, throw your sugar wash in, mix it with some flavorings, and you got booze. If that's all you want to do. But..I'm a nerd about it. So yeah.
Margaret Like a cheap water purifier?
Shane Exactly.
Margaret No, I mean, it seems like the kind of thing where like...I always go at things at two levels. I like first just like do it. And I like don't want to get nerdy when I first start. I just want to like, "Fuck yeah, I made some..." Well, I don't want to do this because...whatever. But like, I made some rum or whatever, right? I just want to do it and then after that, that's when I want to like do it the same over and over again or like compare the different things. And, so a lot of the variables and stuff aren't going to matter if your goal is to just have rum and you don't care if the rum is consistent because you're not a commercial thing.
Margaret And it's more about it being fun to try and create the consistency?
Shane You may still want to get nerdy with the cuts, though, because....
Margaret Because you don't want to drink acetone. you're not perceived. Acetone
Shane Not for safety reasons. Even if you're just make...even if you just want to get some rum made and try it. If you don't bother taking cuts at all, it's going to taste awful. So at least put it in the jars and taste it and see what's best. So that's as nerdy as you want to get for your first go. That's what I did. That's as nerdy as I got my first run.
Margaret What um, what was your first run? What would you recommend if they're different? What do you like making?
Shane Honestly for your first run, just do a sugar wash because you're gonna throw that away or use it for fuel anyway because you want to do a cleaning run. If you got your still on Amazon or if you made it yourself, you want to make sure you get anything that could dissolve in alcohol out of there, like any fluff solder or whatever. And also make sure you using plumbing solder not leaded solder, that sort of thing. But...After that, the first thing I did was rum, because it was kind of easy. All I had to do was just figure out a way to ferment molasses. And I live not too far away from a place that makes molasses. So, it was really cheap for me to get a big jug of it.
Margaret Hell yeah. Can I get some molasses?
Shane But for your first go, you're probably going to do a sugar wash anyway. And I'd recommend turning it into gin because it's not gonna taste great on its own.
Margaret Yeah, I was going to ask. Okay, so like...in my head, every hard liquor is like, the distillation of some soft liquor? But why is it called hard liquor? There's no other...All liquors hard liquor? Is that? Wait...
Shane If it's distilled, it's hard, I think. I don't know. Different legal definitions.
Margaret Yeah. So, like, in my mind, whiskey is like, beer that you take too far. Brandy has wine that you take too far. Not too far. But further...But maybe I like run out because I actually don't know what rum is...It's apparently made from molasses. Is vodka?
Shane Anything. Any sugar cane product. Technically a sugar wash, I think, is rum. So, sugar cane...the easiest way for me to get sugar cane concentrate is in molasses from the store. So.
Margaret Molasses is just burned sugar, right?
Shane Molasses is just concentrated sugar cane juice. So fancy molasses is that Blackstrap stuff. They boil it to get all the sugar out of it and what's left over as Blackstrap molasses. So it's like a byproduct at that point, basically.
Margaret That's kind of cool. I like weird byproducts that people have probably figured out by now. Okay, what's vodka? Is it potato liquor?
Shane Vodka. A lot of people think it's potato liquor. It's really just neutral grain alcohol. So, it's basically, pretty much anything you make out of a grain...Potatoes are used for a lot of, in a lot of places cause it is what they have a lot of. But it's just anything that you've distilled up to above 95 or as high as you can go and then you water it down to drinkable 40%. So you're trying to get rid of as many impurities as you possibly can and make it as neutral as you can. That's vodka.
Margaret Okay. Alright. Then what's whiskey?
Shane You're pretty much on the money when you say it's just distilled beer. You wouldn't want to put hops in it because it won't taste very good. And you don't need to preserve it anyway. But it's any anything that's...any distilled, fermented grain. So, whether it's corn, or wheat, barley, whatever.
Margaret Is there like a secret distillers only alcohol that you like can't get in the store? I guess moonshine is this. Okay, well, what's moonshine?
Shane It depends. A lot of different people have different definitions. Like I read a thing about this on the home distillers forums--there's a whole hobby forum for this--their way of saying is whatever you consider moonshine is moonshine, because it's just any illegal alcohol. Traditionally, I think it's just an unaged corn whiskey. So just fermented corn, basically, and then distilled.
Margaret Okay. But like, okay, so, in my mind, there's got to be like, a type of...Like, you know, if you like...People who grow food, often eat different kinds of foods that you can't get in the store, right? Or, like, people are like, "Oh, there's all these fruits that you don't even know exist," you know, because you go to the store and there's like only certain things. Is there like a hidden liquor? Is there like a distillers' liquor that--I mean, I guess moonshine is the closest to this--but like...
Shane Well, probably the only one and it's more for because it's cheaper than anything but Sugar Shine. No one...like big companies aren't making sugar sugar washes mostly because, at that scale, grains are cheaper and sugar. But yeah, Sugar Shine is probably the closest thing to a secret distillers only. So it's like I said, that's when you take a sugar wash, you just fill it out. And it can be kind of good. It. It tastes like a sugar bowl smells. Does that make sense?
Margaret It seems like it'd make a good mixed.
Shane Yeah, oh, yeah. It's basically a vodka at that point. If you're doing it right.
Margaret Is there an overlap or like a hatred between the groups of hobby distillers and the people who are really into like mixed drinks?
Shane No. Mostly because anything you...Anything that comes out of a home still, you're probably mixing into a mixed drink anyway.
Margaret Yeah, okay.
Shane It's not...my long term goal is to make something that is good enough to sip neat, like to sip just no ice, just out of a glass. I haven't gotten there yet.
Margaret Alright. How...the stuff that you're making, how headachy, hangovery, blackoutty? Are you doing like pretty good on that level.
Shane I'm doing pretty....It's no worse than the commercial stuff, for sure. There's a couple things that aren't exactly distillers only, but they're less common for people who aren't alcohol nerds. One of them is absinthe.
Margaret Yeah, okay, what's absinthe made out of? I know there's a wormwood in it. That's all I know.
Shane So absinthe is...So it's a neutral spirit. You mix some wormwood and anise, usually, some other herbs and stuff in it. And you then you distill it again after it's been soaking in that for a day or so. And then you color it with more wormwood or fennel or something to give it a green color, or you can just leave a white if you want.
Margaret Alright. My other question is, how much work is it? Like how much like raw stuff to make a little bit...Like you mentioned that people distill maybe flower essences or some other essential oils. Is that what you said?
Shane Yeah.
Margaret I know that essential oils are an incredibly like...like, you got to grow a field of lavender in order to make a vial of lavender essential oils, right?
Shane Essential oils is a very different process that I haven't gotten super into. But from my understanding of it, you're really just using your still to boil water at that point. You're using the steam to extract the oils. So that you're getting a very little product, I imagine. For alcohol, if you make a standard batch that you would make for like a beer or wine like a 23 liter, or I think 6 gallon, you're probably gonna get two or three bottles, like standard sized bottles out of that.
Margaret Oh, well, the standard like...
Shane Like 750 milliliter bottles.
Margaret Okay. So you can either have 24 beers or 2 bottles of liquor?
Shane Yeah, basically. And that also depends on how strict you are when you're taking your cuts and stuff. And whether or not you're taking the cuts...Oh, one thing you can do with the cuts, by the way, I forgot to mention this earlier, if you're doing a pot still, you can take that and put it into the next batch to get a little bit more of the good stuff out of it. So you're gonna increase your yield as you go, basically.
Margaret And if you make whiskey...if you make like flavored alcohols, can you still use them as fuel alcohol? Or is it like, not so good?
Shane As long as you don't water it down. Yeah, sure. I think you want to keep your alcohol above 75% if you're using it for fuel. But if you're just...if you're drinking it, you probably don't want it to be 75%, in general.
Margaret And how do you measure the alcoholness, the gravity? Is it still the same, you still use a hydrometer, or whatever, even though it's like super alcoholly?
Shane You have to get a different hydrometer. It is the same thing. But you have to get a hydrometer that's made for measuring proof. And this hydrometer will not work in your beer. You can't proof out your beer using this because there's particulates in the beer that will affect your measurement. But if you're putting it in a spirit, that'll work.
Margaret I, every now and then, get really annoyed at living in the United States. And this is one of those moments. I'm like, this sounds fun. It just doesn't sound cost-benefit fun.
Shane Yeah, so I do enjoy the cheap alcohol aspect of this. But only if I don't think about how much time I spend on it.
Margaret Oh, yeah, no, totally.
Shane It takes like an entire day to run the still. It's just like an eight hour day.
Margaret To get your like two bottles?
Shane Yeah. So, it's not not even worth it from that point. But, it's a hobby, not a not a job. So that's why if they ever come accuse me of selling alcohol, I'll just show them the math. It's not worth it.
Margaret Okay, now, is it fuel efficient, right? Like if you...I know that you shouldn't do it over and open flame, but it's the apocalypse and you have to. Do you have to spend...Do you have to burn more fuel alcohol to make...Like, do you get a net gain of fuel alcohol? Or do you get a net loss of fuel alcohol?
Shane I've never tried to run it over and open flame, so I don't know.
Margaret Yeah, don't do it. I'm just curious.
Shane I will say, it does take a fair bit of power. So I don't know if you'd actually get a...like, back in the day, they used to do it over like a wood fire. I imagine probably because they probably don't want to take their moonshine and pour that in a big bucket and light that on fire to use that instead.
Margaret Yeah, that makes sense. I guess there's other things that people like to burn more than...okay. I think that like answers most of my questions about distillation. Is there something amazing that I'm missing or anything that you like?
Shane Do you want to give people some more practical information on like, where they can...Where or how they can get this stuff if it's legal in the area?
Margaret Yeah.
Shane I've done a little bit of, I've pulled up a few things on this. So, one of the common things that people will get is a still from Still Spirits called a Turbo 500. It's like a somewhat modular, cheap ish--It's like $550--still. It's kind of an all on one set. You just kind of plug it in and go. For the most part. You gotta have water running through it, but if you're trying to...
Margaret Oh, it's electric?
Shane Yeah, it's electric.
Margaret So you don't have to like put it on a stove. That makes so much sense and it never occurred to me when you were like, "Oh, you don't have to put it over open flame anymore." I was imagining putting it on my like electric stove top. No, great. Okay.
Shane Oh, I have done that with my first still. It's a little bit of a pain in the ass. I wouldn't recommend it. It's a bit fiddly on a typical coil stove because you got to balance everything on top of the little coil.
Margaret Yeah. Okay, so anyway, so Turbo 500...
Shane Yeah, so that's a fairly common model. It's under $1,000. If you live in an apartment and you just want to have the ability to do this, should it ever come up, if you need some sanitizer or just want to make a small amount of vodka, or if you want to use it for its intended advertised purpose and purify water, you can get a air still for under 100 bucks, usually.
Margaret What's an air still?
Shane So you don't even need water for this. You put...I'll actually describe what you're supposed to do with it. You fill it with water, your tap water. You plug it in, it'll boil that water, and it'll use a fan and an air cooler on the top to condense that back into water. So, it will distill water. And it'll do the exact same thing to alcohol if you let it.
Margaret Okay, if you use it against its intended purposes, like if you were to use a bong to smoke weed instead of tobacco...
Shane Exactly. So yeah. Now, some people don't like them because there's a lot of plastics in making them and people are iffy about having alcohol vapor touch plastic. Understandably. Yeah, but, you know, if you just want to...if you're making hand sanitizer or fuel, it's a great option to have. Like it fits under your counter. It's the size of a coffee maker.
Margaret Okay, and you can put, "For tobacco use only," on it, and then people will...
Shane Yeah. And then people will try to put tobacco in your air still and be really confused. [Laughing] Okay, so that's...and then the option that if you're getting really into fermenting, you're probably going to end up getting at some point, an all-in-one grain brewing system is what they're called. So it's...Have you ever seen those like big coffee carafes they have at like churches and like food banks and stuff or soup kitchens and stuff. Like the big cylinder, stainless steel cylinder for coffee?
Margaret Yeah. Like it looks like one of those robots from Doctor Who. It looks like a Dalek.
Shane Kind of, yeah. Okay. The T-500 is also very similar to that, but it looks like one of those. It comes with like a filter and stuff to filter out your grains from your beer before you turn it into beer. And a lot of the companies that make those will include little clamps on the side so that if you wanted to, you could go buy, whether it's a T-500 condenser, so you could buy the condenser separate or make your own condenser, you can slap it on top of that, clamp it down, and now you have a still. So that's actually...If you're getting really into fermenting, I'd recommend you get one of those anyway, because if you're going to be doing any beer, any grains, you're gonna want to have that. And if you ever decide you want to make a still, you've already got your boiler. Those can be a bit expensive, but I think they're worth it. Especially if you're making a lot of beer.
Margaret Yeah. Yeah, I mean, every hobby starts at the $100 level, and then immediately goes to the $3,000 level, once you want to do it well enough, you know,
Shane You can get these all grain brewing systems for less than $1000 as well. And also, if you want to make whiskey, you're going to be working with grains anyway. So it's this exact same sort of thing. You're making a beer up until the point where you put hops in.
Margaret Okay. Is the Turbo 500, is that what you use?
Shane No, I went over the route of getting the grain brewing system. Initially, I went the route of getting the cheapest still Amazon had, hating it, modifying it, throwing all that away, and getting what I just mentioned.
Margaret Yeah, that's how I would do it too.
Shane I got a couple of neat things out of the stove top still, but I eventually wanted to get something a bit bigger and a bit safer. So yeah, I went that route.
Margaret Yeah, imagine. Are the cheap ones just like are they just like pressure cookers with some like copper coming out of the top?
Shane They're essentially just pressure cooker stills with a coil and a--like the coil condenser that I mentioned I hate them--so my first modification was getting rid of that and replacing it with the Liebig condenser. So I made my own Liebig and it worked, but it wasn't...I had to tie it to my cupboard to keep it from falling over.
Margaret So it's kind of...There's only one real object that people need. I mean, there's like ways to do it modularly, right, but there's not like a lot of different little...
Margaret Well, there's also, importantly, two different types of stills.
Margaret The reflux and the pot.
Shane Yeah, the reflux in the pot. So I've been talking a lot about pot stills. The T-500 is a reflux still, although you can modify it to be a pot still if you want. And you can also get some cheap modular reflux stills, which is what I got to put on top of my grain brewing system. If you want to make vodka, if you want to make something that tastes very neutral, or if you want to make something that's a very high percentage, you need to reflect still.
Margaret Oh, interesting. Because it's, kind of re...It's like multi...It's doing like almost like multiple passes of a distillation at once, basically?
Shane Exactly, yeah. So, you could sit there all week and just run your product through a pot still 20 times or you can put it in a reflux still, once. Yeah, that sounds better. Okay. It's also safer, because I don't know exactly why this is the case. But the hobby communities rule of thumb is nothing more than 40% in the pot. Okay, so the highest you're gonna get out of that is around 70 or 80%. Which is
Margaret Yeah, that sounds better. Okay.
Shane It's also safer, because...I don't know exactly why this is the case, but the hobby communities rule of thumb is, "Nothing more than 40% in the pot." So the highest you're gonna get out of that is around 70 or 80%.
Margaret Which is higher than I normally imagine wanting alcohol anyway. Like, I'd be watering down anything over 50% anyway, personally, but...
Shane But if you want to make gin or absinthe or anything that starts with a neutral, or a vodka, for example, you're going to want to go up as high as you possibly can, which the highest you can go is about 95. Because the higher the higher you go, the less flavor you're getting out of it.
Margaret Yeah. Which actually...It's suddenly making me think of Everclear. And like, the reason that I keep Everclear in my house is for like preservation and like herbs and tinctures and stuff, you know, which is something that I hadn't even...We didn't...Maybe you mentioned it in the list of things, but I'm only just now thinking of is like one of the other reasons that it'd be really useful for people to have access to make alcohol.
Shane That's actually the reason I got it. Where I am, I actually can't buy Everclear because, you know, to protect us, I guess.
Margaret Half the states are the same way.
Shane But the thing is, I wanted to make orange liquor, is one of the first reasons, first things I thought of when I got into this. I wanted to make orange liquor, but I couldn't find Everclear Yeah, so I had to make my own.
Margaret That's cool. That seems like that would be even more rewarding. Like I feel like trying to like learn how to make like a signature whiskey would be like fun, right? But what seems rewarding is making some 95% proof stuff that you can use as a mixer, or use to preserve things, and make medicine, and make things last a long time. But I'm also obsessed with making things last a long time.
Shane And you can make sanitizer and medicine and stuff like that with what comes out of a pot still, but it's gonna be more effective...Well, it's gonna smell less bad on your hands, I guess, if you're making hand sanitizer, but you actually do want to water it down to 70 anyway, so...
Margaret Oh, interesting. Yeah, and is making hand sanitizer basically just make 70% alcohol and then you like put that on your hands? Or is it like...are you using like...Do you like gel it up? Like, what do you do?
Shane I mean, if you're just trying to get something, get some cheap sanitizer, yeah, you just make 70 or 80% alcohol and put it on your hands. You could mix aloe vera or lotion or something in there to make it, you know, less harsh, but...
Margaret Okay. Well, is there any any last thing we're missing? Or a question that I should have asked you?
Shane I don't think so. The last detail I wanted to get in there was make sure you don't try to use 100% or 95% alcohol sanitizer, because it doesn't work as well. I think a lot of people learned that around Covid, though.
Margaret Okay, and then one weird thing I know about hand sanitizer is that hand sanitizer is very good for certain things. But if you live off grid and you put it in your outhouse or whatever, it doesn't do any good there. Hand sanitizer is effective for...My doctor friend will be mad at me if I don't get this exactly right. It's not good for the fecal oral transmission route. It is good for like stopping colds and stuff.
Shane Now, I didn't know that because when I go camping, every outhouse I see has hand sanitizer in it.
Margaret Oh, yeah. And you know what? It's great. It stops other stuff that is unrelated to what you just did. A good thing to have.
Shane A false sense of security there, I guess.
Margaret Yeah, exactly. And you know, and if you have other safety practices in place for your off grid bathroom then you should be good in terms of distance from your kitchen. But more importantly, like, if--this is completely just a PSA--if you're setting up some kind of like outhouse space for a lot of people and your camping or whatever, you're going to want to set up a hand wash station that use soap and water because that is what stops transmission of things along the fecal oral route. And I don't remember what the thing that, the word for what hand sanitizer does is, but I think it's the breathey-iny-type stuff is what hand sanitizer is good for. I hope I got that right. And if not, do your own research. Don't listen to some girl on the internet who's interested in everything and not good at any of it.
Shane Also, one last note. The same for this stuff. Don't listen to this podcast and then immediately buy a still. There is a lot of information, like hobby information online. There's the Home Distillers Forum. There's a couple of Youtubers that make content about this. So get your information from more than one place.
Margaret Well, is there anything you want to shout out or plug either something that you do or something that you want other people to pay attention to here at the end?
Shane Beyond what I just said, No. I don't really want to be found. So, don't have anything to plug. I just wanted to make this information available to people.
Margaret Well, I really appreciate it. And thanks so much for reaching out. And thanks for coming on.
Margaret Thanks so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode, if you didn't, why did you keep listening? Was it that you set it on in the background and then went about your day and have been like sort of angry the whole time that you've been walking your dog or driving that you're still listening to it and you wish you'd been listening to something else? If so, don't tell me about it. But if you did like listening to it, you should tell other people about it. You should tell people, "Live like the world is dying!" and then people will be like, "What?" And you'll be like, "Sorry, it's the name of a podcast I like. Don't actually do anything different about the fact that the world's ending. Just go about living your life," and then people will be like, "You're exactly the kind of reason that we don't like listening to doom say..." Okay, so if you like this podcast, you can support it by telling people about it. That's the single biggest thing that you can do. You can also support it by supporting us financially on Patreon. Our Patreon is patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness, because this podcast is put out by Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which is an anarchist publishing collective that puts out podcasts as well as books, and zines, and a bunch of stuff. And we've been around for almost 20 years. We haven't been doing podcasts that whole time, because there weren't podcasts when we started. Instead, it was mostly zines for a while. But in particular, I want to thank, first and foremost and always, Hoss the Dog. And I want to thank Michaiah, Chris, Sam, Kirk, Eleanor, Jenipher, Staro, Cat J., Chelsea, Dana, David, Nicole, Mikki, Paige, SJ, Shawn, Hunter, theo, Boise Mutual Aid, Milica, Paparouna, Aly, Paige, Janice & Odell, Oxalis, Jans, Funder, Anonymous--names are getting really interesting more recently--BenBen, Princess Miranda, Trixter, and Lord Harken. Sorry, just a silly way to pronounce that. I think. All right. I'll talk to you soon. I'm gonna go eat fucking dinner because I've been recording all day. Jesus. Which was months ago now by the time you're listening to this. Why are you still listening to this? You should hit stop. There's not any like big secrets that I'm going to reveal if you keep listening. I'm just going to tell you what I ate for a snack, which was that I air fried some frozen potatoes and thought to myself, "I wonder if I can make my own frozen potatoes. I wonder if that's what I can do with old potatoes before they go bad, if I don't eat them in time. I wonder if I can cut them up into little shoestring fries and put them in a freezer bag and then put them in the deep freezer and eat them later?" Are you still listening? Bye.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Pat talks to Margaret about working outside for a living with the National Park Service. They talk about gear, preparedness while hiking, search and rescue, how to prevent needing to be sought for and rescued, and the unfortunate realities of climate change.
Find Pat on the trails. Do not find them on the internet. They cannot be found there.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Pat on Working Outside
Margaret 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today, Margaret Killjoy. And this week...Okay, so you know sometimes I have these shows and it's basically like I find people who talk to me about the things that I've decided I'm really interested in that week. Well, this is one of those examples! And so I'm really excited about it. I think you'll all be excited about it too because this week I am talking to Pat who works outside for a living and he gets to do search and rescue and help people access parks because he is a backwoods...person...at a national park. And yeah, I don't know, I think...I'm excited for the conversation. I can't tell you what's gonna be in it because I haven't done it yet because I record these before I do the interview instead of afterwards. But! This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on the network. Baba Baba bu ba baa ba ba baaa. [Making noises like a song melody]
Margaret 01:51 Okay, and we're back. Pat, so if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then just like a little bit about the work you do?
Pat 02:02 Yeah. So I'm Pat. He/him. I am a back country ranger for the National Park Service and I've been doing it for about 10 years. So I basically just hike around to talk with people, help out with search and rescue, clean toilets, do whatever needs doing. Yeah.
Margaret 02:24 Hell yeah. Okay, I have one question up front.
Pat 02:26 Yes.
Margaret 02:27 Okay, once when I was doing this forest campaign in a national forest--so not the Park Service, but, you know, the National Forest Service--there was this pit toilet. And--because he brought up toilets--there was this pit toilet and it had a door. And we would prop the door open to avoid it smelling. But then the Ranger came by and yelled at us and says that it works better...The like ventilation system is built on the door being closed. But then other times, I feel like I've seen ones that say, "Leave the door open." What's the deal?
Pat 03:00 That is...I'm going to chalk it up to every toilet in the back country is different. So maybe one of them was like designed in such a way with specific ventilation systems, because they get pretty high tech. We have some that have like little solar powered computer fans that will like vent air out and bring fresh air in to try to dry them out. It's kind of neat. It's a huge part of the job.
Margaret 03:25 This was like 20 years ago I think...Probably didn't have a solar panel
Pat 03:27 Probably not solar powered then. [At the same time as Margaret says above
Margaret 03:28 I just couldn't figure out whether she was like fucking with us because she didn't like us or whether she was just like annoyed at these idiots who thought they knew about the woods but didn't.
Pat 03:41 Well, the reason they gave may have not been like 100% accurate. Like one thing that comes to mind is--it really sucks--but you know, critters find their way down into there. And so if the door's open like, you know, a raccoon or something may climb down there and like it really sucks because oftentimes they get down there and they can't get out. And you know, at my park, we shovel all of that waste out into buckets and hike it out. [Margaret makes a "pee-yew" noise of disgust] And sometimes you know little chipmunks and stuff are in there. It's really sad.
Margaret 04:12 Yeah, Is there like a back entrance where you can go down and access the pit? Or do you have to just literally like drop buckets and like it's a terrible well?
Pat 04:24 Oh, no, those structures are literally just...like you just you just like rock them and move the wooden structures off. They're not secured to the ground. and then you put a hole in the ground with just like posthole diggers.
Margaret 04:44 That's fun. I'm glad that this is the first question I asked you. [Laughing]
Pat 04:48 It's part of the job. Sorry, gonna turn all the listeners away.
Margaret 04:52 No, no, no, no, I asked. And I think that that's like....Okay, I mean, that even gets kind of...Um, when I would do any kind of forest defense or anything that involves living in the woods, I feel like one of the main signs of like a newbie in a bad way was people who didn't dig a hole before they took a shit.
Pat 04:53 Yes.
Margaret 04:54 You know? And so the stuff that when you're like in houses and stuff that you sort of take for granted, you can't take for granted when you're not. So it sort of makes sense that shit is the defining characteristic.
Pat 05:28 Yeah, it's kind of fun.
Margaret 05:29 But, speaking of shitty jobs...Hehe, I had to make the pun at least once. I'm very sorry. What got you deciding that you want to work outside?
Pat 05:41 I feel like I was kind of like destined for it. Kind of a weird way to put it. I was basically...my first backpacking trip was before I could walk. My dad put me on his shoulders. And I was out in the woods when I still in diapers. I grew up doing Boy Scouts so I was backpacking basically once a month. And so I just continuously did that essentially my whole life, and then, weirdly enough, in college kind of fell off for a bit. And then, you know, I graduated and decided to volunteer and have been doing it ever since.
Margaret 06:17 Okay, and you moved from volunteer to now this is what you do professionally, right?
Pat 06:20 Yeah, that's kind of the primary path to get in. If you're not coming from some sort of military background or something, you kind of have to volunteer or do an internship or something like that. It's a pretty small community. So getting your foot in the door and learning the lingo is kind of important. And having a name that a hiring manager can call for a reference check that's like in the system is kind of an important deal.
Margaret 06:49 That makes sense.
Pat 06:50 Yeah. Kind of a small community.
Margaret 06:53 What do you like about it? Like, I think that a lot of people listening...So the reason I wanted to had you on, part of it is about search and rescue stuff--which I want to talk to you about in a bit--But part of why I wanted to have you on is I think that a lot of the listeners, a lot of listeners do either work outside or spend...Like I actually work inside, but almost all of my hobbies--and I make it this way on purpose--take me outside. And then I often sort of live outside. I don't currently, but I have at various points. But I think that a lot of people are looking for ways to get outside and don't like their current work or don't have work at all or whatever. And so I guess I want to ask you about what you like and don't like about having a job that has you outside all the time?
Pat 07:43 Yeah. I mean, it's...I love that my job like requires me to be out there. It's like such a huge boost for mental health and everything. It's nice that I don't have to, like take time off for my family to go out and get those experiences. So that's really huge. Yeah, the outdoors is like a...I'm sure a lot of people that go out regularly have the experience where it's...even if you're not religious or anything but it's kind of got a spiritual element to it where you're just like out in it in the wilderness by yourself or even with a small group, and it's just refreshing, you know. It fills you up. So that's huge that I get to do that and I get paid for it and I get to--I think most of all--I get to help people get out to get into it, pointing out trails, conditions, things that. Yeah, it's really cool to have a job where I can, like materially help people on a day to day basis, you know? Like when I recommend a day hike and someone comes back like all sweaty but smiling and thanks you for it. You know, it's a good feeling.
Margaret 08:52 Yeah, yeah. So you're like the human Alltrails[.com]? Is that what you're saying?
Pat 08:57 Yeah, I've got a little bit of a beef with Alltrails. But that's maybe another conversation.
Margaret 09:04 Wait, I want to hear because I've been using Alltrails
Pat 09:07 I, and maybe this is just me, but I dislike how Alltrails chunks everything down into like little specific trails. So like, people come in and ask about like this one trail and it's got a name that I've never heard of and I'm like, "Oh, you're talking about like this section of the trail going up to here." Like, I'm much more like destination based. But that's just me, you know. People like it. And it's really great for finding new stuff. You have the maps right there, which is really great. Although I don't think it's as robust of a GPS tool as some of the other apps. But yeah, it's got some weird stuff with like...Some of the information isn't always accurate. So don't trust it 100% is what I'm getting at.
Margaret 09:54 Yeah, I have noticed that, that it never takes me to the right place to start a trail...
Pat 09:59 See.
Margaret 09:59 Which, i feel like it's just trying to keep me honest. It's trying to make sure I learned how to read maps right. Because it takes me to the wrong spot. But it doesn't do it when I'm like in the backwoods as much, right? Like backwoods is an exaggeration of the kind of hikes I do. Okay, no, no, I mean, because one of the things that I almost dislike about it when I started using it is I'm like...It's kind of like when I'm driving, and I used to drive without a GPS, and drive across the country and all that. And now I drive with a GPS and I know exactly how many minutes are left in my drive. It's a little weird that I have brought that into my hiking life I admit. But, I do like that there have been a couple times where I've been hiking and I'm like, "I don't know where this fucking trail is. Where the fuck am I?" And it's been like, "You're in the wrong place." And I'm like, "Thank God."
Pat 10:56 Yeah. Good job, mapping tool.
Margaret 11:01 Yeah, exactly.
Pat 11:03 It's amazing now how the phones have replaced so many tools in my back country pack. You know, it's like, my camera, it's my GPS, it's, you know, I listen to podcasts when I'm hike. It's...Yeah, it's kind of cool. Very Powerful.
Margaret 11:19 Yeah, no, I like it too. I used to hike around with an SLR [Big camera]. And I'm glad I don't anymore.
Margaret 11:20 That's a lot of weight. Yeah.
Margaret 11:32 Yeah. Okay, so how does it affect...You talked about like...One of the things that you said about working outdoors that actually seemed really interesting to me that seems really cool is that you don't have to take time away from your family to do it because it is the thing...You're combining the thing that you want to be doing and the thing you do for work. How else does it affect your life, working outside or even specifically working for the park service?
Pat 12:00 Yeah. So you know, I have a family. I have a wife and kid at home. So...but where I work is, you know, it's a good couple hours away from where my wife and kid are. So it can be a little bit challenging at times. And I'm really lucky that I've got the situation that I do because my wife has a decent job with all the benefits and everything and I'm a seasonal employee. So I'm working May to October, and then I get like...and so in the winter months it's kind of worked out where I'm able to be a stay at home dad and take care of my kiddo. Yeah, it's pretty...It works out really well. And as she's starting school, I'm just transitioning to homemaker, which is kind of working out pretty nicely. I just get to bake bread and do the laundry and all that fun stuff. It's pretty great. Yeah, it's a good setup. But in the summers, I ended up being away from my family. I go home on my weekends. But, you know, I spend four days at a time out here in the back country and in the office. And, you know, it kind of stinks, but I'm out in the woods and I get so much family time in the actual winter that it it kind of evens out. Yeah.
Margaret 13:17 No, I mean, it sounds like it has advantages over almost every office job. Like even though my parents came home every day, both of them worked easily 12 hour days most days. Yeah.
Pat 13:32 And my wife's job allows her to travel in the summers. So they go and visit family. Like they're off doing stuff. So you know, the couple months where they're off doing those kinds of things, you know, it's not terrible. It lets me go off and do my own thing on my days off. So it works out nicely.
Margaret 13:49 Yeah. What would you say for like...I'm obviously...I presume you can only speak specifically to the park service or whatever. But do you know much about like other outdoors jobs or like what kind of like...What would you say to someone who's like thinking about working outdoors?
Pat 14:06 Yeah. So I've worked closely with some forest service stuff, forest service people. I shared an office with them for a couple of years. So, you don't just have to work for the government to work in the outdoors. You know, there are a variety of jobs working for federal or state agencies. You know, there's wildland fire. There's jobs that take you outdoors if you're interested in like biology. You know, there's people that go out and survey frogs and that's their whole...Their whole job is they spend the summers at alpine lakes just like doing frog surveys, which is pretty cool. But, there's also some of the non government jobs,. You know, there's guiding services. They're the folks that take people up those mountains like Denali and Rainier. They're private companies. That's a job that you can get in there. And also--it's not necessarily in the outdoors but adjacent to it--you know, all those national parks have concessions, you know, private companies that run the hotels and the shuttle services and all of that stuff. So you don't even necessarily like have to be a park ranger to like work in Yosemite or something like that, you know? You can be like a line cook and still live in the valley and be able to go day hiking in those gorgeous places on your days off. So...
Margaret 15:30 Okay, so I actually first ran across you because I put out a call saying I'm interested in talking to people who work with search and rescue. And I had initially thought of--and I'll probably interview some other people about this, and who knows what order they'll come out, so maybe you're hearing this after I've already put out some other ones--But I was originally thinking about volunteer search and rescue, right, and the the groups that do it in different regions, but you do search and rescue as part of your work. And I wanted to talk to you about that, about what search and rescue is like. And just to...the reason I got really interested in thinking about this was I was thinking a lot about how search and rescue is a form of mutual aid that our society puts together and how there's been like--I guess every now and then people try and charge people for search and rescue services and then everyone gets really upset about it. This is like something I'm completely outside of. I just read articles every now yeah and then. So I kind of wanted to ask you about the field of search and rescue and your work with it. And what that's...What's been involved?
Pat 16:31 Yeah, um, I am kind of...you mentioned it, pretty lucky in the search and rescue world in that I get a paycheck for what I do. The Park Service is unique in that it's part of like our enabling legislation to provide for the safety of our visitors. So most other places, it just goes to the county sheriff. That's just the default, the County Sheriff. They don't have the budget to have a paid search and rescue team. And there's always, always always volunteers, people willing to step up to help. Which is, yeah, kind of amazing. And yeah, it's pretty great. We don't ever charge for anything. My park owns a helicopter and we don't charge for pulling people out of places and lifting them everywhere. Yeah, it's a pretty cool setup that we're able to just purely help and not at all worry about money or anything like that. It's pretty great. It's interesting because you see it a lot just in everyday like back country interactions with, you know, non search and rescue personnel to where, you know, you get injured in the back country and complete strangers are going to help you no matter what. Like, you see someone on the trail, they will help you in pretty much any sort of issue you have. I do love that about that sort of wilderness aspect is that like, everyone helps each other. It's kind of great.
Margaret 18:08 That is a...I think that's a really important point. We had a guest recently who's a wilderness guide in Arctic regions and how that work actually led him to understanding anarchism and non-hierarchical organizing was that realization of like, of some of the things that come up in the back country. And so this thing that you're talking about, about how everyone helps you when you're in the backwoods, I think about...Like, I'm a real weird looking person by most of society's standards. And if I am in most...If I'm in the back country, if I am on a hike anywhere other than kind of like a weird city trail or something, no one looks at me weird. Everyone just like nods like they do everyone else. And it reminds me...[Interrupted]
Pat 19:02 Everyone says hello...
Margaret 19:02 Oh, go ahead.
Pat 19:03 I was just...Yeah, it's amazing. People just say hi. They wave. It's...You drive a dirt road and everyone waves. It's interesting.
Margaret 19:12 Yeah. And it reminds me a little bit about what I hear about, and what I've had minor experiences of, of what happens in disaster, which is, you know, the main theme of the show, right? And I wonder whether it's just because when we're far away from civilization and like we...the alienation of society, or civilization, or whatever the fuck--I don't know what we call this--but, you know, the alienation drifts away when we're in these places that don't have as many structures in place or like...What do you think it is? Why is it...If someone's passed out in the street in a city, everyone walks by them, and it's like, "Oh, that person didn't take care of themselves. So fuck them." right?"
Pat 20:00 Yeah, it's...You're absolutely right. It's an interesting phenomenon. I think it has something to do with when you're away from that safety net of society, when you're away from like, "Oh, an ambulance is just a 911 call away. Someone else will do it. Someone else has done it." When you're out there and you're...You know that, "Oh, I haven't seen anyone in two hours and here's this person who's injured." You know that like you are the only one. I think that's part of it. And also like maybe a sense of, "Well, I would want someone to help me in this situation." And I you know, when we're in the woods we we see ourselves potentially in more risky situations. I don't know. It is...
Margaret 20:48 No, that that bystander effect....Go Ahead.
Pat 20:50 No, I'm just, you know, it's that or it's just, you know, when you're away from all of this modern everything we've built, people just are how they naturally are, which is helpful and kind.
Margaret 21:04 Yeah. And, and that's what's so interesting to me about it is that like because people talk about like--a lot of preppers, especially like the center-right preppers and things--will talk about backwoods skills as the most important prepping skills. And overall, I don't think that that's true. Although, I think backwoods skills are great and I'm personally trying to work on mine. But maybe it's like, they're getting the wrong things out of it, right? Like, I mean, it's cool to know how to hit squirrels with axes and skin them or whatever. But knowing how...Like returning to this, "We take care of us" thing, returning to this sense of like, "We're in this together," maybe that's the more important backwoods skill.
Pat 21:52 Honestly, it's wild. You have, you know, just the interaction you have when you're just far enough away, where you're not, you know, close enough to society. Everyone's...everyone's really friendly. Yeah, it makes my job really easy.
Margaret 22:16 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I always have...Like, when I talk to park rangers of various types, they're usually fairly happy and not like smiling because they have to for work.
Pat 22:28 Well, it's like a customer service job at its core, but you're talking with the crowd of people that are--like we were just talking about--gonna go out into the woods and say hi to every person they see. And they're like, going off and they're spending their free time to go do this. Like it's a very specific crowd of people. And it's very like, okay, yeah, it's gonna be...[Audio distortion with missing words] Very rarely do I ever have difficult interactions with people.
Margaret 22:55 Yeah. So with search and rescue, I have a couple questions about it. Okay, one, the least...the most specific--sometimes I like to just ask the most specific question that's on my mind. Which is, so I carry...like when I hike I carry a Garmin inReach Mini 2. I carry an SOS device and a satellite communicator, right. And it's the most expensive thing on my fucking pack. It probably costs as much as the rest of my pack, but I like having it because I hike by myself. I hike by myself...well, with my dog. And this seems like overall a very good thing. I'm very glad I have it, but I keep wondering, especially like when compared with like smartwatches that can send SOS's and like now phones can send an SOS, are you all like buried under fake SOS calls now?
Pat 23:46 So no. Not really. We haven't...I feel like it's just that like new iPhone I think that does that SOS, but I don't think we have enough of those out there just yet to really see a lot of that. But, the inReach is our--my goodness--like gold standard. Those things it's an absolute wonder how those streamline the search and rescue process and get people to the care that they need quick. Yeah, like there's numerous situations I can think of off the top of my head where an individual would have potential...would likely have have died if they didn't have an inReach. Yeah, that...I'm sold on those things. They're just the absolute best. And there's a different brands, not inReach specifically. There's a couple other varieties, you know. I'm not here to sell Garmin products or anything, but anything that you can press a button and call 911 is huge.
Margaret 24:51 Right. They haven't sent us one for free. Okay, yeah, it's funny because ever since I bought the Garmin inReach I am on their like mailing list and so I get the like...like once a month they send a story of like, "This man survived because he...on a ledge for six hours because of his Garmin inReach 2." Yeah. And it's like clearly sales propaganda. But it's also true in this case.
Pat 25:18 Just last year, we had an individual who was experiencing heat stroke, was getting like combative with the rescuers. They were in such a bad way. And if they had not had the inReach, they were like 15-20 miles from the nearest road. If they had not had that inReach for us to be able to get a helicopter there like quickly, it would have been a much different mission for us. So yeah, it's...Yeah, those things are amazing.
Margaret 25:49 Yeah. So if you're listening, Garmin, send us free ones to give to our listeners..
Pat 25:59 Garmin kind of stinks because you have to pay a fee, like the monthly whatever, in order to pay for it. Like the best...The only like real benefit it has over some of the other ones is that you can send messages. But the other ones, I think Spot is a simple one, you just buy once and you don't have to pay things. You just like jam a button and it's good. Also most boats have them, so if you have access to a sailboat, you could probably find one
Margaret 26:24 Okay, now that actually, that's funny. I mean, one of the things, the only thing I've ever used my Garmin for, right is the text communication and the...So for anyone who's listening, it's a small device. It's like, it looks like a miniature walkie talkie. It's smaller than my cell phone, but it's like chunky and it's a satellite communicator. I pay a monthly fee. I think it's like 10 bucks. You can pause it whenever you want. So, if you're not gonna go anywhere for six months, you can stop. And it gives you like basically a phone number that you can text anywhere you can see the sky in the world. And then you're paying, you know, 25 cents a text or I'm making that number up. I don't remember how much money it is. It's around that. And yeah, and so it gives you an SOS button, which calls for help and tells people where you are, or initiates communications with the responders. And it also just lets you...like it Bluetooths to your phone, or you can very slowly and annoyingly type on this like weird thing. It doesn't have a touchscreen. And so, one of the reasons I actually do like that model is that like, I don't want to interact with authorities unless I absolutely need to, right? And I absolutely will press the like "Please save my life button," right. But, there's a lot more situations where it's just like, "Oh, I'm gonna go be off grid for a week. It would be really nice to know..." Like, recently I was off camping in the backwoods. Well, not really the backwoods. I'm playing myself up. I was fucking...I was at Joshua Tree. I didn't have cell service and my aunt was in the hospital and I just wanted to know if anything happened to her. And so it was nice to know that I was able to be reached.
Pat 28:20 Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's huge. You know, I do a lot of solo travel too. And so it's nice to be able to--just because you can send your track as well. So you can send like, "Oh, this here, you can follow me on the website." And so like, you can just send a link and initiate your tracking. Like, "I'm gonna go off trail and scramble up this little peek here. Like, go ahead and follow along." It's kind of nice, nice reassuring, at least. But then you're connecting with that outside world, which takes away that part of the wilderness a little bit.
Margaret 28:55 I know. I was gonna say that part of it. And I feel bad saying it, but like...
Pat 29:00 It's true.
Margaret 29:01 Everywhere has cell service now and I'm like not always glad.
Pat 29:06 It's nice when you can't be...[Talking over each other]
Margaret 29:10 Okay, well...Go ahead.
Pat 29:11 I was just saying it's nice when you can't be reached.
Margaret 29:12 Yeah. For anyone who is listening is wondering why the conversation...We both have shitty internet. So there's lag and that's what you all are listening to. Which, is the fun thing about two people in a rural situation and trying to record a podcast together. And so okay. So you go and you do search and rescue and I have two questions about that. I have more questions about that. Garmin was my like weird specific one. What are people doing? What are the main takeaways that you're learning that you see hikers or campers or all vehicle, all-terrain whatever...offroaders. Whatever. Like, what are people doing that puts them in these situations where they need rescue. Like what? What lessons can you impart to our audience from having seen people both live and die in bad situations in the woods.
Pat 30:05 I think the biggest thing...So it kind of depends on where we are. If we're talking about like the close in day hiking trails, the folks that are just out for a vacation and like maybe doing a hike in flip flops. For that, we're looking at a lot of the basic like, you know, the dehydration, twisted ankles, things like that. You know, people that don't hike a lot are going out and suddenly doing a, what may be for them, a really strenuous hike. And so those sort of like, broken ankle dehydration, whatever medical issues, you know. Grandma doesn't really hike and she's suddenly climbing up some switchbacks and, you know, has some some sort of condition that that causes her to go down or something like that. So that's what happens kind of in the front country. In the back country, when you're like really a little bit deeper out into the wilderness, oftentimes, what gets people into the most trouble is they are overextending themselves. They are pushing past what they are really kind of capable of doing. Oftentimes, you get a lot of like the weekend warriors who maybe haven't done a ton of hiking, who really decide like, "I want to do this one hike, because I saw it on Instagram. And I've got to do it because it looks really cool." And it's way above where their skills are at. They maybe go on too hot of a day and they don't have enough electrolytes. And so we still get a variety of, you know, the whole gambit of issues that can arise when you're out in the back country. But usually, it all stems from pushing themselves beyond what they should do for their capabilities. Yeah, and then the occasional like, whoopsie daisies breaking an ankle.
Margaret 31:57 So it's actually kind of the same thing as the front country?
Pat 32:00 Yeah, I mean, you're right in a sense. I don't...Yeah, it's just more of...Yeah, you're right. It ultimately comes down to just going beyond what you're, you know, expecting yourself to go do more than what you're actually able to do. Yeah.
Margaret 32:15 Yeah. Alright, so are the majority of things heat related and ankle related?
Pat 32:22 Oh, yeah, those are the two big examples. Those are honestly, kind of the most often are lower leg injuries, you just you step wrong, and you mess up an ankle, and then dehydration, and like heat illnesses. That's like, probably a solid like 80% of what we see on a day-to-day basis. And those are all easily resolved. You know, they're the quick in and out a couple hours and it's done. Go in. Bring some electrolytes to someone. Bring them back up and you just walk out, make sure they're okay. Or if it's an ankle, quickly pop up there, and if they're close enough, give them some crutches and help them get out. Get into a litter and wheel them out if you need to.
Margaret 33:06 Okay, so the reason that I'm like...the ankle thing. I watch way too much like hiking YouTube. I wear--just because I'm an old punk--I wear boots all day every day. I used to wear big stupid steel toed boots and hike in them. And now I wear like tactical boots because they have side zippers and they're lighter. And I like them more. Not aesthetically, honestly but for my life. But but all the hikers I know are all obsessed with trail runners. And everyone is like, "No one actually rolls an ankle. What are you talking about?" But you're telling me that people roll ankles?
Pat 33:45 Yeah. The people that roll ankles are usually in boots, surprisingly enough.
Margaret 33:51 Oh, shit. [Laughs a little manically]
Pat 33:53 Yeah. If you're like using trail runners, oftentimes, you're like strengthening your ankles and allowing that movement in your ankle, you know, because like the trail runners usually coincides with lighter pack weight as well. So, you have less weight, less risk. We're able to actually like move with you rolling an ankle. So like, yeah, like I occasionally like step weird. My ankle twists. But like, I'm not locked into something where now all of my body weight is going to be over that. I can quickly adjust and like, be fine. But yeah, it's usually the boots that you're seeing the ankle injuries with. But like if it works for you, hike your own hike. I try not to judge people for their gear. But yeah, the trail runner cult is real and for good reason.
Margaret 34:45 Yeah, you're a trail runner guy. Okay. Okay.
Pat 34:48 I only wear boots in snow.
Margaret 34:49 I mean, everyone I know who's actually an outdoors person.
Pat 34:52 Yeah. That's trail runners.
Margaret 34:55 Okay. Yeah, I mean, at least like, you know, I...my friend Carrot was on talking about ultralight hiking and thru-hiking and you can hear in that episode me slowly getting sold on light weight hiking. I've always been like a maximalist. Yeah. And then in my defense I'm like, well, I used to live out of a backpack. I like know all about carrying weight many many miles. I was 25 when I lived out of a backpack I am. There's that meme from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, "I'm a full 30 or 40 years old and I don't need this anymore." Yeah. Okay, okay.
Pat 35:44 Join the future.
Margaret 35:45 So you would overall suggest that lighter pack weight and trail runners might be a safer method than making sure that you carry everything that would be in a Dungeons and Dragons adventuring pack?
Pat 35:59 Yeah, um, honestly, you know, people aren't used to usually carrying like 40 pounds on their back. Like, it's not something humans normally do on a day-to-day basis. Like 20 is like not that much different. And most people can move pretty much the same way if they've got 20. But with 40, you're like, you're lumbering. Much more prone to the trips and falls and not being able to place your feet quickly and nicely. So...But, okay, ultimately, it's, you know, there is a trade off of like you're carrying less stuff, probably less robust stuff, you're relying on doubling things up, multi-use stuff. So that's kind of like...It's a trade off.
Margaret 36:48 No, and that's really interesting to me because like what we were talking about earlier about people taking care of each other in the backwoods, I was thinking about how camping and hiking and outdoor stuff, in a way, is like making a hobby out of a little apocalypse. You're going somewhere where you can only rely on what's around you, the people around you, and the stuff that you've brought, right. And so that leads me towards my like, vaguely maximalist...Like what I do now, is that like, my pack is a weird lightweight maximalism. I like still want...Like, I carry P-cord, right? And that's like not in an ultralight hike pack. But, I'm also not throug-hhiking. So I'm kind of like, whatever.
Pat 37:39 Who cares?
Margaret 37:42 But I don't carry like 50 foot of climb line, you know? And like, I'm not set to repel. I could repel in an emergency with my fucking p-cord. And it would be bad idea, but I would do it if I had to, right.
Pat 37:56 Terrifying.
Margaret 37:57 Yeah, no, I would double it up and then be terrified. Don't do...No one should listen to me. That's why I have experts on.
Pat 38:04 Don't ever do that. [Laughing]
Margaret 38:07 Okay, got it. All right. Everyone makes sure to repel with P chord. If you're not, you're not ultralight. So. Okay, so I expected the answer to be like, "What goes wrong in the back country?" I expected it to be like, people aren't prepared, right? Because I have this like, tendency to think like, "Preparedness!" and like... But what you're saying is that it's a different kind of prepared. People are overestimating their capacity rather than running into a problem that they don't have the wand of magic missiles that can solve or whatever.
Pat 38:47 Most of the issues we see are not solved by some like gizmo that you carry. It's usually like your preparedness, your like physical ability, things like that, you know. Some little tool in your pack, like for the most part isn't going to prevent the issues that we see.
Margaret 39:10 Right? Yeah. But sometimes they're fun. Like a walkie talkie.
Pat 39:15 Oh, yeah, they're great.
Margaret 39:22 Okay, okay. So while we're...Is most of what you're doing like day-to-day hanging out at a back country office or the office of...What do you do in your day-to-day? I should just ask that.
Pat 39:39 So like about half of my days, I am behind the desk in the front country just chatting with people, pointing out day hikes. I issue permits for backpacking things like that. And I have my, I always got my SAR [Search and rescue] pack there ready in case something pops off that I can quickly go hustle up trail to help with. And then the other half of my time I am in the field, in the back country, hiking around, chatting with folks, making sure that they're not feeding the bears, and I get the point out cool flowers and frogs to people. It's pretty cool. Explore new routes. Try to find shortcuts into places for quick access for search and rescue teams. It's a cool job.
Margaret 40:24 Does your back country pack include a full SAR setup?
Pat 40:29 It does. Yeah, so I...But a full SAR setup isn't...I should correct that. It does not have a full SAR setup because I don't carry a helmet with me when I'm in the back country. And whenever we're on SAR, we've always got helmets.
Margaret 40:46 Like, like the Team Wendy Bump helmets?
Pat 40:48 Yeah, like climbing helmets because we're often like, doing off trail stuff in the dark in weird weather and they were getting way too many search and rescue personnel getting like head injuries. And the last thing you want out there is to like bonk your head on a tree. You know, head injuries bleed a lot. They're not usually scary, but like a cut on your forehead is like...looks scary. And so it's just too much to deal with in the back country. So we got to wear helmets, even when we're hiking for SAR. It's kind of silly.
Margaret 41:20 So all hikers should wear helmets at all times. [Joking tone]
Pat 41:23 Yes, that's what I'm saying.
Margaret 41:25 Cool. Maximalism, that's what you're here to promote. So, how heavy is your back country pack?
Pat 41:36 Yeah, um, I actually got it loaded up right here because I'm heading out after this. But it is...Right now. It's probably about 25 pounds-ish. And that's loaded for three days with overnight gear, food, extra SAR stuff. SAR stuff isn't that much more in addition. It's just a little bit more robust things. Like I carry a bunch of like hand warmers. I carry just extra radio batteries, a big heavy duty like tarp emergency blanket, and then just enough layers where I can like stand outside all night long and not need shelter. Other than that, eye pro, ear pro, gloves. [Eye and ear protection] Not much different that you really need. Any like specialized equipment is coming to you. Or you would start out from the trailhead with it.
Margaret 42:36 I see. So it's not like you're carrying the larger first-aid kit?
Pat 42:41 No, I mean, I've got a decent sized firstaid kit, but most of the time my first-aid kit is for me. And when I'm treating, when I'm helping someone, I'm using their first-aid kit, and I've got some extra stuff for like bigger injuries. But for the most part, I'm like if you're injured on the trail, I'm finding your first-aid kit and I'm going through that first. So it there's like a cool specialized band-aid that you like, make sure that you put that in your first-aid kit.
Margaret 43:15 Okay, everyone needs a full suture kit. And everyone needs at least three Sam splints. [Joking tone]
Pat 43:25 Sam splints are great, but they're just so big.
Margaret 43:28 I know, they're never in my pack and I always sort of wish it was, but it never is. It doesn't...Even my maximalism doesn't put my Sam split in my my pack, but I'm not like a medic.
Pat 43:41 It's funny you mentioned that suture kit. I actually have a story about someone carrying a suture kit in the wilderness and it working out well.
Margaret 43:49 Oh, okay. [Surprised]
Pat 43:50 They...It was in Boy Scouts and we were out hiking and one of the adults with us was a dentist and like way maximalist over packed. He had like an 85 pound pack, but he had a full suture kit. And lo and behold, someone fell and like gashed their knee open like incredibly deep. It was like a big bleed. There he was, sewing right up on trail.
Margaret 44:13 Hell yeah.
Pat 44:14 it was pretty cool. But I don't know if it was worth all of that extra weight. I mean, it was I guess but...
Margaret 44:21 Yeah. I am so...I love talking to people about this because I'm so torn between my...like I mean the main pack that I carry, I just go day hiking most of the time right now and car camping. Currently, I used to basically backpack for a...not a living, but you know I lived out of a backpack, right?
Pat 44:44 You're a professional backpacker.
Margaret 44:47 Yeah. And now I just have like a day hiking pack and it has, you know, it probably has more stuff than I need, but I'm not pushing myself super hard on how long I'm hiking. I have a dog with me who provides a natural limit into how much I can hike. I can't push myself too hard. I actually don't go out too much in the summer, frankly, because my dog does not like the heat. He is a cold weather dog who loves the snow. I have bad news for him about the coming world. But, I am a little bit maximalist. And so I try. I'm trying so hard to pare it down. And it's so hard. But okay. All right. So....Oh, I have so much more I want to ask you about SAR. Do you know much...Like do you all ever work with volunteers when you do SAR? Like, do you have like...Okay, so most of the SAR calls you get are like someone like calls in and it's like, "I fell. My ankles fucked. I can't walk home," and whether it's someone on a switchback in the front country, or whether they're 20 miles in or whatever, do you like? Like, how often is it? It was...I mean, I don't know, it's almost like...I mean I'm not going to put this in the title, so it's not clickbait. But like, how often is it like, "Oh, shit, we have to get there in time, someone's dying, or like, you find corpses or all the gnarly intense stuff?
Margaret 46:21 Okay. So, only hike with a helicopter. Bring a helicopter with you in your maximalist pack. [Dry joking]
Pat 46:21 Usually...usually every day, there's something small happening. Small meaning like, "Oh, someone twisted their ankle a quarter mile trail from the visitor center." Every...it's usually probably three or four every summer, big ones, that have a big outcome, like where it ropes in a lot of folks and ends up being a kind of a big incident. Usually at three or four. But they can also resolve incredibly quickly too. So you can have a major thing that is from the time of knowing about, it's within an hour, it's completely resolved. You know, if you have a helicopter around and someone's like impaled with an ice axe or something like that, we can quickly get them out to a hospital like within an hour if we have if we have a rush. Yeah.
Pat 47:27 Yes. Bring a helicopter. [Dry joking]
Margaret 47:33 Okay, and then okay, so I want to ask--I guess I asked a version of this--but it's like okay, so you're mostly saying like, bring electrolytes and don't push yourself too hard. Are there other things that people like get wrong or even sort of get right about about backpacking or about just like spending a bunch of time in the outdoors whether it's day hikes or not?
Pat 47:56 Yeah, I think what people can get wrong is that like tunnel focus on the destination of like, "I have to get here because Alltrails says that's a cool hike. And it says it's moderate. So I have to do it." That's the same light vein of thinking of like people pushing themselves. Where people get right is folks usually have like their ten essentials like people usually have like a backpack, and like a water bottle, and some way to treat water, or something like that. Most folks these days have like the navigation. They've got Alltrails on their phone. They've got ways to get away like get around. So we don't see too many folks getting lost these days, at least in my current park, which is kind of nice.
Margaret 48:44 Yeah that's cool. Because I only read...Like I read some article about how the ski slopes have like...Local cops near a ski slope have stopped responding to the like Apple Watch "This person fell."
Pat 49:00 Oh, gosh.
Margaret 49:01 Because there's like something about skiing that sets it off on your watch or something, you know?
Pat 49:09 Wow.
Margaret 49:10 And so I like have mostly read about the like, here's how technology is like, making some things like more complicated and worse, but it makes sense to me that...Yeah, I don't know. It's easy to...I don't get lost anymore. My phone tells me where to go. I mean the closest I've come right as you you go hiking and you're like, "Shit, I didn't charge my phone enough," or like or I always assume that in my day pack, I have a spare battery. And then like one day I was like, "I apparently didn't bring my battery in my pack," you know? So I died. No, I clearly didn't. But no, it's cool to hear that people are getting lost less. And even I think that that also even applies to the like outdoors as mini apocalypse type thing, is that it helps to like know that there's certain...I mean, obviously we rely on certain technologies that may or may not work in different situations, right? Like if we're entirely reliant on cell service and cell service is no longer available or whatever. I am trying to think of what the, what the other thing is...I feel like there's...Okay, well, one, I want to ask you what water filter you use, what water treatment system you use?
Pat 50:34 I use a Sawyer. Sawyer Squeeze. Put it right on my little water bottle. I like literally have my pack right here.
Margaret 50:44 Yeah, no, I got really excited when you said that because I...I like, I make fun of how like preppers always, like, nerd out about gear. But it's just impossible not to. If you get involved in a hobby, or an interest, at some point, you're going to be like, "But what did you use?" Like, you know? So...But having a way to do it. Yeah, like Sawyer Squeeze...Sawyer is what I use when I lived off grid at the beginning of the pandemic and needed to filter all my water.
Pat 51:16 They're great. They're cheap. Can buy them in any outdoor store. Kind of nice.
Margaret 51:24 Yeah. All right. The sad question. Maybe the answer isn't sad. How have you seen, working at one place for 10 years...I assume...Whatever. I think you've been there for 10 years.
Pat 51:36 I've worked in two different parks. But yeah, ten years.
Margaret 51:39 Okay. How has climate change affected? Like you see the outdoors every year? What's been changing? And what are? What are people around you saying and thinking? Like, how seriously are people taking it? And what's that?
Pat 51:58 Yeah, we all kind of collectively acknowledged that, especially like the group of seasonals that are like that I'm like working with, we all kind of acknowledge that, like, "Yeah, we get to be frontline watching these places go through the changes for, you know, climate change. We're going to be like, documenting these in our patrol reports of like, how the snow melt is different from year to year and what the new normals are. And it's kind of a weird, like, yeah, like, somebody's got to document it. And so we're, we're here for that. And it's yeah, it's, it's sad. It's like a collective like, "Oh, shit, we're gonna see this place, these places change. And we're going to, we're going to be documenting that, and recording that, and being that that data collection," at least from like, firsthand accounts, so...You know, it's tough when we're just, you know, we're just little patrol Rangers. We don't have really much power other than just communicating to people. That's one of the things I like to talk about. And I like point out things on a map is like, "Oh, yeah, do you see this, like this glacier was here. And now it's way up here. And it's receding this much every year." Yeah. So we have that power to communicate with people. But it's, it's a tough part of the job. Let's put it like that.
Margaret 53:25 Yeah, it...I don't know. Climate grief is a....At some point we need and episode on climate grief. Because it's something that like we all sort of avoid thinking about, even when you're like doing preparedness. Like part of the point of doing preparedness, from my point of view is to like avoid thinking about like how things might go. What have been people's responses, like, do you run across...Are most people....? Because if you hang out on Twitter, anytime someone says, "Hey, this is the hottest day ever. This is a problem." You have like 50 blue checkmarks, who may or may not be real people, being like, "Everything's seasonal, you idiots." Like do you run across those people in like a 50/50 to regular....people who actually understand what's happening.
Pat 54:11 No, the vast majority of people that I talk to about that stuff....First off, I'm talking usually to backpackers. So it's usually like a certain crowd of people, and like National Park backpackers as well. There's also like a selective crowd. And so most people are like acknowledge the reality of climate change and recognize like, "Oh my gosh, this is a changing landscape now." Occasionally, though, I get the person that is like, "Oh, climate change. That's...These glaciers, they always grow and shrink. What are you talking about?" And it's, it's a delicate manner, you know, to talk my way out of that one because I'm in uniform and everything.
Margaret 54:58 Yeah, you don't just like pull a gun and chase them out of the park? [Joking]
Pat 55:04 That'd be nice. I'd be like, "What are you doing here? Why are you here? Go away!" No, I have to be friendly and I don't know, show them pictures of wherever glaciers used to be.
Margaret 55:16 No, that makes sense. No, it actually, I mean, I actually...I think if anything is gonna get us out of...Well obviously, there's no stopping climate change, right? Like there's mitigating the worst impacts, both in terms of the level of change and how that change affects us. But like, we're well past the like...We're like, actually in it now. You know? But I do think still that like getting people...Like changing people's minds, it still actually matters. And it's still actually...You know, there's this counter inflammation program that's designed to destroy the fucking Earth and we have to counter it. And okay, but I have a non climate change related question. And it's the last one I have on my list and then I'm gonna ask you if you have anything that I should have been asking you. What can folks...You deal with a lot of different people coming in, and you talked about different people overestimating their levels of ability and stuff. And sometimes, when I run across like outdoorsy stuff, there's like this macho culture of like, who can do the most vertical feet? And who can, you know, walk the furthest in the worst climate? It's actually almost cool that the weird macho thing about gear is to have us be lighter instead of heavier. But..which is the opposite of what I what I would expect it, you know? But, how can people of different levels of ability...like one of the things I like about...We didn't really talk about the problems at the Park Service. I think that that's just a thing?
Pat 57:06 That's a whole conversation.
Margaret 57:11 Right? You know, the Park Service comes from a very bad place. And so does all of the United States, right? And...
Pat 57:19 Yes.
Margaret 57:19 You know, like, you talked earlier about like private versus public. And, you know, and it's like, is giving yuppies a safe taste of the wilderness for a private company like more ethical than working for the federal government? I don't actually think so. I think everyone has to do different things in order to survive. But...Well, actually, I guess I'm now bringing that up. If you have anything you want to say about that we could talk about. You don't have to.
Pat 57:38 I don't mind. Yeah, it's it's tough. You know, I love these places. It's not my land, though. You know, I'm on indigenous land. This is where I work. And it's, it is a tough aspect to kind of try to reconcile because I love my job. And these, I'm happy these places are protected. But also, like, I don't know, if...Like, you know, I'm white. Like, I don't know, if I should be the person in the back country telling people not to step on the wildflowers, you know? I'll do it because the job is there. And honestly, I couldn't imagine doing something else. But if that land got returned to the indigenous tribes, tomorrow, I would be all for it. You know, it's, it's at the edge. It's a tough one to reconcile. And they're starting to make moves. You know, just the other day, got to go through all of our little laminated maps and sharpie out one of the names for a lake because it used to be a really offensive name for Indigenous women. And now, it's not that anymore. It's like a local indigenous word for grandmother. And it's like, "Wonderful! I get to cross this out and write in the new name on this map." Like, that's fun. But also, you know, it's still not the tribe's land anymore. So, I don't know. It's tough.
Margaret 57:44 No, it makes sense. And I mean, when I think about the National Park Service, I think about a lot of really negative things and then I also think about how like as when I was doing forest defense, the National Forest Service is part of the Department of Agriculture and national forests exist federally not to be protected but to be harvested. And any like people use, or nature use that--and people are nature but you know--that comes along the way is like a byproduct.
Pat 59:05 Yeah.
Margaret 59:09 You know? And yeah, that's the...It's weird because the park services are like, parts of them and more some of them more than others, are like theme park for nature. And there's like all kinds of complicated things. But it's also like...I remember at one point, I was in Yosemite, and I was like on a raised walkway to go see some falls. And I'm like, "You know, it fucking rules that these falls are wheelchair accessible." Like, that's cool. And it's interesting to me that there are people working to try and figure out how to balance, access and preservation. And so even though it comes from the....I don't know, whatever. I'm not trying to be like, "The park service is great," right? But it's just like, it's fucking complicated.
Pat 1:00:44 Yeah, exactly. It's, you know, you make the parks really accessible and then that degrades the quality of the resource in the that solitude in that wilderness aspects if there's a parking lot with 1000 cars, or you know, 200 people on the trail. But also, like, it's great that people can get out to these places. That is the...Yeah, give a park ranger a beer and ask them, "How do you balance access versus preservation?" and that's a that's a whole podcast series right there.
Margaret 1:01:18 Yeah, no, I would totally listen to a podcast series that both talks about the weird fucked up place that the parks come from, and like the way that they do all this bad stuff, but then also, they're complicated, like...I remember being in a national park run cave and this little kid was like, "Why can't we go in that part of the cave?" And the Ranger was like, "Because there's a bat sleeping." And the kid was like, "Well, what if I want to go in anyway?" And the Ranger looks at this like little kid and is like, "If it's between you and the bat, the bat gets the cave and you don't." Like, watching the entitlement strip away from this little kid's eyes and I'm like, yeah...I don't know. Well, okay, and this actually gets into the thing that I was going to ask as my question, which is, um, what can people different levels of ability do? Right? If you try to get involved in, in, not necessarily working outdoors but like, engaging with the outdoors and you're not like, totally able to just immediately--I mean, I can't fucking hike like I used to. I'm not trying to fucking go...Like, I walk seven miles and up 2000 feet, and I'm like, "I am fucking done." And my dog is like, "We are done." You know? But like, what can people do? Like...how make more accessible?
Pat 1:02:44 The best way to really get started if you don't have that experience and really want to avoid that pitfall of like, "I'm going to do this hike because I saw a guide book that says I should do this hike. So I've got to do it." It's just be completely flexible with not getting to whatever the destination of the hike is, you know? Choose something small to start off with, you know, and only do a couple miles, and set a time to like turn around. Say like, "I want to hike for two hours and turn around in one hour," regardless of if you get to the destination or not. And really try to change your mindset from the point of the hike being to get to the viewpoint or to get to the cool cave or whatever, to being the point of the hike is to like stop and see the little things along the way. Some of favorite days are like cloudy, rainy days because I'm not looking for views on those days. I'm like, focused down on like how the rain and the water makes the moss look different or changes the coloration of the wood grain and things like that. You know, rocks look a lot cooler in crummy weather. So I think like changing your mindset to like, "I'm not hiking to get somewhere. I'm hiking to be in nature," can really change like your mentality of, "I don't have to push myself to get to that place. Because just around the corner, there might be a cool thing to look at," and like really sit and explore and like look closely.
Margaret 1:04:19 Yeah, okay.
Pat 1:04:20 That's my advice is to treat it like a walk in the woods before a trek. And you'll eventually get better and more fit and more experience to be able to push on and do more extreme stuff.
Margaret 1:04:36 I like that a lot. Okay, well, that's, that's my questions. Is there like a question you wish I had asked you or like final thoughts or anything?
Pat 1:04:44 No, I think the biggest thing is that folks should get out and hike and push yourself, but have a backup plan and make sure that you don't get in over your head. Drink your electrolytes. It's hot.
Margaret 1:05:06 Yeah. What electrolyte do you rep? What do you pack?
Pat 1:05:12 The gold standard is the that Liquid IV brand, just because it's like four times as much electrolytes than the other stuff. It's also really expensive. So like the knockoff store brand version of that, I've found it like a Safeway has been...It's been okay. Yeah, okay.
Margaret 1:05:34 Alright. Well, everyone go outside, or don't, but probably do. See the world while it's still around? I gotta admit, that's been a big part of it for me is I'm like, "But I haven't seen everywhere."
Pat 1:05:53 Yeah, I want to see it before that doesn't happen there anymore. Yeah, it's tough. Go touch really faraway grass.
Margaret 1:06:08 Yeah. Well, do you have anything that you want to promote or push? Or do you want people to follow you on the internet or support any given program or thing?
Pat 1:06:20 I wish I had thought about this before recording, but I don't...I don't like having an online presence. So don't try to find me online. You can't. But yeah, go for a hike. And touch some grass that's really far away. That's my advice. That's what I'm gonna plug.
Margaret 1:06:41 Hell yeah.
Margaret 1:06:47 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell people about it. Word of mouth is the main way that podcasts spread. The other way is algorithmically. And, you can influence those algorithms by liking and subscribing and commenting and doing all that fucking bullshit that makes me very sad to have to point out is true. You can also support making this podcast happen. Several people make--well, not their living. It doesn't don't come out well enough for that. But several people make some part of their living by making this happen, including our audio engineer and our transcriptionist. And we really appreciate your support. And you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness, because this is published by Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which is an anarchist publishing collective that puts out podcasts, and zines, and books, and all kinds of stuff. In particular, I want to thank Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, Funder, Jans, Oxalix, Janice & O'dell, Paige, Aly, Paparouna, Milicia, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, Shawn, S.J., Paige, Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Cat J., Staro, Jenipher, Eleanor, Kirk, Sam, Chris, Michaiah, and Hoss the Dog. Always Hoss the Dog. And there's like new names on that list since the last time I read that and that makes me really happy. There's a lot that we are trying to do as a collective that your support allows us to do and it will be cool. And you'll be glad. Maybe. I hope so. Anyway, good luck with the apocalypse. I hope you all are building resilient communities and/or learning how to make hard tack. Maybe both. Talk to you soon.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
On This Month in the Apocalypse, Brooke, Margaret, and Inmn talk about a lot of really bad things that happened in July, from the intensifying heat, to floods, to medicine shortages, to Antarctica's ice melting, to grain shortages, to terrifying new laws. But also, there are some hopeful things that happened, and as always the group finds ways to stay positive and for communities to prepare for what's to come.
Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
This Month in the Apocalypse: July, 2023
Margaret 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm Margaret. Now one of you says, "Hi."
Brooke 00:22 Hi, Margaret.
Margaret 00:26 No, you say "Hi," like you say who you are.
Brooke 00:29 Oh, hi, who I am. Brooke.
Inmn 00:32 And I'm Inmn.
Brooke 00:34 Did I do good? Was that good? Alright,
Margaret 00:37 Y'all did great. I'm joined by Brooke and Inmn today for another episode of This Month in the Apocalypse. And this is an extra special extra apocalypsey month that we're going to be talking about because we're talking about July, 2023, the hottest month in the history of humans being alive. Unless you're listening to this in August, in which case maybe you're like, "July that was some fucking amateur hour shit." But for now, hear us at the end of July, hottest month ever. And you know what else is hot is the Channel Zero Network, the network of anarchists podcasts. There's nothing wrong with this comparison. We are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcast and here's a jingle from another show on the network. Da da da da duh daa [Humming a melody]
Inmn 02:12 And we're back. And to start off today, we're going to talk a little bit about global temperatures and the heatwave that we are in the middle of experiencing right now. So this July was quite possibly the hottest--or I mean, definitely the hottest month on record in, you know, a recorded historical way--and possibly one of the hottest months on the planet in a very long time. So I live in Arizona, and in Phoenix, the ground temperature...There were daily record breaks in the in the heat where the hottest day on record was...it was 117 degrees. And then the next day it was 118 degrees. And then the next day, it was 119 degrees.
Margaret 03:09 They won't even make it to that 20. Like come on. Just give us the round number.
Brooke 03:15 No, no, don't. Stay less.
Margaret 03:19 Oh, interesting. Okay. [dryly sarcastic]
Inmn 03:21 There is I learned, a really horrifying thing that happens at 120 degrees. So I really hope that it doesn't get to 120 degrees. Do y'all know what happens when the ground temperature reaches 120 degrees in the sun?
Margaret 03:35 Does Mothra break out of the cracked Earth and fight Godzilla?
Inmn 03:41 Sort of. Propane tanks spontaneously combust.
Margaret 03:49 That's bad.
Brooke 03:51 Oh my gosh,
Inmn 03:53 It's really bad. So in actuality, the temperature did reach 120 degrees because an enormous propane tank near the Sky Harbor International Airport exploded along with a bunch of like five gallon ones and it caused this huge fire. A bunch of cars were destroyed. And yeah, which you know, is by itself not like some huge world ending thing. But if you live anywhere where it might be 120 degrees on the ground, possibly in Arizona, take your propane tanks out of the sun because they might explode.
Margaret 04:35 Normally, I would say don't put them inside because in general that's a really bad idea. But, it's probably better than like popcorn kernels in your yard.
Inmn 04:46 Yeah, yeah. And I say this for people who like, you know, if you have a grill outside that just has the propane tank attached to it and it's not in the shade or anything. Um then, yeah, it could just explode and destroy your house.
Brooke 05:06 But only if it's 120 degrees. If you're at 119, you're perfectly safe. Leave those propane tanks just right out there in the middle of the sun on the asphalt, right? [sarcastically]
Inmn 05:16 No, don't do that. [laughing]
Margaret 05:18 Place them near the following people who run the following companies.
Brooke 05:29 Do you want to know about the the average overall temperatures in the month of July in Phoenix while we're talking about Phoenix?
Margaret 05:36 I mean, no, but tell us anyway.
Brooke 05:39 Okay, for the month of July, in Phoenix, the average high temperature, daily high temperature, was 114 degrees. And here's the really fun one, the average low temperature like the coldest it got was 90 degrees.
Margaret 05:56 There was also a new low warm record. There was a night in Phoenix where it didn't get below 97 degrees.
Inmn 06:04 Oh, golly.
Margaret 06:06 Which is too hot.
Inmn 06:08 It is too hot.
Margaret 06:09 And, I didn't write this number down because I forgot. Massive..Like there was also a record for the most electricity the city of Phoenix has ever drawn because everyone was running their air conditioners, for good reasons. This is not a "Don't run your air conditioners," this is more of a, "There is a limit to what the grid can handle."
Inmn 06:31 Yeah. And just to, since we're hyper focusing on Phoenix, in the last, I think--I don't think this was last month-- but in the last couple of months, the governor did halt a lot of new housing developments that were getting built due to concerns over the future of water in Phoenix.
Margaret 06:57 And it seems like there's two ways to read that. There is the like...I am notably on the record of feeling like people who are...That Arizona is in trouble. I am on the record for that. And I don't want to get into specifics. But the more kind way to read the lack of expansion is that it was less like these places are out of water and more that, I believe in Arizona, or in the Phoenix metro area or something, you have to be able to prove that there will be water access for the next 100 years in order to build. And so it is a little bit less like these places are out of water and more like, "We cannot guarantee this water." I think that's the kinder way...No, not the kinder...That is one way to read that. The other is that Arizona is in fucking trouble.
Inmn 07:55 Yeah, and you know, it stems from these like larger issues of the Colorado River having these like all time lows in water flow, and just due to Phoenix being this like huge, sprawling place that is like under constant development. Like I think it's where...Outside of Phoenix is where Bill Gates is trying to build some like new smart future city. Which is really confusing.
Margaret 08:27 Has fucking Elon Musk gotten into him or something?
Inmn 08:29 Yeah, like it's supposed to be this like huge self contained smart city that's outside of...it's in the larger Phoenix area, but like is separated from Phoenix. And my first thing that I thought was like, "Why? There's no...Where are you going to get water from?" Which I guess if you're really...If you're Bill Gates, you maybe have to worry less about where your water's coming from. But...
Margaret 08:57 I mean, eventually. Other heat stuff from this month, let's see, we had...I was looking at a bunch of maps of where all of this heatwave stuff hit right, and overall, the hardest hit places were the coastal south, the southwest, of course--Phoenix gets a lot of the attention and for good reason--the coastal South got an awful lot, and then actually in terms of it being way hotter than usual, it also affected the lower and middle Midwest. The Pacific Northwest and central Appalachia--aka the two best places in the country based on the general disbursement of the three people on this call--were the least affected. And last weekend--sorry last week--thousands of people across the US went to the hospital for heat related illnesses. Only six states have laws protecting workers that say things like "You actually can't make people work when it's too hot out or they'll die." Only six states actually have laws that are like, "You have to provide like shade, and rest, and water for people working outside." I read a heartbreaking story about a young man who died laying cable trying to send money to his mother and work his way through school and all that shit. The federal government is working on a law about, "Maybe you shouldn't let people work where it kills them in the heat." That law has not..They've been working on it for years and nothing has happened. Yep. Got any more heat heat or move on to wildfire?
Brooke 10:41 Capitalism is so ridiculous. The fact that we have to come along and legislate like, "Hey, maybe don't work people to death in the heat." Like that shouldn't have to be a law that anyone has to have because we are fucking human beings. And yeah, we should treat each other better. Yeah, yeah, sorry. It's upsetting. So, the United States is not the only place that's super hot. Europe's going through another massive heatwave like they did last summer. And last summer's heatwave, you may recall from the news, was breaking record temperatures and was quite severe. And one report I read said something like 60,000 Europeans died last year due to the heatwave. Their average temperatures are currently much higher than they were last summer even...or are getting to high temperatures earlier in the summer than they did last year. That's what I really mean to say. And it's affecting lots of things. For instance, Greece is experiencing wildfires on a massive scale, which I guess they're somewhat prone to wildfires already like the Pacific Northwest. But, the amount of acreage burning right now is two and a half times the average that they've experienced this time of year. Particularly the island of Rhodes, which is a Greece Island. Greek. Greek island. [The island] has had to evacuate tens of thousands of people off the island due to the wildfires. There's something like 90,000 acres of wildfires currently burning in Greece, which is a really significant size of wildfire. And it's weird how much perspective shifts on this, especially being from somewhere like the Pacific Northwest where we're kind of prone to wildfires. And if we get one that's like 10,000-20,000 acres, I'm like, "Meh [disapprovingly]." I mean, that's huge. But at the same time, in the last few years, we've had ones that are at 90,000-100,000 acres. So, you know, perspective shifts on what a severe wildfire is, but 90,000 acres is just massive. So yeah. Greece is...Greece is not having a good time with the fires right now.
Margaret 13:03 And then, right before we hit record [on the episode], I was reading about how today, there's a third 300,000 person city in Sicily, whose name I forgot to write down, that is largely without water or electricity today because the 46 degree Celsius which I want to say is like 118 [Fahrenheit], or something like that, melted asphalt and fucked up all the infrastructure underneath. So no more electricity and water in a town of 300,000, that is also like experiencing a ton of wildfire. Apparently like the city is also surrounded by wildfire, but maybe that was a different city nearby.
Brooke 13:45 You know when you say that, Margaret, it does...I distinctly remember us talking last summer about the heatwave and how a lot of European towns, countries, aren't built for the high heats and things were melting like that. Like the asphalt and stuff.
Margaret 13:59 And then, yeah, I remember. And you had England, you had like the tarmac, which is the British word for asphalt, I think. I don't know. They don't do anything. Right. And then, speaking of places that Europe hasn't done right, Northern Africa is also completely fucked by the current heatwave. And in particular, wildfires. Algerian wildfires are fucking everything up. Like, as I'm...Like, as we're recording, unfortunately, they'll probably get worse by the time this comes out. Algerian wildfires, so far, have killed at least 38 people, including at least 10 soldiers who were doing wildland fire duty. More than 1,500 people have been evacuated from 97 fires around that country. Tunisia is also having some fucking times because, actually, it turns out that national borders are nonsense. And Algiers, the city of Algiers, had a fun 120 degree day. This I believe last week. And two years ago, Algerian wildfires killed 65 people in one week, including, a lot of those people are the people who are like, bravely fighting those wildfires. And I don't know, those people are fucking heroes and martyrs to climate change.
Brooke 15:17 Is the heat causing other kinds of problems in the world, Margaret?
Margaret 15:21 You mean the Antarctic ice that isn't there? Well hear me out. It's actually a solution because we're all going to move to Antarctica, which will be green. And there won't be any Lovecraftian temples with strange writing...in the mountains of madness. Someone's gonna yell at me about Lovecraft. Anyway. Antarctica is like having some real interesting times. I don't know if people have seen the news this week. Every now and then like climate change people like post the deviation from norms charts, where the like waves go up and down and stuff. And this year's, they're just not. Usually they're like, "Check it out. This wave is a little bit different. It's pushing the envelope. It's got some new records." There's no Antarctic ice. That's an exaggeration. That's hyperbole. Antarctic ice is lower than it's possible for people to easily conceptualize right now. It's winter in Antarctica right now. It's...When we talk about the hottest year on record, and we're like, "Oh, well, it's summer. Of course, it's hot, right?" Where I'm at, the hottest year in the fucking world, half of the world is in winter right now. Right? But, sea temperatures are rising, which actually are going to...Fuck I forgot to write this down..I was reading about right beforehand. There's a new study saying that the Gulf Stream, the thing that like cycles the fucking goddamn waters of the world, will likely stop somewhere between 2025 and 2100, with the average guess being about 2050 but as soon as two years from now. Which will have all kinds of changes. Ironically, one of them is that Europe might get colder. It's that movie, The Day After Tomorrow, is based on this concept of the Gulf streams disappearing.
Brooke 17:10 Oh, that movie.
Margaret 17:11 Yeah. That beautiful, wonderful movie. I barely remember it. We snuck into the theater. And I was like too paranoid the whole time. I was like afraid we'd get caught because we were like, really obviously dirty punks. And it was just like, so obvious. But, we didn't get caught. And I don't really remember much about that movie besides it's cold, and that people are willing to walk a very long way for their family, which is very sweet. So this event is, this is a historic low of ice following the previous all time lows of 2016, 2017, and 2022. But this is a five to six sigma event. Five to six--not like cool guys who'd go their own way--but five to six standard deviations away from a normal event, which is a meaningless thing. I had to spend like 20 minutes reading about what the fuck that means to try and explain it to people because you're just like, "Oh, it's a lot, right?" It's a lot, a lot. Statistically, a four sigma event, four standards of probability standard deviation thing, is now you're talking about something that is functionally 100%. Right? This is now so far...Basically, it's like imagine stuff is on a bell curve. The far edges of it are the sigma, are the standard deviations away from the norm, the norm is the center. When you get to the...When you get to like four, you're at functionally 100% of things don't don't fall into this, right? Or something that happens functionally 0% of the time, it's not actually 0% of the time. So it is...but it's often seen as statistically insignificant. For example, if you were to flip a coin 100 times, the odds of that coming up heads all 100 times is one in 3.5 million. That is a five sigma event. Right? The standard deviation, this the amount of Antarctic ice that isn't there this winter when it's supposed to be coming back, is more than that. It is about twice that. It is a one in 7.5 million year event, which isn't to say this happened 7.5 million years ago. It didn't. That's the odds of it happening randomly any given year. So it's really funny because scientists have to be very exact, which is part of what causes a lot of like climate change confusion, because if you ask a scientist like, "Is this man made?" a scientist has to be like, "We cannot to 100% certainty, certain that," right? Because they're like, because they're not certain, and science is based on an uncertainty. And so like a lot of the articles they're like, "Look, technically we're not sure. It's just really, really unlikely that it isn't." And I remember--one time I asked one of my science minded doctor friends--I was like, "What are the odds I am going to have the following health problem that is too personal for me to explain on-air?" He was like, "Look, that is possible. That is a possible risk vector. It's about as likely as you getting eaten by a shark, today, in Asheville, North Carolina." Which is to say, it was possible but not worth fucking worrying about. And this is the opposite of that. This is worth fucking worrying about. And ice decrease, of course, obviously, it makes the water get bigger, right, because it's not in ice form. But also, ice reflects back an awful lot of sunlight. There is a chance that the ice will be back next year. There is a chance that it won't. I was not able to find...I was able to find scientists being like, "We don't fucking know." I was not able to find scientists giving statistics. This is...I think..So I'm gonna go on a rant. I warned everyone--not you all the listeners--but I warned my co-host that I'm gonna go on a little bit of a rant today.
Brooke 20:58 And that was it.
Margaret 20:59 No, no, we're just getting started. Sorry.
Brooke 21:05 Let me buckle in for this. We buckle in for this. Okay, yeah, ready to go.
Margaret 21:07 Alright. So I think...I try really hard to not be like, the-sky-is-falling girl, right? I talk about preparedness and possible bad futures. Semi professional--actually, I don't get paid for this--but like, I do it a lot. It's like one of the main things. It's like, what I do with my time. And I try really hard to be like, "Look, we don't know. Don't put all your eggs into your savings for the when-you're-80 basket. But also don't put none of them in, right? Because the future is unknowable. And that is true. I think that this month marks a turning point where we can no longer in good conscience, talk about climate change as a possibility or even as like a certainty that's a little bit away. And we don't know how bad it's going to be. I think we have to talk about things from the point of view that this is happening. And this is really bad. And this is going to stay bad no matter what we do. That is not to say we can't do anything. And that's not to say we can't mitigate it. But I think that we need to just like...I know I will at least have to stop hedging some of what I say. And I think that this month is the most clear that we are in a really bad time--I don't wanna say "apocalypse," because it's a sort of a meaningless word--since we've been having the show, with the possible exception of March, 2020. And so I just like really quickly--and we'll get back to our regularly scheduled talking about some stuff--I want to talk about some of the stuff we can do really quickly and like what I think is really useful. And overall, what I believe is useful, is that we need to start working together in communities to build bottom-up solutions, not necessarily just to climate change--although that's true--but to preparing for and weathering the impacts of climate change. I don't believe that top-down solutions are coming. Prove me wrong government handler assigned to listen to this show. Prove me fucking wrong. I will turn in my anarchy card if you fucking stop global warming. Maybe. I might thank you and then still try to end you. But...
Brooke 23:25 Weather. Weathering climate change.
Margaret 23:31 I believe that working to create small, medium, and large scale communities that work from the bottom-up, that are horizontally organized, that work in federation with other groups to organize on as large of scale as is necessary, is our best bet going forward for how we can mitigate the worst effects of this, both in terms of our survivability, and in terms of having a culture that directly confronts fossil fuel infrastructure, that directly confronts, you know, the people who are doing this, right? There's that old, I think Utah Phillips quote, "The Earth isn't dying, it's being killed. And the people who are doing the killing have names and addresses."
Brooke 24:22 I'm gonna put that on my wall.
Margaret 24:24 I believe that we can build the kind of resilient communities that can allow more of us to live as long and healthy lives as is possible, considering what's happening. And I believe that the time to start thinking about that and doing that is now. I think that it is time for people to talk to their neighbors. It is time for people to work at like whatever your local community center is that is most aligned to your values. If you don't have one, fucking start one, and start having skill shares. Start prioritizing this. I think that people should make their decisions about where they want to live based on climate right now, and not just move away from the bad--obviously, that's going to happen--but also like where you want to live when/if the structures that currently provide for us are no longer able to do so. Like for myself, I didn't pick "I'm moving to where I think is going to be the least impacted by climate change." I moved to where my family is. Because that is a priority that I will make above my own personal safety every time, you know. But everyone's going to make those decisions differently. And then the other final thing is that I think that we have this problem where Al Gore government type people are like, "This is your fault because you didn't use fluorescent light bulbs, you used incandescent light bulbs," right? [Brooke laughs] To date myself to like 20 years ago when that was like a way that we were trying to get blamed as individuals, like, "If you don't recycle then like the world's gonna end." And it's like, "Oh, the world's ending. It's clearly because I didn't recycle enough." Like one, recycling is mostly fake. Although it shouldn't be. And I think it's still good practice for people to think about their waste, right? But, and so individual like so...[tails of and start over] So there's this problem where corporations are like, "Ah, individuals, that's the solution. We don't have to change anything," right. But we can accidentally fall on the other side of that. And we can say like, "Oh, well, since this isn't my fault. And my individual choices don't necessarily change things. I'm off the hook." And we the way we talk about the hook is wrong. There is a difference between fault and responsibility. It is not your fault, dear listener, that this is happening. Right? It is not your fault that you once got drunk and threw a car battery in the ocean. I have no idea why everyone uses throwing car batteries into the ocean as the example of horrible pollution that individuals can do. But it like comes up all the time. So, if you...[interrupted]
Brooke 26:58 I have ever heard that example before.
Margaret 27:00 Then you have different DMs than me. When you wanna talk about climate change, people are like, "I'm gonna throw my car battery into the ocean." I don't get it. If someone wants to explain it to me, you can send it to me by my DMs and I won't look. And but there is a difference between the fault and the responsibility. It is not your fault, right? But it is our--not your--our responsibility because no one else is going to fucking do it. Rather, the people whose fault it is, are not going to fucking do it. And we need to figure out how to do this because we're running out of time. And I think that...It's essentially liberalism in a bad sense. It is both liberalism to blame the individual, right? But it's also liberalism to be like, "Well, it's not my fault. So I don't have to do anything about it," because like, when you're being oppressed, right, like...For example, I, to use myself as an example as like a trans person, right? It is like not my fault that people hate trans people. But like, I don't want to be oppressed. So, I need to look at doing that. I need to look at solving my problems even though it isn't my fault. And it is a delicate balance to walk when we talk about this because we need to not blame victims. But we need, as collectively the billions of victims of climate change, to figure out our own power and work our way out of this. I think that's the end of my rant.
Brooke 28:31 Actually, I really appreciate that, Margaret, especially the end part there, just because like I, in my own personal life, have been struggling with a little bit of that lately, especially with the heat this summer, and that feeling like, you know, there's nothing I can do, this isn't my fault, so fuck it, I want to turn down my AC some more or something like that. And I haven't, but that like the mentality that I'm struggling with sometimes right now. So I really appreciate you saying that.
Margaret 28:59 Yeah, and like use your AC. Like, I mean when there's like...Sometimes you get these like warnings--there are individual structures that are currently top-down that I don't think are bad--like when they send out a text being like, "Look, if everyone could kind of lay off the power a little bit so we don't all have brownouts, that would be really good." Like you know, that's when we can all like pitch in. It sucks that we're all expected to pitch in while they still fucking clear cut, and drill, and burn everything in the goddamn world.
Inmn 29:29 Yeah, it's like the...Like this came up in Texas. Was it last year or like the year before with like the huge power outages in Texas? They were due to...There was like a huge heat wave. And the thing, one of the things that the grid collapsing was blamed on was people cranking their ACs because it was like 115 degrees outside. And which, you know, probably probably the ACs are not actually what caused the grid to collapse. It's like, the normal strain of the grid is supporting so many unnecessary and ridiculous things. But like, people were asked to turn off their air conditioners, right, during a heatwave so that the grid wouldn't collapse because the grid is not managed well and it's owned by private companies and they don't manage it well. And so the grid collapsed. And then people were like...People were getting heat sick. People were dying. And it's like, we can rely on things like ACs to cool ourselves. But we actually can't because of the mismanagement of utilities and stuff like that could be what causes grids to collapse, not because it is the individual's like fault, but that there's all this other mismanagement and strain from Capitalism, etc.
Margaret 30:57 Totally. And like, I think it's a good example too where, at the same time, it is not the people who want to turn up their AC's fault, right? But I want to be alive more than I want to not be at fault, right? So it's like, if I...[interrupted]
Inmn 31:15 Just because it's not our fault, it still might cause it.
Margaret 31:20 It's our problem. You know, someone else caused a problem. Like, the person who's hitting me with a stick, it is their fault that they are hitting me with a stick, but they're clearly not going to stop. And the AC example is like, if I get a text that's like, "Turn down your AC or everyone's power is going to go out. I'm going to turn down my AC because I don't want everyone's power to go out." And it's not because I'm like--I mean, it is a good like, we're all pitching in together to not die thing, right--but it's also like...It's hard, because it then becomes easy to blame people to be like, "Oh, you didn't turn down your AC. So it's your fault." It's like, "No, it's the people who fucking..." I mean, Texas is that brilliant example, where it's like cut off from the rest of America's grid because it's like, "We got to be Texas." And that's like, why it's so--and that and all the privatization--is why it's so precarious. And so we just build resiliency. It's like, I don't want to be pure fault. I want to be alive. And so like, I want to say like, "Okay, what will I do to keep cool if my AC goes out?" You know? Anyway.
Brooke 32:29 Can I point out that it's weird how we talk about AC because we talk about turning down the AC, which makes me think like turning down power. But actually, what we mean is turning down temperature. Yeah. And then I say, when I say like, turn up the AC, that means make it, I'm making it hot--in my mind, in my mind--if I turn up the AC. Anyway. Yeah, it's difficult. Yeah. Floods!
Margaret 32:54 All right.
Margaret 32:56 That would be really bad if there's more than one disaster at once. Can't wildfires be enough? Or have there been floods?
Inmn 33:02 There have also been floods. And I'm going to focus in on a couple of kind of specific floods that have happened this month in the United States. But there is this...It points to this larger problem and some of the things that I learned after digging into the floods in Vermont, kind of highlight some key issues that I think are worth exploring. So, the flood in Vermont that happened on like July 10th or 11th or something, where essentially two whole months of rain fell in two days. There was like nine inches of rain, which, I was curious how much water that is because, you know, we hear like, "Oh, one inch of rain, nine inches of rain." Like what does that mean? And nine inches of rain over like, over 20,000 square miles--which I don't actually know how big Vermont is, but this is the statistic that I looked up--is like two and a half not trillion but the next number, the next magnitude. Quadrillion?
Margaret 34:24 I don't really know what's above a trillion off the top my head.
Inmn 34:26 Yeah, it's like two and a half quadrillion gallons of water, you know. It's so...I hope I don't get at'd about this math, but...
Margaret 34:35 No, it is quadrillion. That is the...Well, you at least got the word right. I looked at that.
Inmn 34:41 Great, great, great. Yeah, it's like...It's that much water. So like when we think about like, "Oh, one inch of rain is falling." Like one inch of rain falling in one day as a lot. You know, like where I used to live flooded over an inch and a half of rain, you know? And so to put that in perspective, nine inches of rain fell in Vermont over a two day period. And in the first 24 hours, the river--and I am not going to pronounce this right--the Winooski River, it rose 19 feet in 24 hours. And then on the next day, in a couple hours, it rose to 40 feet. And they're measuring this on a 170 foot dam. And are there any guesses as to how high the water rose on that dam?
Brooke 35:41 70 foot damn. Water had nine inches....
Margaret 35:47 I'm just gonna be wrong. Seven feet.
Brooke 35:50 Oh, I was gonna guess like 50 feet.
Margaret 35:51 Yeah, I just figured I'd be wrong.
Inmn 35:54 It rose 169 feet.
Margaret 35:58 Nice. I mean...
Inmn 36:02 It came within one foot of the dam breaching, which it like, this dam sits over Montpelier, which is like one of the only cities in Vermont, and so the dam came within inches of breaching and...
Margaret 36:16 Oh, jeez, it would have flooded the city.
Inmn 36:19 Yes, it would have. Like, this already huge catastrophe would have turned into something several magnitudes higher if the dam had been breached.
Brooke 36:31 As an indigenous woman. I'm like, "Fuck you, dams." But at the same time, like I don't want them to break like that and kill a bunch of people.
Inmn 36:40 Yeah, and yeah. And so the dam did not breach. There was only one recorded death in the incident.
Margaret 36:50 A lot better than Pennsylvania did this month for floods in terms of deaths.
Brooke 36:55 But, wait, what happened Pennsylvania?
Inmn 36:56 Wait, wait, sorry. I got more. I got more. So, one of the other big concerns, and I think this ties in well to kind of preparedness, is locally, there were a lot of people worried about a rather large houseless population that was turned out of COVID housing, like a COVID housing program that ended in June, and so in July, there were like, a lot more houseless people kicking around areas--and houseless people, as some may know, love to congregate around like rivers and stuff because those are usually pretty chill places to hang out and like access resources and stuff. And so like, one thing that's noted is that like a lot of people experiencing housing insecurity tend to congregate in the most flood prone areas because those are the areas available to people to congregate. And so one cool thing that did happen is there was this shelter network, that when they heard about the severe storms, they immediately went and started doing outreach to people living by the river. And actually, they were able to do in evacuation of people on a bus. The bus actually ended up getting caught in floodwaters and was destroyed. But the people on it were not harmed. And people were able to like evacuate by other means. But yeah, just as like a wonderful thing you can do if you think your area might experience a flood is doing outreach to like houseless communities who might not know about the danger and might not have the resources to escape it themselves. Yeah. One of the other big things was that in Vermont--this isn't quite as true as in a lot of other places, but it's something specific to areas like Vermont, or like West Virginia, or like other mountainous areas--like they have that phrase like, "Well, it's only three miles as the crow flies, but it's going to take an hour and a half to get there on the windy mountainous roads." Well, Vermont has a lot of windy mountainous roads, and almost all of those roads became completely undriveable because of roads washing out, mudslides, and these like huge floodwaters. And so the populations of Vermont were largely left trapped in their homes unable to escape if things had gotten worse. Like people described being completely cut off on these little, you know, mini islands in floodwaters. And yeah, just things to think about if you live in these, if you live in mountainous areas, is like having these kind of early warnings to leave places because as much as you might be able to fortify your house as like a bunker for preparedness, if you get trapped in it and it floods then it didn't save your life.
Brooke 40:14 That goes back to what you [Margaret] were saying about community building earlier.
Margaret 40:20 As someone who often lives in the mountains, and currently lives in the mountains, and this is like...Mountains flash flood really bad. And a lot of mountainous areas, like in the mountains, people often build in the hollers in the lower areas between, you know, in the valleys between different pieces of the mountain and stuff. But...And usually it's like the town actually floods sometimes more than some of the rural houses outside of town. Not necessarily, right. But it's like, because you put all...If you have a bunch of houses, you put them in the low lying area. But, if you've got like two houses, you can put them up on the ridge. And there's like unfortunately...If you're randomly being like, "Man, I want to move to the mountains," you should think about buying one of the houses and that's up on a hill instead of down in the valley for that reason. And then the other weird random thing that I was like reading about is that apparently in a lot of flood prone places--this isn't like...this isn't gonna save everyone--but people put an axe in their attic because one of the ways that a lot of people die in floods is that they go higher and higher in their house. And so then, as it gets up to their second floor, or whatever the fuck, they then go into their attic. But if you go into your attic, you can't get out in a flood. And so some people keep an axe in their attic. I don't know whether that's...I'm reading about it in a book, but in a fiction book, you know?
Inmn 41:43 Yeah. Yeah, that is...that is weirdly relatable. Like me and Margaret used to live somewhere that was prone to flooding. And I remember the first time that we got a really bad flood, like this was when our eight foot wide stream turned into like a 70 foot wide moving current of water that was up to your chest...
Margaret 42:10 And bringing all kinds of shit down from...
Inmn 42:14 Yeah, and yeah, there's like trees floating by. And there's all these, you know, tiny houses and structures and stuff, and nobody there was all that concerned about it I think, except for me. Like, we were running around trying to save tools, and equipment, and like stuff like that, and make sure the cars were up on the highest ground possible. And I was like, "We have to leave because we might not be able to if we wait too long." And like, thankfully, I was wrong. But like it worried me how unworried people were about the flood in this like mountainous area that we could have easily become trapped in.
Margaret 42:59 I was a little bit like, "My house was on the hill." So I went down to help. Why don't we put our houses on the hill, which is not very community minded of me.
Inmn 43:12 No, that's fine. But sorry, just to speak to one other thing real quick. So another thing to think about with flooding is that--and I've never thought about this until I was reading about it to prepare for this--but if you grow food, either in a garden or on a farm water, like when there's these huge floods--especially when the wastewater management facility gets like flooded out like it did in Vermont--all of the water that is in this flood water is very dirty. It's filled with like...It's filled with raw sewage, like a stupid amount of raw sewage. It's filled with like oil, and like contaminants, and like chemicals, and like anything that was swept up in the floodwaters. And so, if you grow food and your garden gets flooded out, you can't eat any of that food, even if it's like root vegetables Like pretty much like all fruit and vegetables that get contaminated by floodwater are like completely inedible and like unsafe to eat. So, it's something that, you know, in a local area where a flood happens, it can cause a lot of problems for people and then like globally, it can also cause huge problems with food insecurity. Yeah. And, talking about another food insecurity thing that's connected to floods, so, in Ukraine this past month, a dam, like one of the largest water reservoirs in Europe, was blown up. And you know, a lot of people are like, "Oh, the Russians did it because they're in control of it." And the Russians are like, "We didn't do it, but the dam did mysteriously blow up". And it...
Margaret 45:10 Derek Jensen was running...Someone in a raccoon sweater was seen running from the crime, screaming about how trans people are bad.
Inmn 45:17 Yeah. And so like this...the water in Kherson rose 20 feet, and it destroyed all of these like irrigation systems. And it is expected to affect 600,000 hectares of farmland that produce over 4 million tons of grain and a huge amount of the world's vegetable oil.
Margaret 45:48 Okay, I was reading about how there's a vegetable oil shortage is expected. But I didn't get to the why. That explains that.
Inmn 45:55 Because a dam exploded in Ukraine.
Margaret 45:59 Because of the war that is currently localized but will eventually spread.
Inmn 46:04 Brooke, are there other things going on with food insecurity?
Brooke 46:07 Never. But maybe. I don't think I have anything on food insecurity.
Inmn 46:14 Oh, oh, sorry, I read the notes wrong.
Margaret 46:16 I made these notes ahead of time for everyone. And I put them in the chat. But then they lost all their--just so everyone knows behind the scenes and all the cool insider information--I put in the chat an agenda of what we're going to talk about, but it lost all of the formatting when I pasted it in. So, it's basically incomprehensible. But, I will tell you about medication insecurity. Ehh? That will make everyone happy. Because that's not one of the...Okay, just to be clear, like medication is obviously one of the things that people will get the most concerned about when it comes to preparedness and stuff, right? Because of the way that medication is gate kept--sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad reasons--It is not necessarily available to people to do anything sort of like stockpiling and things like that, right? And we rely on a lot of medications for very good reasons in our society. Tornado Alley. You're like, "Oh, obviously it's related to tornadoes." Tornado Alley is the alley...It's the the part of the US where tornadoes are sort of expected and normal, as if they're not fucking terrifying. Jesus Christ. There's very few natural disasters I'm more like... Because I feel like a tornado could just be behind your back and you wouldn't know. It's like a horror movie. You're driving down the road, and then everything turns green, and then all of a sudden there's this death machine just like, "Baaaah!" [makes a 'scaring someone noise] and it's coming at you--and it makes exactly that noises and sticks his tongue out. And people are like, not excited about tornadoes. At least I'm not.
Brooke 46:19 And they're green and have tongues.
Margaret 47:35 Yeah, well, the sky does turn green sometimes before a tornado. Anyway, so Tornado Alley is expanding thanks to climate change is the point of this. And there's been more and more bad tornadoes further east than there used to be. A tornado in Rocky Mount North Carolina, which is outside of previous Tornado Alley, at least according to the article I read. I've been in North Carolina when there have been tornadoes, but they weren't like, "This is totally normal." It was like kind of a bad thing. Well, do you know that there was one 1.4 million square foot Pfizer a manufacturing plant that was responsible for 25% of all of Pfizer's medications that it sends out to hospitals?
Brooke 48:24 Nope.
Margaret 48:27 Did you know that one tornado destroyed the entire fucking thing this month? A tornado of 150 mile per hour wind speeds--I wrote down the like classification, but then I deleted it because I didn't feel like looking at all the classifications and trying to explain it...A tornado. It was a bad tornado. And it fucked this thing up. It destroyed 50,000 pallets of medication. And more specifically than that, it stopped the ability for this plant to produce the medication. It was an injectable sterile medication place, so, a lot of anesthetics, so things that make you unconscious, and I think also some antibiotics, and other stuff that goes into like IVs, and stuff was destroyed and the capacity for Pfizer to make more of it was destroyed. The one silver lining is that the article used to have it wrong and say, "25% of the US's injectable medication." That was only Pfizer's percent, which is probably a lot still. Pfizer's a really fucking big name in medication. So medication shortages were already, before this, the worst that they've been in 10 years. In 2014 there were medication shortages about as bad as now. At the end of June, again before the tornado, there were 309 specific like named drug shortages in the United States. A lot of them are related to like chemotherapy and all kinds of stuff. So that's bad.
Brooke 49:52 I didn't realize the medication shortage was worse now than it was like during the height of the pandemic and the end of it because I feel like you don't hear about it.
Margaret 50:02 Yeah, I mean, well the pandemics over. So no one has to worry about anything anymore. [said sarcastically] I feel like this is the kind of thing where it's like, it's so hard because it's like...Well, it's like, as we talked with...Like, This Month in the Apocalypse is just a fuck ton of bad shit, right? Like and we're talking about or like some posi like little silver lining, like I saw cute monkey, kind of style stories, you know. Like, he's on roller skates. And, and it's like, it's hard to spin fucking this shit. It's hard to spin. Too much of our...I don't even want to tell them they're making drugs wrong. I don't know how to fucking make insulin, you know. But, obviously, there's some problems with centralization when there's tornadoes around, which I guess was like my Mothra-Godzilla thing I was talking about earlier. And I don't know, I mean...but it's the kind of thing that I wish we stayed more aware of. And I think it's the kind of thing that people mostly don't want to think about because we like to imagine that even if we'd go into debt to do so, if bad things happen, the existing system will be there for us. And, I don't want to knock the people who work really goddamn hard to make the existing system work, and the nurses, and doctors, and all the rest of the staff who work endlessly to make this shit happen. And so Pfizer is trying to move that manufacturing to other plants. But they haven't been able to yet. And they're basically like, "Look, it's not actually easy. You would be talking about moving..." None of the employees were hurt is the one upside of all of it. There's 2000 employees at that plant. And that's all I got. Besides...Are we ready for headlines like do do do [makes type write noise] headline time?
Inmn 51:49 I think Brooke has something about a murder wall.
Brooke 51:52 I know, but I don't want to talk about it anymore. Because it's so depressing. I want to talk about happy headlines.
Margaret 51:59 Should we just shout out that there's a fucking murder wall and it's bad.
Brooke 52:04 The great state of Texas. Yeah, that wonderful place, and it's a dictator du jour, Greg Abbott, decided to roll out some new measures in order to try and stop immigration across the border. So they got a whole bunch of buoys. Buoys are things that float in the water that are like wrecking ball size, which I actually don't know how big a wrecking ball is, but I assume they're massive,
Margaret 52:31 Bigger than a breadbox.
Brooke 52:38 Like the size of a car maybe? I actually don't know. Somebody, somebody comment and tell us how big wrecking balls are. I don't know big. Anyway, they got a shit ton of them and floated them out into the Rio Grande River and anchored them to the riverbed to basically create a floating wall in the middle of the river that's currently about 1000 feet long and make it longer. And then they also went through...As part of that project, there's lots of little islands that are on the Rio, and they tend to have grasses, and shrub brushes, and stuff like that. And they had the the Texas military go in and basically bulldoze everything off the top of the islands. So, they're just like dirt mounds in the middle of the river, and also,
Margaret 53:25 Some World War I shit is what's happening.
Brooke 53:27 Yeah, yeah, they bulldozed down the riverbanks on the United States side so that they could put up barbed wire along sections of the river there to, which you know, the river is at its low part right now because we're in summer, so I'm sure that taking away all of the vegetation and root systems won't have any problems with the waters rise later in the year. [Sarcastically]
Inmn 53:53 None at all. [Also sarcastically]
Margaret 53:54 Well, you know, it's just worth the trade off to economically destroy....Even if even if I was a fucking capitalist, I would be against the border wall. Like what the fuck? Like?
Brooke 54:04 Yeah, it's...There's several things that are wrong with it besides just the really obvious, you know, ethical wrongness of the whole fucking thing.
Margaret 54:14 The murderness.
Brooke 54:14 And, you know, as an indigenous person, I have really complicated feelings about that because borders and migration anyway, but like it was the state of Texas that did it. They didn't talk to the local cities and municipalities about the work that they were doing. So they just, you know, rolled up destroying this shit. And then it's also technically international waters because it's a border between two countries and they didn't talk to Mexico about it either or the federal government for that matter. So you know, Mexico is threatening to to take action against Texas, and the federal government has sued the state of Texas, and local governments are super pissed off. So fun on so many levels.
Margaret 54:59 I'm glad people are pissed off about it. So that's the one...I'm glad that murder wall has been a step too far for even some governments.
Inmn 55:09 Yeah, I mean, it's like, Arizona did a similar thing last year before the governor...Like when the governor realized that he was not going to get reelected, He started building this giant shipping container wall along the border. And he was actually ordered by the federal government to stop doing it. And he just didn't. And there were...But there were all these like interesting things that happened where there were local sheriffs and stuff who were enforcing that law against the governor, like the people building the wall. And then there were all these wild disputes about it, where it became very like a the US government versus the US government like situation.
Margaret 55:57 I don't hate that. I've played enough Risk. I know that when my enemies are fighting, it's time to sit back.
Inmn 56:04 Yeah, but a really cool thing that was able to happen was that a lot of people were, because it was not a legal thing, were able to stage some pretty large scale defense against the area by going and occupying the area to stop construction, but no one was going to arrest them because it wasn't legal for them to be building it.
Brooke 56:25 Oh, this river section also hosts a large annual kayak race that now can't happen because the buoys are in the way, so like a Republican kayaker guy who's like, you know, super into anti-immigration, is like, "But now that, you know, we can't do our kayak race here, I'm super pissed off about it." So like, even more reasons that people are angry about this that are ridiculous, but hey, let's, you know, let's be angry.
Margaret 56:55 Yeah.
Inmn 56:56 Yeah, golly. Is it time for headlines?
Margaret 57:00 It's time for headlines. Is that our wait, we got to come up with....[Brooke makes type write noise] Yeah, there we go. Alright. What I got. Okay, you know how there's this thing that like COVID and the flu and shit were all hitting and then there was also RSV, which like mostly comes up for kids, and adults...In adults who aren't old. I don't know how to phrase this. Without, okay, whatever. In some people, it just manifests as a cold and other people it is really bad, right? RSV I don't even know what it stands for. I didn't write down enough. This is my supposed to be my headlines. And now I'm contextualizing...They have an injectable antibody that the FDA just approved called Beyfortus. And it's the first time that there has been a good specific thing that is like a preventative for RSV that has become available. And so that's promising. I'm curious to see how that goes. Because I know RSV was like fucking over a lot of people I know. Apparently, cement is one of the biggest causes of climate change and damage. It is the 12th biggest cause of climate change. It beats out air travel, apparently. And it...And cement overall puts out more carbon than the entire country of India does. One company is working on a carbon negative cement that is just like manufactured very different from Portland cement. Portland cement is like the main way that people make cement, which both involves a lot of burning of carbon in order to create it because you need kilns. And also then it is slowly off gassing carbon for like, a very long time with the concrete. And so they're working on, and they've proven it to be like structurally sound, and who knows whether this will act...[interrupts self] I know that it won't see widespread adoption because there's no incentive for it because capitalism is the economic system that runs the world. But someone has invented a concrete that actually absorbs carbon. It just sort of passively brings it on instead of putting it out.
Brooke 59:15 I don't know if this is the same project, but I worked for a nonprofit a couple of years ago, or right before the start of the pandemic, that was doing research into this very thing. And they were putting really tiny amounts of wood fiber, cellulose, into cement and they were...They weren't doing it. They were funding, because it was a charity organization, they were funding the testing of this. And I wonder if this is maybe the next stage of that or even the same company.
Margaret 59:41 This company is called Brimstone, which is funny. They might be evil. They might not be. But, they're named Brimstone and we don't live in a boring world. And then my final little posi note is that some agricultural workers have been like...Well, some agricultural workers have been dying in the heat. And so another agricultural woman, agricultural worker woman, developed a cooling vest and has just been doing a lot of studies about like, just specific ways about like, how people who are working outside and are stuck working outside beat the heat with these hot new ideas. But it's like...It's one of those things where it's like, well, what if people just didn't have to do this fun work outside in the goddamn heat? But, it's still good for us to develop these systems. And I love that it is coming from people who do this work themselves. So, I think it's like kind of a swamp cooler style vest. It's like...And they just did a lot of studies about like, if a worker drinks water, versus a worker drinks electrolytes, the person who drinks electrolytes is going to have a substantially lower risk of hospitalization and heatstroke. And then even like, wearing a wet bandanna makes a huge difference. Obviously, like anything that relies on swamp cooling is going to be different based on your humidity levels. If you're in the southeast, it's going to be way harder to use passive cooling from water than if you live in the southwest. But that's what I got. Anyone else? De de deet deet, de de deet deet [making typewriter noises] Hot off the Wire.
Inmn 1:01:22 I have a bunch of headlines. They're not good. One is interesting.
Margaret 1:01:30 You're fired. I'm not actually capable of doing that. Okay.
Inmn 1:01:36 In the great state of Florida this month, it was declared by Rick DeSantis that middle schoolers will be taught about the personal benefits that slavery had for individuals as part of DeSantis' "War on Wokeness." He also was quoted as saying that he was really upset about the ways that--and he meant this in how Democrats are doing it--are criminalizing political differences, which is interesting because he's like the forefront of criminalizing political differences.
Margaret 1:02:16 So, it's almost like it's illegal to advocate the eradication of people based on their race.
Inmn 1:02:21 Yeah. And he passed some wild laws in Florida this month. This one, this one is...Like by itself, you might hear it and you're like, "Lack of sympathy," but like contextualizing it with other stuff that Rick DeSantis is doing is important. So, he passed a law that allowed for the death penalty in child rape convictions despite the Supreme Court having ruled otherwise. Which, you know, when I hear that I'm like, this is another Roe v. Wade situation of states like trying to get laws passed in the hopes that when federal rulings are overturned that they have these laws on the books.
Margaret 1:03:03 Yeah, I mean, this is so that he can kill gay people and trans people.
Inmn 1:03:06 Yeah, so then interestingly, in Texas last month, a lesbian couple was arrested for kissing at a mini golf course. And they were charged with "sexual harassment of a minor." So like, if we contextualize these things together and DeSantis' like war on trans people, we can sort of see where this is going is that he does probably want to make it legal to enforce the death penalty against trans people. He also signed a bill to end unanimous jury requirements in death penalty sentences.
Margaret 1:03:46 Sick.
Inmn 1:03:48 Now you just need an 8-4 in favor, which is a huge, huge spread. You know? Yeah, this is gonna go great. He was also involved in a car accident this morning in Tennessee and he was...not hurt.
Margaret 1:04:08 Dammit. That's fucked up.
Inmn 1:04:10 Right. In some other fun headlines, Robert Kennedy claimed at a press conference that COVID may have been ethnically targeted to spare the Jews in a absolutely absurd brand of conspiracy theories against Jewish people. Student debt forgiveness: people will be expected to pay back their refunded payments according to the student debt forgiveness being repealed.
Margaret 1:04:47 Have they met the blood and the stone? The ability to withdraw one from the other...
Inmn 1:04:57 Supreme Court ruling was like kind of...Not like overturned but an old ruling was over...like, not used in a case right now around stalking, where it's going to be a lot easier for people who are stalking people, especially on the internet, to not get in trouble for it. And it kind of boils down to this idea there that the more deluded the stalker, the more protected the stalking will be.
Margaret 1:05:31 It's like pleading insanity, kind of?
Inmn 1:05:34 Yeah. Being like, "This person was unaware of the impacts that it could have had on this person."
Margaret 1:05:40 Classic thing that should inform the law.
Inmn 1:05:48 It's weirdly situated like that to protect people like at protests, who might scream like, like, "I'm gonna fucking kill so-and-so," you know, in like a heightened state, and then that being weighed against that that person probably didn't mean that. But, it being used like that to protect people threatening to kill people on the internet while stalking them is, you know, clearly, clearly these things aren't the same thing.
Brooke 1:06:25 Laws are bad.
Inmn 1:06:26 Puberty blockers in England were disallowed on a large scale outside of exceptional cases. So like, trans kids in Europe will no longer be allowed to access puberty blockers.
Margaret 1:06:43 You mean, the UK. Technically no longer Europe, thanks to their right wing move to separate themselves. Yes, does not make it any better for the UK kids. I'm sorry. I'm being a pedant. I apologize.
Brooke 1:06:54 Yay, terf Island.
Inmn 1:06:59 Putin signed new legislation on like this past Monday, I think, which marked the final step in outlawing gender affirming procedures. So basically, you can't get any gender affirming, like surgical procedures in Russia any more. And the bill was unanimously approved by the Russian Parliament, which bans any medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person as well as changing any one's gender marker on their documents. The only exception will be for medical intervention to treat congenital anomalies, which I think probably refers to like, assigning intersex people genders. It also annuls marriages in which one person has changed their gender and bars, transgender people from becoming foster or adoptive parents. And yeah, so Russia is even more terrifying.
Margaret 1:08:03 Starting to not like Russia.
Brooke 1:08:07 Starting to?
Margaret 1:08:08 I don't know. Putin starting to seem like kind of a...I'm starting to develop a negative impression. [sarcastically]
Inmn 1:08:17 Yeah. And, you know, just to give people in the United States an idea of where we're headed, this was all in the name of "Upholding traditional family values." That was the main cause for this legislation.
Brooke 1:08:31 TFV. TFV.
Inmn 1:08:34 And my last little headlines, which I wanted to connect to talking about heat wave stuff earlier, a nine year old migrant died after having seizures due to heat related illness in Arizona. This past month, there were at least 10 recorded migrant deaths in southern Arizona due to heat related complications. But, Border Patrol claims to have rescued 45 people from the scorching heat of the desert. But interestingly, in Ajo, Arizona, which is like western Arizona, there was a...It was like 114 degrees outside and border patrol had 50 migrants in custody who they were keeping in an outdoor chain-link pen with like, no shade or anything. So, they have the people that they rescued then put in life threatening conditions,
Margaret 1:09:40 Starting to not like the United States Government either. Yeah, starting to feel on par with Russian governments. I know you're supposed to pick one or the other party. Yeah, it's bad. Everything's bad.
Inmn 1:09:56 Really bad. And I want to get more into the southwest and border patrol and this issue another time. But...Stuff's really bad right now. So yeah, that's my headlines.
Brooke 1:10:11 Margaret, you're the optimistic one today. What do we do? What do we do in this terrible world,
Margaret 1:10:17 We build resilient communities, network them together, teach each other things, try to limit the amount of gatekeeping we do within those communities. We value conflict resolution as high as we can. We value survival skills and more traditional forms of preparedness, and we support a diversity of actions against all of the negative things that are happening in the world, whether or not we believe those actions are strategic. We support any action that falls within our bounds of ethics, including people who are like annoying church liberals, or people who are like taking things too far with the gasoline and the timers made out of kitchen timers. We support the wide range of it and we try to live our lives as best we can. We recognize that winning is not a condition. It's not like a win state, right? There's not a state in which we win. But instead, there's a reason we say, "Winning at life." We don't say, "Won at life." We say that we are in the process of winning. And when we fight, and when we build, and when we love one another we win. We live the best lives that we can despite everything that's happening and we work really hard to help other people live the best lives that they can. Was that a rhetorical question? I'm not sure.
Brooke 1:11:34 No, I do feel a little bit...No, honestly, I feel a little bit better now. I really do. Love wins. We win with love. Love and care. And the thing that goes on if me being me as a nurturing, loving person.
Inmn 1:11:50 In living like we're preparing for the world to die, should we also live like the Empire could be dying?
Margaret 1:12:02 Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, capitalism has proved a sturdy beast, but it can certainly be slain. And if anything can slay it, it is the nightmare that is coming that we will all figure out how to come together to handle. Yay. Good. That a good end note? Anyone got more headlines?
Brooke 1:12:34 No? Well, no. I'm too sad.
Margaret 1:12:42 Well, if you enjoyed this podcast, you can tell your friends about it. And you can more than that, get together with your friends and talk about what the fuck we're gonna do, right? Because it is a good idea for us to get together and talk about what we're going to do because you're talking heads on the radio podcast land can't tell you what to do. You. You and your friends decide what risks are appropriate based on what's happening, and what you all want to do with the time that is available to you. But, one of the things you can do with the time that's available too, is support this podcast by supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. We put out new features every month. And we have multiple podcasts, including one called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness and one called Anarcho Geek Power Hour, and one called Live Like the World is Dying, which you probably know is the one that you're listening to right now if you made it this far. And if you become one of our like super special $20 month backers you--I mean, all of the backers make this fucking possible, right? They pay for the transcription, so we can try and keep this as accessible as possible. They pay for the editing, which allows us to actually come out weekly. And it helps get all of the interviews out that we can because what some of us have chosen to do with this time is to try and spread this kind of message, right? We don't currently get paid for coming on here and talking. I'm not opposed to us becoming paid. But in particular, we want to thank Lord Harken and Trixter. Let's just go back to Lord Harken really quick. That's a sick name. And Trixster. And Princess Miranda--these are all such good fucking names--and BenBen, and Anonymous--Can't go wrong with Anonymous--and Funder--which is funny--And Jans, and Oxalis, which is a plant, and Janice & O'Dell, and Paige--I'm going to run out of things to say about these things, these names--and Aly, and paparound, and Boise Mutual Aid--thanks for being a mutual aid organization--Milicia, and theo, and Hunter, and Shawn, and SJ, and Paige again, and Mikki, and Nicole, and David, and Dana, and Chelsea, and Kat J., and Starro, and Jenipher, and Eleanor, and Kirk, and Sam, and Chris, and Michaiah, and of course, here's our longest term funder, who is a pit bull, Hoss the dog.
Inmn 1:15:08 Thank you Hoss, the dog,
Margaret 1:15:10 And we'll talk to you all next week. Bye bye for now.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn is joined by Carrie and Korin from the Glia project to talk about some of their projects and specifically to talk about why 3D-printed medical devices are really cool and how they help get medical devices to places where they are not otherwise easily accessible. They talk about Glia's work on 3D-printed tourniquets, stethoscopes, otoscopes, and dialysis machines. Also, please give them $5 million. You won't regret it.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.
Glia can be found at www.glia.org or on Twitter @Glia_Intl
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Glia on 3D Printing Medical Devices
Inmn 00:15 Hello, and welcome to live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host Inmn Neruin. And this week we're going to be talking with Glia, a rad organization that designs 3D printed medical devices so that no matter where you are, you can access basic and quality medical devices. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. Doo doo doo doo doo. [Singing a simple melody]
Inmn 01:17 And we're back. Thanks so much, y'all, for coming on the podcast today. Would y'all like to introduce yourselves with your name, pronouns, nd what you what you're here to talk about or what your role is in Glia.
Carrie 01:45 Okay, I'll go first. My name is Carrie Wakem and she/her and my role at Glia is executive director. It sounds very flashy. It's not. We're all team players here at Glia.
Korin 02:00 My name is Korin, my pronouns are she and they. I'm a volunteer with the Glia project, particularly focused on the tourniquets, and specifically with regards to manufacturing instructions and quality control documentation.
Inmn 02:13 Cool. And would you want to kind of introduce what Glia is?
Carrie 02:20 Absolutely. So Glia is a medical device manufacturing company. We do lots of research and we build and research devices that are considered high quality, open source, and at cost. And that's sort of the stuff that we do.
Inmn 02:42 How did Glia come to get started? Also, does Glia stand for anything? Is it an acronym? Or is it just a fun word?
Carrie 02:50 Everybody asks that question about the acronym and how we became Glia or where the name came from and really there's no interesting story behind it. I think the original team on the Glia project just basically said, "What should we call this?" Somebody throw it the name Glia. And then it stuck as far as I know. But that was before my time. I can absolutely speak to a bit of the history of Glia and how it came to be. So, our founder Tarek Loubani is in emergency medicine physician in London, Ontario in Canada. And he works frequently in the Gaza Strip. And quite a few years ago he was there during the war and he was responding to a large amount of casualties. And he was in a room with a whole bunch of patients that needed to be seen. And when he looked around, he saw that there were only two stethoscopes being used in that room and one of them was around his own neck. And literally people had blood on their ears because they were putting their ear to the chest of patients to hear if there were heartbeats. And it occurred to him that some other places in the world don't have access to even basic medical tools like stethoscopes. And then after that trip, he was home and he was playing with one of his nephews and he was using the little toy plastic stethoscope doctor kit--I think Fisher Price used to make one when I was a kid. Anyway, that's who made one. I'm sure there's a lot of knock offs now. But, they have a little toy stethoscope. And he put it to his ears and he was listening and he was like, "This thing actually works. You can actually hear a heartbeat through this plastic toy." And he just had an interest in 3D printing at the time and he thought to himself, "I wonder if I could create a stethoscope using a 3d printer that would be more accessible, lower cost, and hopefully as high a quality as the Littmann cardiology iii, which is what our stethoscope now compares to. So Glia does have a 3D printed stethoscope today. It was our first product that was developed and it's based off of that experience of our founder.
Inmn 05:00 Cool. Is that is that...[incoherent starting and stopping and stuttering] That makes sense how that would prompt an organization like Glia. But it is...That's really grim that that is how these organizations start.
Carrie 05:15 Yeah. Unfortunately. Though, those are the stories that probably motivate people to do something about these scenarios, right? So, you see a problem and you want to solve it
Inmn 05:27 Is Glia, like, I guess....So from there, this person started 3D printing stethoscopes and then how did the larger structure of Glia kind of start from there? Was it like people just being like, "Oh, that's really cool. Could we also make this other thing?" or?
Carrie 05:43 Um, yeah, so a lot of what we've done...There's parts of it that's have been strategic and parts of our projects that have been organic. The first stethoscope, I believe, was developed in 2014. I didn't come into the project full time myself until 2017. So this is a little bit before my time. Stethoscopes were the thing that we were sort of working on, at the moment that I joined Glia myself. And we started with the stethoscope specifically because it's an iconic device, right? Like everybody recognizes it. So, there was some strategy into picking a device to get started on the topic of "How can an open source stethoscope really changed the world? How can that provide better access to quality health care?" It's a talking point and it still is to this day. From there, though, it was the experiences of the people that were working or associated with the project--collaborators, we've had a lot of collaborators, a lot of volunteers over the years--that sort of drove the direction of some of these projects. And the one that Korin mentioned at the beginning when she introduced herself was the tourniquet project. And that was actually originally developed by the engineers that were working for Glia back in 2017, a group there. And they saw a need for tourniquets in the Gaza Strip. They just couldn't access this type of device. And as we know in Gaza, there's constantly the threat of war. So, they needed to be able to come up with something that they could get access to. And so they designed this tourniquet--and we can probably get into that a little bit later--but that was something that organically happened from our remote office. Other projects like our otoscope. We have a 3d printed otoscope. This project was literally designed by a guy that was attending audiology school. So a gentleman that was in his early 20s had a fondness again for 3D printing and he was sitting in class going, "Why does an otoscope cost $400. I'm a student. I'm on a student budget. I can't access this general piece of equipment." And, and we're not talking about the Welch Allyn otoscopes that are attached in your doctor's office. We're talking about just you know, a plain handhold regular tool to look into somebody's ear. And so this guy, his name's Frankie Talarico, he actually sought us out and he was like, "I want to make this otoscope. And I want to just design it quickly on some software. And I want to make it open source so that anyone else can access that source code and copy it from anywhere else in the world." And he looked out to see who else was doing things like him. And it just so happened, we were in the same exact city, literally like a 10 minute drive from each other. And he reached out and he said, "I have this device that I've been working on. I want it perfected. You guys seem to be a little bit more ahead of of the game in terms of open source medical devices. How can we help each other?" And so he brought this idea, this concept, this design. We had it, you know, sort of perfected in a couple of different versions. And now what you see on our website is working a portable otoscope for...It's $100 for that device and we're hoping to improve our manufacturing process in the next year when we have people like Korin involved to help those processes get a little bit more efficient, we can lower the price even further. So its cost right now is 1/4 of what it does for the comparable gold standard model on the market.
Inmn 09:35 Wow. Yeah, that is...I mean, that's a significant difference. If someone downloaded it and printed it themselves, would it be cheaper for them to print it themselves then?
Carrie 09:49 Yeah, so yeah, in a sense it would be. So there's...So what Glia does is we take our designs that we make--all of our medical devices are located in our public repository on GitHub--and people can access those files and make them themselves. So there's no, you know, limit to what people can do with these things. They can redevelop them and make them better. That's what we really love is when people come into our feedback cycles and we see improvements for devices. That's one benefit of having it open source. But people certainly can take the device and make it. And in fact, if somebody copies what we're doing, that is a success to us. That's what we want to happen here, which is probably much different from many of the other medical device companies you think you might know. We measure our success based on how much it's replicated. And so somebody can take that device, they can make it on their printer. It really does cost cents to print with the plastic that we're using. There's a few electronic components and batteries. There's a lens that you need to source. So that might be you know...You could get that somewhere between $5 and $20 USD, to get a lens that goes into this. Not very expensive pieces. And then it's your time of putting it together. But I must say, the one caveat in all of this being, is that if you are building and replicating medical devices and using them on patients, you have to have proper compliance in your area. So Glia holds a Medical Device Establishment license, which is a Health Canada license that we have to make sure that all of our devices that are going out are safe to use on patients. And we would encourage anyone else to do the same thing if they were really making these things to use on patients, to sell to others to use on patients, etc.
Inmn 11:47 Yeah, I was gonna ask, not in like a skeptical way or anything, but like in a....How do the devices that y'all make compare to professional medical devices that are produced in factories? Which I mean, this is just...Yeah, it doesn't seem all that different, just a different means of manufacturing....
Carrie 12:10 Great question. I love this question. So what Glia is trying to do is to make our devices as close in functionality to the gold standard devices that you would see. So we don't compare ourselves to cheap plastic shit that's built elsewhere, or knock offs, or crap that you can find all over Amazon, you know. We want to make sure that we are building high quality devices. So we do real research backed by real institutions on that. And then we publish real papers in reputable journals about the research that we do. So, the idea here is to make something in a different way that lowers the cost, increases the access, but does not touch the standard of quality. So quality is number one for us. And then alongside quality is safety. So that's where the question of compliance sort of comes in. We encourage anyone that's producing medical devices to make sure they understand proper compliance in their area. And really in the world right now there are four main places to get compliance. One is Health Canada, which is where we...our home offices is in Canada. There's also the FDA. There is one--and I'm not sure of the exact name--but there's one for the European Union that qualifies. And then I believe there's one in Australia as well. So for the countries that don't have these types of governing bodies, where often these devices are needed most, they would follow compliance from one of those other countries that provide that service. And if they are then you could trust that you're being safe with what you're doing.
Inmn 14:03 Cool. Cool. Yeah. So in contrast, y'all are producing these medical devices for very little money, but it is without the sacrifice of quality and so it's...like, is that kind of...[starts over] Does that offer a good alternative to if people are like, "Oh, I need cheap medical supplies. I will go buy them on Amazon."
Carrie 14:33 Yeah, I wouldn't recommend doing that specifically, but it doesn't mean there aren't good quality medical devices on Amazon. Okay, so I can just say that for sure. The difference...So the point of this all is to make a sustainable business model where people get paid fair wages to build build high quality devices. And the point here is not to gouge people that need these devices to improve their health. What Glia is trying to do, and say, and change in the culture of the way our health system operates today is that nobody should be making money on the backs of people's health care. And so we should charge what it costs to produce these devices. That's what the customer should pay at the end, not that price plus investments--like paying off investors--paying off people so that they can have their Lamborghinis and their yachts and go out and do all these things, right? Like, this is not the place for that. If you want to make a designer t-shirt and sell that to someone and they want to pay, you know, $500 for a t-shirt, that's up to them. That's not something they need. But people need access to health care and there's a lot of inequity in our world today with accessing even these simple devices as I said in my very first example of how the company came to be. Like why is it in 20--I believe that happened in 2012--why was it in 2012 that stethoscopes weren't available in a place in this world? Like quality stethoscopes. And that just doesn't make any sense. And the three of us, we may have had enough privilege to be able to understand what a stethoscope was from the minute we could walk or talk--thanks to Fisher Price too--but also, you know, like it's not an issue for us to really get some simple tools, but that's not everywhere in the world.
Inmn 16:54 How then do devices make it from y'all to places like Gaza? Or anywhere where people who need to be able to access them? Yeah, how does that that flow path work?
Carrie 17:11 This can happen in a couple of different ways. Our preferred method is for people to adopt what we're doing and do it themselves. You know, this is...I was talking a little bit about the measurement of success for Glia and one of those things is getting people to replicate what we're doing. And so if they decide, "I need access to a particular device, anywhere in the world," it really, for our devices right now, the way they stand, it's mostly about having access to a quality desktop printer, and having the source code, having a little bit of expertise, proper compliance, and you've got the recipe to start building your own devices. So whether that be 100 devices or 100,000 devices, you can really do that based on this model. It is scalable. I mean, but it's not meant to be massively scalable, right? It's about keeping the decentralized manufacturing model alive and only filling the need in communities as they need things, not over producing. You know, like, we don't want to throw a whole bunch of crap into the landfill. That's not one of our objectives. Our objective is to fill the needs of the people who need what they need. Now Glia...That doesn't mean that Glia doesn't ship things. You know, like we will...Some people can't, or don't have interest, or don't want to, or it's not feasible. An example of that is sending tourniquets over to Ukraine for some response there. There are...We also had an initiative--we're working on it again this year--but a couple of years ago we sent out 200 stethoscopes to medical students graduating from their class. So fourth year medical students still did not have access in Kenya and Zambia to a simple stethoscope. So, we worked with a group over there called Myka Medic--or sorry, they're in the UK--and we collaborated with them to send these stethoscopes over. They weren't necessarily interested in that moment in starting their own lab, getting proper compliance, you know, getting all those tools. But getting that conversation started by sending over a couple of hundred units means that we can talk about those things in the future. Now we have these stethoscopes And now, when something happens to one of these stethoscopes, how do we repair it? Right? And that's what's beautiful about the model if you actually do, you know, invest in a $1,400 (Canadian) printer and teach somebody a little bit about what we're doing, give them the access to be able to build it themselves, and then they can go ahead and make more, repair what they have, you know? It just makes it just makes sense.
Korin 18:29 You mentioned a little bit about Gaza, specifically. Those are produced in Gaza. And the reason for that was because there was a dire need for them. And attempting to get medical supplies through that blockade is very difficult without paying exorbitant fees. They would cost...To get a CAT tourniquet here in the US cost about $30 and to get it into Gaza would be about $40 USD even if you're buying in massive bulk quantities.
Carrie 20:23 For a single tourniquet?
Korin 20:37 Yeah, about $40 each.
Inmn 20:52 Oh, my God,
Carrie 20:53 Yeah, that's, a lot of money in Gaza to pay for medical devices. And not only that, but there's another huge issue we can bring in, if it's time to do that, which is talking a little bit about donation culture and how a place like Gaza, especially, deals...I mean, I've learned a lot about this, especially in the last year, but the health system in Gaza right now is reliant on donations so much so that it's hard for them to steer out of any other path. And they can't even, you know, fathom the idea sometimes about being empowered to build their own stuff because they're so used to receiving basically other people's secondhand items. But what this does is it creates this dumping culture where devices will get dumped into an area because another place doesn't need it. So they'll say, "Oh, who wants this? We don't want to throw it away. So let's go put it somewhere where people can't have access." So there's a whole bunch of problems with that system, especially in Gaza. One of the things is they get a lot of stuff they don't need or don't want. They can't store it. They have inventory crisis constantly because of all of this dumping that happens of things they don't need or don't want. And then they become reliant on something. So for example, one of the ideas that Glia has down the pipeline is creating a dialysis machine. And we don't really want to reinvent dialysis. What we want to do is to take an existing type of dialysis machine and build an adapter to fit on that existing machine that will speak to any one of the disposables that may be used for the purpose of dialysis. So right now, those things are manufactured in a way that if XYZ company makes it, you have to get XYZ disposables to be compatible with that machine in order to use it. So, what's happening in Gaza is that there is literally a gymnasium full of dialysis machines that are unusable and another gymnasium full of disposables that are unusable because those two units are not compatible. So Glia's idea for a device--now this is going to be a $5 million project and you know, if any of your listeners have access to that type of cash, we would absolutely love to begin this project--but, you know, we want to build an adapter that will speak to those two pieces so that people can actually use the stuff that is donated to them, that is given to them, because it...And you can imagine, so now they have storage issues and they become reliant on these people that are feeding them the donations, right? So it's just there's so many problems with that. Now, if you look at what Glia is trying to do, we have an office in Gaza. We have an office with several printers running. We build our own turkeys locally there. So we build our own medical devices there. So they're already there, you know, and people can purchase or use what they need. They don't need to rely on somebody else's handouts to get them in there. And there's a lot more that we could do there as well. But it's difficult. It's difficult to even negotiate with those governing bodies that make those decisions in Gaza because they're so used to dealing with these donations and that's kind of the system they're relying on right now.
Inmn 24:33 Yeah. I cannot imagine being a medical practitioner in Gaza and being, "Well, we need dialysis machines," and having an entire gymnasium full of dialysis machines that you can't use that. Wow, I hope that y'all get to start that one soon.
Carrie 24:52 And like Korin was saying, it's extremely difficult to get things in. I worked on a project in 2016 I want to say--yes 2016-- where I moved 10 dialysis machines from Northern Ontario. So for your US listeners, Ontario is in central Canada and northern Ontario is somewhat remote. Okay. And this is going to fill all the stereotypes that people think of Canada right now what I'm going to say. Where I moved these, I work with a nephrologist and he wanted me to take--he did some work in Gaza--and he saw that there were some machines that were at this northern Ontario hospital that were compatible with some of the disposables that were already in Gaza. And they weren't being used by us. So he said, "Let's pay to get these 10 machines that are basically obsolete for Canadians." Okay, "Let's move them to Gaza." This project took me nearly 12 months to get these in. They had to come from this hospital via Ice River, onto a train, onto another train, onto a plane, and then perhaps a ship--I can't remember, it was a while ago--I don't know if we had it on a ship to get across. But then of course, it had to wait. To get this in through the blockade was terribly difficult. But we were able to get the Ministry of Health in Gaza on board and, you know, they let them in eventually. It also cost us $10,000 Canadian in shipping. So, what are we doing here, folks? This makes no sense. And all just because "Oh, somebody donated some disposables and they don't talk to any of the machines we have here. So let's dig out these ones out of the basement of northern Ontario and move those over." You know, it's just so frustrating because think about how far $10,000 would have gone in terms of buying any type of medical device if they had the market to do so in Gaza. It would be...It's just there's nothing that can can really be said about that. It's...
Inmn 27:15 Yeah, that is maddening. I know that...I mean, not to relate things back to things in the United States, but I remember when, you know, early, early COVID times, there was a serious lack of ventilators and all the car companies were going on strike to have the car company factories make ventilators instead. And I don't really know where I'm going with this, but just maybe for people in the United States to think about a comparable or semi-comparable situation of like absurdity that we have all these means of production and we're using them to make cars or we're using them to make stuff that people don't need instead of getting basic medical...having basic medical supplies be accessible to people who need basic medical supplies. I don't know, it just it hurts my brain a lot.
Korin 28:30 Not to, again, not to directly compare these two things because they are different, but even here in the US, you know, glucometers, the things that are used to measure your blood sugar, the the strip and I think the lancet and the unit itself, same kind of razor and blades model where one does not work with every other type of glucometer. So, it's exactly like manufacturers just love to do the whole razor and blades thing with people's health because at the end of the day, if it make some money, they will do it.
Inmn 29:07 Yeah, yeah. And that is the wild thing too when I think about it, is that all these medical industries, they exist to make people money not to necessarily get people medical supplies.
Carrie 29:23 Yeah, yeah. It's sadly true. And so...So I guess the question is then what can you do about that to change that culture? And to start thinking about this in a way that's more about sharing what you know versus holding it tight to your vest to serve yourself? How do you really serve other people with the information that you have? And so that's what Glia is really trying to do is just to show that there are...there's a different business model for this, folks. It doesn't mean that people need to be making no money or that it needs to be charitable. There's a system that could be in place where people just get paid to build stuff fairly. Maybe even just add a little bit to that so it's a nice cushy job, you know, like, give them extra vacation time, or give them just a couple of extra bonuses per year for just being great people. And you can do all of that and not gouge people at the end for all that that upfront R&D (Research and Development) that's done at the beginning. Because that's kind of, you know, fluffy, in and of itself, all of the R&D. We really don't need to redo R&D every time we do it if we just share the information we learned the last time we did it. Right? So why are we reinventing the wheel? Like really why did Glia have to come in and take a device like the stethoscope--that has seen no improvements since the 1970s in terms of its functionality, or design, or anything--and say we have to start from scratch and build this? Because, you know, like we took something that was off patent and looked at that design and replicated it. But why are we hiding behind patents here? You know, like it doesn't...it doesn't really make much sense when people need health care. Okay, I have an example. I will share a personal example. I talk about this sometimes when I give presentations. So, my personal experience isn't actually about medical devices, it's about pharmaceuticals. And I think the thing is, is that people in the US and Canada...There's a difference between the relation for a lay person in the US and in North America, especially, probably other places in the world, too, but I know here. I know our neighbors here. And everybody in North America has a relationship with pharmaceuticals, whereas not everybody in North America has a direct relationship with medical devices. Medical practitioners do. Medical administrators do or people that are making decisions on purchases, or people that are building these things. But not necessarily. Like my mother doesn't have any personal connection to a stethoscope, even though I'm sure her physician uses it on her every time she goes and sees her. But I think the thing about pharmaceuticals is that everybody's accessing this. So we all know about how much of an upcharge there is on certain medicines. And so for example, I have a sister who has a very serious heart condition, and she needs to take medicine in Canada that it costs $40,000 a year for her lung health. And without that she wouldn't be here. So because of where we live in the world, she's able to access that through a community, like through the Trillium program that's in Canada that supports people who, who can't afford it. And she can't, you know, she's on disability here in Canada because she can't work because of her condition. It's quite severe. And without this life saving medication. But $40,000 a year? How on earth would anyone without a health care system like we have in Canada be able to live? You would die. You would die, right? So what are we doing when we don't have working dialysis machines, you know, that are not talking to each other. People need dialysis or they die. A lot of people need dialysis. And so the thing is is that the technology exists, the manufacturing of these things can exist. This is not like brand new science. This is stuff that people can do now. We're not talking about building a dialysis machine on Mars. We're talking about just building it here on Earth. And then the problem here is that, you know, but this one has to be compatible with that one. Anyway. It's it's just a mess.
Inmn 34:18 I know that a big project that y'all have currently is tourniquets. And corn, I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that project.
Korin 34:28 Yeah, the Glia tourniquet, I believe, started in Gaza as well. And that was due to necessity. This happens very frequently, where Israel will start waging war on on the Gaza Strip and that causes a lot of casualties. And due to the blockade, it's very difficult to get like commercially manufactured tourniquets in and so the solution that came up--and this was before I joined the project--but the solution that happened there was to make this tourniquet that can be 3D printed and sewn together with locally available materials. And that's...It works. Yeah.
Inmn 35:10 That's awesome. And I know you're saying the price comparison of like If you wanted to buy one, it's like $30-40 bucks and then like to get it into Gaza, it would be a lot more?
Korin 35:24 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, getting it in there, from what I've heard from Tarek, it's about $40 US if you have a bulk order to get it into Gaza and the time that that would take is variable. Depends on a number of factors. Here in the United States, you can get them for about $30 give or take. Some models are more expensive, but that's about what you're looking for. The Glia tourniquet, I think we've run the numbers a little bit. Depending on where you source your materials, how you do it, in theory, you could manufacture it for about $7.50. But that is before any compliance or overhead. That's just materials and assuming you have the equipment ready to make it.
Inmn 35:24 Yeah, cool. I guess beyond the obvious of like putting the means into people's hands to produce their medical supplies, like why is tourniquets a big deal?
Korin 35:43 So just in general, what they're used for, I guess, for folks who don't know, it's basically a big strap that gets tightened around a limb and it occludes all blood flow to that. So in the event of like a massive hemorrhage, a massive amount of bleeding, these can save lives. These have been gaining popularity over the last, I want to say about 20 years, I think it's largely due to the forever wars, unfortunately. That's where a lot of trauma medicine winds up coming out of. And so there's been a huge resurgence of interest in them. And at this point, they are now very popular and they're very much used to stop massive hemorrhage. For non military applications, there's any number of them here in the US. We have to contend with a large number of mass shootings. So aside from mass shootings, there's a number of other situations where you might need a tourniquet. You can have accidents with cooking, accidents with knives, or power tools, lawnmowers, chainsaws, things of that nature, natural disasters, which are unfortunately becoming more common. Those are all situations where folks might need tourniquets,
Carrie 37:25 I would also add to that industrial accidents and a lot of back country activities. So things like your friends in the north doing a lot of snowmobiling, those types of people, a lot of those types of sports have been reaching out to us with interest in the tourniquet as well. So it's becoming an item that really should be in every first-aid kit. And one of Glia's goals in the next, let's say year to two years, is to start diving in a little bit more into the US market with these items and making sure they're in every public space. So for example, every school needs one of these tourniquets in the US. Every mall. But even in Canada, where we don't have as many mass shootings, these things are useful for all those other reasons. If you work in a facility--lots of people still work online, so you know, machines are doing stuff for us, but there's a lot of people doing factory work--tourniquets need to exist there.
Inmn 38:27 Yeah, yeah. I remember seeing this kind of shift. As you know, in 2020, when there was a lot of gun violence happening at large protests and stuff, and just like seeing people...everyone had tourniquets strapped to their belts and stuff, but I also remember talking to people who were like, "Oh, I'm maybe not going to go to the thing because I don't have a tourniquet and spending that much money on a tourniquet right now sounds overwhelming.
Carrie 39:08 That's so interesting. Yeah, so it's becoming way more commonplace I think, with tourniquets, and it's becoming something that your regular EMS isn't just carrying because the other big issue with tourniquets and why the hill is so steep for Glia is not just all of the R&D, and the manufacturing, and the governing body approval--which I think we might get into a bit--but you know, all the certifications and things that you might need for these types of devices, or what you would assume you may need, aside from all of those tricky things, the steepest hill for us is that lay people don't know how to apply tourniquets properly. So, unless you're a trained person in the use of tourniquets, then it's hard to just put a tourniquet in a public space and know how to use it. So, part of Glia's endeavor is never just to make a device and be like, "Oh, we made our device. That's it. Here you go." No, no, no, we have to do the full package. So likely, you know, we might seek out educational companies that are interested in open source as well and provide educational material to people so that you can become fluent in using a device like this.
Inmn 40:28 Cool. Korin, I know we were talking a little off-air about this, but you mentioned that--I guess maybe the right word is compliance--for civilian grade tourniquets doesn't really exist or something?
Korin 40:49 There is no standard for a tourniquet. So the way I actually got into the project was Tarek Loubani did an interview on It Could Happen Here, where he talked about 3D printed tourniquets. And I said, "Well, that's very interesting." And so I go, when I look through the GitHub and look through all the resources and couldn't find like, 'What standard does this meet? How is this being tested?" And after some further back and forth and discussion, it turns out, there isn't a standard for tourniquets. That does not exist. ASTM, which is a standards making body, is I think, working on one, but it's not released yet. And it's extremely new, if that ever does come out. There literally just is no standard that you can say, "Well, I've done this. And so therefore, it's a good tourniquet." Yeah. And, the way you kind of determine whether or not your tourniquet works is, I think, largely by comparison. And there is some testing that's done, but it's by comparison to what's being used currently. And does it work as well as that?
Carrie 41:56 Yeah, I was just gonna add to that again, like Glia doesn't just stop at like, "Oh, let's take a medical device and reproduce it or build it again." We have to do...we have to go to all the lengths to make sure that this thing can get out there and people can use it safely. So one of the things we needed to do was to partner with somebody that was willing to design a tester for the type of tourniquets that we were making. And that's been a massive project. And actually, it was designed by the Free Appropriate Sustainable Technology Research Group at Western University. And they just published the tester that they developed to test not only the Glia tourniquet, but any tourniquet that works in the way that the Glia tourniquet works. So now we can start developing some sort of standard because when you make a device like this and then you realize that the only thing that really gave it any clout was some panel that decided that these particular tourniquets were the one we were going to use and then because of mass production built a reputation, even though, you know, the CAT tourniquet, actually, in the field is only something like 55% effective when it's applied. And it's the most well known gold standard tourniquet out there today on the market that people trust the most. But you know, half the time you're going to put that on, it's going to fail. So you, Glia dives into, like, why does it fail? What is the test being done on that? Is it actually the education of the user? Does the user know how to apply the tourniquet? You know, we don't we don't just stop at, "Oh, here's the device now for the market. You can buy it. Do what you will with it," you know, like all those other checkboxes are applicable.
Inmn 43:47 Yeah. Yeah. Is like...I guess, because...Is the CAT VII, is that the tourniquet that like the military uses, or do they?
Korin 43:58 I think this is maybe a good time to explain what COTCCC is if that?
Korin 44:03 Yeah, okay, there is this panel called COTCC, Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care. It's a military panel. And I'm actually gonna quote from their website, it says, "The Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care is the pre hospital arm of the joint trauma system for the Department of Defense." So what it is, is it's about 40 something folks who are various types of medical professionals, or some doctors, surgeons, nurses, combat medics, special operations medics, things like that. And these folks, at some point, some years ago--I don't have the exact article here in front of me--they evaluated some number of tourniquets, and they said, "Okay, here's, based on what we've been using in combat, and based on our examination of them, we recommend the following tourniquets," and they had the Combat Application Tourniquet generations Six and Seven by North American Rescue, that's the CAT by NAR. There was also the SOF-T-Wide by TacMed Solutions. And there was a third one that's a pneumatic tourniquet that we don't need to talk about. And so for the longest time, just those two tourniquets were the only ones that this this panel said you should buy. Now, that makes plenty of sense. They're a military panel. They are interested in serving the military. They're interested in military procurement systems. So, they want to go to a company who can produce an enormous quantity of them and certify that they are good and will work and supply them in bulk. That's what they're interested in. They are not so much interested in civilian applications. That's not their concern because they serve the Department of Defense, right? So, that's their concern. That's why they had only those, like those three tourniquets because that's all they needed. Now, more recently, they released another journal article in which they--which when I say more recently, I mean, it's still several years ago at this point--where they expanded that list of recommended tourniquets substantially. But they don't evaluate every single tourniquet on the market. A lot of their recommendations are based on combat experience. So, if the tourniquet hasn't seen combat, they're not necessarily going to recommend it. And there's no other things like that. At the end of the day, they are still a military panel interested in making decisions for and about the military.
Inmn 44:03 Oh, yeah.
Inmn 46:37 Yeah, yeah. So Glia is kind of offering like a much better alternative for civilian use tourniquets than currently exists?
Korin 46:49 Yeah. And that's actually one of the design criteria in the Glia tourniquet was that it works better on children. From the experience of folks, medical professionals in Gaza, they found that the CAT tourniquet didn't necessarily work as well on people who had very small limbs. So young children in general. One of the design criteria that then came out of that was that it works better on children. So some of the design decisions on the Glia tourniquet, particularly the separation of the backplate and the clip, came as a result of wanting to make the tourniquet work better for children.
Inmn 47:29 Can I ask you all a kind of, I guess, maybe a little bit funny, like kind of a theoretical question?
Carrie 47:35 Course.
Inmn 47:36 Cool. Or just some things that are going through my head when I think about, like Glia's project and open source pharmaceuticals and open source medical equipment in general is that if we start seeing more parts of society, kind of like collapse or breakdown or like infrastructure breakdown more, is this open source medical equipment something that is going to be useful for people like in, I don't know, in 10 years--God, I hope it's more than 10 years--when the North American governments collapse and we're in some kind of hellish civil war and people are like, "Oh, medical...like the military has stuff. And that's it."
Carrie 48:27 Yeah, I mean, I think the nice thing about the model that Glia is developing is that it's really adaptable by many different types of scenarios. So it's as relevant for what you've just said, and what you're just talking about now, as it is for some refined medical school somewhere in the world where they just want to do some good, and they want to lower costs, and they want to build their own medical devices and send them out to all their students for the incoming class that year. You know, we can set a lab up here in London, Ontario at our medical school that exists here and have those students build their own medical devices and have proper--as long as they have proper compliance. I'm not going to stop saying that--as long as they have proper compliance, then they can build their own devices. And the thing that's beneficial about that is that then you get up-and-coming medical practitioners thinking about their medical devices in a different way than they currently do today. They can make...they can see that they can customize, make modifications, be innovative, have a say, so they do not get into vendor lock-in with any of the products that they purchase. So I think that's one applicable scenario. And then you can go to some war-torn country, someplace that's desolate, and all they need is solar energy--which by the way, our Gaza office completely powers all of their printers with solar energy--and you can use a solar power energy in the middle of the desert and if you just are able to tent in that unit and get proper humidity under control then you can start building your own medical devices wherever you need them. And I mean, we're talking about stethoscopes, tourniquets, otoscopes...Glia also has a pulse oximeter coming down the road. We have a portable electrocardiogram that's coming out very soon. It's just entering clinical trials this summer. So there's lots of different types of devices that could be in these scenarios that you may need, like in something that's somewhat remote. And so it doesn't matter how remote the community or how vast and vibrant the community is, these devices can be used anywhere, and the process is applicable in all of the communities. Like really we should be making all our devices like this everywhere. Like why are we transporting shit halfway across the world anymore? It makes no sense. It makes no sense.
Inmn 51:19 No, no, it truly does not.
Korin 51:20 You asked in the context of societal collapse and there's a lot of areas even today where we can see that, for example, the wildfire smoke that's blanketing areas of Canada and even in the US. And I know that Margaret Killjoy, along with Robert Evans over at It Could Happen Here talked a bit about this and building Corsi-Rosenthal boxes, which are basically air filters made out of box fans and furnace filters. And so those boxes are a very good example of devices medically--we can call them medical supplies--that people right now may want to come together and make. Those are also a particular kind of device that lends itself to this kind of ad hoc, in the moment, production, where if everyone doesn't stick around and everyone kind of breaks off and goes and does their own thing later, that's completely fine. There's some medical devices, which are a little bit more critical, that have to be approached with a little bit more intention. But there's a number of things all across the spectrum that you could do right now, to things that maybe you should only do in an emergency, to things that we should start building the infrastructure for now so that we can use that later.
Inmn 51:22 Yeah, yeah. And y'all have talked a lot about this, about compliance. And, I guess I'm just wondering, if you could explain for listeners, like what is involved in compliance? Like is it like testing it, the device, to make sure that it works? To make sure it works properly? Like, what goes on for compliance?
Carrie 53:01 So proper compliance. Yes, we've mentioned it a whole bunch of times. It's very important. What that looks like in Canada is four different class levels. And it depends on what types of devices you're manufacturing as to which type of class level you fall into. So currently, Glia is only manufacturing devices that fall into class one. It's a fairly simple license for class one and it's very similar with the FDA, their class, one license looks a lot alike. It's a little bit more expensive to get a class one license from the FDA than it is in Canada. It's actually about double the price. But if you're selling multiple devices, or you have some pool of money to draw on from to get this. Usually these licenses last for a year, so you have lots of time to set up a manufacturer, learn what you need to do. The process is fairly straightforward. You often tend to learn things in North America after the fact. So you know, we set up our license, we got our approval, Health Canada said, "We trust you," and then they came knocking on our door and said, "Hey, by the way, we have an audit for you." And that's very common, you know, and especially for people that are doing stuff in their home basement labs, which at the time, that's what we're doing. So, you know, the point being that it's fairly straightforward. The most important thing to remember about compliance is that it's for the patient's safety. And you have to make sure that if for some reason there's a problem with what you've created, that you can issue a recall. And so, you know, recalls aren't just, "Oh, somebody was poisoned because they ate this bad bag of kale." It's also with medical devices. If there's a problem in that manufacturing process, we may distinguish that there's an issue and we need to take back those devices and inspect them. And it's important that you have a process to do that as swiftly as possible. So you know, sometimes depending on how dangerous the situation could be, you may have to initiate a recall within 48 hours of discovering the problem, and trying to retrieve those devices very quickly. So, it's about knowing those processes really well and protecting the patients, they're health and safety and life.
Korin 55:28 And kind of going back to a little bit about what I said about there are some things where we might want to stand up the infrastructure now so we can use it later. If we're talking about a situation in which we think the government is going to break down or not function at all, some kind of collapse or a civil war or what have you, the FDA may not exist. And so in that case, if I'm making tourniquets, for example, then how do you know that these are actually well made and that they're going to work? And so having proper quality assurance processes in place is extremely important. And that's something you don't need a license to develop, I'm not recommending you go make these devices and distribute them without one. But when it comes to other things, you could do a trial run with Corsi-Rosenthal boxes and try and serialize every single one and send them out if you wanted. And that gives you some practice with with doing this because it is, as Carrie mentioned, extraordinarily important. You determine later, "Oh, oops, we sewed these tourniquets together with the wrong thread. Oh, we used the wrong plastic." I've seen these things happen in commercial environments, for not medical devices but for other things. That is absolutely critical that you have this relationship established with everybody that you might be giving these tourniquets to, or passing them along to, that you can contact them and they know you and you know them. And we're not just making a bunch of medical supplies, dumping them into a community and then disappearing and then hoping that no one gets hurt because that's just reckless.
Carrie 57:13 Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing is, is people shouldn't be afraid of proper compliance. You know, it's not something to run from. Like any system, and especially as large as some of these systems we're talking about in terms of where to obtain proper compliance from, they're all going to have their pros and cons. But at the end of the day, this really is about making sure that companies are doing things in a safe manner. What I see a lot is that there's a lot of engineers out there that want to engineer things, right. So they want to build stuff. People love building. People love designing. People love adding their little flair to whatever it is they're doing. They want to contribute in that way. And then when it comes time for the paperwork, they get super bored. And so that's why they don't pursue these things. But, I can tell you from experience, I came into this job, I knew nothing about compliance, and I am now probably the expert on compliance in our group. And I had to figure it all out just on my own while doing a whole bunch of other things for the project at the same time. So, it's not impossible to figure out these systems. But also in addition, remember, I spoke earlier about how Glia doesn't just put the device code out there and say, "Here's the device world do what you will with it." We do the whole package. So you may not find all of our compliance records on our GitHub right this minute, it may not be there today, but it is our intention to make those things public so that people don't have to have that uphill struggle and figuring out how to do these systems because that's part of the issue, right, is that these systems are made to be somewhat convoluted and difficult to discern. And if you have a bit of an example of somebody else that did this for a tourniquet, and you want to go out and build some other type of device and innovate that and then get the compliance so you're doing it, you can come to Glia and say, "Oh, how did they do it with this device? Oh, this is what they did. Here's the roadmap for doing that. Okay, now I just have to put in my company name, copy these systems exactly. And off we go. I'm doing everything safe," you know, and they're not going to give you a license unless they think you're doing it safe. So you have that back to follow on. But why do you have to start from square one even with compliance? It's not just about building and innovating the device, it's the whole entire system that comes along with getting those devices from materials to actually treating patients.
Inmn 59:50 Yeah, yeah. It's almost like y'all trying to build like a large community of people who are invested in each other's well being regardless of profit or something, which is really cool.
Carrie 1:00:05 Yeah. And in terms of the societal breakdown scenario too and having compliance not really exist in that moment in the way that we see it today, I mean, that's already happening in the world, right? Like a lot of really amazing places and countries don't have these governing systems. And they have to go and borrow the roadmaps for that type of compliance from somewhere else. But there's likely no one in their own countries even governing that. So then, so then what are they doing? Are they being safe? Are they not being safe? You know, so making these processes as clear and transparent and accessible as possible makes sense because at the end of the day, we want to save people not kill people, right? Like, that's the plan here. Yeah.
Inmn 1:00:57 Yeah. And I'm just going to retrospectively change the question that I asked, which is, yeah, what do we do when the compliance for these organizations don't exist or are not accessible? And I'm gonna pretend I asked y'all that and that we just got those lovely answers. Cool. Well, that about brings us to time. Is there anything else that y'all would like to say before we wrap things that we didn't talk about?
Carrie 1:01:32 Well, I'm pretty sure I want to mention a call to action. So often when we meet people and people come to Glia...So Glia., first of all, I probably didn't explain this earlier on, but Glia has a very small staff. But in my time, in the last six years of being in this position, I've seen about 300 volunteers from all over the world get involved in many different ways. And our volunteers are really what fuels our company and what pushes things forward. Korin is a perfect example of somebody who comes in and becomes quite dedicated to the work that we're doing. And often, when we're talking to volunteers or people that are interested in Glia, they want to know how they can get involved and what they can do. So if you don't mind then I'm just gonna share those points.
Inmn 1:02:30 Please. Plug. Plug the things.
Carrie 1:02:31 Yes, yes, we have to plug Glia. That's something I can't go through this whole interview without.
Inmn 1:02:39 Yeah, the end is always for plugs.
Carrie 1:02:41 That's right. So of course, visit our website at Glia.org You're gonna find out about all of the projects that we're working on, and it doesn't stop with device work. We do education in 3D printing, we do other things, we'll come and we'll do a seminar for you, we'll talk to people about any of the topics that we cover. Of course, this project cannot run without funding, which is always kind of the thing that hurts me the most to have to say, but cash is king. And if you are willing to make a donation, you can do that through our website at Glia.org
Inmn 1:03:20 Especially if you have $5 million to give them so that there can be dialysis machines.
Carrie 1:03:23 Yes, absolutely. If you have access to $5 million, I promise you, we will make it work and really Glia is the most frugal project I've ever seen, you know. People are really good at wasting lots of money. We are very good at having the lowest budgets possible and making the most happen. So I mean, please trust me, I will make all of your dollars go as far as I possibly can stretch them. We always do that. We want to see our work continue into the future.
Inmn 1:03:54 Cool. And are there ways for folks to get involved with? Like, I don't know, like, if they have, if there's listeners who are in places where people might have a hard time accessing medical supplies and they have 3D printers, is there other ways for those people to connect to y'all?
1:04:17 Yeah, we have a GitHub page. That's GliaX on GitHub. But all of that can be found through the website as well. So, glia.org, click on the products that you're interested in, and you will find the links to take you to all the information to get all of the roadmaps to be building these things yourself. And certainly if you cannot find those answers there, just reach out to us. We'll help you along the way for sure.
1:04:43 I also want to mention OpenSourceMedicalSupplies.org, all one word, all spelled out, opensourcemedicalsupplies.org. There's a number of plans and a lot of information about, as you would expect, open source medical supplies there. So that that may be helpful.
Carrie 1:05:00 Yeah, absolutely.
Inmn 1:05:03 Wonderful. Well, thanks you all so much for coming on today. And someone out there, please give them $5 million. Please.
Carrie 1:05:14 Thanks so much for having us. Thank you.
Inmn 1:05:16 Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, 3D print a stethoscope and then tell us about it, but also tell people about the podcast. You can support this podcast by telling people about it. You can support this podcast by talking about it on social media, by rating, and reviewing, and doing whatever the nameless algorithm calls for. Feed it like a hungry god. And you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Our Patreon helps pay for things like transcriptions, or our lovely audio editor, Bursts, as well as going to support our publisher Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. We put out this podcast and a few other podcasts including my other podcast Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, a monthly podcast of anarchist literature, and the Anarcho Geek Power Hour, which is the podcast for people who love movies and hate cops. And we would like to shout out some of those patrons in particular. Thank you Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, Funder, Jans, Oxalis, Janice & O'dell, Paige, Aly, paparouna, Miliaca, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, Shawn, S.J., Paige, Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Cat J., Staro, Jenipher, Eleanor, Kirk, Sam, Chris, Miciahiah, and Hoss the Dog. We seriously couldn't do this without y'all. I hope everyone is doing as well as they can with everything that's happening and we'll talk to you soon.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Burdock and Margaret talk about the overlap between Earth Skills and preparedness as well as going over the basics of how to preserve animal hides, how to process road kill for food, and why you probably don't want to eat roadkill. Trust your nose on that one
Burdock (she/they) can be found on Instagram @Scragetywocket
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Margaret 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm today's host, Margaret Killjoy. And I'm really excited to be talking about this stuff that we're gonna be talking about today because it's something I've been wanting to talk about since I first started the show. We're going to be talking about the primitive skills scene. And in specific, we're going to talk a bit about roadkill and we're going to talk about tanning hides of animals that have been destroyed by the mechanisms of industrial civilization. And I'm excited to get into that. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network da da duh duh da daa. [Singing a melody]
Margaret 01:38 Okay, we're back. Okay. So if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns. And then I guess a little bit about how you got into the stuff that we're going to be talking about today?
Burdock 01:48 Yes, Hi. I'm Burdock. And I use she/they pronouns interchangeably. No preference. And I got into this stuff about 10-11 years ago, living in a city my whole life and being like, "This is not working for me at all. And I want to live in a completely different way." And I went to crazy intense primitive skills school because that was like, the thing I found that resonated the most with me, and it was really traumatizing. But I also learned a lot. And since then, I've been continuing to explore communities and practice those things on my own largely.
Margaret 02:30 Okay. What's primitive skills? To start at the like, super basic, right? This the thing where YouTube influencers get money out of people to fake build things in the woods? [Said with dry sarcasm]
Burdock 02:45 [Laughing] Totally. That is definitely one of the things. That is one of the many ways that it manifests in the world. And also, like, a lot of people hate the term "primitive skills." I think it's not great. [Margaret makes an affirmative sound] But it is like, the most known term for this realm I'm talking about. And so I usually use it just so people understand what I'm talking about, that I don't have to be like, "Earth skills, ancestral skills, primitive skills," and I don't know, I think "earth skills," is like, the best in a way. But yeah, acknowledging right now that this whole thing is like rife with cultural appropriation. And there's definitely like conversations happening around that in parts of the primitive skill scene, earth skills scene.
Margaret 03:45 No, it's called Earth skills. [Said jokingly, but seriously]
Burdock 03:47 Yeah, I'm gonna go with Earth skills from here forward. It feels it feels better. Anyway. So, Earth skills broadly refers to all of the ways that humans lived for most of our time here on Earth. Like pre pretty much pre....I don't know there's even metal smithing included in a lot of like Earth skills gatherings and stuff...So, but like, usually very, still very, like, land-based, like wood forges and stuff, but pre-agriculture, pre industrial revolution. But, there is some agriculture stuff because like, I think it's a bit of a myth that like, agriculture equals industrial society equals capitalism equals bad, right?
Margaret 04:38 Yeah, no. Okay. So that is like, kind of my question is like, what skills are included in this kind of place? Like so Earth skills, I assume it's like hunting, gardening--I mean, in my mind, I'm so used to like survival stuff, so I'm like building emergency shelters filtering your water--but I assume it's also like, building more permanent structure and making your own clothes? Like like what? What kind of different stuff are people doing?
Burdock 05:07 Yeah, I'd say the standbys are fire by friction, like ways of making fire from only materials you're harvesting from the land, foraging for food and medicine and other useful plant materials, animal processing, so, you know, post post hunting, what do you do with the body of the animal that you killed? Hunting is definitely there. And weapon making as well, making weapons just from what's on the landscape around you, just from what you can find. Shelter building. And I think the theme, the theme that runs throughout all of these is "Just from the land around you and maybe you have a knife." But I teach friction fire with no knife, so that varies a lot. There's pottery with local wild clay and how to process that clay so you can actually make pots with it. Basket making--which is also something I do--with materials you're foraging and how to forage for those materials or how to propagate them, how to process them. Totally different from, you know, the materials being prepared for you and you're just going for it. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure I'm forgetting tons of stuff.
Margaret 06:38 Yeah, no, I'm, I'm sure, too. And I...it's been a while since I've been around people who are particularly into this, but I it's been interesting to be around. Okay, I have a bunch of questions about it, though. So one of them is, what role does this have in the modern world? Like, what? And I'm sure that's something that people talk about within this, you know, scene or community and stuff, but like, what...or like, sell me or the listener on getting into this kind of stuff? Like, what's it about?
Burdock 07:10 I think it's about different things to different people. And what it's about, to me is resilience and becoming a more resourceful kind of creative person, having more options of ways to live. I get to disengage from a lot of the kind of modern society stuff when I choose to engage in those skills, which for my life has been important because I have like sensory processing stuff. And so being able to, like, escape from the barrage has been really important. And I think different people have different reasons for needing to get away from that. Even just traveling, like it's making my traveling life easier. Even stuff, like being able to pee stealthily or find like spots in the woods to like, have an anxiety attack. Like, all of these skills are really practical in just surviving the modern world the way it is now. Like, even if things stay exactly how they are. And, you know, there is this idea of, "Oh, if stuff gets worse I'm going to be prepared in all these ways. And I can like, share these...I can teach the skills that I know to other people so that they can deal with whatever's happening." And, you know, including just stuff like blackouts that are short or natural disasters. Like that's definitely part of it, too. But a huge part of it for me is just the selfishness needed to protect my senses.
Margaret 09:01 That makes a lot of sense to me. And one of the things that's kind of come up more recently on this show as I interview different people is realizing there's all of these different means by which people engage in nature, right? And I know that...I kind of at some point, I don't know if I have the brainwidth to do it, the brain space to do it right now, I want to problematize the idea of nature, problematize the idea that nature is this separate thing that is distinct from humans, and even--if you want to piss off people--it's even a separate thing that it's not separate from industrial society, right? Like anything that humans make. But there's all of these different ways that people interact with nature. And it's like really interesting to see which ones are useful for people now in the world to learn how to disengage and which ones are useful for people in different kinds of collapse scenarios, different disasters and things and so it's like...You know, I haven't had on someone to talk specifically about bushcraft, but It seems like bushcraft is almost the like step more modern than like what you do, right? Like, because like bushcraft would be like, "Well, you have your saw on your axe and you can build your log cabin, right?" Which is in some ways, I think the least sustainable way for modern people to go interact with nature. But maybe I'm only saying that because I haven't interviewed a bushcraft person who's gonna sell me on it really well. And then you have Earth skills, which is like the least--not necessarily the least impactful--but the least, requires the least resources, right? Versus you have the ways that outdoor athletes, like hikers, and skiers, and snowboarders--I don't know, I don't know anything about winter--interact with it, versus the way that like hunters interact with it, right? And there's like all of these different ways that people interact with and I'm really interested about it. So that's like...what you're talking about, like, here's how to go... Like, I don't know how to start a fire by friction. I've seen people do it. I still don't really believe it. It doesn't seem real because I've tried. But it's really, really hard, I think. I don't know,
Burdock 11:07 It's really hard because these skills need to be passed down from person to person. And in a lot of cultures it's like cultural information. It's encoded in the songs, and in the stories, and it's encoded in everything. And so even as a child, if no one's showing you how to do it, you know from the stories and the songs maybe what plants on the landscape are useful for that. And you've seen people around you do it. Most people when they're trying to start friction fire they maybe have never even seen people do it before. They just have this concept in their mind of like rubbing sticks together, or like they saw it a little bit in a video, or they even watched a tutorial on how to do it. But, that's not enough because you learn these things through the senses. You have to be able to see and touch and hear. And when you can't do that, it's really hard to learn them.
Margaret 12:01 Ya, no. That makes sense. Also, usually I here now make a joke about how everything that I don't understand is fake. But, I actually don't want to here. I do it about fishing usually. Usually my joke is that fishing is fake. But, I've seen people start friction fires and it's cool. So, one of the main reasons to learn this is for the here and now, is like ways to disconnect, and ways to you know, go out and engage in nature, again, the loaded word, "nature." Okay, so one of the things I think that we talked about wanting to talk about now is where earth skills fit within the sort of subset of prepping. Like, I am under the impression that the Earth skills scene, for example, is like kind of a prepping scene in some ways, just not the same as the one that most people know about.
Burdock 12:50 Yeah, it's a lot like bushcraft, and it's a lot like even like backpacking, and it's a lot like homesteading, and it's a lot like all these things. And then the core difference is like basically starting from scratch-scratch. Like you're making all the tools that you're using to do all these projects. You're...If you have a backpack, you're like making that backpack and you have to make the material that the backpack is made out of like...
Margaret 13:22 You have to make nylon. [Laughing].
Burdock 13:25 Right, you have to make the nylon. You have to go harvest the oil and process it. [Probably said jokingly]
Margaret 13:29 [Incredulously] Do people do that?
Burdock 13:30 I recently went to a gathering where you had to drive past this like oil well thing that was just like actually actively pumping oil from the Earth.
Margaret 13:40 Oh my God.
Burdock 13:41 It was actually a great reality check, though. Because it's like, "Oh, we're going to this gathering. We're all pretending that we live in this like beautiful, ideal community where everybody wears natural clothes and stuff." And it's like, yeah, this is...We're all driving here. Like we're all involved in this.
Margaret 14:00 Well, and it gets into this--I want to come back to the prepping thing, but I want to follow on this tangent really quick--It gets into this thing that I think about a lot. I've been like camping and hiking more a lot recently--mostly because I realized I can because I work on a computer on my own schedule for living. And like mostly I read history books for a living and I'm like, "I can do that in a hammock in the woods." And so I've been trying to do that. And one of the things that's like been really striking me is this reminder that there like is no outside. And I mean that--like I mean there's like outside the house--but there's like no outside of society, like there's no...Like the closest we have are like wilderness areas, at least in continental US you know is where I hang out, right, but there's like...You're not...Like, we're like choosing to not bring Fritos with us, right? It's not that the Fritos aren't available to us, you know. And like...And at least the way I do it, I'm like driving there and stuff, but also it's like, even when I go find like the free dispersed camping and stuff, there's like tons of other people around, which is actually fine. It helps break--So I kind of wonder whether Earth skills falls into this a little more than it should--it helps break the like frontiersman mentality, the like, "I'm going to go tame nature," and that's like something that's always kind of...Not rubbed me the wrong way about all Earth skills, but like seemed like a danger available to the Earth skills community. But maybe I'm completely off base. I don't know how people handle that or talk about it.
Burdock 15:26 No, that's really on point. I think there's a lot of like...There's a lot of bizarre ways...I feel like within the Earth skills community, what I see the most is people having this like reverential, like, "I have this spiritual connection with the Earth and with these plants." And there's this kind of disconnect, in a way, with like..Yeah, I don't know how they're actually living their lives, how they're actually behaving. Like, I feel like people don't acknowledge enough, like, "I regard the world and the earth in this way, but I also am exploiting it in the way that I live, too. And I'm playing a part in..." You know, like, some of these people are rich. Some of the people who do this stuff, they have land and that's why they have enough time to learn how to tan hides, like as a hobby, you know? And there's no acknowledgment there of like, that's contributing to this, like, apocalypse thing that's being foretold in like Tom Brown's--he's a primitive skills teacher guy--prophecy, doomsday stuff, like...
Margaret 16:54 No, that makes sense. Because it's like most people...Most people who are making money through Capitalism or whatever like at large scale--not like people who work at Starbucks or whatever because they have to--the people that like own Starbucks. The person who owns Starbucks might be able to have like, a million acres somewhere that they can keep pristine so they can go around and build huts or whatever, but they're doing that by like, destroying the shit out of Central America or whatever, you know?
Burdock 17:19 Right!
Margaret 17:21 It's interesting. And, okay. I'm actually really interested in Earth skills stuff and so it sounds like I'm talking shit, but I really don't mean it this way.
Burdock 17:29 No, you gotta talk shit about it. I talk shit about it because I love it and I want it to be good.
Margaret 17:33 Yeah, no, it makes sense. I wonder whether how much--at least again, in the continental US--settler people, like white people in the United States, how much there's like this, like...I kind of hate framing things....I hate publicly framing things this way because I don't know how to do it better. But, like, I feel like there's this curse, where people like want to have a certain type of connection and almost just like can't because it's just cursed to them. Because...Not because of blood or something, but because of being a settler of a culture that has come and destroyed this place. You know? And so it feels like trying to...It's not...It's still worth trying to engage in stuff. But it feels like there's this like insurmountable or very hard to surmount curse that disconnects us. And when I'm using us, I--I actually don't know anything about you--it disconnects me and other white people from connecting in certain ways with this specific land. And I...I don't know how to say it better than that because I'm not trying to make this like...Well, I mean, I believe in the decolonization of the US, like, on a political level, right, I believe that the United States is an empire that should not exist and occupies stolen land that should be, you know, returned. But, I'm still not trying to make a like permanent proclamation about something on a spiritual level. But I just I feel like there's like this thing that has to be overcome. And I don't know whether it's possible. I think I gave you a really easy question there. [Jokingly]
Burdock 19:08 I love it, because this is what I think about all the time. And I agree with all of those...like everything you said about this country, basically. Like, I'm on the same page. And it's been something I've been thinking about a lot because when I started doing this 11 years ago, that stuff wasn't on my mind. Like, I was just like, "I'm 19. I don't like living in a city." And as I've...You know, and the school, I went to appropriated a lot. And I've been to gatherings where there's a lot of appropriation and it wasn't on my radar. And then it's been thanks to a lot of the work that indigenous people are doing and black people are doing in that I've like, come into this awareness like...But, it's also been through the plants and the land themselves.
Burdock 20:00 It had to come over time. Like when I was at that school 10 years ago, we harvested wild rice. And that...that's like a real...it's the cornerstone of the traditions of all of the people who live where wild rice lives. And then I moved, and I was trying to continue harvesting wild rice and there were a lot of layers about it. Like, it kept not working out for me. And then it was like...I like...It kept not working out until in one way or another I accidentally gave tobacco to the water. And then it would be like, "Oh, now it's working." And so I figured that out. And then after I figured that out, I was really hearing from the land, like, for the first couple of years, it was like, "It's great that someone's here. It's great that someone's like, seeing us and acknowledging us. Like, we're the wild rice and we missed people." And the longer I listened, the more I was like, "Oh, you don't miss like me. You miss "the" people. Like, you miss "your" people and the songs and the stories and the way that those people live and the way that those people live with you. You miss them and I will never be able to be that for you." All I can do is hear that. And that doesn't really answer your question. But, it takes time and a lot of listening and moving at the speed of relationship.
Margaret 20:00 No, that makes sense.
Margaret 20:02 Okay, that makes sense. And I, you know, and I don't want to like specifically call out this community more than any other community, right? Like, I think that people engaging in a lot of this kind of stuff...Well, I don't know, I'm not in a place to make any kind of judgment about that. I'm not part of either the things that I'm talking about, but to people...Okay, so let's go back a step. We were talking about how Earth skills are a subset of prepping or of the prepping world. And I'm wondering if you want to talk more about that. Like, how does it engage with your own preparedness? How can communities use this kind of knowledge to become more resilient is like one of the big questions I have.
Burdock 22:22 Yeah, I think most of the people who engage in Earth's skills aren't thinking very hard about how it actually applies to prepping, but they do believe in some kind of like, apocalyptic future. And that's one of the reasons that they do it. But they're like not thinking about it that hard. They're not thinking about it in real terms.
Margaret 22:42 It's just a utopian thing for them. They're like, "Industrial civilization will collapse. And we'll all be free"?
Burdock 22:46 There like, yeah there will be a lot of suffering, but like, you know, and then we'll be free and it'll be fine. Well, I'll live in huts in the woods. And nothing will be problematic anymore.
Margaret 22:59 Yeah. Because there's...Then you get to have an outside once everyone's dead. That's one of my problems with it.
Burdock 23:05 It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. And like, I used to kind of think that way before I really thought about it. And I'm like, I have too much like, compassion for human beings to wish for anything like that. Like some people want this, like doomsday type thing to happen. But yeah, natural disasters happen. Things happen all the time that we want to be prepared for. And, I just feel like me existing and having like this little library of skills in my brain and my body, it makes it so that anywhere that I am, all the people around me have that skill. And so if we're stuck in a situation where like, we don't have matches, we don't have a lighter. All this stuff happens spontaneously. Like, I know of more than one way to start fire without those things. And so yeah, just having any one person knowing any of those skills, it makes you more prepared for things...Like you can only prepare for so many things.
Margaret 24:11 Yeah, totally.
Burdock 24:12 Like you cannot like, "Oh yeah, I brought matches, but I didn't think about water filtration, or I dropped my water filtration device and it's never to be found again or." And also just like even if you have all those things, if you're in a long term situation, like you're gonna run out of matches. You're gonna run out a lighter fuel. Your clothing is gonna deteriorate. Like you do need to...Even if you even if you like have access to warehouses of this modern stuff, it's important to be passing down these skills person to person. And I think it changes the way that you engage with the world as it is presently, which I think needs to happen.
Margaret 24:59 That It makes a lot of sense that. So, teaching these skills and learning these skills both makes you more prepared in the sense that you know how to start a fire if shit goes bad for a couple days and you know how to repair clothes or fix clothes or make clothes from scratch if shit does stays bad, but that also--I'm just saying back what I think what I think you're saying--but also, people learning these skills also teaches people like, nicer ways to engage with the environment that they're in and like more useful ways to...like less destructive ways of being. Is that kind of what you're saying?
Burdock 25:35 It's having a different mindset, like...
Margaret 25:41 A grind-set kind of deal.
Burdock 25:42 I process a lot of roadkill.
Margaret 25:43 The road kill grind set.
Burdock 25:44 Yes, I process a lot of roadkill deer, the roadkill grind set next, and it's just changed the way I've thought about them a lot. Like, and how I think about all animals but particularly deer, like they're no longer just this, like, being I see in the distance in the land or like a see their dead bodies around, I'm just like, they, each one of them has a unique personality. Each one of them has led a life of like, that we cannot comprehend as humans, you know? And, and each one of them holds in their bodies, like the things that can keep us alive. And I mean that both on this like strictly physical level where it's like, there's bone tools, and there's meat to eat, and fat to eat, and there's connective tissue for bag making. And, like, there's that but it's also...it's also on an emotional level. It's also on a, on a spiritual level, if you're into that.
Margaret 26:53 Okay, well, let's talk about roadkill because that's probably what's going to be the title of the episode. Maybe not. Maybe you all are listening to "Earth skills with Burdock," instead of "Roadkill with Burdock." I'm not sure. But yeah, okay, so like, so I see a dead thing. How rough should we start here? Like, cause some of the questions that people have about roadkill. right, one of the main questions is, "Can you eat that? Is that safe?" Right? That's like...And then there's like "How to?" Right? There's the like, "Can you?" and then "How to." And I guess there's two different things, there's the eating and then there's....
Burdock 27:35 Assessment.
Margaret 27:36 Oh, okay. Oh, I was gonna say, well, there's the eating the animal and then there's the making stuff with the animal.
Burdock 27:44 First there's the assessing of the animal.
Margaret 27:47 Okay, so let's hear how to assess. I got really embarrassed once. I was...There was a roadkill deer on my property and my neighbor...
Burdock 27:55 Oh, on your property.
Margaret 27:56 Yeah. I live rurally. Or, I don't know if you're just taking us a jab at the fact that I'm referring to it as "my property."
Burdock 28:02 No, no, I just mean that that happened. Like right there.
Margaret 28:06 Oh, yeah. No, I, there's deer all around where I live. And. And, you know, all I know is that there's a dead deer intact on my property. And we're like, I don't know how this thing died. And I was like, "Hey, neighbor, do you want this?" And my neighbor was like, "That's no good." And I'm like, "How do you know?" And they just like, look at me and they're like, "Well, it's just no good." And I'm like, "Oh, you grew up knowing how to assess a deer." Because in my mind, well, it's not it's not rotting. I don't know anything about this besides that it's not rotting, you know?
Burdock 28:41 Yeah, well, and I think different people also have different ideas of what is and isn't good, even people who have experience with processing roadkill, with picking up and working with roadkill. Some people think all roadkill is just not good to eat. And there is something in that because the impact does damage the tissues and sometimes even a fresh deer is just...it's just pulverized on the inside in a way that like even if it's not their stomach contents in the meat--that's something people worry about--but like the muscle tissue itself has just kind of exploded interiorly and it does...Injured tissue doesn't taste good. And so if you've assessed the deer and you've said "This deer. I'm going to continue processing this deer. I think there might be food for me inside of this deer," having a framework in your mind for what is and isn't normal tissue is important. And a huge way of how you learn that is just doing it a lot. But, I think the main way that you're going to assess a deer, and the way I assess them, is smell. And, like, if an animal smells really bad, they're rotting and you shouldn't eat them. And if but if you can, like getting them off the road a little farther, so scavengers aren't putting themselves at risk when they're going to eat the deer is nice. It's really nice to do. But yeah, another thing that I do, if I come upon a roadkill deer or other roadkill animal, is you can, super simple test, just pull on the hair of the belly. And if it comes out, just like with no effort at all, that rotting is really set in. And you don't want to use the hide. You don't want to eat the meat.
Margaret 30:52 You don't want to use to hide if it's rotten?
Burdock 30:54 Yeah, I mean, particularly for first because the fur is all going to slip, but at that point, like if the hair is slipping, there's enough bacteria present in even the hide that it's a health risk to move forward with processing them, especially like you know, bacteria from a rotting hide getting into any kind of open wound on the hand. I get cuts on my hands a lot because I do lots of my hands. People you can get infections and they're really bad.
Margaret 31:29 What if I have Earth skilled myself like a nitrile hazmat suit?
Burdock 31:35 Then you're fine. Or I mean, even, if you really wanted to tan that deer skin, you could like wear some gloves and get the hide and flush it and get it into like a alkaline solution, like a wood ash solution. And that would actually neutralize things. And from that point forward, the hide would be fine to work with. But you know, until then, you gotta you gotta put on your earth skills latex gloves.
Margaret 32:01 Yeah. Well, and it's probably worth pointing out that if you are learning how to do this from a podcast, do not try the expert level thing.
Burdock 32:09 No. Even putting a hide in wood ash has just taken me years to figure out, like, "How much water to mix with the wood ash," and "How much...How to assess like when do you even want to do that?" And yeah, yeah, most of the information about that out there is really bad. And the way I learned it was my friend just being like, "Here, this is how it should feel," and me being like, "Oh, okay, it should feel slippery like this. And that, that means it's the right amount of wood ash and the right amount of water" Like dammit, yeah.
Margaret 32:41 Yeah, that makes sense. That's the kind of thing that you can't get from YouTube or a podcast, you know?
Burdock 32:48 No, you can't.
Margaret 32:51 Okay, okay, so, you've done the initial assessment.
Burdock 32:54 No, you've done the actual assessment.
Margaret 32:56 It's, it smells fine, the hair on the belly doesn't slip, and you've...so then you cut into it. And I'm so grossed out by it, but I'm going to do this for out listeners. I think everyone who listens knows that I'm vegan, but also have no ethical qualms with roadkill or hunting, personally. But, so I'm going to try my best. So then you like cut it up, right? And you're like, "Oh, there's meat in here?" Is that the?
Burdock 33:24 Yeah, well,...
Margaret 33:26 It's like a video game, right?
Burdock 33:28 Usually you have to--unless they die on the road right outside of your house and even then--you need to move their body to where it's safe for you to process them. And so there have been times in Maine where all I've had to do is move the deer off the road because it's wooded and there's not going to be some person coming over and being like, "This is my land. What are you doing here with this dead deer?" But sometimes you have to put the deer in your car. That's a whole thing. But after you're at a place where it's safe to do that process...Yeah, I mean, do you want me to really get into...the details of it?
Margaret 34:05 Yeah, I mean, like maybe not like totally blow-by-blow but like...Okay, like how much am I willing to disassociate for this? Maybe don't tell me how to like...You know what, let's let's cut to the...I'm sorry everyone you're gonna need a different teacher...We'll cut to once you've got the meat and the skin and they are separate things. I don't need to know about the organs as much, but maybe there's like big, like, "Don't rupture the such and such." I think there's like some organ that if you rupture, it's like all over. Everything smells awful.
Burdock 34:40 It's really, it's not hard to not do that. I think people make a really big deal about the gallbladder. Yeah, I feel like if you're just starting out, like if you're just starting out, if you're picking up a deer, they should smell neutral. Like if they smell a little bit like a horse to you or like like grass, like that's what you want. Sometimes I pick up deer who smell different, but it's because I've had time to figure that out. And you want to just, for roadkill, remove all guts. Just don't deal with that. And then you're dealing with a clean body and a skin. There's lots of skinning videos on YouTube. And there's lots of different ways to do it. You know, like, you know, the different ways to...
Margaret 35:29 Not allowed to how a 30 round magazine.
Burdock 35:31 Yeah. [Laughing a little confused]
Margaret 35:32 YouTube, you're not allowed to do a 30 round magazine, but you can watch some animal get removed from its skin. It's bad.
Burdock 35:38 Totally and it's, it's not considered violent or anything.
Margaret 35:42 Yeah. I mean, whatever, I'm completely fine with it. But anyway,
Burdock 35:45 It's just different standards. But yeah, and I like to just quarter the animals and just what that means is having a back leg, and another back leg, and a front leg, and another front leg, and then the torso and you can break that down however much you want. But you just have these kind of large chunks. And from that point, if it's good, if it's the right weather for it, you can just hang the meat. And the meat is okay just hanging outside. And I have to do that a lot because I often am not living with refrigerators and freezers. Some people, when they get a roadkill deer, they either choose to or they need to process all the meat right then and there and like wrap it in plastic or paper and put it in the freezer and it takes like all day. Yeah, but it's...I think it's more ideal if you just get to hang up some legs and a torso.
Margaret 36:48 What's the legality of taking roadkill?
Burdock 36:48 It varies from state to state.
Margaret 36:49 Okay, great.
Burdock 36:50 So, you got to look up what your state says about that.
Margaret 37:00 Don't break and then point to us about it.
Burdock 37:03 Don't break the law. But also different cops have different feelings about it. Like some of them secretly think that you're really cool for doing that. And so even if they like see you doing it there, they ignore it.
Margaret 37:19 Yeah, fair. Okay. Okay, so. And for anyone who's listening, the reason that there's...Like a slight lag. And so that's like, why my dumb interjections aren't always working. Otherwise, they would be incredibly funny and everyone would be laughing all the time. It'd be a laugh track. [Joking] And so, okay, so you've got your drawn and quartered animal where you've tied it between four horses and pulled it all four directions and then...Sorry, wait, that's the medieval torture. So, we've quartered the animal. Alright, so the meat. We don't talk about cooking meat and stuff. Right? That's meat. Alright. So yeah, but you want to talk hide, right?
Burdock 37:59 Yeah. Hiiiiides. [Excitedly inflected upwards like singing] I love having the honor and privilege to work with animal skins. And I think that it's a huge thing to do because like with the meat you're eating, it's gonna be back in the earth pretty soon, but with the skin, you're suspending a part of the animal away from the Earth where they normally go when they die for like a long time. And that requires this huge effort. And it takes a long time to learn. And it takes a lot of infrastructure, especially for larger skins like deer skins, if you're making brain tanned leather or bark tanned leather--and we can get into all the different kinds of tanning if we want--but yeah, you need physical infrastructure. And, you can make all that stuff pretty easily. But then that also takes time. So...Uhhh...I've gotten to a place where I can improvise a lot, but there's also...it's, way easier to work with a skin when I just have like, the physical infrastructure already there. Like if I'm traveling and I show up at a friend's place and they have all that stuff ready to go, I don't have to think about it. Like a scraping beam. That's the first thing you need because when you remove the skin from the animal, they usually have some muscle tissue and maybe fat still on the skin, and you need to remove that because that's what's gonna be starting to rot the soonest. And you do that by...I mean there's other ways to do it, but I do it by draping the skin over like a log and pinning the skin between my body--which I have like an apron of some sort on--and the log and I use a metal scraping tool. It's quite dull--you don't want it to be sharp because you don't want to puncture the skin--to push the muscle and fat tissue off of the skin. You got to do that for every skin you're working on. A lot of it...From there, there's a plethora of options, but every skin needs to at least be fleshed, as they call it, just the process of removing muscle and fat tissue.
Margaret 40:27 Okay, so where does the skill tree build up from there if you're playing a video game? I don't know. So, you said there's a bunch of different options. So there's like--I'm going to make them up--so there's like rawhide, and there's brain tan--there's natural tannins--and then there's vegetable...Wait no, and then there's mineral tanning, which means chemical tanning. And which means it'll never rot into the Earth and therefore is unholy by the standards that I personally hold. In a similar way as plastic, which I totally use, and so I'm not actually casting judgment here. Okay, those are the only three I know of.
Burdock 41:03 I love that you said rawhide first.
Margaret 41:07 Well, that seems like the most...It's the one where you do the least...I don't know.
Burdock 41:11 Yes, I love rawhide. And I think that people don't give rawhide enough credit. Because you can use rawhide in a lot of ways. And people use tanned skins for a lot of things you can just use rawhide for. Like, please save yourself the effort. Like, it's a great place to start if you want to work with skins. And it's a great place to start. It's just making rawhide and using it.
Margaret 41:37 Okay, but what are people using it for that...What are people using a tanned leather that they could be using rawhide for?
Burdock 41:43 Like hides that you're going to sleep on, or sit on the ground with, or even put on a chair, like they don't need to be softened the way that hides that you're going to put on your body and wear as clothing needs to be.
Margaret 42:02 So it's about softening them not about preserving them?
Burdock 42:06 Well, it's also about preservation because...I'll use the example of using a hide to sit on the ground. I prefer rawhide for sitting on the ground,because it takes rawhide a lot longer to absorb moisture from the grounds. At least in the places where I live, the ground has moisture in it. And if you're putting pressure on a hide you're sitting on it's going to be sucking up that moisture. And a tanned hide, like a brain can hide especially, it is more like a towel. It will it will take in moisture faster and more easily. Even on a really humid day, if it's like foggy or it's really humid, a brain tanned buckskin, for example, is just going to pull moisture in from the air and just become wet.
Margaret 43:04 This sounds awful. You're describing a nightmare. You are trapped in another creature's moist skin.
Burdock 43:09 And that's and that's why like I lament, for a lot of reasons, but with you know, with the genocide of so many people, you lose these, like finer details. Like if people who lived in the territory of the Penobscot, for example, wore buckskins, how did they deal with it when they absorbed moisture from the air? Like what? Yeah, did they? How did they prevent that from happening? Or like, how did they deal with that? Or did they just...was it not a big deal and they dealt with it? I don't know. And it's...it's hard. It's hard to even like mentally process how much of that finer detail, more land specifics information, is if not lost, unmoored and difficult to to find. Yeah.
Margaret 44:24 Okay, so the three methods...Am I wrong that it's the three methods? There's rawhide, vegetable tanning, which is brain and bark, any natural tannin--I'm literally making this up--and mineral tanning which is chemical stuff.
Burdock 44:41 Yeah, so your your close.
Margaret 44:44 Okay.
Burdock 44:45 Rawhide. And then I categorize brain tanning and vegetable tanning differently, but I consider those both natural tanning methods. And a lot of people just say naturally tanned, though, and then they don't go into details. And when they can't tell you more information it's usually chemically tanned anyways.
Margaret 45:07 Oh, I thought you could tell by like cutting the leather. I was like in the leather working for this brief moment. Like, I wasn't very good at it. I thought you could like tell by like cutting the leather and it was like darker if it was...I'm expecting I'm wrong. I thought was like darker if had been mineral tanned inside.
Burdock 45:25 Honestly, I think it's hard for me to tell even now as a tanner, sometimes, like, what, in what manner hide was tanned. It's usually pretty obvious, but sometimes it's a little unclear. Yeah, those are kind of the two natural tannings and then there's alum tanning, which I know nothing about it, but it does seem kind of in between natural and mineral tanning. Or maybe it's...You know, some people would say, "That's a natural method." And some people will say, "That's not natural." But I don't know anything about it so I'm not gonna talk about it. And then yeah, there's all the more industrial methods of tanning where they're constantly using new chemicals to do it because either the old ones got outlawed or they can't find those chemicals anymore. Or, you know, they have to like put everything...they have to put the whole tanning station on a boat and put that boat into waters where there aren't regulations about these things so that they can dump the caustic stuff that they're using, just you know, into the ocean, like it's that...It's that level. So yeah, commercial tanning is is bad, y'all.
Margaret 46:40 Well, no. Okay, so this makes me feel better about...the weakest part--I don't really proselytize veganism, people will do whatever they want--but the weakest part of veganism in general is when people are like "Use vegan leather instead," because what they mean is use plastic instead. Right? Yeah. And like using plastic instead of leather is like not actually doing anyone except possibly the factory farmed animal any favors, right? But if the way that commercial leather is treated is also fucking evil then it like moves a point back over. Anyway....
Burdock 47:17 Over to the vegan side.
Margaret 47:20 Yeah, I totally...
Burdock 47:24 I mean, watch out. Someday they're gonna figure out cactus leather, or mushroom leather, or kombucha scobi leather.
Margaret 47:31 They're working on mushroom leather.
Burdock 47:35 I don't think that any of those leathers are ever going to be able to do animal-based leather can do.
Margaret 47:48 I have no counter argument. Okay, so I'm guessing that you're a proponent of vegetable tanned leather, or naturally tanned leather and not chemically tanned leather. Is that an accurate assessment?
Burdock 48:03 Yeah, yeah. But there are...you can get vegetable tanned leather commercially, too. And it's different from the home tanned stuff. It is often still done in pretty shitty and unsustainable ways. But at least there's less like chemicals involved. Some of the barks that are used in the commercial vegetable tanning are like from the Amazon rainforest and they're byproducts or products of like deforestation that shouldn't be happening. So there's that too. I like the home tanned stuff because you know what's going into it? You don't have to ask those questions. "Where did this come from?" "Oh, I found this deer on the road." "Where did the bark come from?" "I found the bark that had just fallen up the street,that just fallen. I took the bark. I boiled the bark, I put the hide in the bark. I waited a long time. I kept changing the water and then I took the hide out and I put oil in it and I softened it while it was drying and now, now it's my shoes."
Margaret 49:15 I really liked the speed run of tanning and you just did.
Burdock 49:20 Well that but that's just vegetable tanning. Brain tanning is a little different.
Margaret 49:24 Okay, so is brain tanning and vegetable tanning both using something called tannin, which is some kind of chemical thingy that naturally occurs in a bunch of different stuff including acorns and some bark and apparently brains to do stuff to the leather? Is that the big idea?
Burdock 49:48 Vaguely Yes. So brain tanning involves no tannins. At that point...And pretty much at any point tanning is like a colloquialism. It's a word that we say that doesn't necessarily have an association with tannins anymore. And what people mean when they say tanning is they just mean that the hide has been softened and preserved.
Margaret 50:11 Okay.
Burdock 50:12 But the only method in which that's happening with tannins is the vegetable tanning method. And vegetable just means plant matter in that context. So it can be leaves, it can be bark. I don't want to get into the acorns thing because I've never successfully like boiled acorns or acorn shells and gotten tannins that I'm happy with. I think it's a myth. But maybe other people have other experiences with that. And if you have, tell me how you do it.
Margaret 50:48 Okay, but why would someone pick brain tanning? Because in my mind, I'd be like, "Oh, well, the thing you got comes with the thing you need," like so it seems like brains are gross as shit but like a natural--I mean you're already doing something gross as shit--so whatever. It seems like a natural thing. Like why? Why do you fuck around with leaves and bark when the brains right there? Or like what are the...how do you decide how you're going to tan your shoes?
Burdock 51:18 Yeah, different leathers for different purposes. And they behave differently as well. Brain tanning...And it really shouldn't be gross. Like, if there's bad smells going on, something's wrong and you need to figure that out. It shouldn't. It shouldn't smell bad even though the concept of like, "I'm touching a skin. I'm touching a brain," might be...uncomfortable
Margaret 51:44 Yeah, yeah. It's not gross because of the smell. It's gross because you're inside something. It's gross. Yeah, but this is my own...I don't like the inside of my own body. Like this is fine.
Burdock 51:56 Yeah, yeah, outside it's fine.
Margaret 51:59 Yeah, well like half the reason I'm vegans is I'm like, "Well, that's just gross so I just don't fuck with it." I don't know. Anyway,
Burdock 52:07 Um, yeah. So I like brain tanned leather for clothing that's going to be against my skin, for example.
Margaret 52:19 Makes you smart.
Burdock 52:21 Yeah. It's always going to be softer and more supple in general, more flexible. But, it absorbs water, it absorbs moisture the most quickly from out of all of the leathers. So, it's not great for for instance, shoes in a climate where the ground is wet a lot. Right. Even though buckskin moccasins are incredible footwear, it's really nice to be able to feel the Earth while your feet are protected. But, if they got wet, it feels really gross. And it just like it deteriorates quickly. Like if you wear your buckskin moccasins and they get wet and you continue wearing them, they are going to get holes and wear out very soon. You know? Vegetable tanned leather doesn't absorb moisture as quickly. And it's it's generally a little tougher. And I think rawhide doesn't absorb moisture...It takes the longest to absorb moisture. It's the toughest. Okay, yeah, yeah. And what brains do to the hide is it's just it's just a softening agent. It does the same thing. Oil for vegetable tanned leather is also just a softening agent. The preservative agent and brain tanning is smoke. It's the woods smoke. After the softening process, you can stitch the whole hide up like a balloon and fill it with wood smoke by making a super smoky fire and like funneling all the smoke into it. I'm oversimplifying a lot. And you turn it inside out and smoke the other side. And it's the aldehydes in the smoke that are acting as the preserving agent.
Margaret 54:20 Okay, that...Yeah, that makes sense. You can smoke meat. So yeah, to preserve it. Okay, okay, I know about meat. [Said skeptically. Then laughs]
Burdock 54:35 Yeah, whereas with vegetable tanning, the preservatives, the actual tannins that are in the plants, you're boiling or cold leaching them so that they come into the water and then from the water they go into the hide and they bind with the fibers of the hide. But tannins, the way that you know something is tannin right, is like tasting it. You put in your mouth and it's like, it feels horrible. It has this drying quality. It's more astringent than bitter. It's more about the astringent action. And the astringency, it's like...it's like this drying, puckering thing. And so when you put a hide and tannins, it's stripping it of moisture, it's very drying. And it actually causes the whole hide to kind of pucker up a little bit so it gets a little smaller and it gets thicker.
Margaret 55:33 Everyone who's listening, I'm very sad that you didn't get to see Burdock enact what happens to the hide. You're just gonna have to imagine at home.
Burdock 55:44 The little dance.
Margaret 55:48 Anyway, sorry.
Burdock 55:49 I have to get my brain back into science mode. So yeah, once you've...once all the tannins have bound all the fibers in the hide, and it can't absorb any more tannins, you need to replace all of the like glubons and stuff that have been stripped out with oil. If you don't oil a vegetable tanned hide...like if you don't oil a hide that's full of tannins, it's really brittle because of the drying astringent quality of tannins.
Margaret 56:24 Are you getting that oil from animal fats? Because, I'm under the impression that oil is like one of the harder things to source in the wild.
Burdock 56:31 It can be. It can be any kind of fat. It could even be, yeah, egg yolks or brains. It can be...but it can be like plant fats, you know, olive oil. Some people use olive oil. Some people use Neatsfoot oil, it's like this really specific thing. I still don't really fully understand what it is. You can use coconut oil. You could use...but I use bear fat. That's really abundant in the places I've been living. And a lot of it is discarded every year during bear hunting season. And I try to...I keep in connection with the local game processor. So he gives me the fat and I render the fat and I gift a lot of that fat to the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot and pretty much any local indigenous folks who want it. And then the stuff that's like not quality enough to gift. I keep for myself and use for hide and other stuff. And because that's like the abundant fat of the landscape I've been living on.
Margaret 57:43 Yeah, as compared to like something like olive oil, which is basically people being like, here's the thing that I think is cool that applies to a very different climate than...
Burdock 57:52 I mean if you dumpster dived that olive oil, you know, good on you.
Margaret 57:58 Okay, well, we're almost out of time. But actually, one of the things I find so interesting about this is that like, rather than replicating, like just what was done before civilization or whatever...What was done before civilization was using available resources. And so we have such different available resources now. And so that's why I love the inclusion of something like dumpster diving, or even like roadkill, right? Roadkill is not a very natural process. And again, it's complicated, "natural," but whenever I'm using it. Yeah, you know, like things getting hit by the fact that I drive a giant fucking truck, like, I hate that but whatever. And, and so that's actually one of things that's really interesting to me. I really liked this thing that you're talking about, like, "Okay, we find what is discarded and work with it." That's like the part that really appeals to me the most, besides a preparedness point of view, the idea of working with refuse in a society that throws too much away, has always appealed to me. I no longer subsist off of dumpster diving, but I did for a very long time. And I really liked the idea of like dumpster diving the roads, you know? It's interesting to me.
Burdock 59:11 That's some major raccoon energy right there.
Margaret 59:14 Yeah, totally. Um, okay, well, what is the...Okay do you have any like final thoughts either about Earth skills, or about tannins, or why tannins are overrated, or anything like that?
Burdock 59:31 I love tannins and I love vegetable tanning, but it is definitely the highest effort kind of tanning because you need so much plant matter. So so so so so much. And it takes a lot of physical labor to process all of that. So if you can use rawhide, use rawhide, and if you can't use rawhide, use buckskin, and if you can't...or brain tan, and if you can't use brain tan leather, then vegetable tan leather is is a good option. That's kind of how I tried to approach it. And my other note is just that it takes way, way, way, way, way longer than you think it's gonna take. And that's a good thing. Learning any of these skills and doing any of these things.
Margaret 1:00:25 Because one of the things that...I was gonna leave the last word and then I keep thinking about things. I'm sorry. One of things I was thinking about I remember, because there's this whole argument about like, did vikings wear leather. If you want to like fall down a weird rabbit hole, look at the fucking Norweeboos and arguing about that.
Burdock 1:00:42 [Squealing] The Viking discourse is so weird.
Margaret 1:00:47 Yeah. And when I try and...I really like writing Dark Age fantasy, right? I know [incoherent] Dark Ages, but I don't like high medieval, I like low medieval. So I like writing early Middle Ages fantasy as...That is my sweet spot, right, Because they have the cooler helmets and swords barely exists. Anyway, whatever. Yeah. And arguments about leather and like leather clothing. Right? And. And there's not a lot of historical record of people wearing leather clothing in Norweeboo land. What is that called? Norway, Sweden? And some of my listeners are there. I'm sorry. I'm a terrible person. So and, and so there's all these arguments about it. But then I learned how much work was involved in making a yard of linen. Like to sew into clothes. And you're talking about--I'm gonna get this number wrong because it's been a while since I looked this up--it was like a week's worth of work for someone to make a square yard of linen fabric. And so when I look at that, I'm like, "Yeah, of course they fucking wore leather. What the fuck? Why wouldn't you?" But and then, I mean, you've gone over some reasons why you might not want it for some of your clothing. But, um, yeah. But that is an interesting thing that you're bringing up about it takes way longer than you think. That was my train of thought. Sorry.
Burdock 1:02:13 Yeah, I mean, what if I told you that it also takes a week to manufacture a square foot of leather. I mean, that's, that's not necessarily true. For vegetable tanned leather, though, it takes longer than that. And that's why I'm saying that's a way bigger investment. And that's something you don't want to make every single thing out of. But, for like brain tanned leather, yeah. I guess in a week, you could produce six square feet. I mean, depending on who you are. Some people are fast, some people are slow. And if you've been doing it for a longer time, you can do it faster. And the weather conditions. And what the hide is doing. There's so many factors.
Margaret 1:02:53 Fine. Back to linen I go. I mean, that's more what I like wearing anyway. But anyway, okay, okay. Well, if people want to...I don't even know whether, I can't remember whether you do like...Should people try to find you on the internet? Would you prefer to not be found? What...Do you have anything that you want to plug here at the end of all things?
Burdock 1:03:14 [In a low and ornate voice] I don't want anybody to find me? I just live secluded in the forest. [Switches to normal] No, I have an Instagram. My handle @scragetywocket and it's all one word. Great. But if you can't find me, that means I've changed my instagram handle to @huge_racc. [said like "Huge Rack"] And that's RACC. I did a poll and everybody thinks I should change it to that. So I'm considering it. Which is referencing raccoons by the way.
Margaret 1:03:51 Yeah, of course. Totally.
Burdock 1:03:58 Okay, yeah. You can cut that out if you want.
Margaret 1:04:05 No, no, it's staying in. Alright. Well, thank you so much for coming on. And explaining all of these things that I'm both incredibly interested in and incredibly terrified of learning. So thank you.
Burdock 1:04:19 Thank you. It's been great to chat about all this stuff. Thanks for being open to it.
Margaret 1:04:23 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoy this episode, then you should go live like a raccoon. That was the one takeaway that you should have had from this. Or, you should tell people about this episode and other episodes of Live Like the World is Dying. And you can also support us, you can support us by telling people about it, which is already covered, and you can support us on Patreon. Our Patreon is patreon.com/liveliketheworldisdying. And no, that's not true. Our Patreon is patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness because I have to give everything long, complicated names. And Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness is an anarchist publishing collective that publishes a ton of stuff, including this podcast and including some other podcasts that you might like. If you back us, we will send you a zine in the mail. If you back us enough. I'll read your name out right now. I want to thank Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous--hell yeah, Anonymous--Funder. Also a good choice. Jans, Oxalis, Janice & O'dell, Paige, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, Shawn, S.J., Paige, Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Cat J., Staro, Jenipher, Eleanor, Kirk, Sam, Chris, Michaiah, and of course, Hoss the Dog. And that's pretty much it. Everyone should take care as best as they can and don't fall into an apocalyptic cult. Even though you listen to an apocalyptic podcast I run.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
B and M from Rot Glow Farm teach Inmn about how to farm mushrooms in the forest. They talk about their farm and growing set up, as well as the Lobelia Commons project they work with, and the Earthbound Almanac that they help put out.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.
Rot Glow Farm can be found on Instagram @RotGlowFarm. Lobelia Commons can be contacted at lobeliacommons@protonnmail.com or found on Instagram @LobeliaCommons or on Twitter @LobeliaCommons.
The Earthbound Almanac can be found at www.Earthbound.farm or on Emergent Goods at https://www.emergentgoods.com/
Deadline for submissions is July 31st, 2023.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Rot Glow Farm on Forest Farming Mushrooms
Inmn 00:16 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host Inmn Neruin, and this week we're going to be talking about something really fun. And that is fungi. Specifically, we're going to be talking about how someone can grow mushrooms for food or medicine. And we're going to be talking with the folks that operate Rot Glow Farm where they grow mushrooms in the forest. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channels Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on the network. Doo do do doo doo doooo. [Making noises that sound like singing a melody]
Inmn 01:40 And we're back. Thanks y'all so much for coming on to the podcast today. Would you like to introduce yourselves with your name, pronouns, and the farm that y'all are both part of and just tell us a little bit about about that project?
B 01:59 Sure. My name is B. My pronouns are they/them. We a part of Rot Glow Farm and are farmers in Mississippi, pretty close to New Orleans, about an hour and a half away.
M 02:16 Yeah, I am M. And he/they. And yeah, we've been farming here in southwestern Mississippi for three years.
Inmn 02:26 Cool. Cool. And could y'all tell us a little bit about like, what is Rot Glow Farm and what do y'all do there?
M 02:34 So we're primarily a mushroom farm and tree nursery. We grow quite a bit of shiitake mushrooms outdoors on logs, which we take to market and most of the sales from the shiitakes goes into basically subsidizing this tree nursery that we have where we grow thousands of trees and give them away in New Orleans and rurally in Mississippi.
Inmn 03:07 Cool, cool. Like how did y'all get involved in doing this?
M 03:12 For me, several years ago, I read that book Mushroom At the End of the World, which was kind of a life changing book for me. And that got me really excited about mushrooms generally and fungi. That first manifested by growing shiitakes in New Orleans as part of a backyard gardening practice. And then, when the pandemic happened, some of us had been part of this project in New Orleans called Lobelia Commons, which is this...We define it as like a network for food autonomy and neighborhood survival. In that project, we started a collaborative mushroom group where we kind of learned together how to produce mushrooms, which would fit into a wider network of ways of producing food in the city. So, the way that first manifested was doing oyster mushrooms, workshops to do oyster mushrooms in buckets at a decent scale. And we then also started doing some production on logs. Then wanting to scale that up a bit, we were interested in growing shiitakes in the forest north of New Orleans. So then we started growing out here in Southern Mississippi. And yeah, that's how I got here.
Inmn 04:53 B, How did you start to...Like what got you interested in in mushroom farming?
B 05:00 Yeah, so where I was living before, I was involved in mutual aid programs and just living in a place for a while and feeling sort of stagnant and feeling like the work that we were doing was great and impactful. But it...I just....I think my heart wasn't in it. It felt more like a job, like going to my mutual aid job. And it felt more like charity than it did like actually connecting with people in a way that felt horizontal. And, I had a big life event and had to leave where I was living at and started to get involved with the Gulf South region through hurricane relief after [Hurricane] Ida. And so I was connecting more with people in this area. And I met M a few years prior and M and I were getting closer as friends and starting to meet more people who were doing this work that, to me, felt more aligned with my interests and my value system and also just something I was really fascinated by. And the mushroom farming was an aspect of that. And like M said prior, it helped us subsidize this thing that we do and the nursery growing that what we do and some of these other projects that were involved in. And, it felt sort of like a natural progression for myself because years prior I used to live in central California and had a fair amount of experience just walking through the woods and foraging mushrooms that were wild and talking with budding mycologists. And where I was living before, it was sort of like a casual culture of mushroom interest that people had. And so there's like a annual fungi fair that happens every year in the area I was living before. And so I guess I had never really considered farming mushrooms. And M was already starting to cultivate that here. And once I was introduced to it, it felt like this really exciting thing, but yeah, it just kind of fell into my lap in this way what was like, "Oh, yeah, of course. That's what I'm doing now." And yeah, like I said before, it's not disconnected from anything else that we do. It feels really interconnected. And that's what also makes it feel regenerative and worthwhile. Does that make sense?
Inmn 07:47 Yeah, totally. Totally. And I guess maybe this is silly question, but like, why...why mushrooms as opposed to like any other food or medicine thing that you could grow?
M 08:03 Um, so partially, the land that we inhabit here is a successionary forest, very young. Everything around us is pine plantation, mostly Lob lolly pine. We have a lot of like lob lolly here and a lot of young sweet gums, young oaks. And in...like, in some ways, the only way to farm at all here we would have to clear some woods. So, and on the one hand, it's practical, because we also would like to grow large amounts of trees. So, we can't grow trees in the middle of the forest. Well, we could, but it would take a very long time. And it wouldn't be like really effective towards getting them in the hands of people who want to plant trees. So, we cleared some of the forests to have that nursery and small garden and, you know, meeting some local needs. So, with those trees, the sweet gums and the oaks in particular, we turn them into mushroom bolts is what they're called, like blogs, basically. But I think beyond that, I think mushrooms are just like an extremely fascinating subject. They're unlike anything else that you eat. I think they have something that's kind of like indescribable or like uncanny. And I think when you get into conversations with people--especially like we're often at farmers markets--there's a way of finding, especially rurally like who the kinda secret freaks are. And like you know, it's really hard to find each other out here. And mushrooms, I think is like kind of a little like, "wink wink," in some ways, and I think that that's been a big asset for us. We met a few people through farmers markets like that.
Inmn 10:27 Like, mushrooms is like, more....Farming mushrooms is more common like, for people that you might feel more like the true freaks or something? Or?
M 10:38 I think not even just farming--I mean definitely farming--but I think, like in a good way and a bad way. There's definitely some mushroom farmers who are like, maybe not freaks we'd like to hang out with on a lovely Saturday night. But I think the type of people that are drawn to are like going into the woods, getting down, and like looking at the Earth very close and that these super tiny things or sometimes, like really phallic things. Or, you know, like in all the all the forms...[B interrupts]
B 11:17 Yes. Slimy, stinky, like, yeah, voluptuous, like, disgusting. All of the brackets of signifiers. Yeah, and like you said, it takes a certain kind of attention and careful consideration and observation where you're getting down on your hands and knees and just like you're...There's this one particular--I can't remember what it's called--but it's a...there's this one type of mushroom that grows just on Magnolia stuff, just the cones of magnolia trees. And it's really teeny tiny. And you would never think to look for it if you didn't know it was there. And there are just so many species of mushrooms that are hidden. If you just look a little bit closer on the bark of a pine tree, it's this microscopic guy that just exists like in this one area, or, yeah, there's just so many numerous species like that, that are fascinating to look at and to think about and so many species that are being discovered all the time. And then also just the queerness of mushrooms is fascinating and really interesting to think about when we're thinking about the way things are reproducing and sex, of biological sex and how there's like...What's the one that the? [M interrupts to answer]
M 12:54 Schizophyllum.
B 12:57 Yeah, Schizophyllum. Has how many different sexes?
M 13:01 The common name is common split gill, and it has, I think it's like 23,000 different distinct sexes. [Noises of incredulity from Inmn] You'll see it everywhere, it goes pretty much full sun to like deep shade on all kinds of dead wood.
B 13:21 And the reason why it grows everywhere, right is because of how promiscuous it is and how adaptive it is. And so that's like, part of its ability to reproduce so successfully is because of the wide diversity of sex that it's able to inhabit.
M 13:40 Yeah, I think it's something like any one individual of that fungus can reproduce with like, it's like 96% or 98% of all total of that species, total individuals of that species. Which so cool.
B 13:58 Yeah, and that's just, you know, that's just one particular grouping. When you start to go through them, it's...I mean, yeah, it's infinite.
Inmn 14:12 Yeah. That's, that's really cool. Um, I've heard that in, like, in the southeast that, old growth gets talked about a little bit differently than, like on the West Coast, for example. Where like, like an old growth forest has like more to do with the amount of fungal interactions that are going on than it has to do with like, the size or the age of the trees necessarily. Is that, is that true?
M 14:44 It's, it's, that might be...I might not be totally qualified to answer to that. But my inclination is that that's a glass-half-full way of looking at the situation with southeastern forests, which is unfortunately the southeastern long leaf pine forests, which are, you know, amazing and, unfortunately exist only in fractions of fractions of fractions of its former glory like, you know often gets compared, like the type of biodiversity that gets compared to the Amazon rainforest. And I think a lot of that is in the soil, like particularly the Russulaceae, the Russula laurocerasi is extremely diverse in the southeast. And that's, that's a mycorrhizal mushroom that you'll often see it's like kind of the one that is, has a brittle cap, often red caps, but has quite a diverse array of colors, green, purple, blue, there's even a yellow. But yeah, and that's just the one's that you'll see quite a lot.
Inmn 16:09 Cool. Cool. To switch a little bit, it seems like maybe it's like a practical decision since y'all live in a forest, but like, why kind of doing like forest farming? Like as opposed to like...I guess I don't know how people normally grow mushrooms. But like, yeah, is there something that's different about forest farming for y'all than like how a lot of people might go about cultivating mushrooms?
B 16:43 So yeah, so, if you're growing mushrooms outdoors, you could probably have a very elaborate way of creating shade and humidity and the kinds of things that you need in order to grow mushrooms on logs. But, it just makes sense because you're as a person who's growing mushrooms on logs, you're...in some ways, you're replicating what would be occurring in the wild, and how those mushrooms would be occurring on decomposing wood or logs in the wild. And so it sort of does the work for you of...I mean, you're already in a forest. So, instead of putting that in an indoor setting, which a lot of people will do this where they'll they'll have, you know, a sterile, often sterile environment indoors, they'll have bags of mushrooms--and I don't know that much about it because I don't do it myself--but from what I've read about it and talked to people about it, you're able to really dial in the exact conditions that these mushrooms would need to produce. Whereas, in an outdoor setting, you're exposed to whatever kinds of temperature increases or decreases and you're exposed to the seasons and, you know, if there's a drought that year, or whatever it is, and so the forest is going to help maintain the environment that you're going to need to be able to grow those mushrooms. Does that sum it up? I don't know,
M 18:37 I think I would add, like a question that we get asked a lot by, especially by other farmers whether or not they're mushroom farmers, is that they'll ask what our acreage is. Which doesn't matter. You know, like if you have any amount of space and you have a way to make shade, and you're not just sitting on concrete, you can grow mushrooms outdoors, pretty much. So that one doesn't matter. But they often ask like, "Why don't you...I'm sure you can get a grant. Why don't you put in like an indoor space, or like a warehouse? You know, you've got plenty of space to put in a warehouse." And it's like okay, you have to like just clear cut a bunch of forests where mushrooms are already happening. Fungi are everywhere, you know, raised, you know, in their perfect condition. We already have the perfect condition. It's just like yeah...And I mean, obviously this comes from farmers are very concerned with yields, and productivity, and stuff, which totally makes sense. Like, obviously that's like a capitalist mindset. But, we also have to eat, you know. Like, if the mushrooms don't fruit then we can't go to market. And, we eat a lot of shiitakes. We also just eat less of that stuff. So, I understand where that comes from. But, I think our wager with forest farming has been that we really need to try and try and try new things. Like, the way things have been running for, you know, 300 years in this area hasn't hasn't been working, simply put. So, this is one effort to try something that's different, that's maybe not motivated by capitalist economics and colonial mentality. Yeah. And hopefully it works out.
B 20:51 Yeah I mean, I'm right. That's, that's it, we're, I guess, generally...I mean, maybe in the future, we would experiment with doing some indoor space just to try it because I personally, I've never done that before. So it would be interesting to see. And I think for folks who are trying to really scale up, there is some sense in doing something indoors, because you can really dial it in and you can maximize the amount of space that you have for the amount of yield that you're able to get from being able to manipulate your environment in such a way that you're able to get it. You know, like you can calculate exactly how much you're gonna get. And, I guess really, the point is just that we're trying to sort of move away from having this artificial spaces that takes a lot of energy to create, especially where we are. I mean, thinking about climate controlling an indoor space to be able to produce mushrooms in the dead of summer, you know, where it's like, you know, 100 and get gets up to like 115, sometimes, like 110 degrees. It sort of goes against the path that we're trying to go down, which is to take ourselves out of that cycle of constant resource extraction and constant, which is like cultivation, or like artificial cultivation to be able to make as much money as possible in the shortest amount of time. We feel like, yeah, just trying to sort of see it in a different way and show others that it can be done in a different way. And also that like yeah, of course, it's not going to be as profitable, but I feel like the process in figuring it out and trying it is worth the setbacks. Like for example, recently, this last spring, we didn't have as much shiitake yields as we thought we would have. And we're not really totally sure why that is. But, our reishi did really well. And we're still...We're still troubleshooting why that happened. And if we were operating a completely indoor space, I think it would be pretty simple to figure out, okay, well, you know, we didn't have this humidity, or like, our air conditioning unit broke down for this one week or, you know, we tried this one strain that maybe wasn't as viable as like a different strain. But, I think there's something about that, that it forces you to really look at your environment and be forced to be more connected to where you're at and the kinds of species that are growing. And like for example, we're growing on sweet gums and oaks. And so we're starting to think "Okay, well, is it...Do the sweet gums maybe not last as long. Do they maybe last two years or three years rather than four years? Are the oaks better to be growing on rather than sweet gums? And that's all being figured out through trial and error. But, it feels like important long term information to be gathering. Albeit, might be frustrating to be like "What the fuck, why isn't...why aren't they fruiting as much as they were last year?" or whatever it is.
Inmn 24:34 Yeah, yeah. It's wild to me that someone would question why you would grow a thing in the place where it naturally grows. [Said sarcastically and then laughing]
M 24:47 Yeah, and I mean, to be fair, it's like, you know, shiitakes not from here. Reishi is. But, it [shiitake] does quite well in the in the woods here.
B 24:58 But then you know, we're going to markets and there are these other growers that are growing indoors and you have a bunch of mushrooms, and they're selling, you know, they're selling as much as they possibly can get out into the market. And for us, we're like, "Oh, shit, we don't really have that much to offer this Spring," because we're more at the whim of what's going on in the world around us than if we were operating in an indoor space, which like, it makes sense that people would choose that because it's...it's a lot...It's something you can count on. And especially if you're counting on it for your survival or your your livelihood, then like, it does make sense if you have that startup capital that you would decide to do it that way inside.
Inmn 25:46 Yeah, yeah. If y'all didn't like...Like, if someone were growing, or cultivating shiitake or like reishi logs in the forest where they lived, what can the yields be like, on that? Like, if someone was just growing mushrooms for their own consumption? Like, what would that be like for someone?
M 26:13 So, I think that there's a really good PDF online from Cornell, that--I think he's named Steve Gabriel--put out. He's a professor there with the [undecipherable] there. And it has...Like, if someone is getting involved in growing on logs, specifically, it's kind of like "the book." It's like a 40 page PDF, and it has so much good information. But, I think you'll see there and many other places, a claim that each log per year will produce about a pound of shiitakes. That's just for shiitake. I think we've found that to be fairly accurate. And in some cases, low. But, for instance, reishi, it's going to be much lower. And Reishi, as you grow it in on the ground, it loves...like it wants like 90% humidity, 95% humidity. The longevity of the log is up for question in terms of like, do you get termites. We get termites here. So, the longevity is up for question. But what we've found is, depending on the size of the log, you can get quite large flushes. I'm not sure if we've ever actually weighed them because we don't...we don't take those to market. We mostly just get them out to friends to make medicine with. But, I would say even with one log...Yeah, without being able to quantify it--and partially not really wanting to mediate everything through like a measurement--it's absolutely worth it. Even if you only have one reishi log, you can make quite a lot of tincture or tea with what that would produce for one year. You can probably expect a couple of caps minimum. They might be quite large caps. Yeah, I personally haven't found a rhyme or reason to why they're bigger or smaller.
B 28:17 Yeah, it's really fun. Like, even if you're not interested in growing on a bigger scale or like feeding your family or whatever it is and you just want to try it because you're simply interested in it. I think that it's so worth it to invest in the startup costs of getting yourself a drill bit, or something that goes on an angle grinder, and inoculating a couple logs, putting them in the shade and looking at that PDF, and just getting going on it because yeah, it's just it's a really interesting thing to take part in. And it's so fun, and it can be really rewarding. And it might lead you to starting to connect with your local mycological club or connecting with other people that are growing mushrooms. And yeah, it can be really rewarding. So yeah, I just, I'd like to encourage people that maybe they're listening to this, and they're like, "Oh, well, I wouldn't want to do that on like a large scale or maybe it just seems like too complicated." It's pretty simple.
M 29:31 Yeah, I would, in terms of like investment, I would definitely say that--and we had the experience in New Orleans, specifically, where this worked very well--would be to team up, you know. There's other people out there, either through a local mycological club. Some regions have like really robust robust ones and might, you know, likely have people who are already growing. So you wouldn't have to buy any kind of drill or drill bit or the like plunger things. And doing it together, it's like a really great social activity. We do kind of like a festival of sorts every year when we do the inoculation time, and people kind of look forward to it, and we're all like working together and not too hard, you know, just like, it's a...it's a really fun time. And I would encourage, especially like, building a culture around that can be really rewarding. And if you are just on your own, listening to the podcast, and really want to grow mushrooms, but you don't know anyone who's interested in it, that's...I mean, that's how I started. Me and my roommate were the only two people I knew that were interested in it. And there's like...they sell inoculated dowel rods online, which, you just basically just drill into logs, and you hammer into the log. So, it doesn't...you don't need like a whole gang of people inoculating, you know? You can absolutely do it on your own as well.
Inmn 31:06 Cool. I know there's this book/PDF, that y'all reference that lays out the process probably pretty pretty well, but would you mind kind of just breaking down like what the process is like? Like, how would you set up a like a log for growing mushrooms. Just like the kind of like a breakdown of the steps.
M 31:33 So first, you're sourcing your log. So that could look like a lot of different things. You could be felling the tree your yourself, you could be maybe talking to a tree company that sometimes has extra logs. There could be a storm and you just find a log on the side of the road. Any of those are fine. The recommendation is--and we have found this to be true--that you want the tree to be dormant and already healthy. You wouldn't want it to be already infected with some other fungal pathogen. Like if it's living, it already has something some other mycelium running through it. [Interrupted]
B 32:18 Because that would out compete what you're trying to inoculate it with.
M 32:24 So, you want something healthy. So let's just go with from felling, which is what we do. Fell the tree. Buck it up, so like cut it into like a manageable size. So, for shiitakes, for instance, we find that somewhere between like, four inch and eight inch diameter [log]. I feel like once it gets wider than that it's starts to get cumbersome because you have to move them around if you're forcing them. But, if you're leaving them just in your backyard and not not ever touching them, you don't have to worry about that quite as much. But just you don't want to like, you know, hurt your back when you're working on them. So, you cut them up into what's called bolts. Then you let them sit. This is something that's a kind of debated, some people will tell you that you need to inoculate the next day or as soon as humanly possible from felling. Some people will tell you three to four weeks waiting, to basically let the tree kind of fully die and make it so it's it's not going to challenge your mycelium that you're putting into the log. I tried kind of all of that. And it doesn't seem to matter in our case, dealing with oak and sweet gums. We've inoculated the next day and we've inoculated four weeks later. So long as it's not fully...you're starting to see like other fungal growth on the log, you'll be good. And even if you do have a log that has, like, you know, like we were saying, already has fungal pathogen in it, or you fell it and then you wait too long and you see that like on the edge, often you'll see like where you cut the log start to become black. Even if that's happening, it will probably be fine. You just might not get as long of a yield because basically after you inoculate them, they're competing for space inside the log. So, inoculation looks like you basically either produce or order spawn. Likely if you're listening to this, you're ordering spawn. There's a number of good places to order from. We use Field and Forest, for what it's worth. I don't necessarily endorse them, but what's cool about them is on their website, they have a ton of information about each of their strains and how it performs. And...[interrupted]
B 35:07 And like what temperatures it does well in.
M 35:11 Yeah. They're like, kind of like...The US shiitake industry was kind of built around what they started in the 70s. But, there's also, if you're in the South, there's Mushroom Mountain, run by Tradd. Cotter. But, so you put the spawn into the log by drilling and then plunging in the spawn and then sealing it in.
Inmn 35:42 What is the spawn?
M 35:43 The spawn is either sawdust or grain that the company, in this case Field and Forest or Mushroom Mountain, has inoculated with a strain of a fungus.
B 35:58 So ,it comes in a bag. And they're plastic bags. And they...they sort of they seal them. But Okay, start that one over. They come in these bags, these plastic bags, and you just...It looks sort of like a brick, like a fuzzy, creamy brick. That's all of the mycelium that's colonized that sawdust or brand or whatever it is. Grain. And so you just open up your bag, and you take a handful of it, and you break it up so that it's sort of mixed up, and then you'll take your plunger, which is just...it's like a handheld...it looks like a short dowel, and you plunge it and it captures the spawn in a compartment that is at the base of the plunger, and then pull it up--It's sort of like the way a syringe works or something--so you pull it up, and then you put it on your hole that you've drilled out of your log, and then you plunge it into the hole. And then once you've plunged it into that hole, it fills up the whole hole. And you'll sort of like tap the top of it to make sure that it's all the way full because sometimes your plunger might not capture all of the amount of space that's like the compartment at the end of the plunger. And so it might be kind of loose at the top. So, you just kind of like tap it to make sure it's all the way full. And then what we do is we heat up golf wax in a crock pot and we use these little foam applicator brushes, you know, like the kids arts and crafts ones. We have found that those are the best to seal plugs because they capture a lot of wax that we're going to be using to seal the hole. And, you can just kind of dab it and then the wax comes out really well. And, you want to make sure the wax that you're using is hot enough. We use golf wax. But, it's hot enough that it's clear when you're applying it to your hole to seal it up. Because if it's not clear, it'll it will be opaque. And it just means that it's not hard enough. And so it sometimes works. But, often what happens is you put it on opaque and it kind of seems like it's done the job, but then you wait a few hours or a couple of days and that whole piece that you sealed up will just kind of crack and pop off. So, you just want to make sure it's hot enough that it penetrates that hole and makes a good seal. And you just kind of dab on your little applicator and then seal it up.
Inmn 39:08 Okay, and what is the wax? Like? What is it keeping in? Like what's happening inside that hole?
M 39:17 So, it protects the spawn from drying out is probably the primary thing that it's doing. And, it protects from fungal competitors. So, one that we often are concerned with is Trichoderma which is like a blue green mold. And also, it will to some extent protect from getting predated on by birds and rodents. But, I think that they eventually will get through it. The goal is to basically...You're giving your team, you know, your your fungus, the best chance at it digesting the log, or what a lot of people called colonizing the log. Basically, as soon as you put the spawn into the log, it's going to start moving through the wood and digesting wood. And, once it has completely taken up the wood, or, again, fully colonized the wood, that's when it's ready to start fruiting.
Inmn 40:27 Okay, so it's like...And, you know--maybe everyone who's listening knows this--but it's like the fruiting body or like the piece that we eat is like very...Like, what is the the body of the fungus? Like, like, what's it like? What's it like inside there?
M 40:49 Yes, so it's, it's mycelium. People are probably familiar with this. I think oftentimes people assume that mycelium is just like in the forest floor like the mycorrhizal network. But, it's also the body of the fungus that...In this case, we grow what's called saprobic mushrooms or saprobic fungi. They eat dead stuff. And they also are made up of mycelium. And then you're right, the mushroom is the fruiting body, the sexual organ, and what produces the spores, which will then go on to germinate on whatever surface that species requires.
B 41:40 Yeah, and so, when you're getting those bags in the mail, you know, and you're breaking up the spawn to inoculate with your plunger, that's the body. That's...You're breaking up the body, basically, and you're putting it in the log, and then it's doing the same thing that it did to the sawdust or the grain where it's moving through the log. And so, I guess to be able to picture it, you'll see it sort of when you get it. If you get it in that bag form, you can sort of see how it moves through and clumps in that particular strain anyway.
Inmn 42:23 That is very weird and freaky.
B 42:27 Yeah, you should, if you're interested, I highly recommend trying to, or getting some and, you know, breaking it up with your your fingers is a really interesting sensation. It's sort of like cool and smooth but also has a lot of texture to it. And the way it breaks apart is sort of fibrous,
Inmn 42:51 Cool. Yeah, that sounds that sounds like a freaky texture experience. I want to try it. Cool. And so then like once the logs are fully colonized, they start producing these fruiting bodies. What like...What...Or I feel like I always ask funny leading questions because I like vaguely know the answers, but like what kind of conditions do they then need to produce fruiting bodies? Like, I imagine a lot of moisture. Or do you have to water them? Or?
B 43:30 Yeah, so it depends on your climate. But you have to keep a certain level of shade and humidity in the fruiting yard. And so for us, we've had to experiment with shade cloth and trying to grow up certain trees to make more shade or less shade. And so that's something that folks who are listening would have to figure out based on where they're at and their particular climate and situation. But, if you want, for us, before we're about to go to a market, about 10 days prior to wanting a fully formed mushroom to take to market, we do what we call force fruiting. Also we call it dunking. So, we have a cattle trough, and we put--we have what we call groups--so every year we'll label group one, group two, group three, and it will help keep organized to know which groups that we've brought in or which ones we haven't. And so let's say we have group one. So, let's say it's 12 logs. And so we put all of our logs that we've stacked in like log cabin style stacks...Is that we you call it? [M makes an affirmative noise] And so that's just to maintain aeration and make it so that they don't get too crowded out. And so we'll take each one of those, put them in our cattle trough that's filled up with water. And then we sort of weigh it down because once the mycelium moves through them, the logs start to get more pithy because the mycelium are eating through that wood. And so the logs will get lighter and lighter weight as you go on. But also wood floats in general, so we just have to weigh those down. And then we keep them in overnight, usually around 24 hours. And they have to be--they don't have to be like totally fully submerged--but generally, yes, like submerge them. And then we take the weight off. And some people will do it and really like cute ways where they have like...What does that guy do where he puts them in some.... [Interrupted]
M 45:55 There's a few places where they're like super picturesque, you know. Yeah, they'll put them in a creek and they'll have a little section, roped off or whatever. And it's just like it...which is actually, you know, if you have that, that is the perfect place because if you think about how shiitake evolved, you know, that we're basically mimicking like a cool spring flood or rain, you know, a heavy rain event. Like actually one of the heaviest fruitings we've had was, like, the week after Hurricane Ida because it was such a disturbance event. And that's basically what we're trying to mimic. So, you have these these people that have these gorgeous farms, they put them in the creek or a pond or something sometimes, yeah.
B 46:45 But so, we'll take them out 24 hours later. And then we lean them up against sort of a makeshift shelf type thing and make it so that there's enough space between each of them so they're not fruiting into each other. And we just wait about 10 days and sometimes the individual mushrooms will go at different timescales, but generally they'll all fruit around the same time and they'll all be developed around the same time. And then we harvest and go to market and then we put in the next group.
Inmn 47:24 Cool that..I mean, that whole process sounds kind of like wacky and ridiculous but in you know, like a really fun way. Like, I could grow them like inside where I live, but I live in a desert so we we...It'd be pretty hard to. Although, we do... So, it's wild. We do have these like during the monsoons, if you go hiking up in like really rocky mountains the like, all of the dried lichen, because there is dried lichen, and it will like flesh out and get like carpet-y and like poofy for like a day or two and then it like dries up again. It's weird. [Everyone goes "Whoa."]
B 48:09 Yeah. Also, I was just thinking of your cave...I feel like I've heard of these caves in Tucson. Yeah. Okay, good. Yeah.
Inmn 48:30 Cool. So, the other thing that I wanted to have y'all talk about is y'all put out an Almanac, right?
M 48:42 Yeah, so we're part of the group Lobelia Commons, which puts out...or, some members of that group put out the Earthbound Farmers Almanac. And we are going into our fourth year doing that.
Inmn 48:57 Cool, what like...What kind of Almanac is it? Like, does it have specialized information? Or like what information is in this?
M 49:07 So, it's primarily land-based knowledge would be kind of like what it specializes in. It's like not necessarily focused on farming, per se, but more skills and thoughts around being on land and what that means in our current climate. And I think pulling on a urge to build new cultures of being land. Kind of like, obviously there's a legacy of radicals getting back to--of course with the 60s with Back To the Land--but trying to forge something that grapples with the world we're in today. Of course of climate change, trying to sharpen a anticolonial...While also simultaneously trying to build this culture that would sort of fill a void in some ways because there's been so much damage done by genocide and just colonization and settler shit. So, people might not have something like a knowledge base to pull from, whether or not they're indigenous, settler, Black, or what have you, living on Turtle Island. We are, unfortunately fairly dispossessed in a fairly general way from ecological knowledge that is really critical for the world we're entering.
Inmn 51:11 Yeah, cool. What would be kind of like a sample of like information that, or like kinds of information that might might be in there?
B 51:26 So, something to note is that we're...we just put out our 2023 Almanac. And we can like link in the show notes, where to get that. Emergent Goods is distributing it for us. But we also are putting a call out for submissions for 2024. And, I feel like this is a good moment to sort of list the kinds of submissions that we're looking for. And it also summarizes past editions and the kind of content that is in there. So, anticolonial histories and features, critical agri-ecology, recipes from the land, stories from your neighbors, climate change noticings, traditions to uplift or destroy, farm notes, and just I mean, really whatever you feel like is relevant and close to you in this time and what would ring true for others and inspire and uplift others In the moment that we're in.
M 52:40 Oh, yeah, but the entire first three, and for the future, everyone we put out in the feature, can be found at Earthbound.farm. A lovely collected member just made this site today. You can just look at them online and get tons of examples. If people are listening to this because they're interested in mushrooms, particularly, they might be curious to check out the 2021 issue which has some, like a detailed how to grow mushrooms using coffee grounds, growing oyster mushrooms on coffee grounds. And this is something that the person who wrote this, who also is the person who made that lovely website, actually, they were growing quite a lot of oyster mushrooms. She has coffee grounds that they were keeping from their coffee habit. And there's also in that one a nice introduction to foraging to try and kind of abate the general mycophobia that exists in our culture. But there's all kinds of stuff. There's recipes. Like, I think that one has like a recipe for a fig cake, which I've never had but sounds really really good. There's cool like almanac-y information like, you know. For those outside of the Gulf Coast, New Orleans area, some of the almanac information isn't quite as pertinent, but I think it's maybe an inspiration for people to start noticing those types of things in their life on that almanac, those almanac pages, the monthly kind of like phase of the moon, day length, that types of things. Also we include each year, farm notes from a different farm or nursery projects or what have you. The most recent one, I'm a big fan of, it's someone who doesn't have...He doesn't like own land, doesn't have like a cool urban farm, but is really just like in love with the world and loves noticing birds and, you know, goes hunting and so is, you know, following elk and, you know, is trying to grow things and moves all over. It's like a dispossessed person that just rents, you know, where they can. And there's there's a piece in the 2023 Almanac about basically how to develop this type of practice. And it's very witty, and I just really love that piece that came in at like, the 11th hour. And yeah, really appreciate these. Recommend.
Inmn 55:44 Cool. Yeah, that sounds great. I'm definitely going to check out the old Earthbound Almanacs. Cool. Well, that brings us about to our time for the day. Is there any anything else you want to plug before we go? Or any last minute thoughts on on things that we didn't cover that you'd love to mention?
M 56:09 No, yeah, I think I would just, once again, encourage people, if you're a writer, or like, don't fashion yourself a writer, but might have some thoughts about growing or whatever. Just like really, really, really feel free to send us a pitch. Doesn't have to be very long. Just give us like an idea of what you want to write. You know, worst case we're like can you flesh this out a little bit more and tell us what you're thinking. But you can email us LobeliaCommons@protonmail.com. And if you're not inclined to write or anything like that, but maybe you're a photographer, or illustrator, send us some examples that, you know, we would love to include. We like always need illustrations and photos. And none of the above, but you are really interested in it as project, we send copies of the almanac, like entire boxes, to groups, all over the place. And we just ask that people cover the shipping and the cost of the printing. And then in good faith, we let people sell it for, you know, to benefit, whatever cause that they are like locally interested in supporting. So, this oftentimes is like a local food autonomy project, maybe like a pipeline resistance, the campaign to Stop Cop City. Can be all kinds of stuff.
Inmn 57:52 Cool. Great. Well, we will we'll link to all those things in the show notes. And thanks, y'all so much for coming on and teaching us about mushroom farming.
B 58:04 Thanks for having us.
Inmn 58:05 Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please go grow some mushrooms and then tell us about it. But also tell people about the podcast. You can support this podcast by telling people about it. You can support this podcast by talking about it on social media, by rating and reviewing, doing whatever the nameless algorithm calls for. Feed it like a hungry god. And you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Our Patreon helps pay for things like transcriptions, or our lovely audio editor, Bursts, as well as going to support our publisher Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. We put out this podcast and a few other podcasts including my other podcast Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, a monthly podcast of anarchist literature, and the Anarcho Geek Power Hour, which is the podcast for people who love movies and hate cops. And we would like to shout out some of those patrons in particular. Thank you Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, Funder, Jans, Oxalis, Janice & O'dell, Paige, Ali, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, Sean, S.J., Paige, Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Cat J., Staro, Jenipher, Eleanor, Kirk, Sam, Chris, Michaiah, and Hoss the Dog. We seriously couldn't do this without y'all. I hope everyone is doing as well as they can with everything that's happening and we'll talk to you soon.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This time on This Month In the Apocalypse, Brooke and Inmn talk about storms, extreme flooding, and the deadly heat dome. They talk about a lot going on in the ocean, including orca attacks, the Ocean Gate submersible, and El Nino. They also talk about mostly bad things for trans people. However, there are some fun instances of fascists beating each other up.
Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
This Month In the Apocalypse: June, 2023
Brooke Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. This is your early summer June-ish installment of our segment This Month In the Apocalypse. I am Brooke Jackson and co-hosting with me today is the very delightful Inmn. Our podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And before we explore today's episode, we'd like to share a little jingle from another pod on the network. JIngle jangle, jingle jangle. [Brooke singing a simple melody]
Brooke And we're back. Hey Inmn, how are you feeling today?
Inmn I'm, I'm feeling fairly good today, Brooke. But you know, a lot of bad things happened in June. But also, some really funny things happened in June. So...
Brooke This is true. You wanna hear the funniest thing that happened? I bet you have one, but I have one that's gonna be funnier.
Inmn Yeah, yeah. There's a couple of funny things that we'll get to. How are you, Brooke?
Brooke I'm good. I like that we've swooped in and taken this podcast away from Margaret. Just kidding. She's dealing with other stuff. We miss her terribly. And, she trusted us to do this whole episode on our own.
Inmn Yeah, because we're real people.
Brooke And I'm so excited about that. Do you want to hear really funny story?
Inmn Yes.
Brooke Okay, so Portland, Oregon always does a big Pride celebration on--well it's usually it's a Sunday, I think--in June and it's often fallen on Father's Day because of terrible planning and timing. And this year it finally didn't for once. So, it was having his big Pride celebration. I think this was just a week ago. And both the Proud Boys and the Rose City Nationalists showed up to protest Pride, except both groups showed up to the wrong location. And they showed up to the same wrong location. And they got in a fight with each other instead of fighting and protesting Pride.
Inmn Wow, do you know that the fight was...Like, why did they fight?
Brooke There's some videos you can find on like Twitter and the Proud Boys are attacking the Rose City Nationalists and they're calling them racists. And the Rose City Nationalists are in like khaki pants and blue shirt, you know, that full face covering thing. What does they call that? Something. And like hats. And the Proud Boys are a bunch of older white dudes, burly biker gang kind of guys, and they're yelling at them for being like punk kids, and wearing masks, and being racist. They just kick the shit out of them.
Inmn Maybe just because I don't know totally who they are; who are the Rose City Nationalists?
Brooke Oh, there are local to Portland chapter of one of the white nationalist groups in the US.
Inmn Okay. What...Do you know why did the Proud Boys think that they're racist?
Brooke I think if I remember correctly, I think they're like a neo-Nazi affiliated group, the nationalists, and they think it's really weak of them to wear full face coverings and not show their faces when they show up to events and to be in like matching outfits. I think they mock that too when they're getting into the fight, how they're in their little khaki and blue shirt uniform thing.
Inmn Wow. That is...You know, if all of the white supremacists want to like fight each other and spend all their time doing that, I would be thrilled.
Brooke The best outcome to a Pride protest ever, two asshole groups showing up at the wrong location and fighting each other instead.
Inmn Oh, that's just wonderful.
Brooke A big thanks to friend of the pod, Alex, for sending me all of the videos from this and news articles and stuff. I've just been laughing about that all week. I keep thinking about it and just chuckling
Inmn I have a similarly...you know, it's like a something bad happened, but also something funny happened kind of thing. All right.
Brooke Let's go. I like funny news.
Inmn Okay, so, ongoing anti-trans legislation across the country and in Texas. Yeah, it's pretty bad. But, Michelle Evans who's like...I think she's a Texas House Representative candidate and some kind of like legislative Director for some wacky organization that is trying to do weird things around COVID vaccines. She was at the Texas State Capitol to celebrate SB14, which is a bill that was signed into legislation that blocks doctors from providing gender affirming care to minors, which is pretty horrifying.
Brooke It's awful.
Inmn Yeah, it is. It is not as bad as SB 1029, which would essentially defund all gender affirming care for anyone in the state of Texas. It's through some pretty interestingly deceptive means. Like, it blocks use of public funds for those things, which sends this ripple effect through....because you could be like, "Oh, What about like, you know, private providers? Wouldn't they still be able to provide care for people?" And the answer is probably not. Because, the public funding affects things like malpractice insurance or insurance providers in general. And so it's essentially, private doctors who don't receive public funding for doing gender affirming care, would essentially not be able to get insured because of this funding that's being...would be taken away. So...
Brooke It's not okay. So not okay. These bills make me so angry. And I feel like every time we do one of these episodes, we're talking about another state, another place, another layer of these bills, and it's not just like, "Oh, they're considering this," like it's that these bills are passing in various places.
Inmn Yeah, and SB 1029 has not passed in Texas, but SB 14, which blocks gender affirming care for minors, did pass. But, Michelle Evans was there at the Capitol celebrating and she confronted a trans woman in the bathroom. The altercation reportedly like involved some verbal harassment of this person. And then Michelle claims, she claims that she was sent a picture of this person in the bathroom.
Brooke That's creepy.
Inmn Yeah, by one of her followers. That's what she says. But she...It'll make sense in a moment. Okay, so she tweeted this out to her following and it very rapidly, you know, went viral and there were people commenting to her about it, being like, "Hey, you know, it's illegal to film people in the bathroom, right?" And she was...While she was still at the Capitol, she was detained by the Capitol Police and got her phone confiscated and she was questioned about the photo being like....They were like, "Oh, we heard that you tweeted this photo of someone in the bathroom." And she was like, "Oh, but I didn't take the picture." You know, or so she claims. And yeah, so she is still under investigation for taking a picture of someone in the bathroom, which is against the law it turns out in Texas.
Brooke Oh, there's a ray of sunshine in this awfulness. And that's like, I mean, even if...Okay. Laws, not laws. Anarchism....You know, it's confusing. But, It's wrong, whether or not it's legal or illegal, it's just like, your own internal ethics should tell you that that's wrong to do. So it's nice that there's repercussions for it in some way.
Inmn Yeah, you know, like, I don't...like I'm not down with the State existing or laws or like, whatever. But I'm absolutely not going to have sympathy for anyone who, like, might end up getting charges for filming people in the bathroom because that's fucked up. So, I'm curious if it'll catch on as like any kind of thing or like piece of resistance that people can do for like being harassed in bathrooms, like wherever they are, is to like....if you get filmed in the bathroom, it's like...I'm wondering if more people will end up catching charges for filming people in the bathroom who they believe to be trans.
Brooke Right, you know, but then now, as you say that, I realized the flip side of it. If you're someone who's being verbally or whatever, assaulted, attacked in the bathroom, like, you shouldn't get in trouble for filming the way someone's mistreating you. But, the law doesn't, you know, have that caveat to it.
Inmn Yeah, it's dumb. Yeah. But luckily, a lot of these people who are confronting people in bathrooms are like, incriminating themselves, I think. Mostly.
Brooke Yeah, that is handy. Like, if you're the bad guy and you're taking the video, thanks for the evidence and doing the thing that's illegal and getting you in trouble. I just feel bad for the person who's on the receiving end of the assaults, and them maybe feeling like, "Oh, I can't document this because it's illegal to film in here."
Inmn Yeah, yeah. So yeah, a thing for people to think about. So, that was a kind of funny thing.
Brooke That had better ending than I was expecting. So thank you for that.
Inmn Yeah. Um, do you want to hear some more kind of bad news, though, for trans folks in the news this month?
Brooke No, I don't. But I also don't want to be an ignorant...to live in ignorance. So you can tell me.
Inmn Okay. So Elon Musk, you know, is in the news, again.
Brooke Oh God, I know where this is going.
Inmn Elon announced that "Cis" and "Cis gendered," like those terms, are going to be slurs on Twitter and that targeted use of them could be grounds for account suspension on Twitter.
Brooke Just when you think he's not done being the worst, he finds new ways to be just the absolute worst.
Inmn I know. And like, I'm like...I feel like he just does it for the media cycle or whatever. Like, every time he like dips out of the news, he's like, "Oh, I'll just like, ridicule trans people and get back in the new cycle."
Brooke He just needs the attention one way or the other. All attention is good attention, including negative. Speaking of horrible rich people, actually, I have one for you, which is going slightly out of the order that we talked about earlier, but I think it's fun to put it in here. There's a company called Ocean Gate that has developed its own little mini submarines for undersea exploration. And it's doing private tours of underwater things like, you know, submarines and other wreckage. And it's gone down to the Titanic. And they've...I guess they've been doing this annually the last couple of years, although it sounds like the last two years were both research missions. And then this year was the first year, from what I'm reading, that they were doing an actual tourist expedition. So, five super rich people who paid a quarter million dollars a piece, popped into this tiny little submarine to go down and explore the Titanic and the submarine didn't survive the water pressure. Ergo, neither did the unfortunate rich people on their underwater sea exploration.
Inmn Yeah,
Brooke I don't know if any of them were specifically terrible human beings. But you know, rich people in general, if you can afford to pay a quarter million dollars to go underwater, I don't feel superduper bad about it.
Inmn Yeah, I think from from what I read, it was like, it was like three literal billionaires, the owner of the company, and then a titanic expert, who, I don't know what that person's deal was. So, you know, I might feel a little something for the Titanic expert who was possibly not a billionaire. But also, I don't know, I don't know what that person's life is.
Brooke Yeah, but the billionaires Hey, you shouldn't be hanging with billionaires anyway. And, it is pretty ironic that the founder of the company was one of them. And yeah, while they've done, you know, for people who don't know this, explorations have dived to the Titanic, and pictures you've ever seen in videos and stuff has never been from like, people actually being that up close to the wreckage because it's so deep underwater. It's from sending--I don't know what they call them--a drone that's underwater. So, a remotely manned, piloted underwater craft that goes down and like, explores that wreckage.
Inmn Yeah. And there's something...like, the pressure down there, it's like 6000 pounds per square inch or something. So like when that thing depressurized it was crushed within a few milliseconds?
Brooke Yeah, I have it here if you want. About one millisecond. 1 thousandth of a second is how fast it would collapse. And the human brain can't respond to stimulus--the fastest the human brain can respond to stimulus is like 25 milliseconds. So, significantly later than when it actually happened. Like. your brain couldn't register that it happens before you died. And also, this is interesting, human bodies incinerate and are turned into ash and dust instantly upon this implosion.
Inmn That's crazy.
Brooke Isn't that wild? So, you wouldn't even know that had happened. Like, less than a blink and you're gone.
Inmn Yeah, yeah. There is a there is an image circulating--which is probably like, you know, after hearing that, like, it's probably a photoshopped image--but there was an image floating around where people thought they could see the Xbox controller that controlled the sub on the bottom of the ocean. Which I think is probably not true because everything was destroyed. But....
Brooke Yeah, it's kind of funny, though. For a frame of reference, you mentioned that it's 5000 pounds of pressure. It's...that's like 400 times the amount of air pressure that we feel just standing around at sea level, I should say. So, it's the equivalent of the weight of the Eiffel Tower on you.
Inmn Wow.
Brooke Yeah. Or, I guess on the submarine. I shouldn't say on the person. But, that's the equivalent of the Eiffel Tower sitting on top of that little mini submarine.
Inmn Yeah. And on the note of the ocean gate, do you know who the...you know, this is a Wikipedia joke, so you know, maybe there's other people, but...Do you know who the last person who was killed by a maritime invention that they created was prior to this?
Brooke Maybe a Nazi submarine creator? I don't know. I'm guessing. Way randomly guessing.
Inmn Thomas Andrews. who designed the Titanic.
Brooke [Brooke laughing] The Titanic being like, "You shouldn't fucking come down here. Bad things happened." Cursed a bit of water.
Inmn Yeah. Cursed water.
Brooke So, mini submarines created by eccentric rich people who ignore standard safety protocols and the warnings from experts probably don't hop into one of those Let's move on. What else is happening in the ocean, Inmn?
Inmn So, I'm sure everyone has heard about this. But there have been an increasing string of orca attacks, specifically in the Straits of Gibraltar, which is kind of off the coast of Spain. And the...So it's a big hype in the media right now, I think because of some specific things, like that they've sunk at least three boats at this point.
Brooke Do orcas get big enough to sink boats?
Inmn Yes.
Brooke Wow. I'm bad with the size of things in the ocean. I think of them as being like dolphin size, but no, they're not. They're whale size, right?
Inmn Yeah, they weighed like 11 tonnes or something.
Brooke Oh lord those are big. Okay. I feel really ignorant for having confessed that to everyone. Just go ahead and laugh. It's okay.
Inmn Yeah, they're big. They're big and powerful. And they're incredibly smart as well. And there's this one boat captain who's reported getting attacked by orcas twice at this point. And both times, his ship's rudder has been disabled. And that's what the orca are doing, is they're--in some cases they're sinking boats--and in other cases, they're disabling the rudders by ramming into them and breaking the mechanism.
Brooke I don't know why I love that, but I kind of do.
Inmn Yeah, it's very interesting. And, they're supposedly teaching each other how to do it. There's adults teaching calves how to do it. And then like the calves mimicking the ramming of the rudders.
Brooke I love this. I don't know why I love this so much.
Inmn Yeah, yeah, it's pretty good. And so, it's coming to prominence because of the sinking of the ships and because of the antagonism of this global boat race that goes through the Straits of Gibraltar and ships getting attacked during the race. But, can you guess how many orca attacks, or like encounters that resulted in some kind of worrisome interaction, with an orca that there have been since 2020?
Brooke Since 2020?
Inmn Yeah.
Brooke Okay, I'm gonna guess that there's a couple hundred a year in normal times. And, I think the time frame you're giving me implies that it's worse than usual. So, 1000.
Inmn Okay, I mean, you know, you're good at extrapolating disasters...[Laughing]
Brooke Because that still seems extreme. What is it close?
Inmn There have been over 500 recorded worrisome encounters or attacks on boats between 2020 and now. But, orcas have been attacking people and boats since the early 1900s, at least in terms of like what is recorded. There was a study done interviewing a lot of Inupiaq people in Alaska about orca interactions. And so like, you know, there are Indigenous stories of orca interactions dating back much further. And, what a lot of folks from those interviews had to say was that orcas are like, these, you know, wise and mystical creatures, but also that they hold grudges, might revenge themselves upon anyone who has harmed a whale in the past.
Brooke Fuck yeah.
Inmn Yeah. Which makes sense for some of the....Like, some of the orca attacks are being talked about, in the media specifically, they're like, "Yeah, it might be due to past trauma." Specifically, for this one whale named White Gladis who's supposedly the one who's teaching all of these orcas.
Brooke Angry old lady orca. I love it.
Inmn Yeah. But there's some kind of funny things being said about it. Like people are like, "Oh, it's from trauma." Some say it's revenge. Some cited it as a fad. And there are some people who are kind of minimizing it saying, like, "Oh, this is just a fad. Like, they're not revenging themselves upon people there. It's just a fad that they pick up and they'll drop it soon," citing examples like, in the Pacific Northwest, where for a while there was this pod of orcas that would swim around with dissembled seals on their heads.
Brooke Wow. Alright.
Inmn Yeah. And what's amusing about this to me is that people...I think people are just coming up with wild reasons for why animals do things. And it's like, I feel like it's almost how the news talks about like youth culture and youth uprisings. Like, there's some similar language being thrown around,
Brooke Oh, my gosh.
Inmn But one of the biggest underlying factors of the orca attacks in the Straits of Gibraltar could be linked to the fact that they were recently declared a critically endangered species or sub population. There's like 40 of them left in the Straits of Gibraltar.
Brooke Shit, that is not a lot.
Inmn I know. And so it's funny that people have this tendency to say like, "Oh, it's just a fad, or it's from past trauma." And it's like...they're a critically endangered sub population that is like, "No, fuck the chips. Like, it's messing with us." And, it is. Because, a lot of increased ship traffic leads to a lot of complications for them for hunting tuna. And, their fishing and hunting grounds are severely being messed up by boats, boat noise, and by changes in tuna migrations, which is exacerbated by warming waters. So, I think it's pretty clear they're revenging themselves upon humans for this
Brooke Yeah, for sure. And, when you're talking about how few of them there are and then you put that in perspective how many attacks there have been like...Obviously, you know, there are orcas in other places, not just the Straits of Gibraltar, but if there's only 40 there--and I don't know how many of the 500 or so boat attacks are...but let's say a couple 100 of the boat attacks are in that area where there's only 40 orcas, you know? That means every orca has gone out and done like five boat attacks. [Both laughing] It's just like, once or twice a year, they're like, "Fuck these boats. I'm doing it."
Inmn Yeah, yeah.
Brooke And I'm here for it. Go orcas!
Inmn Go Orcas.
Brooke You know what else what happens when we fuck with Mother Nature?
Inmn What also happens when we fuck with mother nature, Brooke?
Brooke Weather. Weather weirdness and stuff going bad. For instance--you've got a better one than me--but this is a little one that I'll pitch as a warm up and then you can share your much better story. There have been storms in the Midwest and the East Coast this last week that have grounded thousands or even tens of thousands of flights. They've been delayed and canceled. So, there's however many passengers that equals--maybe it's thousands of planes and tens of thousands of passengers was the number, actually. They're, you know, stranded vacationing on the east coast, what have you, and can't get back to their homes. And, they haven't even started rescheduling flights yet. And I compared this earlier to like Climate migration. And it's obviously not quite the same thing. It's like a very temporary sort of situation in which a whole bunch of extra people are stuck in a place because of the climate preventing their ability to travel. Isn't that fun?
Inmn No?
Brooke No, certainly not. Yeah. I mean, it's just like not the normal time of year for there being epic storms like this that are holding up planes and causing cancellations and stuff.
Inmn Yeah, yeah. Is some of that related to smoke from the wildfires in Canada?
Brooke Um, you know, I didn't see any notes about it being caused by smoke. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some of that going on too. But, it was talking really specifically about major storms, rain storms, wind storms in the Midwest and east, which is like...When we hear about it in the winter and there's flights canceled, we're like, okay, yeah, winter snow, and ice means flights get canceled. But, when you hear about it in summer, it's very strange to have that going on right now.
Inmn Yeah, yeah.
Brooke Is there are other strange weather going on now?
Inmn There's some other strange weather going on right now. So, in the southeast United States, South America, and Mexico right now there's this pretty intense heatwave going on. In Mexico alone, since March, there have been over 112 people who have died from extreme heat related complications in Mexico.
Brooke Jeez.
Inmn It's pretty brutal. There's large sporting events being canceled from athletes just like dropping out from heat illness. In the southeast of the US it is particularly bad with heat indexes of upwards of 120 degrees in New Orleans and Texas right now. And, a lot of these are like record heats for the areas. And notably in Texas, in Big Bend over the month, a 14 year old hiker in Big Bend died from heat related illness complications. And, his stepdad also died from heat related illness from crashing...which resulted in him crashing his car and dying while trying to get help for his stepson.
Brooke Jeez.
Inmn Yeah, it's awful. It's kind of brutal. And, there's kind of like critical fire conditions in New Mexico because of this. Like, I know someone who's like getting deployed to a fire pretty imminently in New Mexico. And, in contrast to this there's also wild flooding happening. Yeah, there's kind of been like an early little hurricane season in the Caribbean. And, in June there were catastrophic floods in Haiti, across the rest of the Caribbean, and in South America with catastrophic flooding in Brazil, Ecuador and Chile.
Brooke So like, just south of the areas that are having the really bad heat waves, basically?
Inmn Yeah. There's also this extreme flooding happening. And, some of this can be explained by a another pretty large weather shift, which is that we are officially in an El Nino weather pattern as of June
Brooke An El Nino is the wet one, right? It's way too much rain. And La Nina is something else?
Inmn Yeah, kind of. I spent a long time trying to understand these weather patterns and they're rather complicated. So, essentially what is going on is that there's this large amount of warm water that accumulates around Australia. And at some point, there's this big weather shift due to these like feedback loops changing. And, all of that warm water starts to move eastward. So, okay, during a La Nina event, Australia and tropical Asia experience a lot of flooding and storms and stuff. And then during an El Nino event, all of that warm water starts to shift eastward, which results in much higher surface water temperatures across the Atlantic. Which, can do a lot of it brings. It brings rain as well to the Atlantic. But, it also brings a huge amount of heat. So like during an El Nino event, there is projected to be like large increases in global temperatures and specifically in the surface water. And so typically in a La Nina event, we experience in the Atlantic a lot more hurricanes. So during an El Nino event, there's actually like a decrease in the amount of intensified hurricanes because of the trade winds that are associated with an El Nino event. They kind of like cut off the head of the hurricane before it can develop. But, due to an unprecedented heat event occurring, the heat is actually suppressing the winds and so a lot of weather scientists are unsure what's going to happen for this El Nino event because the winds that normally prevent large hurricanes might not do that anymore. But, there will be a huge increase in warm water and in the amount of water in the Atlantic so other catastrophic things could happen.
Brooke Oh, good. Just what we need more catastrophic things.
Inmn Yeah, and this is....I feel like I'm going to get @'ed for for some of this reporting. Go watch a YouTube video about El Nino.... [Brooke interrupts]
Brooke You're not a climatologist full time.
Inmn Yeah, not a climatologist. I had a really hard time deciphering a lot of this information. But yeah, that's what I got about the weather.
Brooke I think it was great. And I appreciate that. Alright, one quick news topic for you if I may?
Inmn Yeah, yeah. What else have you got in this list of horrifying things?
Brooke Well, the United States Postal Service, USPS, is raising the price of stamps again. That's effective July 9th. So, if you happen to be listening to this before July 9th and you're someone who does a lot of mailings, run out and buy some Forever stamps because they will be only be 63 cents and you can use them for first class postage forever. Where as, starting July 9th, they're going to be 66 cents. They're gonna go up three whole cents. They're also raising the price for postcards and for international mail.
Inmn Cool. I mean, you know, whatever. But...
Brooke I have one more funny news story, but I can't remember if you had other stuff to share, too?
Inmn I have some more stuff. I have some other headlines. But, you know, do your headlines.
Brooke Oh, no, throw out one of your headlines. I want to your headlines. I just did a headline. We take turns here at Strangers. It's very important.
Inmn All of my headlines are about pretty bad things happening for trans folks.
Brooke Oh God, no.
Inmn No, it's not a good month or a year for us.
Brooke Or century. Life time.
Inmn In Vancouver, BC, a husband and a wife interrupted a track and field meet literally in the middle of the shot-put event as this kid was walking up to do her turn. And this dad like literally stormed onto the field, accusing this person--who is a cis girl--ended up berating and accusing her of being trans, and how she should not be able allowed to compete, and demanded that the parents produce a birth certificate on the spot to prove that this like nine year old, this girl was, in fact, a cis girl.
Brooke Don't harass children. I mean, the whole thing is kind of bananas, but what grown ass adult in their right mind thinks it's okay to walk up to like, you know--I was picturing like a high schooler, which is still not okay, but then you said a nine year old and I'm like, "What the actual fuck? Like, what's wrong with your brain?" I shouldn't say it that way. Why would you think it's okay to berate a nine year old child? A stranger that you don't know? That's just bananas. That's bananas.
Inmn Yeah. All in the name of protecting children. [said with dry sarcasm]
Brooke Yes, as a mother, I'm imagining if that had been my child in that situation, I would have not done well. I become kind of a mama bear with my kid. And like some stranger comes up and starts shouting at my kid, it's not gonna go well for them. And I just don't understand how anybody thinks that's okay.
Inmn Yeah, and the both of them also verbally berated both of this kid's moms as being, you know, groomers and genital mutilators?
Brooke Gross. Yeah, child's not even trans. Not that would be okay if they were, but it's just that extra layer of ignorance.
Inmn Yeah, it does point to this larger thing, though, of like, you know--obviously, all of this heightened violence towards trans people is obviously more dangerous for trans people than it is for anyone else--But, I think that we're going to see--and this is corroborated by some more headlines that I have--that a lot of this violence is also going to be directed at other queer people. It's going to be directed at trans guys. And, a lot of it's going to be directed at cis women. Like, basically anyone who doesn't fit gender norms.
Brooke Wonderful.
Inmn Whether that's how they dress or how their hair is cut or otherwise. And, that was part of the provoking incident with this nine year old was that she had a pixie cut. So, she had short hair.
Brooke Oh, no. I had a shaved head at that age. Like 8, 9, 10. Like, shaved. Like that's just a pixie cut, you know, little tiny baby hairs. That's how I like to wear it. And it's weird to think about how if I were nine years old today, how I might be treated. I mean, everybody thought I was weird for having a boys haircut then but like, nobody was going to come up and yell at me about, I don't know, my gender expression or anything like that. They're just like, "You're weird." And that was all.
Inmn Yeah. Interesting. Do you have any other headlines?
Brooke I've got one more fun story from Oregon for you. Do you want it now? Or do you want it after your evil headlines?
Inmn Maybe if it's fun, maybe it's like a nice thing later?
Brooke Okay, yeah, that's good. Suffering for a little bit. And then maybe I can take us out with some lols.
Inmn Another notable thing that happened...this was like trending on Tik Tok a lot this past month was a like...a masc, a slightly masc presenting cis lesbian woman was actually arrested for using the bathroom designated for women.
Brooke Oh, of course.
Inmn Yeah.
Brooke God forbid.
Inmn Yeah. Which involves this dude cop like going into this bathroom and trying to shake this person down for ID, you know? To like, prove that she was in fact a cis woman.
Brooke Oh, the whole bathroom thing.
Inmn Ben Shapiro. I'm sure folks knew who Ben Shapiro is.
Brooke A little bit.
Inmn Yep. So, Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire is filming an anti-trans movie in Nashville right now.
Brooke I was really hoping you were gonna say in a bathroom. Sorry.
Inmn I'm sure bathrooms will get brought into this movie.
Brooke Okay, and where? Nashville?
Inmn Nashville Tennessee.
Brooke What's it called?
Inmn It's called the Coach Miracle and it is about a group of cis men who are pretending to be trans women so that they can play basketball in the Olympics.
Brooke Okay.
Inmn And I think I've heard that Ted Cruz was on location filming with it. And they misled...they had a bunch of misleading casting ads, which tricked a lot of queer actors into signing on to the film.
Brooke Yeah, I see it. I see it now.
Inmn Because it's being billed as this like queer comedy movie about basketball. But, yeah, it's pretty bad. But okay, so the one thing that I'm wondering is, does them making that movie put them in violation of Tennessee's drag ban?
Brooke When the shitty laws come back around to bite the shitty people in the ass? I hope it does.
Inmn Yeah, well, or
Brooke I really hope it violates that law.
Inmn It definitely wouldn't...like no one...None of them are going to be prosecuted for that. But, in a good bit of news, a federal judge rejected the Tennessee drag show ban as being unconstitutional.
Brooke Yeah, it is. It's a First Amendment violation
Inmn Yeah. So, the Tennessee drag ban is is no more. I mean, it's still in the books, but it has been deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
Brooke Alright. Well, that's a little something to make me less, just a little bit less worried about the world.
Inmn Yeah. But also the Human Rights Campaign, which I feel like I'm having like a brain fog around. I feel like the Human Rights Campaign came under heavy critique for being pretty transphobic in years past. But I can't remember a lot of things. So. But, you know, regardless, Human Rights Campaign, declared in June, what, you know, trans people have been saying for a very long time, which is that they declared a national state of emergency for trans people.
Brooke Holy shit.
Inmn Which, you know, I don't really understand what that means. And it's like, you know, queer and trans people have been saying the same thing for a very long time. So like, I don't really know what kind of legitimacy they're lending to it. But...
Brooke Yeah, but they're like a well known entity. So them, I think, saying that like really is going to draw some important attention to what's going on that obviously, you and I are paying well attention to, but I don't know how much any of the rest of society and you know, your normal Democrats or vanilla leftist folks are really paying any attention to all of this that's going on.
Inmn Yeah, yeah, that's true. But regardless of what's up with the Human Rights Campaign... And my foggy memory...Maybe they're fine? I don't know. They did put out a report recently that is this interactive document that keeps up on what laws are being introduced, what bills have been signed into law, what states there are sports bans and bathroom bans, and things like that. Pretty much all of the information to stay up to date on what's going on in your area or your surrounding area can be found in this interactive report that they put out.
Brooke So, okay. Well, if you've had problems in the past, it sounds like they are catching up and making progress and starting to do some good things now. So we should always applaud when that starts to happen.
Inmn Yeah.
Brooke Or we can be disappointed. But it's, you know, it's good that they're getting there now. I feel like.
Inmn Yeah. What's your good headline? Yeah. What's your funny news?
Brooke Okay, soon New Jersey is going to be the only state in the United States where you're not allowed to pump your own gas because Oregon's legislature just passed a law saying that's going to end our very, very silly law that says you cannot pump your own gas. So, the governor still has to sign in that law--which there's no reason to think she's not going to--and then congratulations to us. When we get to a gas station, we can get out of our cars and do it ourselves. And it's hard to emphasize how ridiculous this is if you haven't, like, lived here in Oregon and then traveled to other places where you can pump your own gas, you know? I've lived in this state my whole life, but I traveled to Washington frequently. And once I crossed that state border, I pump my own gas and it's not a big deal. But, in Oregon, I mean, you don't get out of your car, right? You roll down your window and someone comes to you and takes your card and pumps your gas. And there have been a couple of times like during severe heat waves and part of COVID, in which they allowed self-service. And it was very confusing for people. You could see them when they got to the gas station that they were sitting there and like looking around and waiting. And then they realized there was a sign and then they were like, "Oh, pump my own gas," and they get out and they look at this machine like it's asking them to do calculus or something. Oh, it's gonna be so confusing and upsetting for people and I'm looking forward to it.
Inmn Cool?
Brooke It's just so silly that we can't. I mean, it's a law that came on the books like 70 years ago or something like that because the government was worried about, you know, people handling flammable materials and whether or not they could be responsible and safe. And, Oregon still has that law active on the books.
Inmn Wow.
Brooke Yeah. So this means nothing to, you know, probably 80% of our listeners, but the 20% of you who are in Oregon with me or who have lived here for a set of time, you know you're laughing.
Inmn To just to frame this episode with, you know, fascists killing or harming or trying to fight other fascists. So, people might have heard, but there was an attempted coup in Russia from this group called the Wagner Group, which is a private military company of some 50,000 troops.
Brooke Damn,
Inmn Yeah, yeah. And it's a private military company, they're literal mercenaries. It is a company that is operated by a single person who was...It's hard for me to understand what, you know, fascists quips with other fascists are, but they were dissatisfied with the military leadership for the, you know, the invasion of Ukraine. And they were upset that they claimed that their troops were getting shelled by the larger Russian military. And so they staged a coup. They attempted to go to Moscow to specifically target this general who is in charge of the invasion of Ukraine. And that lasted about a day and there was this shady sounding deal that was brokered between Putin and Prigozhin, who's the head of the Wagner group, by the Belarusian president, I think. And the details of the deal have not been...no one knows what the details of the deal are. But, the Wagner group went from being accused of treason and like considered criminals by the Russian state to everything's fine and no one's getting in trouble.
Brooke Yeah, sure. Everything's fine.
Inmn So yeah, some fascists killed some other fascists.
Brooke Excellent. No notes.
Brooke No notes.
Brooke As we started the episode, so we ended with good news. Thanks for that happy headline. Can I do the the ending thing now with the ending of the thing?
Brooke Thanks so much for listening to the latest installment of This Month in the Apocalypse. We come to you as members of the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness publishing collective. We produce a few other podcasts, great zines, publish books. And, we just finished very successfully Kickstarting our first tabletop role playing game, Penumbra City.
Inmn Which, as of...If you're listening on Friday, you still have until 7am on Saturday, July 1st to back this Kickstarter.
Brooke So why would you want to?
Inmn So this wonderful role playing game that me, and Margaret, and Robin, and Casandra have been working on for a really long time is...We Kicstarted it. It was a huge success. Thank you, everyone. So, if you back the Kickstarter now, in addition to whatever rewards you select--and there's, you know, there's rewards from digital PDFs, to a beautiful hardcover print edition of the game--you get a reduced price because it's going to be cheaper on the Kickstarter than it will be when we sell it later.
Brooke That's like a 20% discount. That's awesome. Yeah.
Inmn And you also get some Kickstarter exclusive swag, a sticker that won't exist after this, and access to an art print by Robin Savage, which will also not be available after the Kickstarter. You also get, if you back it now at any level, you get two additional books, which is a novella by Margaret Killjoy, and a campaign module that I'll be writing. And those are because we unlocked most of our stretch goals. You'll also get digital--and these are digital editions and like discount on print editions later--but you'll also get a digital edition of a full color map that Robin and Casandra are making. And so, you know, go check out the Kickstarter. Kickstarter, Penumbra City. It's on there. And yeah, I'm disappointed we didn't get to...[interrupted]
Brooke [Finishing] The pizza party or the naked live streamed hot tub party.
Inmn It was never naked. It was never going to be...[interrupted]
Brooke I was gonna be naked. I don't know what you guys were gonna do. But there's still time though. Get us to that 100k mark and be naked in a hot tub for everyone and you will be happy about it. I promise. Yeah, there's a new book coming out too, that we are crazy excited about? At least I am because I got to do that editing work on it and it is phenomenal. I think I'm gonna buy like five copies, at least, from us when it comes out because I want to give it to so many people.
Inmn Yeah, it is an incredible book. It's coming out. It's actually, if you go to our website anytime after listening to this, it'll be available for preorder. And that is To the Ghosts Who Are Still Living by Ami Weintraub. And it is a collection of essays written by Ami. In this collection of remarkable essays, Ami guides us on a journey to meet the ghosts of his Jewish ancestors, the people whose struggles and stories sometimes whisper and sometimes scream to be shared. Ami examines challenging questions of heartbreak, memory, restitution, and self-discovery. It is an absolutely beautiful and heartbreaking book. And, if you want to hear more about the book, what also came out today is an interview with Ami on my other podcast, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. There's a really incredible interview that he does talking about the process of creating the book and a sample chapter read by the wonderful Bea Flowers. So, go check out the book and the other podcast to hear more about it.
Brooke Nice. All that great stuff is available on our website, Tangledwilderness.org. And we are also on some social media platforms and you can connect with us there. We are able to do all of these rad things because of the support of our listeners, especially because of our Patreon supporters who really provide the base monthly financials that we need in order to do our production work. So, we're incredibly grateful to our patrons. If you're interested in supporting the work, you can check out our Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness and our lovely Patreon supporters who provide at least $20 a month get a very special shout out at the end of every podcast. We thank you Hoss the dog, Michaiah, Chris, Sam, Kirk, Eleanor, Jenipher, Staro, Cat J., Chelsea, Dana, David, Nicole, Mikki, Paige, SJ, Shawn, Hunter, theo, Boise Mutual Aid, Milica, paparouna, Aly, Jans, Paige, Janice & O'dell, Oxalice, Funder, Anonymous, BenBen, Princess Miranda, and Trixter. Thank you.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Sean teaches Margaret about brewing alcohol. They talk about fermentation in general and then walk though how to make beer and cider.
Sean (he/him) can be found at https://seanvansickel.com/
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Sean on Brewing
Margaret: Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. This week we're talking about fermentation. We're talking about little things that eat things and then poop out alcohol. I actually don't really know because I'm the one who's going to be asking these questions and I record these introductions before I actually do the interview. So, I'm going to be learning more about fermentation and we're gonna be talking about alcohol, but we're also gonna be talking about all kinds of other stuff too. And I think you'll get a lot out of it. And first, we're a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on the network. La la la, la la la la [Margaret making musical melody sounds]
Margaret: Okay, we're back. And so if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then I guess like a little bit about how you got into fermentation?
Sean: So my name is Sean. Pronouns are he/him. Well, I actually started with, with cider and mead because I had a harder time finding commercially available cider and mead that wasn't just kind of like a novelty product or obscenely expensive, you know, imported from like Basque country or whatever. So that's, that was kind of where I got my, my kickoff on fermentation. I worked in commercial fermentation doing sour beer production as well as like conventional clean, you know, canned beer, and then actually worked in sales and distribution with beer for a while.
Margaret:Okay, so this is really exciting because I've always kind of wanted to get into this. Well, I've kind of wanted to get into everything, which is the whole reason I started this podcast, so I could ask people about how to do things. But fermentation...so you can format things and it makes them different? What is fermentation?
Sean: So fermentation basically is either yeast or bacteria breaking down almost always some form of sugar or carbohydrate. The main thing that is being produced by that is co2. But a nice little side effect that is often produced is alcohol, right, or lactic acid is often produced especially in the presence of bacteria, specifically in the presence of lactic acid producing bacteria. We call them you know, LAB is the abbreviation that's used. So, fermentation is happening generally-when people are referring to it--they're referring to yeast fermentation. So the most common yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, right, beer yeast. It's the same. It's called beer yeast. But that's the same yeast that's used to ferment wine. It's used to ferment like a sour mash, if you're, you know, making whiskey in a legal distillation situation as opposed to you know, the other distillation situation. It is illegal to distill alcohol for home use in the US. So, yeah, you have to be very careful you don't do that. On Accident.
Margaret:Yeah, we won't cover that for a while.
Sean: Yeah, right.
Margaret: Okay, wait, is this the same yeast as like sourdough and all of that?
Sean: It's very, very close. So sourdough is--especially if you make like a if you'd like a sourdough starter capture right from the air... I have not done this. It's something I've wanted to do. I've captured wild yeast for brewing from the air but never for baking. But they are a similar blend of airborne yeast, so you'll have wild yeast. You'll have wild Saccharomyces cerevisiae as well as wild other yeasts, Brettanomyces. Yeast strains are very common in air. And then you'll also have lactic acid bacteria in the air. So these are those rod shaped bacteria that are active in the absence of oxygen. They're anaerobic bacteria. So, they will continue to acidify things, even when there is no oxygen present to like kind of fuel or catalyze that reaction in a way that regular beer yeast, or even bread yeast, baking yeast, right, won't necessarily be able to do.
Margaret: I'm really not used to the idea of thinking about bacteria as a positive thing.
Sean: Right. No. So they are extremely a positive thing, Lactic acid bacteria, because they drop the pH as well. And lower pH means you don't have to worry about like botulism, for example. You know, so that's definitely a benefit. Most spoilage...So one number I'm going to be saying probably a few times is 4.2. 4.2 is like the pH level, below which you have a greater degree of protection because of the acidity, right.
Margaret: Okay. Cause botulism doesn't like hanging out in there?
Sean: Botulism is...I'm not 100% sure if it's the pH, the alcohol, or both. But botulism does not like low pH, nor does it like high ABV. So these are, these are both good ways of protecting yourself from that.
Margaret: So it's that kind of...so fermentation probably comes originally, basically...Well, probably by accident. But originally probably comes from people just basically desperately trying to figure out how to make sure food doesn't go bad. And this is and fermentation is like, one of the many ways that humans have developed to keep food from going bad? Is that a?
Sean: My theory is that's why fermentation stuck around. I think it showed up eventually because human... ancient, you know, human beings, proto humans even, you know, proto hominids realized they could get fucked up with it.
Margaret:Yeah. That's fair.
Sean: I think that's the key point. Like human nature hasn't changed that much. That will always be the driving influence on novelty, I think.
Margaret: So, what are some of the things--I'm going to ask you about some of the specifics about how to do this a little bit--but what are some of the things that you can ferment? I know, you can make sauerkraut and you can make pickles? Nope, that's not fermentation.
Sean: No, lacto fermented pickles, absolutely. That's frementation.
Margaret: Oh, yeah. No, I totally knew that. That's definitely why I said it.
Sean: Not like quick pickling with vinegar in the fridge. That's not an active fermentation process. And I do that too, like quick pickled red onions are like...those go well on everything. But no, like actual, like long term pickling. Hot sauces are a big one. You know, I did a batch of...I grew a bunch of jalapeno peppers. And then I went to like a restaurant supply type grocery store and they had like three or four pound bags of jalapenos for like, you know, they were starting to go off, right, I got them for like, under $1. So I fermented about 40 pounds of jalapenos in a five gallon bucket. And you just make a make of salt brine. Right. Like you can you can look up the levels. I think I did a 3.5% or 4%. saline brine in there.
Margaret: I'll ask you the more specifics about how to do it in a bit.
Sean: But yeah, so peppers you can do. You can do any kind of...anything that has an naturally occurring sugar usually can be fermented and emits....And when you have high levels of naturally occurring sugar, like the classic example is grapes, you usually are, you know, suspending that sugar and solution, water. Right. And you're making a beverage. Like that's the most classic example. That's, you know, wine, that's beer, that's, you know, fruit wines. You know, there's a lot of rural cultures throughout the world. There's, you know, non-grape wines, right, it's very common mead is another one, right, and probably the oldest. You know, we talked about the, you know, anthropological aspects of fermentation earlier. And, yeah, that's almost certainly we've, you know, a lot of evidence suggests mead,
Margaret: Okay. So, when you ferment stuff, how long? What kind of shelf life are you able to get on something like hot sauce or sauerkraut or pickles and things like that? The like food stuff.
Sean: Yeah. So you've definitely there are two dates at play here, which is the this is going to, you know, this still tastes really good and this is still a safe source of macronutrients and, you know, and things like that. I've had no decline in flavor with fermented hot sauce. And I usually package the fermented hot sauce in beer bottles with like a beer cap over the top or in a, like, sometimes mason jars as well. But in that packaging, I've not really seen any kind of degradation over like a two year time period, as far as flavor is concerned. It's probably foodsafe not indefinitely but probably at least 10 years. But it is going to depend on your process. It's going to depend on how much oxygen is introduced at packaging It's going to depend on the amount of salt that you have, you know, because salt is usually part of, you know, fermented food preservation and salt is a preservative. So, you know, there's going to be a lot of little factors that are going to affect that aspect of that.
Margaret: Okay, but if you if you do it right, you can probably make bottles of stuff and leave them in your basement for like 10 years if you need to?
Sean: Yeah, absolutely.
Margaret: Fuck yeah.
Sean: And that applies to especially lactic acid bacteria fermented alcohol. You know, whether that's like a French or Basque style cider or a sour beer. Those things we're talking, you know, probably a 20 year lifespan.
Margaret: Oh, interesting. Okay, as compared to so that's the bacterially fermented?
Sean: So the food is bacterially fermented as well.
Margaret: But I mean, as compared to regular beer, right?
Sean:Yeah. Yeah.
Margaret How long does regular beer last?
Sean Very high alcohol beer can last just as long because alcohol is a preservative just like salt, you know, the effects that some of these bacteria create. Bacteria and wild yeast like Brettanomyces is oxygen scavenging, right. So when you when it referments, if you re-...it's called bottle conditioning, right, it's where you add a small amount of fermentable sugar to a bottle and then cap it and then it referments in the bottle, you get a tiny layer a yeast at the bottom and it carbonates in the bottle. It's not done as often professionally because it produces pretty inconsistent results. But it is going to increase the lifespan of your beverage exponentially because as part of that like reproductive cycle, oxygen is scavenged and where there's less oxygen there's less spoilage.
Margaret: So it's like putting the little oxygen absorber in with your like Mylar bag food only it's...
Sean: Except it actually works. Yeah. [Laughing] It's far more effective because it literally is pulling every, almost every last, you know, unit of oxygen out of there and using it to fuel, you know, its own cellular reproduction. So it's not just being like absorbed and held--as much as it can be absorbed and held inert--it's like being used.
Margaret: That's cool. Alright, so let's say I want to ferment because I kind of do. Let's start with...I think probably the average listener is probably thinking about how they're going to make beer or wine or things like that.
Sean: Ciders probably the easiest.
Margaret: Okay, so yeah, I want to make cider. What what do I do? Like what what do I need? How do I get started?
Sean: You are in like actual apple country. If I understand correctly. So you have some options that most people don't. Where I am like getting getting really quality fresh pressed apple juice, apple cider, unfermented, right, is is a little bit of a challenge. But the easiest way to do it is to just go to a grocery store, you know, any place where you can get like the half gallon or gallon sized jugs of apple juice. You know, get them when they're on sale, get them in bulk. Use frozen apple juice concentrate if you want. It doesn't really matter. You are going to put that in a five gallon bucket, HDPE, high density polyethylene, plastic, right. It's a food-safe bucket. But like in food service, you see, you see these buckets used for pickles, you see them use for frosting at you know bakeries and things like that. If you want to do some dumpster diving, you can find yourself some of these real easy or if you just have a you know, a friend or member of your community that's, you know, involved or, you know, is working in food service they can probably hook you up with these as well. Worst case scenario, you....
Margaret: I'm looking it up, it's number two on the bottom of a? Like, plastic usually has a recycling symbol. Is it number two?
Sean: HDPE?
Margaret:Yeah.
Sean: I don't remember if that's denoted with a number two, but it's HDPE plastic.
Margaret: I just looked it up.
Sean:Yeah. And it'll usually be specified as food grade or, you know, if it was used to hold food in the sense of the, you know, recycling and reusing from, you know, food service and like commercial kitchens and things like that, obviously, you know, you're taken care of in that respect.
Margaret: I'm trying to look up to see whether like the Lowe's buckets are HDPE or not.
Sean: There's two different types. Lowe's did have food grade ones. But the like, kind of universal blue bucket one, I believe it is HDPE but it is not certified food grade. So there might be contaminants in there. So, you would be maybe rolling the dice on that one a little bit. In a survival type situation or something like that, I think that would be fine. But, if you have other options, you know, maybe err on the side of caution.
Margaret: Okay, that's good to know. I have a lot of these buckets for a lot of different purposes.
Sean: Me too. Yeah. They get a lot of use in the garden.
Margaret:Yeah, exactly. Now I'm like oh, are they not food safe. Should I not be growing tomatoes in them? And then I'm like, this is probably over thinking it.
Sean: Depending you know, some something that like roots are touching not necessarily that food are touching versus something that you have in acidic and micro biologically active thing churning around that you are then going to drink in large quantities, like you know...
Margaret: Okay. No, okay, fair enough. And this has been an aside Okay, so I've gone and gotten some apple juice, or if I'm really lucky I press some apples. And I've got a five gallon bucket and I fill the bucket with apple juice I assume?
Sean: So, about four gallons of apple juice. Yeah, you gotta leave yourself some head space because you are going to, you know, have some activity in motion with the yeast. Then you're going to be pitching in yeast. For apple juice for cider you can use champagne yeast, right? That's, a very, very common one. It is a like a specialty product that you need to order online or get from like a homebrew store or a brewing supply store, something like that. You can use just regular like baking yeast, like breadmaker's yeast like Fleischmanns or whatever. It will work. You will get a few like...you're more likely to develop some off flavors, maybe some sulfur type, aromas. Things like that. And then you also might have a less healthy fermentation. So the fermentation might take longer and your final gravity right, the amount of residual sugar left by the fermentation will be higher and the amount of alcohol produced will be a little bit lower. Okay, so that's that's using like bread or baking yeast. If you're using a champagne yeast, you know, wine yeast, beer yeast even you are going to get a faster and much more complete fermentation. Less likely that contamination, if there is any present, will will take hold. Right?
Margaret: Okay, what about um, like, let's say the supply chains are all fucked, right and I can't go get yeast. My two questions is one...okay well three questions. Can I use wild yeast? Second question, when you've already made this stuff, can you like reuse pieces of it as the yeast? Like in the same way as you like can with like sourdough or something? And then third question is, can you use a sourdough starter? That one so I'm expecting no.
Sean: The answer to all of those is yes, actually.
Margaret: Oh, interesting.
Sean: And I'll go through one at a time. So your first, if there are supply chain issues, you don't have, or you just in general you don't have access, or you don't want to
Margaret: Or you're in a jail cell and making it in the toilet or whatever.
Sean: Yeah, right. that's gonna that's gonna have its own very special considerations. But yeah, you can absolutely use wild capture yeast. So the...what I would do with with the equipment that I have, I would get a cake pan and I would put...I would fill it maybe between a quarter inch and a half an inch high full of fermentable liquid, in this case apple juice. I put it outside, ideally on a spring or a fall day when there's no danger of a hard frost, right, either before or after, depending on which shoulder season you're in. But fairly close to that date is when you're going to get the best results. You're going to want to have some kind of a mesh over the top, maybe like a window screen or door screen, you know, screen door type mesh.
Margaret: Keep bugs out?
Sean: Yep, exactly. Keep bugs out. You want the microscopic bugs not the ones that we can see flying around in there, you know? So leave that out overnight on a cool night. If you have fruit trees, especially vines, any grape vines, anything like that, right under there is ideal. If you don't, just anywhere where there is some, you know, greenery growing. In the wild and you kind of have--not in the wild but you know, outside--in a non sterile, you know, non-contained environment, you're gonna have less luck trying to do this inside or, you know, in like a warehouse building or something like that. Yeah, this is actually, once you have that, you know, you've had it left overnight, decant it into maybe a mason jar or something like that with an airlock. I use like an Erlenmeyer flask just because I have them for other fermentation stuff. And you can with an Erlenmeyer flask, you can drop a magnetic bar in there, put it on a stir plate, and you know, knock the whole process out, you know, 10 times as fast. Obviously not necessary. But, it's a fun little shortcut if you want to, you know, drop $40 or $50 on a stir plate.
Margaret: Is that just like a basically like, a magnet? Inside the flask that moves because of a magnet on the plate?
Sean: Yep, that's it. Exactly.
Margaret: That's Brilliant.
Sean: Yeah, so you have like a little bar magnet. It's like coated in like a food safe plastic, right, so it's not gonna scratch anything up. And then you just drop that in, you turn on the plate, it usually has a like potentiometer, like little knob that you can control the speed on. Sometimes if you get the speed up too far, it will throw the magnet and then you've got to recenter it and get it all there. But that's great for, you know, doing your own yeast and bacteria captures. It speeds that up.
Margaret: So it's speeding it up because you need to stir it. To go back to the I've just done this without a flask. I've put it in a mason jar.
Sean: Yeah, just give it a swirl a couple times a day, give it a couple swirls. It is going to be, you know, working the same way just on a slower timeline.
Margaret: And this is a sealed jar?
Sean: Sealed, but with an airlock because again, anytime you have fermentation you have CO2 production, it you don't have an air lock, you've just made an improvised explosive device sitting on your kitchen counter. So you don't want that
Margaret: Right. Usually not. Okay. So that's the little thing that you see sticking out of carboys where it's a little glass thing with some water in it. The thing goes through where the air bubbles go.
Sean: Yeah, it's usually plastic. The most common ones are, it's like an S bend, right? The same kind of thing that you've seen, like sink and toilet plumbing to keep the stinky gas away. The function works the same way that gas can pass through in one direction.
Margaret: So basically, you've captured some wild yeast and you've put it in a mason jar with an airlock and then it it...you're feeding it...it feeds off of that for a while and that's how you get your starter? Is that?
Sean: Yeah, so that is your yeast. That is your inoculant, your starter? Yeah, but you do need to do a couple things to confirm that that is--because you know, wild captured isn't going to work every single time perfectly. It's why we've you know...
Margaret: Why you can go buy champange yeast at a store.
Sean: Yeah, everyone uses that. So what you need to do is you need to confirm that the pH is below 4.2. Okay, all right. So...
Margaret: It's that magic number.
Sean: Yeah, that's the big number for...I think that's what Douglas Adams was talking about, actually, he just probably pulled the decimal point. But no, so you need to make sure it's below 4.2 ph. You can do this with pH testing strips. Litmus paper. You can just, you know, put a drop of it on there and you know, see what color it is. I would advise against using the full pH range like the 0 to 14 ones just because since it is such a wide range, it can be kind of like "Is that greenish brown or is that brownish green?" like that's that's a whole point on the pH scale. The pH scale is logarithmic. So the difference between brownish green and greenish brown is a factor of 10. So like, you know, have a more narrow range. Litmus paper is ideal or a pH meter. They've gotten a lot better in the last five or ten years and a lot cheaper, like we're talking under $20. So those are really...if you're going to be doing fermentation, I would recommend using both just in case there's like a, you know, a calibration error or anything like that. It's just a good way to confirm.
Margaret: Okay. Alright, so you've got to now, you know, the pH is under 4.2. What else are we checking?
Sean: Yeah, we're also going to just use our olfactory sense. So get your nose in there. And if it smells like rotten eggs and sewage like toss that shit out. There are other bacteria at play that we that we don't want playing in our in our happy little colony here. So that needs to go and instead just, you know, do another capture. You want like fruity aromas, aromas that maybe have some spice or piquancy to them are fine. Like alcohol aromas are really good too, you know, things like that. These are all indicating fermentation production of, you know, of alcohol production of CO2 as well. You want to see that. That's another really good indicator is that and that's why I like those S-bend airlocks as opposed to they also make like a three piece one that just kind of percolates through. The S-bend one is really nice because you can see the CO2 coming through, right, you can see it coming through in bubbles. So you have a visual and audible indicator, right? Like you can hear that there are, you know, 10 or 15 bubbles coming through a minute, right. So you know that there is cellular reproduction happening and fermentation happening.
Margaret: This whole thing...I recently recorded an episode about yeast, about sourdough, this is why I keep referencing sourdough. Yeah. And the whole thing is like hard for me to believe is real. Once I start doing it, I'll believe it but wild capture...Like sure the invisible alcohol makers in the sky are just going to turn it...like of course they are.
Sean: It feels like some like biohacking, like bio-punk speculative fiction. Yeah. Like it totally does.
Margaret:Yeah. But I love...I mean, when I start doing this, I'm gonna go out and buy yeast, right. But I'm much more interested in hobbies that I know that like, I know how I will do without buying chemicals if I have to, you know? Okay, so wild capture and then you said that you can also use...
Sean: You can inoculate with stuff that you've already made.
Margaret: Yeah.
Sean: I think your second question, right. So the example I'll use for this is sour beer, right? I can go out and pick up a bottle of sour beer. I can drink the sour beer and leave just the dregs at bottom. I can swirl that up and I can pitch that into a fermenter and I've just inoculated it. That's it.
Margaret: And so it can't be pasteurized, right?
Sean: No, no, you don't want to pasteurize. But again, remember, we were talking about bottle conditioning, right. It's a bottle conditioned to beer. So, because it has sugar added to the bottle and it's naturally re fermented in the bottle, you know, built up co2 and nice, pleasant effervescent bubbles in the bottle that means that it is it is fully bioactive. That's great, too, because that...much higher levels of like vitamin B and things like that, as well as a full culture of yeast and bacteria, which are really good for your gut biome, which is also important. So that's why I'm a big fan. Pasteurization definitely helps for like safe transportation and breweries not getting sued when their bottles explode and leave glass in people's hands and things like that.
Margaret: And so for anyone listening, pasteurization is where you treat it so that everything's dead inside, right?
Sean: With heat.
Margaret: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sean: Yeah, exactly. They slowly increase the pressure in increments that you don't notice until you find that everything is completely dead.
Margaret:Yeah. Okay. Cool. And safe for capitalism.
Sean: And safe for capitalism. Absolutely. Yep. [laughing]
Margaret: Cool. All right. So once we've domesticize, the bottles of beer...okay, anyway.
Sean: Yeah, so we want to avoid pasteurization unless absolutely necessary because then the product is less healthy for us and it's less useful for us in the future. We can't use it to inoculate other other batches. If I were going to be doing that, I would--I mean, again, going back to that stir plate, I'm talking about an ideal situation--I would add some of that to unfermented beer or cider on the stir plate and let that go because that's going to get my yeast and bacteria cell count up very, very high. That's going to ensure the fermentation and acidification start quick and finish strong.
Margaret: Okay. And so is there any like...Is it just a taste difference if you were to like....if I were to go get sour beer and then dump it, you know, do everything you just said, and then dump it in as my starter for some cider, would it just be like weird? Or would it be fine? Or like. Like mixing flavors and mediums or whatever it would be called?
Sean: Oh, so like fermentables. Like a mix of apples and malt for example.
Margaret: Well, so it's like if I'm using...if the yeast I have access to is I drank a sour beer and I have what's left, right. But what I have access to to ferment is apple juice. Can I use that to ferment the apple juice?
Sean: Absolutely.
Margaret: And will it taste really wild and different? Or is it just kind of yeast is yeast?
Sean: Not especially. Sour beers is yeast and bacteria. So you have yeast and bacteria at play.
Margaret: Can I make make sour cider?
Sean: Yeah. Because there's already both malic acid and lactic acid naturally present in apple juice, using lactic acid producing bacteria doesn't make it seem as sour as like sour beer, right? Because it's already, there's already these natural acids at play. In beer, like the pH of non-sour beer, it's lower than like water, but it's not low enough that our brains register as sour. So, when you apply those bacteria to a, you know, fermented malt liquid, it's such a huge gulf between non-sour bees and sour beer. Non-sour cider and sour cider are kind of adjacent more. There is one other little factor though, that ties into what you brought up, which is that yeast and bacteria over time are going to adapt to perform ideally in the fermentable that they have reproduced in. So, if you are reusing like a culture, and I'm going to use the word culture rather than yeast or bacteria because it's almost always a combination of bacteria and multiple yeast, right? If your culture has optimized itself to reproduce and to, you know, churn through the fermentables in beer, right, you have a lot of longer chain carbohydrates in beer than you do in fruit juice whether that's apple or grape, right? So they're going to evolve to deal with those and, you know, when you switch from one to the other, your first fermentation might be a little bit sluggish. Still perfectly viable.
Margaret: So, okay, so to go back to where we're at in the stage. I really actually like...I think probably most of this episode will be just literally us walking through the steps of making some cider, but we're gonna learn so much along the way. I'm really excited about it.
Sean: I'm here for it. I'm here for it.
Margaret: Yeah. So okay, so you've gotten your apple juice, you've gotten your starter yeast. Ideally, you went and got champagne yeast, but maybe it's the end of the world and you wild captured or maybe you just don't want to do that. My plan is to start the easy way and then try the hard way later.
Sean: Yep. Good. It's good to....You're more likely to keep going if your first endeavor is successful.
Margaret: If I succeed. Yeah, that's my theory. Okay, now I've got my five gallon bucket. I've added yeast. I'm closing it and putting a little S...
Sean: Airlock. And it doesn't...again going back, like if you don't have access to a homebrew store or the internet or whatever and you can't get an airlock, like you're not completely screwed here. All you need is a piece of hose or tubing in a cork or bung or something like that and stick the other end in liquid, you know. Maybe water with a with a few drops of bleach in it, sanitizing solution, vinegar, alcohol, whatever. Right? Because then it's just you know, the CO2 is blowing out of that tube and just bubbling out of thing. Like an airlock is cleaner, takes up less space, and is more optimized, but yeah, improvisation works fine.
Margaret: Okay. How long am I leaving this? Does it have to be in a cool dark place? Like can I do this on the...
Sean: You don't want direct sunlight. Alright, so you don't want direct sunlight and you don't want light from you know, you don't want
Margaret: Grow lights, or UV, or whatever.
Sean: Yeah, grow light or UV or anything like that. If you just got like, you know, ambient room light hitting hitting it, especially if it's in a bucket, you're probably okay. Beer is more of a concern because beer has hops, and hops are photosensitive, and your beer will taste like Heineken at a summer picnic, you'll get that like kind of skunky thing that you get in green glass bottles.
Margaret: Yeah. Which I weirdly, I have positive associations with just from...
Sean: A lot of people do. A lot of people do. It's like...What you like isn't isn't wrong. Like, it is what it is. It's an unfavorable characteristic to some people, but, you know, there's a lot of traditional German beers that are described as having a sulfur character. And it's like, I don't like that though, but it's correct.
Margaret: I drink a lot of Grolsch. And like, yeah, yeah, I drank a lot of green-bottled Grolsch when I lived in the Netherlands. And it was not...Yep. I'm not trying to relive my cheap beer phase. But like, Grolsch was a good middle of the road, cheap beer, you know.
Sean: I like the bottles because they're almost infinitely reusable. You've got to replace those little plastic... Grolsch bottles are the ones that have that swing top with a little cage that clicks down. So those are...I still have a few of them that I use that I have been reusing for almost a decade now.
Margaret: That's amazing. Okay, now so we've got the bucket, you're keeping it out of the sun because you don't want Heineken and especially with hops.
Margaret: Oh, I would assume gravity is about alcohol.
Sean: It's less of an issue with with cider. But you're going to, depending on how finicky you want to be, you can test the original gravity, right? Original gravity is the original measurement of the liquid's specific gravity, basically how much sugar is in solution?
Sean: No, gravity is sugar in solution.
Margaret: So that's how you find out your relative...Go ahead, please explain it.
Sean: Yeah, you look at how much sugar you started with and how much sugar you ended up with and subtract the difference. Yeah, because yeah, yeah, no, it's...there's a couple ways of measuring original gravity.
Margaret: Yeah, how do you do that?
Sean: The easiest, cheapest, and most like durable over like a long term survival situation is going to be the use of a hydrometer. So that is like a little glass. It almost looks like an old school mercury thermometer with a bunch of weights on one end and like a glass bubble. And that floats in solution. You can float it in like a little like a tall cylinder so you don't waste very much alcohol. You can also float it directly in the bucket. Right? And it's got little lines. It'll tell you like 1.050 Like, that's like the standard standard gravity for most beer and cider. Right? It's around, you know, 1.050 and that when it's fermented fully...
Margaret: Is it measuring the buoyancy of the water?
Sean: Basically, yeah.
Margaret: Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah, sorry, please continue.
Sean: So that is how a hydrometer works. And then you'll measure it again. If you're doing it in a bucket, you don't need a cylinder, you just need to sanitize that hydrometer and then stick it in, measure the original gravity, the gravity reading before you add yeast, and then after--in the case of cider, I would say, you know, three or four weeks I would start checking it again. The other really nice thing about a hydrometer is you can hold off on packaging until you get consistent readings, right? So if you check your...you know, you've let it ferment for three weeks. You check your gravity on Monday and then you write it down, you know: 1.015. Then you check it on Wednesday: 1.014. Okay, well, maybe check it again on Friday: 1.013. No, it's still going down. Like we need to, we need to let this continue to ferment.
Margaret: Okay, so you're basically letting it eat as much sugar as it can.
Sean: Yeah, yeah, it'll...it's got its own limit. It's got its own limit. And once there are no more digestible, you know, saccharides then you're safe to package. If you package while the yeast is still actively fermenting, you've got two problems. One of them is the....
Margaret: Exploding bottles.
Sean: You know, exploding bottles, as mentioned earlier. The other is that, you know, our cultures are generally pretty considerate in that they clean up after themselves, right? They metabolize the most easily available sugars first and then there are some compounds leftover. A lot of them have unpleasant, you know, tastes or aromas, maybe like a really bitter, pithy, green apple thing. Sulfur is very common, right. But these compounds, the yeast is going to turn to when it runs...and bacteria are going to turn to when they run out of very, you know, junk food, basically. Very easily digestible monosaccharides.
Margaret: Is there something called young beer where it hasn't eaten at all? Am I completely wrong? I just have this in my head somewhere.
Sean: Like it's like a historical thing, right? Like in English brewing maybe?
Margaret: I don't know. Some concept where people intentionally drink beer that still has the sugar or something? [Sounding unsure] I'm probably wrong.
Sean: No, semi-fermented beer is very much a thing. And I know in some brewing traditions, I think there's some in Africa that use like cassava and things like that where you're drinking it like 12 hours into the fermentation and it's like kind of like a communal thing. Like, you know, people, you know, make a big batch and everybody drinks it at once so that you know, you can get it right when it's super fresh. Tepachi as well, like the fermented pineapple drink in South America, it's kind of a similar thing. There's the pineapple and then there's brown sugar added as well and you want to start drinking it when about half of the sugar is fermented so it's still really sweet. It's almost like a semi-alcoholic, like bucha tiki drink sort of thing.
Margaret: Okay. Before we get to packaging, my other question is, is beer just white sugar? Is that the thing that's added? Like, what is the yeast? What is it? What is the...or is it eating the carbohydrates instead of the sugar?
Sean: The carbohydrates. Beer uses beer uses malted barley. So malting is a process by which you take you take your grains of barley, you get it slightly damp and you just keep turning it over. And the kernels will like begin to germinate. But before they like crack open and you get like a little shoot or something like that, the process of germination, basically you get a lot of these very difficult to digest carbohydrates converted into simple carbohydrates so that the emerging plant has a rapid source of fuel. Kind of similar to an egg in the survival strategy, sort of. Yeah, right. Once it once it's malted, right, once that has has taken place, they kiln it, right. So, they hit it with heat. And that kills the sprouting grain. So, it's not like the malt is going to like mold or, you know, go to seed or, you know, start growing or anything like that. That would be inconvenient. You want this stuff to be able to stay shelf stable for a couple years. So, they treat it with heat, right. And there are there are all kinds of ways of doing it. It is a very involved process. I have never malted my own grains. I've thought about doing it, but it's like very labor intensive and really only economical at pretty large scale.
Margaret: Is this why people didn't fuck with beer until after they were fucking with cider and meat and all that shit?
Sean: I think so. But, the first beers were actually made from bread not malt. So.
Margaret: Because it's simple?
Sean: Exactly. Same process, right? It's easier to make bread than it is to commercially, you know, kiln, you know, bags and bags of barley. And also, you know, bread has its own shelf life. So, if you're getting towards the end of it....
Margaret: Oh, yeah, then you turn it into booze.
Sean: Exactly. And that's a thing in Russia too. Kvass, K-V-A-S-S, it's a it's made with, like rye, rye bread. And it's usually around 2% or 3% alcohol, but it's literally like a thing that you know, people...
Margaret: I love low-alcohol beer.
Sean: Yeah, me too. Oh, man. Like a 2.5% alcohol pale ale. Yeah, just a little bit of hops. That is like my sweet spot.
Margaret: Yeah, absolutely. Because it's like, oh, I want to drink a beer, but I don't want to get drunk all the time. Like, you know, it's like I love a beer on the nice afternoon, but I hate the after afternoon nap that you could get stuck taking if you drink an 8% beear. Like what the fuck.
Sean: Yeah, no, it just like the day's plans have all of a sudden have changed.
Margaret: Okay, because the reason I asked about the sugar thing is the first time I ever helped someone ferment. They made dandelion wine. And ever since then I've been like this is all bullshit because dandelion wine--at least as this person made it--I was like, this is just cane sugar wine. It's just cane sugar wine with some dandelion flavor. And I was like really upset by this. Because I--and maybe this is bullshit--but it's like, which of these alcohols are mostly just cane sugar? And which ones can you actually ferment?
Sean: Dandelion wine for sure is because there's virtually no fermentable sugars in dandelion, but there are a lot of very strong botanical flavors. Like dandelion wine...like the dandelions are more equivalent to like hops in beer than they are to malt in beer.
Margaret: Because the hops are flavor?
Sean: Yeah, they're adding they're adding flavor. They're adding aroma. They're adding like all of these botanical, you know, aspects to it, but they are not the source of the alcohol. They are not the source of the sugar or anything like that.
Margaret: Okay, can you make dandelion wine with like, with actual...I mean, I know cane sugar does come from a plant, but it's still...I feel betrayed.
Sean: Yeah. You could make dandelion...you could add dandelions to cider. I haven't done it but I've noticed people doing it. You can use, you know, any kind of like a reconstituted fruit juice and do like a fruit type wine. I think the reason...and I think the one of the more interesting ways of doing the dandelion wine thing is doing a dandelion mead. I've had a few of those that are really good.
Margaret: Oh, that sounds nice. That sounds very like cycle of life, you know, like, honey and the flowers.
Sean: It's a lot of closed loops, right? No, I think the reason that cane sugar became a convention for that is, you know, economic. Like cane sugar was fairly cheap. It was the cheapest, you know, fermentable available to rural people in the Dust Bowl era.
Margaret: That makes sense. Yeah.
Sean: I mean, artificially so, right. Yeah. I think that's where that came from.
Margaret: Okay, so you mentioned doing all this in a bucket. I still want to get to the putting it in the bottles and stuff. But, is there an advantage...Like, do...Should I get a carboy if I have the money to spend. I'm under the impression that a carboy are a big glass bottle that looks like one of those five gallon jugs you put in your office cooler, only it's for making alcohol. Is that better?
Sean: That's pretty much it. I don't...I don't like carboys. I've used them. I use them for bulk aging of sour beer. I use them for primary fermentation of clean beer and cider. I got rid of all of mine.
Margaret: So you use buckets and stuff?
Sean: I use buckets or I use converted kegs or converted stainless steel kettles if I'm doing a larger batch. It's just I have a like...for like all the sour beer I have like a 15 and a half gallon stainless steel kettle with a like a bulkhead. Like a like a valve on the bottom. And that allows me to like do pass throughs. So I keep that as like my acidifying chamber. It's called a Solera. I actually wrote a Kindle digital single about like building and maintaining these. It's almost exclusively useful for sour beer, you know, bacterially fermented cider or vinegar making. But, if you're doing any of that kind of thing, especially, you know, small scale, but you know, wanting to provide for a bunch of people like a club or community or anything like that, it's really the most efficient way to do it.
Margaret: Why don't you like carboys?
Sean: I don't like glass. I don't like glass because there's just a real risk of injury. When...if you've got a seven gallon carboy full of liquid, we're talking 70 or 80 pounds in a glass bottle.
Margaret: Yeah, okay. I see where you're going.
Sean: Things can go Bad real quick. When I use them, I had some that fit in milk crates so I could just pick up the milk crates. That helped out a lot. They also make, they call them I think just carboys straps, it's like a like a four piece harness with handles that you can use. But when I when I've seen them break, it's almost always when someone's setting them down, right? Anytime you're setting down something heavy, you know, unless you're very strong and have a great deal of control, right, that last little bit you can sometimes kind of crack it down. And again, we're talking 70 or 80 pounds in a glass bottle. And you don't have to crack it down very hard for the whole bottom to go out and that's a mess.
Margaret: Yeah. Because then you got blood in your beer. And that's just...
Sean: Yeah, right. It gets very Klingon on very quickly. And it's Yeah. But the other aspect I don't like is they're completely light permeable too, right cause they're just clear glass.
Margaret: Yeah. That always seemed weird. You have to keep them in a closet with a towel on them or whatever.
Sean: Yeah, yeah. It's just I think, again, it was...so homebrewing only became legal in the United States under Jimmy Carter. Right. It had been illegal from prohibition to Jimmy Carter. Yeah.
Margaret: Holy shit. Yeah. Does that mean we'll eventually get home moonshining? I can't wait.
Sean: I feel like if we were going to get it, it would have happened already. And I don't think the trends politically are towards individual deregulation anytime soon for that kind of thing. But you know, it is legal to make you know, like fuel alcohol. Some people make fuel alcohol and then lose it in barrels and things like that.
Margaret: Yeah, it's not worth it for me. I always figure I shouldn't do anything that brings the Eye of Sauron anywhere near me. So I'm just not gonna make it.
Sean: Oh totally. And, there have always been people who are going to do it, you know, illegally, but it's not worth the hassle. It can be like...I know we've been talking about fermentation on the side of, you know, consumption and food and beverage and all that, but I do know, people who have stills that use them to produce like fuel alcohol, you know, for backpacking and things like that. And that is valid. And you can, you can, you can produce, you know, fuel alcohol very cheaply, if that's the thing that you use for, you know, kind of off grid type stuff that can really be a useful a useful toolkit, but kind of outside of what we're talking about today.
Margaret: Yeah, I'll have you on...have you or someone else on at some point for that. Yeah. Okay. So you've made your alcohol, this was all simpler than I thought. So now you have a bucket full of alcohol, and you don't want to just pass out straws. What do you do?
Sean: Yeah, passing out straws is an option, but you need to, you know, make sure there are enough people in your in your group to get through five gallons all at once, I guess. No, so you're the two main options available are bottling and kegging. Right? So bottling is usually, you know, when we're talking about it as an alternative to kegging, rather than, you know, bottling from a keg, which is a totally different thing. If we're going to bottle it, we're probably going to bottle conditioned it. So, we're going to add a small amount of sugar back. What's that?
Margaret: But why?
Sean: Bottle condition?
Margaret Yeah.
Sean Bottle condition for the oxygen scavenging effects of Brettanomyces yeast.
Margaret To make it as safe as possible. because we don't have commercial...
Sean And shelf stable as possible.
Margaret Right? Okay. If we had like a big commercial thing then there would be a way of bottling it where no air gets in, but because we're doing a DIY some air will get in so that's why we want to bottle condition to clean up our mess?
Sean Well, even in commercial systems you are going to have oxygen ingress, but it's going to be significantly less than than what you have at home. Okay. So yeah, that's going to help with that. So we got longer shelf life both for like a quality flavor product and a, you know, safe to consume product. Both of those are extended. That also adds carbonation, which a lot of people really enjoy, you know, having the nice fizzy bubbles.
Margaret Oh, it's flat until this point?
Sean Yeah, yeah. Totally flat. Because it's only going to pressurize in a sealed environment. It's only going to carbonate in a sealed environment.
Margaret No, that makes sense.
Sean You got to blow off tube. So all your co2 is, is going away.
Margaret Does that mean people don't bottle condition their wine because otherwise you make champagne?
Sean You wouldn't want to add sugar to wine that you are bottling unless you are trying to make sparkling wine. But of course it wouldn't be champagne unless it came from Champagne, France.
Margaret I'm glad we have the same bullshit cultural reference. 90s...whatever.
Sean Oh, man. That one is, like...
Margaret I love Wayne's World.
Sean ...hilarious too just in their own right.
Margaret Okay, so, okay, so, back to our cider. We're bottling it. Oh, but that actually...cider is not normally carbonated. Is DIY Are you kind of stuck? Does bottle conditioning always carbonate it?
Sean You can, if you want if you want still cider, just don't add sugar.
Margaret How are you bottle conditioning then?
Sean It's just not bottle conditioning, it's just bottled. It still has yeast in there, it still has all of that in there because you haven't pasteurized it, right? So, it still has those those health effects. Shelf life might be a little bit lower. I haven't seen any significant studies on comparing, you know, home produced still versus, you know, carbonated, you know, via bottle conditioning insider. But I would like to. Like that would be really...that'd be some really useful data if somebody wants to get on that. But you still are probably going to have a good few years of preservation. And again, the higher the alcohol you get the longer it's going to be shelf stable, right? You have fortified your cider with say brown sugar, right? That's a very common one that people will do. You add brown sugar and maybe some cinnamon or vanilla, right, especially for kind of like a winter drink. You can very easily make a cider that's 11% or 12% alcohol and ferment almost as quickly and that is going to stick around just fine. And it tastes really good.
Margaret You know I want this. I don't even drink very much. But yeah, this is making me...I'm on...like, I barely drink anymore, but I'm like, I just want to make this stuff.
Sean It is a lot of fun. And I've always really gravitated towards like the kind of like sensory aspects of beverage. Yeah, like, just the, I don't know, I love a head change. Don't get me wrong. Yeah. You know, there's a reason that humans, that we've been covergently evolving with alcohol for as many millennia as we have. But there are flavors that only really come out through, like for fermentation, specifically through lactic acid fermentation, and I'm talking flavors in beverages and food. You can get you get these, you know, different compounds from all different aspects of the process that you just can't get anywhere else.
Margaret Okay, but we're, we're coming up towards an hour and I want to get to the point where my cider is in bottles.
Sean Where we have drinkable alcohol?
Margaret How do I get it? How do I get it into the bottles? So am I like siphoning it like you're stealing alcohol? Like when you're stealing gas?
Sean Yeah, you can people do that. But they also make what's called an auto siphon, which is just like a little racking cane kind of arm that you just put the tubing on. And that like, let's it starts the siphon for you. It automatically starts to siphon for you. So you don't get your bacterial mouth on tubing.
Margaret Yeah, that makes sense.
Sean Yeah, you know, in a survival situation, you know, switch with some vodka and do it and call it good, but in an ideal situation, a sanitized, racking cane is ideal. Even more ideal, I think a lot of people do especially with cider because it doesn't produce nearly as much yeast sediment, just ferment in a bucket that has a little valve or bulkhead on it.
Margaret Oh, down at the bottom?
Sean Yep. All you got to do is take your bucket, sit it up on your counter, you add in you know a little bit of sugar. It's usually around like four ounces of sugar, you dissolve it in boiling water and then add the sugar solution. Stir it gently. And then you just use that valve to fill the bottles. And then you use a bottle cap or you can either use like a bench capper that like sits on a bench and has like a little lever arm like this. That's a lot more ergonomic. They also have these they call them wing cappers. There's two handles and you just kind of set it on top of the cap and then you know, push down. I have definitely broken bottlenecks with the wing cappers before. Yeah, not broken any with a bench capper. So I would definitely recommend a bench capper.
Margaret Or, drink Grolsch.
Sean Yeah, drink Grolsch. Yeah. And any kind of you can, you can save those. It's not just Grolsch bottles, but those are probably the most common ones. They have like a little swing cap cage, a little ceramic cap with a rubber grommet. You have some kind of siliconized grommet. Yeah. And that just sits there and then clicks it in place. And yeah, those sometimes you have to replace the little rubber part after every six or eight uses of the bottle. But yeah, that's a hell of a lot better than replacing the whole thing. Okay, once you have bottled, though, you are going to need to leave them alone for two or three weeks because the bottle conditioning needs to occur. So, it's refermentation in the bottle. So in order to get that CO2 built up and those those nice lovely bubbles, you're gonna have to leave that alone.
Margaret But if it's cider, we can drink it right away because cider isn't conditioned.
Sean Yeah, cider or wine. I like bottle conditioning cider. I like to carbonated cider. But if you're, if you're leaving it still, you know, that's kind of like the English tradition. I think you generally see more like carbonated cider, though.
Margaret I'm...yeah, now that I realize I do....Cider does have carbonation. Great. I totally know what I'm saying.
Sean Some don't and like a lot of...like, I was relating to like Basque cider. And you know, from like the France and Spain kind of border area you have like this huge range of carbonation. There you have some that are like champagne levels, like over carbonated like, you know, almost burns your nose when you drink it. And you have some that are completely still and then you have some that are, "Oh, yeah, I guess there are bubbles in here. I guess this is technically carbonated." Yeah, pétillant is the industry term. But so there is like a huge range on that.
Margaret Okay, so the stuff I need is I need a fermentable, I need yeast. I need a not carboy but a bucket or whatever. I need a water lock...airlock.
Sean Airlock or a blow off tube. Yeah.
Margaret Yeah, and I need a way...either a spigot or a auto siphon. And I need bottles, bottle caps and a capper.
Sean Yep. The other thing that I would say you need is, you need some kind of a sanitizer. If we're going with convenience, the easiest one is like a brewery specific sanitizer Star San or Quat, things like that. They're no-rinse sanitizers. So you don't...They sanitize and they leave a little bit of foam in place. And you don't need to rinse them. They will be broken down by the process of fermentation and they are soluble in alcohol and they are completely food safe. Yeah. So you generally buy these in like a concentrated form, like a 32oz or 64oz bottle with a little like dispenser, you know, thing at the top, and half an ounce of this concentrate will make...one ounce of the concentrate will make five gallons of sanitizing solution. So if you have one of these around...
Margaret Jesus, so that's enough for a long time.
Sean Yeah, I know, I've replaced my at some point, but I can't remember when the last time it was. Like, you don't go through it very quickly. It's definitely worth investing. You can, again in a pinch, you can use, you know, water diluted with bleach and then just rinse it with like water that's been boiled. Yeah, you can use you can use alcohol, right? You can you can use...
Margaret If you have that still that we of course won't have...Once the apocalypse comes and we all make stills.
Sean Yeah. Right, then in that situation, and obviously, you can use that to spray it down. You can even put, you know, in our in our current, you know, situation, you can you can put pop off vodka in a fucking Dollar Tree spray bottle and yeah, do it that way. You know, like there are options for that purpose. You know, like, you know, industry specific beverage and brewing no-rinse sanitizers are the easiest. And again, like we were talking about.
Margaret Yeah, if you're planning it out.
Sean If your first endeavor, if it goes well, right, and everything works easily, you're more likely to keep doing that. So, I definitely recommend using those, if possible, but again, certainly not necessary. Once you you've got that, the only other bit of material that we talked about, and it is optional, is the hydrometer.
Margaret Oh, yeah, that's right. Because then you know when it's done.
Sean You can also use a refractometer, which is a different piece of technology I mentioned. I meant to mention this earlier, but I didn't. A refractometer is...it almost looks like a little Kaleidoscope that you put up to your eye, but it's got like a like screen and then a piece of plastic that clips on top that lays flat on top of the screen. You put a couple of drops of your liquid on the screen and then put your plastic on there and you look through it. And it shows you on a line what your specific gravity is based on its refractometary index.
Margaret Is the reason people homebrew is because they want to feel like mad scientists? And they want alcohol.
Sean A lot of people I'm sure. Yeah.
Margaret I mean, this is some mad Scientist shit. Now you use the kaleidoscope to find out how much alcohol there is.
Sean I feel like yeah, you should have some Jacob's Ladders and Tesla coils behind you as you're doing it.
Margaret That's how you sanitize is you make the ozone with it. Anyway.
Sean Oh, you just lightening flash the ozone. Yeah, I can't believe I haven't heard about this. Yeah, no. The nice thing about the refractometer is we're talking like half a cc of liquid being used. So it is a really, really efficient way to measure it. It will not measure accurately in the presence of alcohol. There are like equations that can like compensate for this a little bit.
Margaret Wait, then what good does it do?
Sean It tells you how much is there originally. So if, like for me, I know to what degree like my house culture of yeast and bacteria ferments. It ferments down to like .002 or even just 1.0. The same lack of sugar in solution as water, basically. Right? So if I know that, I don't need to measure it at the end if it always winds up at the same place. Right? If I was selling it, I would need to, but if it's just for personal consumption, and I always know where it's finishing, I just need to know where it's starting and I know what the alcohol is.
Margaret Okay. But then you can't tell if it's done except for the fact that you've done this enough that you're like the bubbles have stopped. It's been a week. I'm used to this. It's done. Or whatever.
Sean Yeah, yeah. So, for Starting off, I definitely recommend the hydrometer. It's just more effective. And if you're doing all of your fermentation in a bucket anyway, it's real nice because you can, you can just put it in, you don't have to pull some out, put it in a sample, pour it, you know, put it in a tall cylinder and then toss that, you know, eight ounces of beverage down the drain or whatever.
Margaret Yeah. Well, I think that's it. I think that we're out of time and we didn't even get to the food stuff. So, I'm gonna have to have you back on if that's alright some time.
Sean Yeah, that's absolutely fine by me. I've enjoyed myself thoroughly.
Margaret Fuck yeah. Is there anything that you want to plug? Like, for example, you have a book that people can buy about how to do some of this stuff? Maybe if more than one? I don't know. Like, you wanna? Yeah.
Sean So "The Self-sufficient Solera" is the name of the book. I just did it is a Kindle single on Amazon. So you can you can get it there. If you don't, if you don't want to go through there, my website Seanvansickel.com. And yeah, there's contact info there too. You know, if anybody has any questions about any of this stuff, I love to share that and all of my writing is collected there. So, I've published an article on like, composting spent grains and like, you know, reducing waste from home brewing. I published that with Zymurgy Magazine recently. And, you know, that's all on there and original fiction and all that good stuff, too.
Margaret Awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much. And I look forward to talking to you more about this soon.
Sean Sounds good. Have a good one.
Margaret Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed that episode then go get drunk. I don't know, maybe don't go get drunk. If you don't drink, we will be talking about fermentation that doesn't have to do with alcohol at some point in the future. And tell people about the show. We're weekly now. And you can be like, "Holy shit, this shows weekly," and people be like, "I've never heard what you're talking about." And you can be like, "I can't believe you've never heard of Live Like the World is Dying, what the fuck is wrong with you?" Or, instead of gatekeeping, you could just tell them that they can find it wherever they listen to podcasts. And if they're like, "I don't listen to podcasts," you can be like, "That's fair. Everyone gets information in different ways." I mean, you can be like, "No, you should absolutely listen podcasts. It's the only reasonable thing to do." You can also support us by supporting us on Patreon. Our Patreon is patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness is an anarchist media collective that puts out, you'll be shocked to know this, it puts out podcasts like this one, and Anarcho Geek Power Hour and Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. And we also put out zines and we put out books, including my most recent book "Escape from Incel Island." So you should support us if you want. It allows us to pay for transcriptions and audio editing and makes all of this possible. And in particular, I would like to thank top of all--I can't say Hoss the Dog is the best dog because Rintrah's the best dog. I'm sorry Hoss the Dog. I know every dog is the best dog to their individual people that they hang out with. But Rintrah is the best dog. But close runner up, just like close runner up on also Anderson, but close runner up is Hoss the Dog. And I'd also like to thank the following people who are presumably humans. Michiahah, Chris, Sam, Kirk, Eleanor, Jenipher, Staro, Cat J., Chelsea, Dana, David, Nicole, Mikki, Paige, SJ, Shawn, Hunter, theo, Boise Mutual Aid, Milica, paparouna, Aly, Paige, Janice, Oxalis, and Jans. Y'all make it possible. As for everyone else, y'all are also great because we're all going to try and get through this really, really nasty shit together. And we're doing it. We're so here. We will continue to be here. That's the plan. All right. Oh, goodbye.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Emily and Margaret talk about organizing against fascists while the Eye of Sauron is upon us. Emily breaks down the history of some far-right groups in the US as well as the history of opposition to them. She talks about how to organize against neo-Nazis, the interconnections of antifascism and transness, the perils of seeking asylum, and how to hunt Nazis and win.
Emily (she/her) can be found out in the world winning. Or, she can be found on Twitter @EmilyGorcenski or at www.emilygorcenski.com
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Emily on Antifascist Organizing & Hunting Nazis
Margaret: Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcasts what feels like the end times. I'm when your host, Margaret Killjoy, and today I'm excited. I guess I say that every single time that I'm excited. But it's actually true. I really...I wouldn't interview people if I wasn't excited about it. Today, we're going to talk about antifascism. There's going to be a couple of weeks--I don't actually know what order they're gonna come out--And maybe you've already heard me talking about antifascism recently, but nothing feels more important in terms of community preparedness than stopping fascism. So, that's what we're going to talk about today. And today, we're going to talk with someone who was involved in organizing the counter protests in Charlottesville, the anti-Nazi side of Charlottesville, and has had to deal with the ramifications of that. And I think you'll get a lot out of it. But first, we're proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on the network da da duh da da. [humming a made up melody]
Margaret: Alright, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then I guess, a vague overview of who you are and why I had you on today.
Emily: My name is Emily Gorcenski. She and her. And I am an activist from Charlottesville. I had called Charlottesville my home for about eight years before the infamous Unite the Right rally happened. And that sort of called me to anti- fascism. In the wake of all of that, I also started initiatives to digitally hunt Nazis and track them down, expose them, and understand how their networks operate, how their movements form and grow and evolve, and have been involved in sort of organizing against fascism for the last several years.
Margaret: Awesome. This is going to be good stuff that we're going to talk about. Well, bad stuff, I suppose. So the Unite the Right rally, what was that? I mean? It's funny because it feels like it was either yesterday or 15 years ago.
Emily: Yeah, both of those. It was both of those. Unite the Right was what a lot of people call "Charlottesville." It was the big neo-Nazi rally in August of 2017, August 11th and 12th to be precise, and it was one of several neo-Nazi rallies in Charlottesville. It was the biggest and got the most news coverage. During that summer...Locally, we call it the "summer of hate." We don't like to use the word "Charlottesville" to describe the moment in time because we are still a community, but it was the moment that you saw everything from the neo-Nazis marching with the swastika, to the terror attack, to Donald Trump saying there were very fine people on both sides.
Margaret:Yeah, kind of it feels like the moment that sort of kicked off the modern Nazi-right. Like it feels like their big coming out party, their gender reveal--if Nazis a gender. I don't know if it's...Nazi might not be a gender. I hate to disrespect people's gender, but that might be not on the list. And I don't know what color they would use for fireworks. But it... Okay, so it feels like their coming-out, right, like it was this thing. And I'm kind of curious what your take on it is because from where I'm at it seems like kind of a little different than stuff had gone before and a lot of bad things happened. A lot of very bad things happened and we can talk about some of those things. But, it felt like kind of this like aberration. Everyone was like--I mean, except the president the US--everyone was like, "Oh fuck, that's bad. We don't like this. This is bad when Nazis march down the street with torches chanting, 'Jews will not replace us.'" Clearly this is bad. But it feels like...it does feel like it kind of worked for them to kick them off into the mainstream. Like it. It doesn't feel Like their movement has shrink since then, I guess I will say.
Emily: I think it's a complicated. Yeah, that's a complicated topic. If you look at the history of what led up to Unite the Right, there were a number of neo-Nazi rallies, sort of the ascendance of the alt-right throughout the country, right. So we had Richard Spencer growing in prominence and forming the alt-right movement. We had these groups like Identity Europa and Vanguard America, and Traditionalist Worker Party. And all of them were sort of, they're holding these rallies all over the country, right. There were some in Pikeville, and there are some in in Huntington Beach, California, and there was some in in Berkeley, right, the the sort of infamous battles of Berkeley. And all of these events were sort of in the months around, I don't know, anywhere from one month before or two months before to a year, year and a half before, right. And this is sort of aligned with the ascendance of Donald Trump, the sort of hard shift right in American politics, the reaction to a lot of things, including Obergefell, the court case that legalized gay marriage, and two terms of a black man being president, right, there are a lot of factors that kind of started to swirl together and formed this vortex of the alt-right. And what happened in Unite the right was, this was...it was almost like that moment in an orchestra where everything was tuning up beforehand, right? You know, there was like the smaller rallies, there was some violence, there were some, you know, definitely some things that are fairly scary, but it was isolated. And it was easy for people to ignore. What happened in Charlottesville, everything came together. And when we saw on the night of August 11th, at the University of Virginia, the Nazis marching with the torches and chanting, "You will not replace us," and eventually, "Jews will not replace us," all of that started to come together to be like that moment that the orchestra starts playing, right. And I think ironically, August 11th was also their high watermark. Because even though we have seen fascism grow in power since then, the dynamics are much more complicated because those groups that organized and participated in Unite the Right have essentially been destroyed and that movement has essentially been destroyed. And so what we see is actually something that's morphing. And I think that's a much more important thing to understand.
Margaret: Okay, that makes sense. That does kind of--because I don't hear people talking about the alt-right anymore, right? And a lot of the individual groups that made up yeah Unite the Right like, died, like the part of the Lord of the Rings, where the orc grabs the barrel of dynamite and runs towards the wall and blows up--maybe that...I think that was Lord of the Rings--to bring down the wall or whatever. Like because we don't talk about the alt-right anymore. We talked about the right wing. And now but it does seem like the right wing is now doing the things that the alt-right used to do. Like, why is it--I'm asking this like half earnestly and half to get a an answer from you--but like, why is it we got rid of, we voted out the far right politician and now things are going further and further right, even though he's gone. Does that relate to all of this?
Emily: I think I think it does, right? So it's all about movement and counter-movement. We defeated the alt-right. We killed the alt-right. The alt-right didn't die. It didn't die of its own accord. it was killed. it was killed through through antifascist organizing, it was killed through through criminal charges being brought against key players, it was killed through alt-right people committing mass shootings and the movement being unable to recruit, and it was killed through civil court cases even. So there was a number of factors that killed that movement, but
Margaret: I take back my comparison the to the Lord of the Rings guy.
Emily: The thing about the alt-right, though, is that it doesn't need to exist anymore. Its purpose was simply to set an anchor point that everything else can be sort of tied around, right? And so actually what you see if you look at, over time. at these dynamics, you know, 2015, 2016, 2017, you had the alt-right movement on its upswing. 2018 It started to die. And by 2020 It was pretty much gone. On sort of that sort of downswing of the alt-right, you had groups like the Proud Boys starting to grow in power. So the Proud Boys existed as early as 2016. They participated in Unite the Right, but they were not a major factor. They didn't really participate in the organizing. They were kind of on the fence of "Should we? Should we not?" But they we're there. Enrique Tarrio was there. Many Proud Boys organizers were there. As the alt-right died, the Proud Boys started to gain in prominence. And the difference between the Proud Boys and the alt-right, is that the Proud Boys had more of a sanitized image in the public eye, right? They were led by a Hispanic man. And they were...they had these members that were like Samoan and Asian and they didn't look like the, you know, dapper Nazi with the fascy haircut and all that stuff. And that kind of...what the alt-right did is it created a foil for the Proud Boys, right? So, it was very easy for everyone to decry the alt-right after they committed a terror attack, murdered Heather Heyer, and did all this awful stuff using images of swastikas and stuff like that, right? It was to set a sort of expectation so far removed from what was acceptable, that as long as you weren't that, as long as you weren't the worst possible thing, you were probably pretty okay. And so now you see the Proud Boys and they got really involved in the electoral politics, right, they were really close to Roger Stone, and they had a really big part in the the J6 [January 6th] insurrection and all of this stuff, right? So, you see this sort of like...it's like a three phase current, right, as one, as one movement starts to decline, another movement starts to pick up, and now the Proud Boys are in the decline now. They're they're facing trial. The trial is currently ongoing. I don't know how it will end up. And you see these other movements start to pick up, right, and this is now more mainstream. Now we have more politicians like Ron DeSantis and they're bringing this explicitly fascist agenda into legislatures and into sort of normie spaces, even though it's the same exact thread that has been going through the alt-right, the Proud Boys, etc, all the way to like the white power movements. It's a lot of the same philosophy, but it presents itself differently. And so even though we elected out Trump, we didn't get rid of that undercurrent. We just changed the face of it.
Margaret: Okay, so if we have these three phases, and this is a very--I'm not really saying...is a very convincing argument--that we have these three phases. And I really like focusing on this idea that this the first wave of it, at least, was stopped by antifascism and through a diversity of tactics, both electoral and direct action tactics. I want to come back to that because I want to talk about what those tactics are, but I want to ask about with this current wave, what do you think are effective organizing strategies? Like what can stop this? Because it does seem probably, legally speaking, no one's gonna go fistfight DeSantis in the street, right? No one's going to out him because we know who he is. He lives at Florida's White House. I don't know how governors live. What? Yeah, what do we do?
Emily: I think this is why the diversity of tactics is so important, right? Because every movement has a different face. And it has a different way of operating. So you need to be able to confront it with different techniques. And I think that what's important about like the current wave of fascist organizing is that there actually does exist a long activist history of opposing what they're doing, right? This movement is not actually new. Everything that like Ron DeSantis is doing, Ron DeSantis is essentially a product of a decade's long evangelical project to essentially turn America into a theocracy, a christo-fascist theocracy. And so this is like, if you look at the history of how these groups have organized and tried to introduce bills and stuff like that, there's actually a really strong sort of cadre of people who can oppose those things through the systematic means that we have, right? And so some of the direct action, yes, you can go out on the street and you can punch Nazis and that's great. You don't want to go out into the street and punch Ron DeSantis. That's probably going to end really, really, really badly for you.
Margaret: I feel like there's different ways of defining the word "want." "Shouldn't," maybe.
Emily: Yeah, maybe yes. So I think that what we need to do is we actually need to look to these groups that have been opposing the other sort of things that this group that these these fascists have been focusing on over the last several years, like homeschooling, and parental rights, and the opposition to gay marriage, and, you know, things like the Tebow bill, if you remember the Tebow bill, right? It was this this whole thing about like using federal funds to allow home schooled athletes to participate in public college sports. And all of this is coming from the same core, right, and there are people who have been opposing this for a long time quite successfully. And so I think that what's important is actually to understand how to organize with them and follow their leadership and to try to muster up the resources that they can use to effectively oppose these things in the forms where these things can effectively be opposed. Now, there may come a time when that opposition renders itself ineffective, either the bills pass, or, you know, these groups just don't have enough money to fight all of the bills or whatever it might be, there will probably come a time when that no longer works. And then we have to look at other means, right? Funding battles in the courts, right? Use that system against them, you can protest outside of these people's houses, right, you can protest outside of these offices that our that are responsible for, you know, some of these consulting firms that are like, funding these politicians, right you can do, there's a bunch of direct action campaigns that you can choose to organize around that don't necessarily need to be movement versus movement in the streets type of confrontation, there are a lot of tools in the toolkit. And it's really important for us to be fluent with as many of them as we can, right. Organize boycotts, strikes, right, all of that stuff.
Margaret: How do people get involved in that kind of stuff? Like, I mean, this would be true, regardless of the tactic, like one of the main questions that I get asked a lot, and I'm always sort of the wrong person ask because I don't have blanket answers and I can't necessarily speak to individuals and also I'm just not an organizer. If people say like, "Well, how do I get involved?" and whether it's how do I get involved in the groups that are fighting Nazis or doxing Nazis, or whatever, but also, how do you find the sorts of organizations that are fighting these bills? How do you? Yeah, how do you do it?
Emily: Yeah, I think that the most important thing is to connect with your local community and see who's been organizing in your local community because they usually know the best, right. And even if they're not the ones that are opposing these things, they usually know who is and how to oppose it and stuff like that, or they usually know what groups are out there. There's also a lot of resources online, right. If you're opposed to like the hateful legislation that is being proposed and debated, there's like the Equality Network that tracks and, and lobbies against it and and they're different in each state--and some of the states are kind of mediocre, and some of them are actually pretty good--but they've been effective, right? And I think that what we forget is that what we're seeing now is not unique. It's barely even noteworthy compared to what we've seen over the last year. So right, there's like, 400 or so like anti-trans bills this year, right. But if you look at the last three years, there's been a thousand anti-LGBT bills that have been introduced, right? So, we know how to fight this stuff. And in these organizations that are putting themselves out there and raising funds and looking for volunteers and stuff like that have been showing leadership. Now, I don't always love equality, right? I don't the Equality Network, right. I love equality. But the Equality Network, right. I'm not always their biggest fan, right? If you don't know...like, you can start there and branch out. And I think that the most important thing is that a lot of people come to activism because they're upset with seeing something, they're hurt, they're feeling marginalized, they're feeling scared, and they feel like they need to do something. And that kind of gets bundled up with a feeling that nobody else is doing something. But it's not really true, right? There are people who are fighting these things. And the most important thing that you can do is actually just start with your local community, see who's doing what, go to your city council meetings, talk to your....you know, find your local Black Lives Matter chapter, find your local immigrant rights chapter, you know, whoever is fighting for....fighting against ICE, fighting against, you know, police violence, right? This exists in almost every community. And if it doesn't exist in your community, look at the neighboring community. Network with these people, because they have the leadership. Even if they're not fighting for the cause that you believe in directly, all of these causes are linked together and they will be able to help you. So that's the first step is just get to know people around you.
Margaret: Well, it's good...that actually...you know, most of what we talked about on this show is preparedness, right, like how to store water and all that shit. And the number one thing in all of that is the same. It's literally the same. It's get to know your neighbors. And whether it's get to know your neighbors because you want to share water with them or get to know your neighbors because you want to know who is going to try and murder you as soon as it's legally allowed for them to murder you. getting to know the landscape of what's around you makes them a lot of sense to me. And it ties into something...Okay, so you're like talking about diversity of tactics often is used as this kind of like, way of saying, "Hey, more people should support more radical action." But it's worth also understanding that diversity of tactics also means like supporting action that like, isn't quite as radical seeming or as like revolutionary, like you might want in terms of just actually maintaining a decent platform from which to fight, right? It's like easier to fight for things when you're not in jail. It's easier to fight for things when you're not in the process of being forcibly detransitioned medically. And it's interesting because like, okay, earlier on, you talked about how one of the reasons that all this stuff came up is that people felt so aggrieved by the fact that we had two terms of a black president and we had gay marriage, you know, sanctified in law, or whatever. And it's funny, because in the crowds that I'm part of, two terms of a black president and gay marriage was like, so unimpressive. The left was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah," right? Whereas meanwhile, I guess the right is, like frothing at the mouth that these things are happening, which makes me realize that they were a bigger deal all along, or something, you know, I don't know.
Emily: Yeah, I think it's because the left is really good at judging situations as a...in their distance from where we want them to be. Right? So we judge things, as, you know, from how far are they from our ideal. The right doe opposite, right. They judge things as "How far is it from the norm," so things like gay marriage and a black president, those aren't really big things. Like a black president is not a big deal when they actually what you want to do is abolish the presidency, right? But if you're if you're a, you know, white Christian Evangelical that is a racist and, you know, maybe doesn't like openly support the Klan, but doesn't really denounce them either, right, like, that's a huge deal because you actually do believe in this notion that like white Christian men should be in charge of everything. And that means the presidency. And that means everything else, too. So, I think that part of what we have to do as organizers is actually try to look at where things are, and how our sort of political opponents are using change to drum up recruitment, and are using fear mongering and things like that, right. And we're so used to trying to judge based on the outcomes that we want that we miss that picture.
Margaret: Now, I really liked that way of framing it. It's an interesting...do you think that relates to...there's there's sort of this cliche that the left will cast you out for one sin and the right will take you in for one virtue? Which I don't think is...doesn't have to be true, but...
Emily: It doesn't have to. It doesn't have to be true. And it's not really true, right? Because there's much more complex dynamics on top of that. But I mean, it's really kind of like to same philosophy. Yeah, exactly. It's the right, well, if...they'll overlook a lot of failures if you can move the needle even one degree further, which is why you have things like fairly moderate, otherwise moderate politically women in the UK who are like, supporting the Proud Boys and these anti-trans issues, right? They're just like, "Oh, yeah, I don't care about the fact that you're basically a Nazi organization, as long as you also hate the trannies." Like, that's kind of how that is all working.
Margaret: Yeah, and you have this thing that I wanted to be a bigger split than it was--although I think it's something worth holding on to--is that like, there's like Satanists and pagans throwing down alongside evangelical Christians because they're all Nazis together. And it like, it doesn't make any sense to me. I can't imagine--Well, it's hard to imagine being a Nazi period--but it's just like...You know, even like the rise of the Catholic right. I keep wanting to be like, "Y'all know that the evangelical right doesn't even think you're Christians. Like, they want to murder you too." That is the history of the United States. That is the history of large parts of Europe. Like, it's amazing who will decide the Nazis are on their side because they all hate the same people or whatever. Okay, so to tie this into the the trans thing, right? Both of us are in a book called No Pasarán on by Shane Burley, that you can go and get from wherever you get your books--this is really ad, this is a plug--and your piece in that talks about relating antifascism and transness. And when we talk about like a lot of the laws that are right now being challenged, a lot of the stuff that...currently, the Eye of Sauron seems to be on the trans community in particular. It's on lots of communities in particular, but like we're the ones in the news, even more than usual or something right now. I'm wondering if you kind of want to talk about antifascism and transness. And then we can kind of tie that back into this conversation.
Emily: Yeah, sure. So the chapter I wrote is about looking at antifascism through the lens of transgender identity. And what I tried to do is to take a walk through the current day to the historical context and then back through to the current day of how fascist and far right movements have used trans people as scapegoats for a larger agenda, part of that agenda being hatred of other people, including hatred of the Jews, but also a power play, right? And I think part of the lesson of the chapter is that we need, we need to be much more careful and thoughtful in how we look at comparative analysis. Because there's sort of two schools of thought that are happening in the left, especially in social media discourse. One is, you know, you you sort of look at historical mapping, and you say, this is basically the same thing as this thing that happened in the past, right, like, the laws that are being passed against trans people now, it's like, just what happened in the Holocaust. And that's kind of a problematic comparison, right? But it's also, it's also like another thing where it's like, you also have people saying, "Oh, don't compare what like the bathroom bills are about to what happened during Jim Crow, because that's a problematic comparison," right? So these are two things, like two different perspectives. Or it's like, don't compare these two groups of people. And then another perspective is like, "Actually, these things are..." you know, because the first is like, "Don't compare these two, these two situations because, you know, people now don't have the same dynamics. There's not a racial element. There's not a history of slavery," for example, right? And the other school is kind of like, "Well, actually, you need to look at the causes. And you need to look at the factors that went into it." And I think that there's a little bit of both of these things that are going on, right. And so when we actually look at historically how trans people were targeted in the Holocaust and how gay people were targeted in the Holocaust--and they were. There were a lot of trans--what we would now, today, call transgender people--they didn't have those words back then and also they were speaking German--And, you know, and queer people. They were targeted in the Holocaust. But it's also impossible to separate the way that they were targeted from the anti-semitism, right. So a lot of trans people talk about, today, talk about like the raids and the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft [Institue for Sexual Science] in Tiergarten, Berlin. So, the Deutsche Studentenschaft, which was like kind of like the Proud Boys of its time, raided the archives of Magnus Hirschfeld, who is a sexual scientist at the time, and they burned those books and a lot of trans people love to focus on these images and say, "You know, these, these books were the archives of the Institute for Sexualwissenschaft, and it's partly true, right? But, it also erases a big part of that history because it wasn't only those books, it was also Jewish authors like Sigmund Freud. It was Carl Jung. It was Jewish scholars,and politicians, and philosophy.
Margaret: So all of this homosexuality is all a Jewish plot to destroy the good German people? [said with dry sarcasm]
Emily: Right. And if you actually look at the posters that the DST put up to recruit for what they were calling the aktion gegen den undeutschen Geist, the action against the un-German spirit. Their...one of their key like bold faced bullet points was "Our principle enemy is the Jew," and so what they were doing is they were using trans people as a way to attack Jews. It doesn't mean that trans people weren't attacked. What it means is that you have to recognize that, historically, there was an interconnection here. And so if when we're erasing that interconnection, we're losing out a big part of that history. And we're also losing out a big part of how we can fight against these movements. At the same time, when we, when we totally ignore these things, like when we say, "You know, don't compare the trans movement now to the civil rights struggle of before," we're missing out on how the right wing uses these arguments to recruit and to motivate, right. So yes, it's not true that trans people who are denied bathroom use now, they're not in the same position as black people were who were denied bathroom use during Jim Crow, right, but the arguments are very similar. The white Christians back then were saying "These black people are going to like go into the bathrooms and they're going to rape your women," right? They use the like the fragile virginity of the white American woman as this this sort of rallying cry to drum up support for their cause, which is very similar to the arguments that are being made against trans people now. So when we look at this sort of comparative analysis, we have to bring in sort of a two sided perspective.
Margaret: Yeah, there's so much there. It's funny because my immediate instinct, and I don't know whether this comes from my position as a white American or something, is to...it would never occur to me to compare the bathroom bill to Jim Crow, right? That just, to me, seems like obvious that the foundation of slavery is so dramatic and so influential. When, as compared to when I think about being targeted by the Holocaust, you know, to me--and maybe it's just like, my Twitter brain or like constantly thinking about what people could say to undermine what I'm saying or find holes in it or whatever--to me, that feels like a not only a safer argument but a more logical argument because it's...I wouldn't compare what's happening to trans people as to what's happened to Jews in the Holocaust. I compare what happens to trans people, to what happened to trans people in the Holocaust. I can make that comparison. But I really, I think this is really useful, this thing that you're talking about because the way I've been talking about it lately, right, like a lot of the anti-trans stuff and the rhetoric right now on the not-far-right, but the middle right, is around trans athletes, right? Specifically, trans feminine people, participating in sports with other feminine people with similar levels of hormones and bone density and shit, or whatever. Whatever the fuck. And it's this wedge issue, right?. And if you take a step back--it's the reason I don't fucking discourse about that--is because it's a wedge issue. It is meant not to talk about trans people in sports but to use trans people in sports as to break off support for trans people in general from the rest of LGBT community with the eventual intention, I believe--I evade anything that seems conspiratorial, but this seems like the strategy that our enemies are taking--to then eventually, you weaken LGBT, you split them off. Homosexuality can be a larger wedge issue to start more and more just like basically dividing and conquering and, you know, with the eventual plan of making us no longer exist.
Emily: Yeah, I don't think it's conspiracy, right, I think it's exactly true because they say so much. They say it like that. They say, "Let's split the T off of the LGB." I think that's absolutely true. And you're right, it is a wedge issue, it is a way to get us to fight amongst each other instead of fighting against them. At the same time, the answer to us fighting against each other, is actually to look outside of us and actually to go and seek the solidarity of other groups of people who are marginalized, right. And so I, like I'm really uncomfortable with some of the language. Like I've written about this, like, there's a big movement of like, "How do you apply for asylum?" right? I'm like, screaming at the top of my lungs, "Please do not do this." Because not only do you not understand how bad this process is for people who are actually seeking asylum--and you thinking that you're going to get some sort of preferential treatment to that is really problematic--but it will also ruin your life, and in ways that you don't yet know. And this is like that sort of, there's like a whiteness or an Americanness of the privilege to this, this thing that's being that's being promoted, right? And so I'm like really hesitant to embrace some of this catastrophizing language. Also, because we have seen stuff that is just as bad being done against people like immigrants at the southern border of the US, right, of Muslims during the early days of the Trump administration, right? We've seen this stuff, right. And what we should be doing is we should be banding together with solidarity with these groups and saying, "Look, it doesn't actually matter what our internal dramas are. What matters is that we must be united against this broader front, right? We have to unite against patriarchy, we have to unite against white supremacy, we have to unite against xenophobia, against anti-semitism, against Islamophobia, all of these things. And we have to, we have to come together, right. And so I'm a little uncomfortable with some of the things that have been sort of out there because it's such an internal focus on ourselves. And it's not really doing a great job at saying like, "Actually, you know, what, like, we've been saying, you know, 'First they came for the x...'" And we've been saying that about three different groups, four different groups over the last four years. At some point, you actually have to stop and think, "Actually, wait a second, I'm not the first. They were the first. And before them, or, you know, before them...before us, was them and before them was another group. Why don't we start building those connections? Why don't we start building those networks?
Margaret: Right. Well, and that's actually why like, at the beginning, I was like, you know, the Eye of Sauron like currently on us, right? Like, it's not, it didn't start on us. We are not the primary....yeah, like, I guess I'm saying I agree with you. And then even in terms of when I think about the history of splitting up the movement and things like that, like I think about how the first thing that the Gay Liberation Front did after, in 1969, after Stonewall, you know, which was a very diverse crowd of different queer people fighting back against the repression as gay people, it was in this context of the late 60s in which all of these other struggles are happening. And the Gay Liberation Front, at least, and many other people, at least--whether because of their own intersectional marginalization or just out of having some awareness of history and present--worked together, right? Like the first actions of the Gay Liberation Front were to protest the Women's House of Detention where Afeni Shakur, Tupac Shakur's mother, was being held as part of the Panther 23 [Meant 21] trial, right. And the Gay Liberation Front, I don't think was even aware of Shakur's sexuality at this point--I don't actually know if she was at this point, it was around...I believe she had her realizations while she was in the Women's House of Detention--but they were doing that because they were part of the new left. They were part of...like, of course we roll with the Black Panthers, of course we work together with all of these other groups, all of these different marginalizations. And yeah, so in my mind, it's less like...yeah, rather than comparing ourselves one to one with other marginalized groups, yeah, we just need to be fucking working together.
Emily: And I think it's also important, like, at the same time, that we don't...like the Eye of Sauron, as you said, it's on us now and it's going to look away. And it's probably going to look away pretty soon, right? The right wing doesn't have the attention span to stay focused on one thing for a long time, right. Like, over the last five years, I've been called a terrorist by a government organization of some sort at least four times, right? And I'm still hearing, I'm still walking free, right? I remember when Antifa was a terrorist organization that Donald Trump was going to like executive order in prisons all, right? I remember all of this stuff. And I've been through so much of this, right? This focus on the trans thing, it's going to go away and it's going to be on somebody else. And what we should be doing is actually preparing for supporting that group, whoever it goes on to next whether it's Muslims, whether it's immigrants, whether it's Asians, right, remember when it was the Asian hate, right? That was at the beginning of the pandemic. All of this stuff, right. It's going to be something else, pretty soon and we just need to be prepared for that. But at the same time, I think we also owe ourselves this look at history to look at how these groups have won and how they have succeeded, even in the face of these, you know, incredible odds, right? Because, we actually owe ourselves a little bit of joy and hope at the same time, right? You don't become an antifascist, because you like, are a cynic, right? antifascism is about creating a better future. Nobody goes out into the street and like maybe gets shot because they don't believe that they can create a better world. So we do need to think about this as a struggle but a struggle that we will win and a struggle that is going to, you know, lead to a better future at the end of the day. So, I think it's really important to like, keep that sort of focus in that perspective.
Margaret: That makes sense to me. One thing, I kind of want to push back a little bit on is about the asylum thing, where--and maybe it's just because my standard is that I do not judge people on whether they choose to fight or whether they choose to go, right? Like, I'm a bit of a stay-and-fight person myself, right. But, I think that there's also this thing where I'm coming at this as an adult, right? Like, the state I'm in will probably pass a law this year that will make it illegal for me to go to the grocery store. It probably won't be used against me. And I can put on pants and pass as a weird looking cis man with bangs, you know? And, but like, I have the tools to navigate that, right? But, the children who can't access gender-affirming care or the adults in some states that will no longer be able to access gender-affirming care without breaking the law--and I do think that there is a difference between...I guess you don't seek asylum in Oregon, right. You just moved to Oregon. But, I think that the general...I dunno, frankly, I think that a lot of people should, if they're able to, keep their passports current. Like, I...go ahead.
Emily: Absolutely. Like there's nothing wrong with with fleeing, right? Nobody has to fight. I moved to Germany because I had a Nazi that was trying to kill me and like there were multiple attempts on my life. Right. I was SWAT'd. There was all sorts of stuff. Yeah, there's nothing there's nothing shameful about fleeing. Asylum is a very specific word, however. It has a legal meaning and it means a specific thing and a lot of people...like, yes, keep your passports handy. But before you even think about moving overseas and requesting asylum, talk to people who have done this because there's a lot of options out there for how you can do this safely, and not request asylum. Because, the thing that a lot of trans folks who are not organizing in solidarity, or who have not yet organized in solidarity, let's just say, with immigrants with with refugees and stuff like that do not understand how bad this process is. If you apply for asylum in Europe, for example, like some people are like, "I'm gonna go to Europe" First of all, Europe will deny your claim, almost certainly. I'm not a lawyer. Not legal advice. But, they will almost surely deny your claim. But they will only deny after two years, maybe. During those two years, you have to live in a detention center, essentially...not a detention center. It's called an Arrival Center. But it's essentially a camp. You have four square meters to yourself. You cannot work. You cannot travel. You can't leave the city or the state that you're in. Right? The medical care is worse than the medical care that you'll get even under the laws that are being passed in the United States. The violence in those centers is off the charts horrible, right. And there are trans people who have tried to apply to asylum. There's a there's a case, that I am not going to name to the person, but this person went to Sweden and applied for asylum and spent like 16 or 18 months there, living on the equivalent of $6 a day. And at the end, her claim was denied and was deported. And now she can't even come back to Europe, most likely. So it's a really, it's a really dangerous thing. And I really want to stress this for anyone that's out there. Talk to people who can help with this because this is...the stuff that's going around is so dangerous that if you don't have an expert supporting you, it's going to ruin your life.
Margaret: Okay, now that that makes a lot of sense. I was thinking of it mostly in the context of like, leaving the country versus the specifics of seeking asylum.
Emily: It's way easier to move to Minneapolis than it is to move to Madrid.
Margaret: Right. And there is kind of a like, "Where we'll stay safe" is a very blurry thing, right? It is unlikely, but not outside the realm of possibility that we'll see federal bans on various things in United States, depending on how power can move. But it's unlikely, right? And, but at the same time, it's like, "Oh, yeah, that place that everyone loves all the trans people, and no one thinks we're horrible monsters who are against the will of God," that place, you know, like, I mean, there are places that are better and worse, don't get me wrong. But okay, so I want to I want to change gears and talk about digitally hunting Nazis because I feel like that's something that you have some experience with, is that fair to say?
Emily: I think that I'm a pretty decent Nazi Hunter. I've exposed a few.
Margaret: What's, you know, cuz it's funny, because I think about like, Okay, we've talked about how the landscape has changed to where it's no longer doxing and holding physical space in cities as like the two primary...Well, they were never the primary, but they're certainly the most visible and some of the easiest to sort of get involved in in some weird way because you can just...you can't just go fight Nazis, right? It's not a good idea. You should have support networks and all that shit. But it is like...it's like the advantage of direct action, as you can imagine point A to point B fairly easily. But even though the landscape has changed, I feel like a lot of people....his, like, the grassroots Nazis still exist, right? And like, they still, like I have my Nazi doxers who occasionally remind me that they exist and things like that, you know? And like, so it still feels like there is still this territory. And I'm curious about what your experiences has been hunting Nazis, like, what are some of the...what are some of like, the wins, you've gotten out of that and some of the things that you've learned from doing that?
Emily: I think that what really makes me proud when I do that work is when I get somebody out of the community that could have done harm to that community. And by exposing these folks and by helping a community defend itself, I think that's the greatest reward. So there's a young neo-Nazi, who with his 17 year old wife, lit a synagogue and fire in Indiana, and I did a lot of work tracking down his case and researching the documents. And in following his case, I found that he was recruited along with his wife into Identity Europa and found evidence of some of the people that recruited him and how they met and how they brought him into the network and her into the network and exposed this information. And as it turns out, this information helped connect to an online presence to a real name, and it turns out that this woman was running a stand in the Farmers Market in Bloomington, Indiana, and was just there in the community every day, and she was a neo-Nazi recruiter. And when the community found out, they mobilized and they organized and they work to get this woman kicked out and pushed out a farmers market and totally disrupted her ability to organize and recruit for that group. And I think for me, that's like the reward of sort of hunting Nazis and exposing them is that you actually get to help a community defend itself. I think the thing that I've learned from doing this is that it's fucking dangerous. Because, what you're doing is actually you're exposing people to shame. And the reason that this sort of--we can call it doxing--the way that this sort of doxing works is that it has to be bad enough for a person to be shamed out of their community, right. We don't do it to harass, we don't do it to intimidate. It's done to give people the tools to say, "I'm not willing to have this person in my midst. I'm not willing to employ them. I'm not willing to go to school. I'm not willing to work with them." Shame has to be a factor, right? And when you shame people, they can react, and they can come after you and yeah, that's why I had like an Atomwaffen hit squad tried to fly to Germany to assassinate me once, so I knew that was always a possibility.
Margaret: Aw, that's exciting.
Emily: Yeah, that was very strange. It was really strange when the Berlin police, like the Berlin polizei slid into my Twitter, DMs. That's 100% true story. I will show I will show you the DMs if you want some day.
Margaret: No, I believe you. The interactions I've had with German police have all been incredibly authoritarian and incredibly polite. Those are the two...whatever, I've only been stopped by the German police twice. And both times, very polite, very stern.
Emily: That's, the German dream, that that's Deutschland for you. Very authoritarian and very polite.
Margaret: Which, you know, I have feelings about but yeah, it is what it is. I guess...Damn, okay. So wait, tell me more about this hit squad. Like what happened?
Emily: Yeah. I don't exactly know what the motivation was. But I got a DM from the Berlin polizei. They were trying to find me. Because apparently--we think it was the CIA because the CIA is responsible for protecting Americans overseas--But somebody had, through whatever surveillance they had on Atomwaffen, the Atomic Division in English, whatever like surveillance they had on this group, they detected that these folks were flying overseas and had intentions to be in Germany and that they had intercepted chats apparently, saying that they're going to try to find me at a demo and stab me. Which is very funny, because I don't really go to demos in Berlin. But anyways, that was their plan. And I think I know who these folks are. They ended up getting arrested and sent to prison at some point, not for trying to murder me but for other things.
Margaret: For being an Atomwaffen. So pretty...Yeah. Yeah. I don't feel like that group deter deserves to be pronounced properly in German because I feel like that's like what they want is to be like, "We're good, proper German Nazis," but there's just some fucking...I mean, obviously, I'm not trying to....Well it's interesting, I do want to diminish them and make fun of them, but at the same time, like, there's a weird balance here, where you kind of want to be like, "Oh, you dumb little assholes," you know? Well, not, while still accepting that they're a very serious threat in some ways. You know?
Emily: I could always speak actual German around them. And watch them be dumbfounded.
Margaret: Yeah. Okay, so one of the things that stands out from what you just said about all this stuff--besides the how complicated of strange times we're in where the CIA is stopping Nazis from murdering antifascists--is the fact that this recruiter was at the farmer's market instead of like...like when I was more actively involved in stuff, it was like metal shows, you know, it was this like, it was a very subcultural milieu, the the Nazi scene. And I feel like this like move to farmer's markets is like worth exploring and talking about, you know, you have the kind of like, the way I usually see it expressed is like the crunchy granola to Nazi pipeline and things like that. And like you talked about how, like homeschooling was like a big avenue. Yeah. Do you want to talk more about that just to the why they're at farmer's markets?
Emily: I think it's, you know, there's so many different factions of the far-right. And one of them is sort of this traditionalist faction, right, there's a lot of like homesteading, and there's a lot of prepping, and there's a lot of like live off the land and be independent and have lots of white children and be pregnant and barefoot all the time. That's part of this sort of Christian, this this far-right, like, Christian sort of segment of the far right. And there's also like it's part of this white Christian sort of traditionalist second segment of the far-right. There's also like, Neo-pagan segments of the far-right that are similar. But yeah, I think that there's there's a lot of this like mythology, right? One of the essential elements of fascism is that what differentiates fascism from other far-right, authoritarian ideologies, is that Fascism is fundamentally around sort of this mythos of rebirth, right? So these these mythologies around like folkish culture and traditionalism, and the rebirth of like, return to like proper America, and like, when men were men and women were women and all of that stuff, right? Yeah, this is part of the mythology of it. And so the difference, like the shift between the skinhead Nazi to the traditionalist Nazi, it's as much a matter of ideology and aesthetic as it is the degree to which they understand and embrace those elements of the fascist belief, right? And I think it's dangerous because so much of American identity is also about nuclear family and home values, like you know, good old fashioned values and home cooking, and you know, doing things with your mom and your dad and your 2.7 kids and having a white picket fence, right. So much of American culture is wrapped up into that, fascists have realized that it's really easy to prey on that. That's why you have Nazis at the farmer's market.
Margaret:Yeah. Makes me sad, but I get it. So what are what are we...we're coming up on an hour, and I'm kind of wondering what's the question I should have asked you? What else do you think? Do you have any, any final thoughts or any like, you know, rousing "How do we solve all of this?" not to put you in, not to give you an awkward question.
Emily: I would have asked me about what it's like beyond the activism? Right, because I've actually kind of retired from the activism. And I think that a lot of my perspective now, is about what it feels like to be in the middle of this whole milieu of the shit. And then to walk away from it.
Margaret: Yeah. Alright. What's that like?
Emily: So I don't know. I think that there's a few years where like, I spent almost every day looking through Discord logs, doing alt-right research, tracking their cases. I was spending thousands of dollars on pacer fees, downloading and court documents and all this shit, right. And I would end my workday, and I would go home and I wouldn't play video games, I would start hunting Nazis. And I would wake up in the weekends and I would update my website where I tracked Nazis and I did this and this was my life. And it was a way of dealing with trauma. There was also a time, still today, probably a week doesn't go by that I don't see the torches from from the rally from August 11th, right? So that trauma is still very present. And it was a response to it was my way of coping with it and dealing with it. And then when the insurrection happened, I kind of saw that as a passing of the torch. The insurrection was the moment that the alt-right stopped being relevant and the Republican-right started being relevant in this discussion of "Extremism," right? And I realized pretty quickly that I wasn't going to...one, I wasn't going to be able to keep up with it and two, my work was done. My goal was always to try to give tools to mainstream journalists so that they could write more effectively about what we were seeing in the world from the position of an antifascist, right? antifascist often have a really antagonistic relationship with the media and for very good reasons. At the same time, if you don't have relationships with the media, nobody's going to tell your story to that forum for you. You have to have some sort of ability to work with these groups of people in order to help get your message out. With these reporters and stuff, right. And I feel like since 2016 up until 2021 there were a lot of folks that actually started to figure out how to write about the far-right. They're not always perfect at it, they don't always do a good job, they sometimes fail to credit and stuff like that. All of those things are annoying, but I think that they covered substantively a lot of this much better. And I decided to retire from public activism. And now that I stepped back, and I can look at this, and I'm not on Twitter day to day, and I'm not, you know, in every debate and having every argument, I can actually sort of zoom out and feel like I can have a much broader picture. And it helps helps with like my mental health. And I think that's actually...I think it's actually important to also take breaks from this work. Because if you're just in the day after day, you're going to be fucking miserable. And it's, and you're not going to be able to change anything, you're not going to fix anything if you don't give yourself breaks.
Margaret: That makes a lot of sense to me. I feel like there's a lot of cycling in and out. And I don't know, I do think that there's a difference between...I think that sometimes people and you're not necessarily doing it here, but sometimes people refer to it as sort of like leaving a thing, right, and being like done with it. Or like, sometimes people burn out so hard that they're like, "Now I'm apolitical," or, "Now I don't care," or whatever. And I think there's a very big difference between like, "My time in the front line of this particular struggle is done. And now I'm in this like, support role where mostly I'm living my life," you know, and I feel like--and maybe I say that, because that's what I do, right? Like, I'm no longer in the streets to the degree that I was when I was younger. But and I actually think it's useful for people to see folks like you, who are no longer doing something full time but still still existing in this. Like, I don't know how to say this. But it's just like, I think it's useful for people to see that it's like, this isn't everything. This is not the entire life, one's entire life is not the struggle and things like that, you know?
Emily: Yeah. And I think one, people are doing it better than I ever have done it. The people, the work that's being done now is such high quality, like the antifascist groups that are out there, they're so good at what they do that I'm embarrassed to even be in the same breath as them, right? They're so much better. They're so much more rigorous, they're so much more careful, they're' so much more impersonal egoless, right, that I like, stand in awe watching what they do. And I don't even want to consider myself part of that because they're just on another plane. I think that when I started this, we didn't have enough people doing the work. And I'm happy that I was able to contribute. And I think that that's my chapter of it. antifascism is shift work, right? You can't work in solid...like part of solidarity work is knowing when to step up and knowing when to step back. I'm still writing, you know, I think I know that not everyone agrees with some of my takes. My goal is not to get everyone to agree with me. Right? I think that's also something that I'm trying to take away getting away from Twitter, right, is I don't actually necessarily need to convince you or to sell you or to get you to agree with me. What I want to do is actually give you something to think about. And I want to try to give you a lot of tools to view a problem from a variety of perspectives, knowing that we're all on the same side. Right. And so, I don't know, I'm just sort of hoping that that I can add, if there's anything that I still have to add to this fight, it's that there's a little bit of to add depth and sort of dimensionality to it, rather than just being front lines, whether it's digital front lines or physical front lines, just to try to add some...to broaden the spectrum.
Margaret: That makes sense. Yeah, go ahead.
Emily: And also, just to kind of live a good life. Like I was targeted by Andy Ngo for how long....I was like...Seb Gorka once followed me on Twitter, right, while he was in the White House, you know. There was like, Milo Yiannopoulos was targeting me, right. I went through all of this stuff. I had Atomwaffen trying, you know, flying overseas and threatening to execute me and all this stuff. It's like...none of them succeeded. None. Like Chris Danwell spent, has spent five years trying to put me in jail and has never succeeded. These folks, they're not winning. I won. Yeah. And what allowed me to say that I won is I can close my laptop whenever I want, I can walk out the door, I can breathe free air. And even though I will face oppression in everything that I do because I'm not white and because I'm trans, I still had the freedom of that choice. And that is something that the fascists can never take away from me. And I think that that is an act of defiance and antifascism too.
Margaret: That makes a lot of sense. And that feels like maybe a good note to end on. If people want to find more of your work, or in a nice way, if people want to follow you do or....I mean, it sounds like you...do you want people to find your work? And if so, how can they do so?
Emily: Um, you can you can google my name. I still syndicate stuff through Twitter, right? So you'll still see the links and the stuff that I do when I post, right. So you can twitter @EmilyGorcenski, you can go to emilygorcenski.com and see what I'm posting and half of it is about my day job working in technology and half of it is about trans issues or antifascism or politics and half of it is shitposting. And I know that that's three halves. But I'm a mathematician, so I get to make the rules with numbers. And yeah, I think that, you know, I'm on Mastodon as well, but it sounds complicated. So just like Google my name and figure it out.
Margaret: Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you so much for coming on. And keep winning. It makes me happy.
Emily: Thank you for having me and keep doing what you're doing because I couldn't be winning if it weren't for people like you. Thanks.
Margaret: Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, you got something out of it then well, the main thing to do is to think about how to be in solidarity with different groups when the Eye of Sauron passes upon each of us, because it does stay in motion for better and worse. You can also, if you like this podcast, tell people about it. You can tell people about it on the internet. You can tell people about it in real life. You can tell your dog about it. Kind of the only person I'd be able to tell about it right now. Hey, Rintrah, I like this podcast. Rintrah doesn't care. I recommend telling people. Animals are great but people are most of our listeners as far as I'm aware. I'm about to shout out Hoss the Dog. Shout out to Hoss the Dog, our like longest standing Patreon backer. If you want to support us as well as Hoss the Dog has supported us, you can go to patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And there you will see that we put out new content every month that actually anyone can access for free at tangledwilderness.org But, if you want it mailed to your house support us there. And also you get a discount on everything we do in the store. You can also check out our other podcasts. At the moment...well, there might even be a new one by the time this comes out because I'm recording this a little bit before this one comes out--but at the moment, there's Anarcho Geek Power Hour, for people who hate cops and like movies. And there's Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness for the content that we put out as Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. That one comes out monthly. And I want to thank some of our backers. I want to thank Hoss the motherfucking Dog, who has been with us as a Patreon backer for years. Thank you Hoss, Michaiah, Chris, Sam, Kirk, Eleanor, Jenipher, Staro, Kat J., Chelsea, Dana, David, Nicole, Mikki, Paige, SJ, Shawn, Hunter, Theo, Boise Mutual Aid, Milica, Paparouna, Aly, Paige, Janice, Oxalis, and Jans. If you'd like to see your name on here, you can do it. You can even make it be a silly name that I have to say every time but not an offensive one because I wont do it, not even for money. Anyway, I hope you're doing as well as you can and I or one of the other hosts will see you next Friday.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Emil talks to Margaret about life on Svalbard. They talk about hiking in the Arctic, staying warm, gear, the unfortunate realities of climate change, and the rising conflicts between humans and polar bears.
Emil (He/they): a masters student on Arctic Outdoor life.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
LLWD: Emil on Arctic Hiking
Margaret: Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcasts for what feels like the end times. I'm one of your hosts, Margaret killjoy. And this week, we're going to talk about snow and ice and moving across them. And I'm probably gonna ask about glaciers. And we're gonna talk about all that stuff. And I'm really excited because we're gonna be talking about how to move over Arctic terrain, which might be everywhere in the future. I mean, everything's getting warmer, but like, you know, everything's getting wackier. So things might get different. Do you need crampons? I don't know. I'm gonna find out. And that's what we're going to talk about. But first, we're proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's another jingle from another jingle...Here's a jingle from another show on the network. [Makes noises that sound like singing a melody]
Margaret: Okay, we're back. So, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then a little bit of your background as to why I'm having you on the show.
Emil: Yeah, sure. So, my name is Emil. I go by he/him or they/them. I have a bachelor's degree in Arctic Outdoor Life and Nature Guiding from the University of Tromsø in Northern Norway. And I'm currently doing a master's degree, also in Outdoor Life, at the University of Southeastern Norway.
Margaret: Okay, so this means that you spend your time with a sledge and fighting polar bears? And penguins. Is that correct? [Said with dry sarcasm. Emil laughs] Emil: There have been sledges and polar bear guard standing involved. But the penguins are on the other side of the planet unfortunately. We don't have penguins up here. [Laughing] Would be cool, though.
Margaret: Yeah, I mean, because then you can have the polar bears and the penguins hanging out and the Far Side comics would be complete. Okay, so yeah, so you're a guide, or like, you know, so this is one of the things that you do is you take people out and show them how to move over this terrain and show them how to explore. Like, is this like tourists? Is this like, scientists? Is this people who got lost in the snow on their way home? Like, I don't really know what...I've never been in Norway. This is gonna come across.
Emil: Yeah, no, it could be, it could be all those things. It could be guiding on scientific expeditions, it could be taking tourists on trips, or it could be more like, you know, like summer camps and things of that nature. Which, is more like...not as hardcore. So you have sort of, it's a broad range of sort of different levels from summer camps with kids that's really sort of safe to the two week long expeditions in the Arctic, skiing, where you really have to sort of take care of yourself and the people around you and you have to be sort of on guard.
Margaret: Okay, yeah. And so I kind of want to ask you about...I mean, basically a lot of my questions are just like how do you move over Arctic terrain? Like what is involved? How do you get...how do you practice? Like, is it...is everything like snowshoeing? Is it cross country skis? Is it like, dogs and sleighs? Is it reindeer pulling the sleighs? Like what's...I'm making jokes, but I also know there's reindeer up there.
Emil: Actually, actually, you can. You can actually do reindeer sledding. Some people do that.
Margaret: Whoa.
Emil: But yeah, really, in Northern Norway, the northern most county, there is a yearly reindeer sledding competition, actually. So that is the thing that some people do. But it's...Yeah, dogs sledding and skiing, I think, are the most common for long distance. If you're moving, sort of in forests, then snowshoes can be advantageous. But if you're moving any sort of distance, it's going to be cross-country skis, or we call them mountain skis. They're a bit broader. They're a bit wider than normal like racing skis, or dog sledding. Yeah.
Margaret: So, like for my own selfish reasons--it's unlikely that I will specifically need to be moving...escaping an apocalypse in Northern Norway--like that seems not incredibly likely but something that does, like, within my own selfish...when I think about it, I'm like, "Well, what if I had to move over some mountains?" Right? Like, what if? And that seems like, the kind of thing that could theoretically come up in my life or just could be fun, right? What's involved in starting to learn that stuff? Like both, like, how does one? Like when you take someone out and you're like, "Here's some snowshoes?" Is it like a? Does it take people hours to figure them out? Is it like, pretty quick? Like...
Emil: It's...I think it's pretty intuitive often. A lot of the outdoors sort of pedagogy or the philosophy of learning is learning by doing. So, it's getting hands on experience and just sort of trying it, obviously, putting people in an environment that's challenging enough that they feel a sense of accomplishment and mastery but not so challenging that they die.
Margaret: Okay, that's seems like a good way to learn. Yeah.
Emil: Yeah. So it's...What's involved in learning it? I think a lot of it does come from from childhood, at least if you live in the north, sort of something you grew up with. But I think it's kind of just like, getting out there. And then I know, there's skiing courses and stuff that you can take if you want to learn, like technique.
Margaret: Yeah. Okay. Well, if I like had to, like, Lord of the Rings style cross a mountain pass, do I want skis? Or do I want snow shoes? Or do I want the Ring of Power? Like? Like, like, if I'm just crossing a mountain...Like, obviously, if I'm going to be like moving overland in the far north, it would be way better if I had skis, it seems to be the case. But like, if I'm just trying to like cross a mountain pass, do I need skis?
Emil: Well, I think it depends on the...I think it's going to depend on the time of year and the snow depth. So you don't necessarily need skis. You can walk through the snow with just your normal shoes, not even snow shoes. But, it's probably going to be faster on skis. And additionally, you would probably want, at least if if you're going to be out for more than a day and you're going to be out for several days, you'd want something called a pulk instead of a backpack. A pulk is just a sled. So you pull the sled after you instead of carrying a backpack. It helps with stability. You can carry more, which typically, winter equipment is heavier. So it is advantageous to pull the sled.
Margaret: Okay. Yeah, cuz one of the reasons...I think, I think that you commented, like, we posted an episode recently with an ultralight through hiker, right, and I think your comment was something like, "Whoa, things are different in America," or something like that. And, and so that's why I reached out to you. So, it's like, I'm curious, your reaction to concepts of like weight and ultralight and stuff like that. And I guess when you're carrying a pulk you, like...weight probably still matters, but in a very different way?
Emil: Yeah. At least when it comes to when it comes to winter in the Arctic, you want equipment that sturdy. It's quite often specialized equipment as well. So, on average, it's going to be a bit heavier. So doing ultralight isn't necessarily feasible. So I think it's going to depend on sort of the environment you're in. Moving ultralight in a temperate forest, I think is probably more feasible. Like in, I don't know, the Appalachian Trail or the parts of the PCT, right? But, it's it's also a thing where the arctic environment is kind of inhospitable in the sense that there isn't a lot of available energy in the environment. So if you think about walking through temperate forest, right, you have firewood and there might be some food and stuff that you can forage, right. So energy both in the sense of fuel for heat and in the sense of calories, right? If you think about moving across a snowy mountain plateau, it's sort of a barren, it's kind of like an ice desert. You have to carry all of that energy with you, the fuel, the gasoline, the food, everything. So, it's necessarily going to be heavier.
Margaret: Wait, what's the gasoline for?
Emil: The gasoline is for stoves for burning. Yeah.
Margaret: Oh, okay.
Emil: Both for heating food and heating the tents.
Margaret: Okay. Okay, so then...this is so much to think about. Obviously the way people do this now is probably very differently from the way people did this a hundred years ago or something, right? Like, I assume that a hundred years ago people probably bringing like--well, actually probably they were still bringing oil stoves a hundred years ago, actually, now that I think that through--rather than, like...people aren't hauling their firewood. People are instead hauling oil to burn? Is that?
Emil: Yeah, yeah. Or is it kerosene? The sort of oil?
Margaret: From wax?
Emil: Yeah.
Margaret: Burnable wax. Paraffin wax. Okay, yeah. Um, I'm trying to think there's like so many things I....
Emil: I know, it was different, like, the sleeping bags were made of reindeer skins and stuff, you know?
Margaret: Yes. Yeah. And so it's probably lighter equipment now than it was 100 years ago? I assume that's like...
Emil: Yeah.
Margaret: Okay, what kills people? Like, besides probably everything, but like, what is the? Like, what are the like, main things you're worried about? Like, if I'm like, walking through the snow, am I gonna like just like, fall into the snow and then die? Like, I know, there's like avalanches to worry about...Like, like, I read a lot of like, "And then everyone went hiking, and then there's snow. And then they all died. And it was Russia. And people still argue about what happened to them. And they all went mad." Now, I can't remember where it was from.
Emil: Yeah, the Dyatlov pass incident, I think it's called. Yeah, that I think was confirmed to be an avalanche. Or the the main theory now is that was an avalanche. That can....actually this actually a good example.
Margaret: Yeah. Do you want to explain to the audience because if people have no idea what we're talking about, what are we talking about?
Emil: Yeah, it was a group of people in Russia that went on a hike and they all died. And it's been sort of...it's been sort of a mystery for quite some time, what actually happened to them. Right. So there's been a lot of like, conspiracy theories and stuff. But, to the question of sort of what kills people: what killed them, the the predominant theory now is actually a, I believe, a combination of an avalanche and subsequent hypothermia. Okay. So they're...what we believe is that their tent was caved in by an avalanche, which then made everyone super wet, and super cold, and without shelter. And so they became hypothermic, and essentially, became so hypothermic that--and this is what happens when you become really, really, really cold, you start to feel warm, which is called the sort of...I think it's called the hypothermia paradox, right, which is when people, towards the end, they get so cold that they feel warm, they take off all their clothes and then they succumb...
Margaret: Die.
Emil: Yeah, to the cold. Alright, so the main things to worry about, I would say, are avalanches. So, if you're moving in terrain that is steeper than 30 degrees, or moving...then that's sort of the avalanche zone and then you have a zone below that where the avalanche could...the run out zone that you have to worry about. And then you have hypothermia, of course, just being cold. And hypothermia can be sort of a slow and insidious killer because it can actually creep up on you over the course of several days.
Margaret: Yeah. Oh, interesting.
Emil:Yeah, it can. And then the last one is carbon monoxide poisoning.
Margaret: Oh, from like burning stuff inside your tent?
Emil: Yes.
Margaret: Or your snow cave.
Emil: Yeah, from burning stuff inside the tent or the snow cave when you have, for example, a gasoline burner that isn't burning properly. So the flame is, if the flame is yellow, that means that it's an impure...the...it's not a...it's not a complete complete combustion, as opposed to when the flame is blue. So blue flame means less carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is tasteless, colorless gas. It's a heavy gas that settles below, sort of on the floor. And it takes up the place of oxygen in your blood. So, your blood transports oxygen through your body. But, when the body takes up carbon monoxide there is no more space for oxygen, essentially. The body thinks it's oxygen, and so what happens is that you actually, your brain becomes oxygen depleted. You become dizzy, tired, you can begin to hallucinate, and just generally your decision making ability degrades.
Margaret: You sound like you're speaking from experience.
EmilI have, I have woken up one time with sort of...you get these, you can get these sort of black spots under your nose almost from a night of sleeping in it. Yeah. And I was kind of dizzy after, that day.
Margaret: Okay, but do you all have a like, and maybe it would be in Norwegian and not in English, but do you have like a like, like, "Flame is blue, that'll do. Flame is yellow, you're a dead fellow." Like, is there like... that's the one I just made up. But like...
Emil: It was very good. I don't think we do, actually. We should. Yeah, no, we're not that creative.
Margaret: Okay, you got to work on that.
Emil: Maybe it's something to do with our Norwegian language. I don't know.
Margaret: I literally don't know word of Norwegian. So I can't...That's annoying. I'm like, I usually know how to say at least like, "Thank you," and, "Fuck you," in like most languages.
Emil: You know, it's quite similar, actually, because English is a mix between, I think it's...there's some Gaelic in it, and then there's Norwegian, and Danish, and Swedish, and French, right, because of all the different groups of people that invaded England and settled there over the history. So it's, you say, "Egg," I say, "Egg." [rhymes with "dig"] You say, "Window," I say, "Vindu." So, it's quite similar.
Margaret: Okay, how do you say "thank you"?
Emil: Takk
Margaret: Takk. Okay. I think I have heard this before. Or is it? Maybe it's similar to Swedish or something?
Emil: Yeah, they're mutually intelligible.
Margaret: Oh, interesting. That's good to know. My tiny bit of Swedish.
Emil: Swedes and Norwegians can talk to each other.
Margaret: As everyone in the audience learns that Margaret doesn't know shit about Norway. I know way more about Finland. Okay, so. So, the question then is like, okay, why do you burn stoves inside? Is it just because you fucking need to? Because there's like, otherwise you'll freeze to death?
Emil: You don't, so you don't necessarily need to. It does help, right? It does help with especially the form of hypothermia that's kind of creeping hypothermia that you you get warm once a day in the evening. That you...and it's also like a psychological thing. It's having warm food, knowing that you'll have warm food. It's also...well actually you do need to because you need...
Margaret: And you can't look outside because it's too cold?
Emil: And you need, and you need, you need water as well. You need to melt snow to drink.
Margaret: Oh shit. Yeah.
Emil: Yeah, yeah. So you do actually need a burner. You can theoretically melt snow by just putting it in a, some sort of a plastic bottle and heating it with your body heats, so keeping it close to your body while you walk. But, it's not very efficient. Yeah, so and it's also the social psychological aspect of, "You know even though I'm cold now, I know that when I get to camp tonight I will be warm." Right?
Margaret: So does that mean y'all's tents...Like in my head when I think about tents in the continental US where I live, there's like three-season tents and then four-season tents, and four-season tents are just like honestly...they're almost like more windproof and they just have like fewer events, right? And they're heavier. And then there's like lighter shit like single wall tents, and little pyramid tents with no floor, and all that stuff. But like...but overall, we have three season four season tents. But then I'm like aware of this thing that just is not part of my life because I don't live in the North--if you ask some southerners I do, but, you know, that's a political distinction and not a how-much-snow-is-that distinction [noise of something hitting the floor]...I just dropped something that scared my dog. But then, I'm aware that there's like these tents that have stove jacks and stuff and you can vent out a chimney and shit. Is that like what y'all are fucking with? Are y'all just basically taking the same four-season tents as us and then like putting a burner in there and like hoping you get the flame right?
Emil: Yeah, it's essentially a four-season tent. Yeah. So, the last one. You can, if you do dog sledding, for example, or you use a snowmobile then you can do the really big heavy duty tents with...what did you call it?
Margaret: The stove jack.
Emil: Stove jacks. Yeah, right. So yeah, it's the chimney, right?
Margaret: Yeah
Emil: Yeah. So, you can do that. But, I think those are more used for base camps because they're so big and heavy. So, it's more of a four-season tent and then you have like, you know, you have an outer tent and an inner tent, right, so you can cook food in the outer tent, but you can also bring the stove inside the inner tent as long as you're careful with all your sleeping bags and all that stuff. If that squared away, you can put the, you can put the stove on a wooden plate, for example. You can just jury-rig that system. And then, if you then burn inside the inner tent, it can be easily 20 degrees Celsius. I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit, but it's like a nice comfortable temperature.
Margaret: Nice and warm. Yeah, I want to say it's around 70 [degrees Fahrenheit] or so. Yeah,, let me actually do this math for our listeners. 68. Yeah, I was close. Yeah. The the ideal temperature in a lot of ways.
Emil: Exactly.
Margaret: Yeah. Okay, because I cannot imagine bringing a stove inside my...like the way that I grew up, you know, I mean, we would have like...I would camp in...Well, this is going to be non-mutually intelligible. I guess I'll just keep this thing up. You know, it's like I've camped in like five degrees Fahrenheit, right? Which is like negative fifteen. That's about as cold I've camped and it would never occur to me to heat my tent. But, I know a lot of people do do that. And then the other thing...Okay, the other question I have is: do people use little...like what I use in my like cabin and I use in my truck is like a little one burner, a little propane heater that's like meant for inside safeness. Do people use those? Like, why the stove? Is that so they have only one thing that both melts your water and keeps you warm or like...I'm so afraid of this carbon monoxide thing. I'm just like, we need to come up with something different.
Emil: Yeah. No, the carbon monoxide poisoning is definitely something to be aware of. The key there is to check your flame and check that you have a blue flame. So, you can do that by, and you can improve that by...Like, when you have a gasoline burner, usually you have a pump to pressurize the gas container. Sometimes you have to pressurize the pump to make sure that you have a blue flame but it's...You can use like propane or butane, but that is mostly used in the summer because when it gets cold enough those gases don't really work anymore.
Margaret: Are you fucking kidding me? Goddammit.
Emil: No, no.
Margaret: Okay, I believe you. I was trying to figure out why the fuck you use gasoline. So, this makes sense. Okay.
Emil: Yeah, you use gasoline because gasoline works in extremely cold temperatures. [Margaret unintelligibly interrupts]
Margaret: Go ahead. Sorry. I'm sorry. Go ahead.
Emil: No, you can get like, you can get like special propane, butane that can do a bit colder. But if it's going to be really cold, you do want gasoline. Essentially.
Margaret: When you say really cold--I have a suspicion that we have different conceptions of how cold the world can get--can you give me an example of what you're talking about? Like how cold are we talking about?
Emil: Yeah, I mean, so butane and propane, at least I think butane, stops working at, let's say, I don't know, 20...I'm looking at the Celsius to Fahrenheit calculator. 20 degrees Fahrenheit? Maybe? It's below freezing, right?
Margaret: Yeah.
Emil: So like, a bit below freezing, the gases kind of stop working as they should. But then if we're talking about really cold, my definition of like, really, really cold would be something like 22 below Fahrenheit. Right? That's really cold.
Margaret: Okay, what's the coldest you've camped in? This is like, I'm just literally just curious.
Emil: Yeah, it's around there. It's around 22 below 0 in Fahrenheit terms.
Margaret: I think that's roughly the coldest I've ever experienced in my life and that was not camping. I'm very grateful.
Emil: That sort of cold really sort of saps the warmth out of you, right? It really kind of...you feel your heat is being stolen by the environment. You have to be constantly moving.
Margaret: So, that actually leads to one of the other questions I have about all of this. Whenever I read about people in Antarctica or the Arctic, it talks about like...because in my head you know, if you're cold, you put on more layers, but I'm aware of this thing where like, if you're hiking and like climbing and doing all this shit, you kind of can't just do that because then you like sweat and die. Like...
Emil: Yeah.
Margaret: What kind of clothing? Like what do you need clothing-wise to go on an Arctic expedition in the winter?
Emil: Right. So you want, you want wool as your base layer. It's also--I think in English, it's referred to as a wicking layer--because it dries, it basically takes the moisture away from your body, right? And it's also...wool is also warm when it gets wet, or warmer than cotton, for example. Yeah, so you want wool as a base layer and then maybe you want, if it's really cold, you might have a second warm layer and then a jacket. You can have, if you're standing still or you're in camp, you can do a down jacket. When you're walking, it's quite common to use just a shell jacket, shell pants that are windproof and waterproof, but that's what you're walking in. And also, it's a constant sort of, it's a constant adjustment, where you're putting on and taking off layers as you're walking as well quite often. So if you're walking up...if you sort of, you've been walking flat and then you come to sort of a pass that you have to climb or a mountain that is...like a steep hill, you might take off the layers, but you have to be adjusting. Okay, but to the sweat thing, like...Yes. No sweating is like...the ideal situation is to be dry. But you are going to sweat. And I think sort of the whole, "If you sweat, you die," thing is kind of overblown as long as you can dry--and that's another reason why you would want a stove in your tend, so you can dry your clothes in the evening.
Margaret: Okay, okay. We say cotton kills because it's alliterative. Is it alliterative in Norwegian also or no?
Emil: Yeah, you mean you can...Yeah, I think so.
Margaret: Okay, because that's one of the phrases I learned when I was very young about not wearing cotton is, "Cotton kills." Although that is a little bit with the like, "Everything will murder you," theory. Although, it sounds like in the Arctic more things will actually murder you than usual. But, alright, well, I feel like I could talk about this for the whole hour. But, there's a bunch of other stuff I want to talk to you about. And, one of the questions I have is, as I read a lot of stuff about climate change and one of the main things that it talks about is like the disappearing ice and the like, the impact this is having on the polar areas of the world. And, and that is completely hypothetical in my head, right? I've only seen a glacier with binoculars. On the other hand, I would have seen a lot more glaciers in Glacier National Park if I had been there 20 years earlier. So clearly, this is an impact. But, how has it...like what does it look like on the ground for climate change?
Emil: I can give you two examples. One example is from Svalbard, which is a Norwegian owned archipelago. It's north of Iceland and east of Greenland. It's quite close to the North Pole where I spent a year doing an arctic nature guide course. And on Svalbard, the thing is, Svalbard does have polar bear, right? And polar bears are classified as marine mammals for a reason. That's that they spend a lot of time out on the ice, right, hunting seals. Seals are what they eat. And with the warming climate, Svalbard is actually one of the warmest...or one of the fastest warming places on Earth. It has been...it's warmed, I think 4 degrees Celsius for the past, or over the past 50 years. So, since the 1970s, that's 4 degrees, right? We're talking about the global average of 1.5. Celsius. So, that gives you a sense of the scale of warming in the in the north, in the Arctic, heating up really quickly. And so one of the things that happens is because the ice is melting, the sea ice, polar bears are increasingly hungry and losing their sort of winter habitat, right, so they're more on the archipelago itself instead of out on the sea.
Margaret: Are you leading up to they attack more people? Is that what's happening?
Emil: Yeah. Yeah.
Margaret: Oh, fuck. Oh no. Because then people shoot them and then they die.
Emil: Exactly.
Margaret: Okay. Please continue. Sorry.
Emil: Yeah, no, that's what's happening. So, there's two things, right, they're hungrier and they are in the same places people are, right. And so they...it's it's increasing. The polar-human conflict is increasing because there are more polar bears coming into camp. And they're hungrier, so they're more motivated to find food, right. So, that's--which is again, sort of exacerbating the loss of number of polar bears, right? So, it's kind of like it's a double whammy. It's both the climate and then the climate is impacting human-polar bear relations. If you want to put it that way.
Margaret: Okay...
Emil: So, then I have another example.
Margaret: Yeah, and then I'm going to ask you about fighting polar bears. Okay.
Emil: Awesome. So, in Northern Norway, the only indigenous people in sort of Western Europe is in Northern Norway, the Sámi people. So Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. And one of the sort of main components of Sámi culture, at least today, as we know it today, is reindeer herding. And so what happens--and the reindeer eat moss from the ground also in the wintertime--And so what happens is when the winters get warmer, you have more of these freeze...these what do you call them...Cycles...
Margaret: Oh, like when it defrosts and then freezes again?
Emil: Yeah, exactly. It melt-freeze cycles [melt-thaw cycles] which creates ice. Which makes it more difficult for the reindeer to find food because they have to kick through the ice layer to get to the moss. And so this is impacting indigenous livelihoods as well. I wanted to bring that up, too.
Margaret: Yeah, no, no, that's...it's absolutely worth bringing up. And then I think that one of the things about this melt-freeze cycle, I was talking with one of my friends who lives in Canada who like has...like, in rural Canada, where it snows more than half the year, which is not my experience. Where I live, it could snow, you know, three or four months of the year. And, it seems when you when you're somewhere where, like where I live, where it constantly melts and freezes, it seems like a nightmare to have nine months of snow it seems unlivable. Right? I'm like, "How does anyone do it?" And I was having a long conversation with my friend about it. And one of their main points was that like, it stays snow. And so it's navigable in a way that like...you know, when it snows here, the road is fine, because I have a big truck, but the next day, it's fucked because the next day the sun has melted enough of it and then it's frozen overnight. And then like...and if more snow falls, it's snow on top of ice and then the roads are just fucked. You know? So I just...it's interesting to think about that also fucking up moss and fucking up...It makes sense. But I don't know. Okay, my other...Okay, I have two questions about all this. One, is it just heartbreaking? To like, actually visually see more of this happening? Because we have like, "oh, the weather's really fucking weird." And we have a few more like disasters, right? But I'm not watching permafrost melt. I'm not watching glaciers recede. I'm not watching the place that I go...like, I'm not trying to bum you out. But, I'm like...How do you know? How do you cope?
Emil: You know, it's it's difficult. I think. I don't think I have a good answer for you. Yes, it is depressing, right? And so I think one coping mechanism could be just taking that sort of sorrow and anger and putting it towards political action. I think that sort of...I think that's what I'm doing. Also, just like, getting really mad at politicians, just going around thinking all day, like, "Fucking Prime Minister. Fucking," you know? You could just, you could just be angry. It's okay to just be angry, you know? That's...that's fine. But, yeah. No, it is, I think, especially for the people who live in these landscapes and have their lives and livelihoods intimately connected to these landscapes, it's...we think of climate change as an existential threat in the abstract, but for them, it's already sort of in their lives, you know? And so yeah, I do think it's...it's, it's closer, kind of. It's not just on TV. It's in this valley you're moving through, you know?
Margaret: Yeah. And having it be different every year, probably every year that you go into it. Okay, well, that brings me my other...It doesn't actually but my other question from what you were just saying. Alright, so how do you fight polar...like, you're saying that it increases, like, conflict and so it's like two questions, like, one, is like...I'm sort of aware I'm gonna get some of this wrong--I know how to deal with black bears because they are black bears where I live, which is that you have to like, stand up to them, right? You'd be like, "Hey, fuck you, black bear. I'm bigger than you," which is like a lie, right? But they're like, "Ahh, alright, whatever." And they fuck off. And it's like sketchy. And it like confuses me that I have friends who do this on a regular basis who are like forest defenders, you know. And I've only had to do it like, a handful times in my life and let it stay that way. That would be great. And then we have like grizzly bears are like the biggest thing that we worry about, right? Because like--and I don't worry about them because I don't live in Alaska--but like, the polar bears are like...they're like mythical to me, right? They're like, oh, you know, there's bears. And then there's like dire bears, which are grizzly bears. And then there's dragons. There's just dragons in the north. And that's the polar bears. They are this like mythical fucking thing. And so the concept of like...like I've stood guard for bears or like, when you have a forest defense camp in the Pacific Northwest, people have to do bear duty where they sit around and like, throw rocks at bears that are trying to come into camp and shit, right? But I can't imagine what that is like with polar bears. I want like a fucking palisade, and like, like spotlights, and like helicopters, and shit. Like, like, what is the...How do you deal with polar bears?
Emil: Yeah, so, I think it's much the same way that you deal with other kinds of bears. The only thing is that, I mean polar bears can be really, really persistent. I believe they're the only bear species that is known to actively hunt humans in emergencies.
Margaret: [Laughing] I mean, it makes sense. They're a lot bigger than us. Yeah.
Emil: Yeah, but it's actually, it's only in emergencies because it's a caloric loss project for them. The reason they eat seals is because seals are so fatty. And fat has more than twice the amount of calories per pound than carbohydrates and protein. So, like most of us aren't as fat as a seal. So it's...they don't do it unless they absolutely have to. But you do...When you're out in a big group, you do polar bear guard, right, whenever you have camp. 24/7. That means getting out of your comfortable warm sleeping bag where you're snug at three o'clock at night and going out for an hour and grabbing the rifle and standing guard from from three to four, right, in the middle of night or in the early morning hours. But, you do, you have some sort of signal flare, usually, that is for scaring the bear away. So, you you can have...it's like a small explosive fired out of a flare gun that...it's just like a flash bang essentially, right. It's a really big loud boom. And then you also carry a rifle, usually, you can also, some people carry magnums. I have seen...
Margaret: By Magnum, you mean a large pistol?
Emil: [Said while Margaret interrupts Emil] I have seen Glocks for sale....Yeah. By Magnum, I mean, like a .44 Magnum revolver.
Margaret: Yeah. Okay.
Emil: Yeah, a nine millimeter. I have seen some Glocks for sale. That's not really going to be very effective. You need a big round like a .308.
Margaret: There's 10mm. Yeah. And they're like, I mean, actually, for Grizzlies and for black bears, you're better off, instead of a gun, you're better off with bear spray. It's just like, statistically, more effective at deterring a bear is to get sprayed with bear spray than to get shot. I don't know about polar bears. But like, but I know that 10mm is a round that is often carried by people who are in Alaska or are in places where like, big fucking game is like a thing that they worry about, you know? Anyway, I didn't mean to cut you off. I'm just like, geeking out about it. But, so the rifle that you're carrying is .308?
Emil: Yeah, usually .308. Sometimes .30-06 Springfield, [pronounced thirty-aught-six] usually .308 Winchester. That's kind of the standard, and then some people carry essentially big handguns as well. It's lighter to carry a revolver. But, obviously it has sort of like less range and stuff. But it's less...it's more difficult to shoot a pistol than a rifle, but I have to say it's...it's shooting a polar bear is not something that you should do. There an endangered species. It's actually, it's illegal. It's illegal to shoot a polar bear in Norway. The hunting was banned in the 70s. So, when you shoot a polar bear on Svalbard, in self-defense, it's treated as essentially like a murder case.
Margaret: But you just like, prove it was self-defense?
Emil: You prove self-defense, essentially. So that's, that's very important to add that it is like a last resort.
Margaret: Yeah. Do people use bear spray for polar bears or just not?
Emil: You can you can use bear spray as well. But, I think the effective range of bear spray is so short that, sort of, people might not be comfortable with letting the bear get that close.
Margaret: That's fair. I mean, I don't want to get that close to a...I've only seen a grizzly once it was through binoculars. And I was like, "This rules. This is the right distance. I'm so happy. I got to see a grizzly bear. It is checked off the list." Okay. Alright, so that's how you defend yourself against polar bears. How common...I mean, you're saying on Svalbard it's becoming more and more common, but it's like, is this a like...like, there's places where bears are like raccoons, you know, they're just kind of everywhere. But I assume that this is a kind of not the case, because they're pretty endangered.
Emil: Yeah, not quite like raccoons, but they're quite common. I think--because the usual line about Svalbard is, you know, "The archipelago with more polar bears than people." Which has, which has a degree of truth to it. It's just that the polar bears are also distributed around the sea ice, around the island group, right? So, it's 2,500 people, and they reckon around 3,000 polar bears. So, it's quite common, quite common. It's not unusual to see a bear. But I didn't see one.
Margaret: Okay, fair enough. Like, I want to go. I like, I've never been up where the sun doesn't actually set. I've been close, you know, Well, actually, I've done the opposite. I've been in the far north in the summer and had like 2am Twilight and I love it.
Emil: It's so weird. It's like a super strange experience coming out of a nightclub at like, 4am and then the sun is just like shining straight in your face. Like, "No, I'm tired. I want to sleep." Like all the birds are circling around you and fucking making ungodly noises and it's...yeah, it's a surreal experience. I mean, it's...I've been partying all night and it's like, it's bright as day now.
Margaret: Yeah, I'd feel betrayed. I'd be like...Yeah, I like it. But, I don't know how I would handle it if I lived there. I like that I get to experience that every now and then. And I don't know how I would handle the, you know, how--I don't know how many days of night it is--but you know, the sun not coming up thing. But, okay, one of the other things that you mentioned that you wanted to talk about, and I got really excited about, was how you spent a lot of your time in the outdoors, you spent a lot of your time guiding people and like and working with groups of people in dangerous and complicated situations. And I want to ask you about the decision making in that kind of environment and leadership structures. And also, you know, specifically how this led you towards more thinking about non-hierarchical organizing and anarchism and stuff like that. What was that like for you? Or, what's that? What is that like?
Emil: Yeah, so, in my, during my studies, I've been outside, I've been working with a lot of different groups of, especially fellow students, and one of the things that struck me is that the...when we were out on trips, especially like study trips, all of the decision making was remarkably sort of consensus based. Rarely was there sort of a clear leader. It didn't really feel natural to have a clear leader. When we were...When we had differing opinions about which route to take, we would usually sort of discuss and people kind of fall into, sort of, the organizational structure where people just sort of take up tasks that they see need doing, you know, and things just kind of work themselves out. And it's also...Now, it is nice when you have the sort of structure to have sort of evening talks that are, for example, after dinner we have half an hour of like daily feedback, for example. "How did you do this day? Is there anything that's, you know, bothering you? Annoying you?" I think actually the Kurds have something similar? I don't remember the name.
Margaret: It's called techmill.
Emil: Techmill. Yeah, exactly. It's...So, we kind of had our own, like daily techmill when we were on hikes. And so this experience, really, I think, is one of the things that sort of pushed me towards anarchism, towards like, the idea of non-hierarchical social organization, or like self-organizing, because I see that it works even in sort of demanding contexts because the outdoors can be quite demanding. You're like tired, cold, wet. And yet still, just with like a bit of work, a bit of like good effort it works and works well.
Margaret: Yeah. I love hearing this, because I like things that fit my presupposition about how the world works, but specifically, it's like, because it's the opposite of what everyone says. Everyone always says, like, "Oh, you can do consensus when it's like, no stakes. But as soon as you're in the backwoods you need a guy with big muscles to be like, "Nah, we got to go this way, then like," and everyone would just naturally..." It's just really cool to be like, this makes sense to me. They're like, "Oh, which route do we take?" "We should figure this out, not listen to what the captain says. Like, we should actually listen to everyone here. And come to conclusions, because this is all of our lives on the line. And there are a bunch of people who like know what they're doing. So we should ask all of them and figure it out." This makes complete sense to me. But it's completely the opposite of what everyone always says about this kind of situation. Yeah.
Emil: I have to say there are specific situations that are...When when the risks are extremely high, when you're in an emergency, for example, if there's been an avalanche, it does make sense to have one person coordinating the whole thing, right?
Margaret: That makes a lot of sense to me.
Emi:l: Or, or...Yeah, same thing if, hypothetically, this is not just outdoors but like if you're being shot at, if you're in a group of people and you're like taking fire, right, it makes sense to have like one person who kind of, whose job it is to to keep their head on a swivel and kind of figure out what's going on and make some decisions because it needs to happen quickly, right? Since there may be someone stuck in an avalanche. But other than those sorts of extreme situations, right, that consensus works.
Margaret: Yeah. Okay. And I actually really liked that you point this part out too, because I think a lot about like, when you're in a situation where someone's been grievously injured, the medic is in charge. And the medic can tell everyone what to do. And you just fucking do it. You know?
Emil: Exactly.
Margaret: Yeah. And that makes sense. Like, "This person is bleeding out. You go get me towels." Or...you don't need towels. Just whatever it is.
Emil: Yeah, you're not going to spend 10 minutes discussing what to do and figuring out a plan together because by that time the person is already dead.
Margaret: Right. And so that that actually does make a lot of sense to me. And then you have like, basically, these roles are filled based on the people who are most capable doing them. Like, the person who's been in a bunch of firefights, like...Yeah, maybe when we're planning the overall strategy we listen to the people who have the most strategic knowledge, but it's still "we figure it out together." But yeah, like no, if someone's shooting at me, and someone's like, "You go there. Shoot back. You do this. You do that." Like, I do like...To me, that's almost like...It's like the exploding brain of anarchism. Like, the bigger and bigger steps of it is being like, "Oh, no, sometimes you let people tell you what to do." Like, sometimes that's part of being a part of a functioning group. And then, okay, the other thing that I like about it, too, is that you're talking about like, okay, you have your conversations you have every evening and it's this balance because you're talking about how everyone kind of takes these roles. They're like, "Oh, what needs doing?" and then does it. But, then part of it is structured and so it's this mix of organic...It's like chaotic and structured all at the same time, you know? I really liked it.
Emil: And it's not just...I mean, you can have I think social structure without hierarchy, right?
Margaret: Yeah.
Emil: So you can...So I mean, for me, hierarchy kind of implies a...kind of implies violence and coercion, right?
Margaret: Yeah.
Emil: But structure, social structure doesn't necessarily imply violence. Social structure can just be sort of something that emerges by itself and which can then be discussed in these evening conversations, for example. So, if a person sort of naturally falls into the role of cook for the group, right, that can be a form of social structure that just kind of emerges. But, if that person isn't happy in that role, it also helps to have these sort of regular scheduled conversations where those sorts of things can be discussed, right? And maybe we want to...maybe they want to do something different the next day, or like, maybe we can like switch tasks.
Margaret: Yeah.
Emil: Right? And so, but this actually comes to something that I think is sort of important here and that's that the outdoors is actually a fantastic arena for forming social connections and group, sort of, bonds, and also political...and also, like, within political groups. Like there's a reason why in the 20th century outdoor activities, outdoor recreations, like the Scouts and those types of stuff, but that type of stuff was actually taken up by all the mass political movements, socialists, and communists, and anarchists, and fascists. All to use the outdoors as like an arena, right? But, I think as, as the--because it works really well--but as our societies have sort of Neo-liberalized and individualized and kind of also de-politicized in a way, I think that sort of, the outdoors as a political arena, that idea, has sort of faded away. And I think actually, for us as anarchists, that's something that we can kind of take back. We can use the outdoors as a fantastic place to get to know each other and to practice anarchism, to form group bonds, and to just train. And it's also just like fun. It's a nice thing to do.
Margaret: I'm really excited by this idea. That makes so much sense to me. I think about like...I mean, one, literally being in Boy Scouts is a very formative experience for my life, right? And I like go back to the stuff I learned there constantly. And I was only in there for a couple years, because then I got like to cool. And like, you know, quit or whatever. And and then yeah, like, as I read about social movements in 20th century, I read about, you know, the hiking clubs in Weimar era Germany that the communist, the fascist, and the anarchists all did things with. And the like, wild, queer kids who didn't really have a political label would also go do. And yeah, and then the Spanish anarchists had sports clubs as a huge part of what they were doing. No, this is really interesting to me. And then because even like when you're describing all this stuff--because I've been getting more and more into hiking--and one of the things that when you're talking, like one of the reasons I want to ask about all the Arctic stuff is like not because I really think that there's a really good chance that I'm going to have to move over mountains personally, right? But knowing how feels like really useful to me and interesting to me. And then also like, going out and practicing and learning seems like fun, you know, and a good way to...And even...Okay, when I was talking about, when I was asking you how to cope with climate change, one of the things that I've been doing--and I don't know whether it's like good or not, but it's been working a little bit for me--is to kind of embrace seeing more and like experiencing more--and not necessarily just like tourist and traveling--but like literally just hiking around where I live and just like feeling the Spring, you know, like getting out and being like, "Spring is here." This winter was weird. We had a really dry, warm winter here. The west coast the US had the exact opposite. You know, but like, being like okay, how is this Spring different than last Spring? I want to be able to start really building that and being like, well if this is the last bits of the Earth being like this, let's fucking enjoy it. Let's do this shit.
Emil: Yeah, I agree completely. Yeah, it's one of the things where I think a lot of people...because being outdoors, we've talked a lot about the practical and a little bit about the political, it also has an existential dimension. People go outdoors to feel a sense of peace, or time for reflection, or to get into, there's a particular rhythm to, to hiking, for example. And it also has a spiritual aspect actually for a lot of people. So you can, what some people experience is that like, as they spend time outdoors, they feel a sense of sort of connection, or a being in place, feeling like a part of a network of relations to the landscape around them to the flora and the fauna. And from that can actually emerge, kind of animism as well. Like, if I'm wandering alongside a river, for example, in a valley and I'm fantasizing, I'm starting to think about this river as sort of having a life or like having a life force that sort of an animistic thought, and it doesn't mean that--and it sort of arises naturally, I think--and it doesn't mean that I literally think that the river has a consciousness, for example. But it's an expression of this idea that this river in this valley is central to a sort of network of relations. It's thinking ecologically. So, I think getting in touch with that side of things as well can be really--you talked about how to cope with what you asked about how to cope with like, climate grief--I think just sort of getting in touch in that way, can be a way to...or just like getting close, you know, to the landscape, to this network of relations. I think that can be a really sort of valuable personal experience and also an experience that you can have in groups, but perhaps wandering alone would be the best way to like get that. Margaret: That makes a lot of sense to me. And I feel like that might be a good note to end on, for people to reflect on. And yeah, I guess I want to say thank you so much for coming on. And do you have anything that you want to plug, either your own work or work of people that's around you that you want to draw attention to? Anything like that?
Emil: Um, let me think, Oh, yeah. I mean, thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. I think I don't have anything to plug personally. But sort of on the last note that we were on, I would direct people towards a book called Becoming Animal: an Earthly Cosmology, by an American author called David Abram. He writes beautifully about, he takes a phenomenological perspective for those who know what that is. And he writes beautifully about exactly what we've been talking about now, sort of getting in touch with this network of relations. Yeah, I think that's what I would point people towards.
Margaret: Fuck yeah. I like that. I like that your plug is a book. That makes me happy. I mean, I haven't read the book yet. But now I'm gonna check it out. Alright, well, thank you so much. And I'm probably going to at some other point have you on to ask more questions about how to walk over frozen lakes.
Emil: That would be awesome. And also glaciers. We didn't know mention glaciers.
Margaret: That was one of my questions I didn't ask. Yeah, I know. I know. All right. Well, we'll have to we'll have to have you back. But yeah, thank you so much.
Emil: I would love to be back. Yeah, that'd be awesome.
Margaret: Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell people about the show. Tell people about it on the internet, or in real life, or in the Arctic, which is part of real life. Believe it or not. If you want to support us more directly, you can do so by supporting us on Patreon patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness because this podcast is produced by Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. We are a collective that publishes anarchistic culture stuff, Fiction, essays, memoir, podcasts, obviously podcasts. There's this podcast. There's another podcast called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. There's another one called Anarcho Geek Power Hour and there will hopefully be other ones soon too that you all can hear. And if you support us on Patreon we will send you all kinds of stuff in the mail as a thanks every month. And also, some of you we'll thank directly. In fact, we're going to thank Hoss the Dog. Michaiah, Chris, Sam, Kirk, Eleanor, Jenipher, Staro, Kat J., Chelsea, Dana, David, Nicole, Mikki, Paige, SJ, Shawn, Hunter, Theo, Boise Mutual Aid, Milica, Paparouna, Aly, Paige, Janice and O'dell, Oxalis, and Jans. Thank you all so much, and I hope everyone is doing as well as you can. And hopefully I will talk to you soon while we're trying to convince the polar bears that they're on the same side as us. And that together we can destroy the thing that's destroying the world together. Us and the polar bears.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Bex and Inmn talk about first aid and why it's super important for everyone to know a little. They talk about different trainings you can take, different situations you might need to know first aid for, what the world of street medics is like, and when to seek higher levels of care. They also talk about a really helpful zine by Riot Medicine called Basic First Aid for Emergencies.
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.
Bex can be found nowhere. However, Riot Medicine, the writers of Basic First Aid for Emergencies, can be found at riotmedicine.net where you can find a lot more resources on learning about first aid, and responding to emergencies and all sorts of situations. You can read Basic First Aid for Emergencies here.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Bex on First Aid
Inmn Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host Inmn Neruin and I used to them pronouns. This week we're talking about something super important that we've covered in bits and pieces in other episodes and that is first aid. This episode was used on our other podcast that I host called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. On that podcast we have a voice actor narrate our monthly zine and I do an interview with the author. This month we chose to use our zine Basic First Aid for Emergencies by Riot medicine and invited our friend Bex to talk about first aid. Bex is not the author of the zine but does know a lot about first aid. And since this is a very much a Live Like the World is Dying topic, we decided to feature it over here. Content warning, we talked about blood and bodies. I mean, the precious light that fills our bodies. There's no blood in us. Bex has been on Live Like the World is Dying before to talk about treating gunshot wounds and it was one of the first episodes. So, go back and listen to that one if you haven't already. But first, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network. And here is a jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo doo.
Inmn Real quick. We just launched a Kickstarter for Penumbra City, the TTRPG that we've been writing--we being Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. The Kickstarter launched on June 1st, which might have been yesterday or might have been a long time ago. Watch the game that inspired the short story Confession to a Dead Man come to life. We also have an actual play recording of us playing that game that just came out on this feed right before this episode. So give it a listen. And check out the Kickstarter at kickstarter.com/projects/penumbra-city/penumbra-city. Find your friends. Kill the God King.
Inmn And we're back. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and for talking.
Bex Woo!
Inmn And for talking to us about this thing that is just so important and something that we will...a topic that we absolutely can't cover in a single podcast episode but we're gonna try to get through the basics of. Would you like to introduce yourself and just tell us a little bit about your background in first aid and like responding to emergencies?
Bex Yeah, my name is Bex, thanks so much for having me on the podcast. Stoked to be here. I first got involved with doing first aid or like emergency medical response in 2010 when I took my first street medic training with the Rosehip [Collective] medics out of Portland. Previous to that I, you know, was like a youth lifeguard and things like that. But, I feel like that's that training in 2010 kind of kicked me off on a different path and I've been sort of running as a street medic since then and running medic trainings and street medic trainings for the last 10 years. And, now work professionally doing wilderness first aid trainings as well. I'm having...I'm not like an expert medical practitioner, but I do have a bit of experience and I'm extremely passionate about education and sharing knowledge and making this skill set accessible to folks who are interested in it.
Inmn Yeah, yeah. And it's funny because I feel like people who...like there are a lot of people who are like, extreme experts in a field or something, but are like, maybe not as excited about teaching or education or finding ways to introduce people to those worlds as much. So.
Bex Yeah, and especially in the sort of medical industrial complex, I feel like it's a place where people often feel extremely alienated both from their own bodies and also from being able to access information about how to take care of themselves or take care of people around them. And, I feel like trying to break that down and make that...change emergency medical response from something that is, like, highly specialized and professionalized to something that is available and accessible for everyone is tight.
Inmn Yeah, yeah, it is a very, very cool thing. And, you know, that's part of what this zine is supposed to do, it's supposed to kind of break down the barriers to just, you know, people who have no medical training to have some kind of foothold in responding to different emergencies. But to kind of back up from that--although listeners, we are probably not going to like go through this zine, page by page in this interview because that would, one, take way more time than we have on this podcast to talk about all the topics and, two, because it is possibly not the best way to learn about the minutiae of these topics. So, we're gonna focus mostly on talking about what first aid is and why it's important and how you can learn more about it outside of an hour long podcast. But, Bex, Could you could you tell us kind of like what...what is first aid? And what is kind of the scope of first aid?
Bex Yeah, the like, general gist of first aid is: it's the very first care or intervention that someone receives, or gives to themselves when a illness or injury occurs. So, this is usually what's happening by a layperson, someone who's not a professional, and is happening in, you know, where the injury or illness is happening rather then in a clinical setting. And this can range from the everyday first day that we give ourselves at home, like, "Oh, I got a cut. I'm gonna wash it out in the kitchen sink and put a band-aid on it." Or it could also be in a protest scenario or it could be in a wilderness scenario or it could be anywhere. Anywhere there are people doing things there is first aid happening.
Inmn Cool. That is a very great explanation for first aid. And, for folks who are kind of like less knowledgeable--maybe they're hearing these phrases for the first time--what is a street medic? And what do street medics do?
Bex What do street medics do. [inflected as more of a statement] Yeah, so a street medic is basically someone who has some amount of emergency medical response training, who goes out in a protest or demonstration sort of scene, whether that is mobilization in the street, or whether it's hanging with their affinity group, or whether it's place based, sort of like encampment type of protest, or anything like that, and responding to the types of illnesses and injuries that we might see in those settings, including things like dealing with police munitions, chemical weapons, or potentially gunshot wounds, as well as like, "Ah! The bike brigade hit me and I fell over and now I'm scraped up," or whatever, but it's basically doing some emergency medical response in a protest setting.
Inmn Well, cool, and what kind of training do street medics usually have? Or like could that vary? I'm asking you leading questions I know the answers to.
Bex Well, there's controversy here actually. I would say that the gold standard for street medics is to have a twenty-hour training. In that twenty hours, you can really cover the depth and breadth of how to do a basic patient assessment system to make sure that you are really understanding the full picture of what's going on with a person that you are supporting and you learn different types of interventions, whether that's wound care, eye flushes for chemical weapons, how to tell if someone has a spinal injury, all kinds of things. You get to practice in a bunch of like fun hands on scenarios. People do shorter trainings as well. There's like bridge trainings for folks who are already coming from a professional medical background but want to get involved in sort of street medic stuff. And then there are also much shorter trainings, like just "stop the bleed trainings" or things like that where you're just dealing with major hemorrhaging bleeds.
Inmn So...Oh, and like, sometimes, you know, street medics obviously have varying levels of training, like whether they have the twenty-hour training or whether they're coming to it with like, you know, like, I know nurses who are street medics. I know, doctors who are street medics. I know EMTs, wilderness EMTs, like people with wilderness first responder certifications. So there's a...Or like, herbalists or clinicians. Like there's such like a wide scope to who practices street medicine, right?
Bex Yeah, definitely. And, then there's also this other side of the spectrum where, because street medics for decades now in protests have been sort of like a visible element of many protests scenarios, it can also be tempting for people to adopt this as their identity. And they're like, "This is what I do. I am a street medic and I stand on the sidewalk where I'm really safe and I don't actually participate in anything. And I've like been in situations where you've got like, ten medics, and you've got like, ten legal observers, and you've got, you know, like, a police liaison, and then there's like five people actually involved in the protest. And I would just really encourage breaking that down. And, I think that you can be supporting people and like providing emergency response or first aid while also being a really active, engaged participant in movement spaces and in demonstrations. And like approaching that with like, some nuance or some caution about like, "Hey, am I gonna mark myself as a medic if I'm gonna go do this sketchy thing? Maybe not." But like, Yeah, I think that finding like these niche ways to...or like these kind of, like, ways to bring our skills to protest movements is really awesome but not at the detriment of also being really active participants in all of the things that we're interested in and feel up for engaging.
Inmn Well, yeah, and maybe we'll talk about that a little bit more later. But, before we get too heavy into theory, I just want to I just want to go over this is zine. So folks, if you're listening on the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness podcast or if you're listening on the Live Like the World is Dying podcast, we have this zine called Basic First Aid for Emergencies, it was put out by a group called Riot Medicine and it is the first in a series of skills series zines that we're putting out, which we are woefully behind on. If you know a cool skill, and you would like to write a zine for this series of skill scenes, then you know, get in touch with us. So, this zine was put out by Riot medicine and Riot Medicine is an entity that puts out essentially medical information specifically geared at people who might go to things that, you know, some people might classify as riots or like responses to kind of like police violence or violence from the, you know, alt right or fascists. I mean, you know, fascists all of a different name. And the zine, it goes through some really kind of baseline stuff, like stuff that someone with no medical training might find as helpful tips. It talks about safety, your safety, kind of like environmental hazards, and it talks about, like, personal protective equipment that you should consider. It talks about a layperson's guide to finding someone's vital signs. It talks about best practice ways to move people who might not be able to move themselves. There is a very brief introduction to compression-only CPR, there's a brief guide to wounds, specifically for severe bleeding and then for minor wounds. There's a section on burns, heat illness--which we did an entire episode on heat illness before, so if you want to learn more about heat illness, go back and listen to "Guy on Heat Illness"--talks about hypothermia, frostbite, talks about clean water, and then kind of has a basic construction for what a first-aid kit could contain. And that is available for free to read on our website or you can get it mailed to you. And Riot Medicine also, they....just to kind of go through some of the things that Riot Medicine puts out. If you go to their website, Riotmedicine.net, you can find a more comprehensive guide to to learning about medic stuff, they put out a full length textbook called Riot Medicine, it's yeah, it is massive. It is 466 pages, which includes an absolutely obscene amount of information that might, you know, peruse at your leisure. They also put out a smaller field guide. This is something that could be like in your medic kit and view kind of like a reference piece. They put out a bridge guide for people coming from other medical professional backgrounds who want to learn how to apply those backgrounds to engaging in street medic work. And yeah, they put out a ton of really awesome stuff. And yeah, so that is kind of the basis of the guide. And instead of kind of like digging into depth of like all of these topics, I would encourage everyone to go out and read about it or to attend a training of some sort. It's going to be a much better way to learn about a lot of these topics. But, to kind of switch gears into in talking about backgrounds, on the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness podcast, I always like to ask people kind of like, "What the story behind their story is?" or "How this piece came to be?" And that is a little less applicable in this context, but Bex, how did you get your start in learning about responding to medical emergencies of all kinds? Like what what was your catalyst or origin story, so to speak?
Bex My first-aid origin story. Well, okay, first, let me just say the zine is really cool. It's a--in addition to all the things that Inmn described--it also has illustrations for almost everything. And so if you are into sort of like the visual learning, it's got illustrations. It's great. Everyone should check it out. It seems really useful. Keep it in your backpack, keep it under your bathroom counter for when you're like, "What am I supposed to do with this gnarly cut I got?" Okay, but my my villain origin...I mean, my first-aid origin story. Honestly, I'm like a very accident prone person. I would say that in general, I've got like pretty low body awareness. And it's not uncommon for me to like, get injured in odd situations. So, I've spent spent a lot of time taking trips to the urgent care and being like, "I think there might be something serious going on." And, specifically, there's like one incident that really launched me into wanting to learn more about first aid, which is that I got a pretty bad concussion from a bike accident. And I had no idea that I had a head injury. I had no idea that I should even be considering that I might have a head injury until like, the next morning when I was like collapsed in the shower and my roommates were like, lifting me up by my armpits and like patting me off and like, putting me in the car to like head out to the urgent care to like see what the fuck was wrong with me. And that experience was just like...was extremely scary and extremely eye opening to know that like there could be something like seriously wrong going on inside my body and I did not...I didn't know....I didn't know what to look for. I didn't know what was going on until it sort of like reached a more critical point. And that just made me really want to learn more. And I think that I probably went to a street medic training and also maybe like a 16 hour wilderness first-aid training in the year or two following that incident.
Inmn Why did you go to a street medic training? Like, first, instead of like a WFR class or WFA class?
Bex Yeah, and WFR stands for wilderness first responder. That's like an 80 hour training usually, and wilderness first aid is the WFA that Inmn just said and that's usually a 16 hour training. There's different orgs that offer those. Um, well, I went to a street medic training, because when I heard about it I thought it sounded cool and fun. And, because I was looking for a way to plug into some specific movement spaces, or like, demonstrations that were coming up that I was eager to participate in, but wasn't quite sure how to engage in. And this felt like a...I was like, "Oh, there's something I can do, like something I can offer, a skill set." And now I feel like my thinking on that has shifted, where I'm like, actually, every single person brings something. Like every person brings a skill set and that's being exactly who they are engaging in a protest space. But, at the time it felt like getting a street medic training was a really empowering sort of entry point of like, "Oh, I've got this sort of, like, motivating reason to show up and feel like I can be helpful or something."
Inmn Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a great--I feel like it maybe this is less true now--but I feel like at--- really aging myself here--a while ago, I feel like it was a really good entry point into, like, getting involved with movements, like, in the same way that, you know, when I was a teenager I would go to Food Not Bombs. And that was a huge entry point into learning about different radical projects in my area was just going to Food Not Bombs. And so, like, I feel like street medic trainings similarly offer a very easy, low-barrier way for people to get involved in protests or like uprising movements. Or at least that's how they did in the past. I don't know if that's true anymore.
Bex Yeah, and in general, I mean, I think that, like, we as human beings are like, very, sort of, like, motivated towards connection with others and like, relationship building, and, like community building and a sense of belonging. And I think that in radical movements that creating containers--whether it's things like a street medic training or Food Not Bombs or like, you know, whatever--it is finding places where people can know that, like, "Oh, I can show up here. People are going to be stoked that I'm there. They're gonna, like, be actively and enthusiastically, like, sharing their knowledge and skills and like, inviting me into the space feels really fucking good." And we need more models of that all around us.
Inmn Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, that was one of the first ways that I got involved in that kind of stuff was like, I don't know, I went...I like was at a thing and I watched the police fuck some people up and I watched these, like, street medics like swoop in, and like, just, like, instantly have this like, response of like...it's like, I saw someone screaming because they'd been like pepper...they'd been maced in the face and there was suddenly this group of people who knew exactly what to do to help those people. And it was like...it like it was a very, like catalyzing experience for me. At least to like, see that and then be like, I want to help people like that. I want to like know what to do when my friends get hurt.
Bex Yeah, totally. And I feel like doing a street medic training and getting involved in that world was a really catalyzing experience for me as well, where previously, when I would witness, you know, like, police brutalizing someone at a protest, I would be overwhelmed with this sense of helpless rage, where I'm, you know, you're like watching something terrible happening and there's nothing you can do or like, you feel like that in that moment. And one of the big things that I love about emergency medicine in general--whether it's street medicine or wilderness emergency medicine or what have you--is his emphasis on calm, like spreading calm, and bringing calm to a situation. And like, Yeah, we should all be fucking mad and energized, but we can like find a place of calm and purpose in our responses rather than feeling completely overwhelmed by hopelessness or rage. And I think that in general, like, when people have a sense of agency in a situation--whether it's a situation in their own personal life or in a protest scenario or what have you--if you feel like, there was something I could do, I could participate in some way, I had some agency here in how I chose to respond, we know that sense of agency reduces the sort of like, permanent traumatic mark that that makes on us. And how we recover psychologically from witnessing or experiencing those things has a lot to do with what we felt we were capable of in our response in that moment. And I think that, for me, having this skill set around first aid, just makes me feel more empowered and able to act and I think that is like, good for my brain.
Inmn Yeah, yeah. So like, obviously, it's good for there to be people who know a lot about first aid or a lot about responding to emergencies, like people who have extensive training in doing that but why is it important for everyone to have a basic understanding of how to respond to emergencies? Like why, if we have this zine, if there's, like, you know, if there's just people running around who have 80 hours of training, like what is reading a zine about it going to do for me?
Bex Yeah. I love this question. Because we...just because someone's running around with 80 hours of training or more or is a professional, doesn't mean that other people have to rely on that person. Like, we should not be recreating the hierarchies of the medical industrial complex within our movements or within our communities or within our personal lives. Like, the more that we can sort of like decentralize information, we're also decentralizing that power that people feel like they have to support themselves, to support the people around them. And like, yeah, it's freaking awesome to be able to call up someone who's an expert. Like, I use, different herbs. I'll take tinctures or use salves, but I don't actually know shit about herbalism. And it's really useful to be able to call up a buddy and be like, "Hey, this is what's going on, like, what would you recommend?" but I also want to be able to have my own little apothecary, and like, make my own little stuff that I do feel comfortable with. And, I don't want to have to rely on someone else for all of my interactions with that, and I think that sort of like general first aid is a similar thing. Like it's great to have people with more experience around, but we should all know how to clean a wound and recognize signs of infection, or like when to be worried about a head injury, or how to help someone out who's like gotten too hot or too cold, or get fucking tear gas off someone's face and mucous membranes.
Inmn Yeah, yeah. And there's actually...there's a funny thing that I want to ask you about because I feel like I see it get...like it's something that is not covered in the basic first aid for emergency zine and something that I see get talked about less but I feel like is like wildly important and applicable to most people's lives. So like, you know, your experience of having a concussion and not realizing how dangerous it was, like, I think we can all relate. We've all like got...a lot of us have gotten into a bike accident and then been, like, "Oh, I'm fine, except I did hit my head, but I was wearing a helmet. So I'm probably fine."
Bex All of us here have crashed our bikes, right?
Inmn Or like, you know, hit your head on something like or had a friend who hit their head on something. And what are the important things to keep in mind when someone has hit their head and they're unsure about whether they have a concussion? Like, when is the...when does it go from "I'm okay," to, "I have to seek, like some kind of higher level of care for what's going on"?
Bex Yeah, totally. Well, like, the basic thing that we're worried about with head injuries is swelling to the brain because there's just not much room inside the skull for the brain to swell at all. And right, like something that gets injured, like if I like, twist my ankle, that ankle is going to swell. There's plenty of room for it to do that. There's not room for the brain to swell up without like, creating some more serious problems. And so that's like, generally what we're worried about. And you can bump your head, you can bump your head pretty dang hard and not get a concussion, like not get a head injury. If you hit your head and you're like, "Oh, yeah, it hurts where I hit my head. And maybe I've got a little bit of a headache from that bonk." We're not worried about that. But if you hit your head, and you're like, "Oh, now I feel kind of dizzy. And I actually feel kind of nauseous, or I can't really remember that like moment of impact, or like my vision is affected, maybe I'm like seeing stars a little bit or a little bit of blurriness," then you might be looking at sort of a mild head injury and you just want to take that pretty seriously. You can go get checked out at a at a clinic, if you are able to access that resource. And in general, you just want to like monitor those symptoms and make sure it's not getting any worse. And rest. With head injuries we need cognitive rest as well as physical rest. So, there used to be all this stuff about like, "If someone gets a concussion, don't let them sleep. Wake them up every you know, 10 minutes with this, like secret passcode they have to remember," and like we do not do that anymore. Like if someone has a head injury, actually they like really need to rest. And like sleep is great. And we want to let people sleep like please.
Inmn I feel like that was the unfortunate plot of like so many like 90s sitcoms was like, like kind of torturing someone into staying awake while they're concussed.
Bex Yeah, but if you're experiencing that stuff, and you've had some kind of blow to the head, like definitely consider going to get checked out. Concussions are complex. They get worse, the more times that you've had one. You become more and more sensitive to concussions, even from like a minor head bump. And there are also...there's like a long recovery period from a concussion, like it can be like many, many months of recovery, so it helps to get checked out. And then if it's a serious head injury, you want to like get to, like get to a clinical setting, like whether that's the urgent care emergency room or like whatever, like you want to get there right away. If you're having things...if someone has a head injury and they are getting like...they're having like personality changes, like they're becoming really irritable, combative, they're like disoriented, they're having like a really bad headache, they're getting super sleepy or lethargic. If someone has a head injury and then has a seizure. If there's any bleeding from like, the nose or eyes or ears or like other fluid coming from the ears, this person needs to get to like a higher level of care as fast as possible.
Inmn Yeah, yeah. And maybe you mentioned it and maybe you didn't, but is is vomiting also a strange sign?
Bex Oh, yeah. Well, okay, with head injuries, everyone gets like one free vomit. And then if there's like more vomiting than that then we would consider that that might be like a serious head injury. I'm not sure exactly of like the physiology there of like why there's this vomiting, but there is...yeah, there can be like a lot of vomiting or even like projectile vomiting from from a serious head injury
Inmn Yeah. Listeners, you might be noticing that I'm asking Bex a lot of like kind of leading questions. This is, this is partially because I have a fair amount like medical training as well, and--all of which is like horribly lapsed--like, I kind of got out of practicing as like a person who does medical stuff except like casually to myself and my friends a while ago.
Bex We're both lapsed wilderness EMTs it turns out,
Inmn yeah, yeah. Cool. Well, yeah, thank you, thank you so much for that little explanation. I feel like it is a...you know, obviously, if anyone is worried about something then they should, you know, go to urgent care or go to the emergency room. But I feel like there was a lot of, like, in between things were we're like, "I don't know." And like going to the ER or the urgent care casually is like, not something that people can, like, always afford to do.
Bex Yeah, but we do want to pay...like, I would urge people to be very cautious with head injuries. One thing that we've learned from the great sport of American football is that head injuries are very serious and do get worse and repeated head injuries...like if your brain is just getting pummeled all the time that can add up to really serious cognitive, emotional, and like, even like personality impacts. And it's just not...it's not good. It's not good to hurt your brain. So, being like really careful, making sure that someone is getting rest, getting checked out if they're having these symptoms is great.
Inmn Yeah, yeah. And yeah, again, listeners, like, you know, we are...this is not medical advice. This is...
Bex This is not a medical training.
Inmn This is not a medical training. But we are trying to kind of cover some basics for people to think about, but highly suggest if you want to learn more about these things to go out and attend more extensive trainings on how to assess these things. So Bex....
Bex Inmn...
Inmn You have been involved in this world for quite a while now, right? Like the world of first aid and responding to emergencies.
Bex Yeah.
Inmn I was wondering if you wanted to kind of talk about like, just, like, kind of like, experiences or like stories that you might have of, responding to emergencies, providing first aid in like various contexts, like...yeah, do you have any kind of like, notably interesting things? This isn't a leading question?
Bex I mean, I feel like, like running around as a street medic, you see all kinds of things, you know, a lot of like, flushing chemical weapons out of people's eyes, definitely have supported people with head injuries, sometimes from police munitions, and working with people who are like, "Oh, I'm bleeding from the scalp, but I don't want to go to the hospital." And then you're just like, "Okay, well, how about your friends that are with you, like, here's this list of things to watch out for, like, here's how we're going to take care of this person." or I feel like, like, notable moments for me have often been like, when I can, like, empower people to like, look after themselves, or like look after the people that they're with, and I can like, do what I can to support someone, but I'm not like therefore positioning myself as like, "And now I am the expert and I've like taken you over and I'm gonna like tell you what you have to do now," or whatever but. Definitely, like one really eye opening moment for me--and I talked about this more in the Live Like the World is Dying gunshot wound episode was like responding to someone with a gunshot wound at a protest. Which at the time, I think it was like 2016 or something, at the time. I was like, that was not what I was expecting to see at a protest. And it really threw me. I like didn't really feel prepared to deal with that sort of like extreme of an of an injury. And since then, now, I feel like the like gun violence in a protest setting is super common. And there have been many demonstrations or actions that I've been at where people have gotten shot. And, it's like a really, it's a really scary thing to witness. And it's also scary the way that it has become such a sort of, like, predictable part of like, the landscape of kind of like radical movements and demonstrations. And, one thing that I remember was like being at a demo and seeing someone get shot and then, you know, I'm there like trying to pull out my, like, pull out my, like trauma response stuff from my medic fanny pack. And before I even can, like, get those things out, there's like a bunch of street medics who are like supporting this person. And I'm like, "Hey, I think I like... it's possible that I'm like, recognizing some of those people from like a medic training that I helped to run a couple of months ago." And that moment, like, even in that moment, that was like extremely scary and traumatizing being like, "Oh, like the transferring of information and the like, sharing and like broadening of like this knowledge base is very much like changing the outcomes that people are having in really bad situations because there's all these people who know how to respond. And especially I think, like in 2020, like, everyone started like running around with like, a tourniquet strapped on their belt, you know, because we're just like, seeing so much gun violence in those spaces in a new way. And I think that like that, that is great. And that, like, if nothing else, like knowing how to respond to like, really major life threatening things is... and having the tools to be able to do so is awesome.
Inmn Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it is really amazing to see that. It's funny, I have like, kind of a, like, personal story of where I was incredibly relieved that there were so many people who had training around, which...it's a vulnerable story in that, like, I don't love how I responded, but like, it was a good learning experience for me of like, I had been doing like street medic stuff for like a long time and I'd been doing...like I was a wilderness EMT at this point, and--but you know, I'd never worked as an EMT before--and I was at a thing and I watched someone get run over by a car. And spoiler alert is that this person was like, fucking miraculously fine. Like, literally nothing was wrong with this person. Like, which was incredible. But at the time, like, I was the closest person. And I, like I froze. And because I'd never witnessed something like that before and that's not what I was expecting to have to deal with and like...but, you know, I went over, and I started to try to assess what was going on and then like, three other people swooped in, all of whom had a lot more experience than I did, to which I was so grateful, because I was like, "Hell yeah, there's a more qualified person here to bottomline this situation, I'm just gonna, like help with creating a perimeter around this person so that we can make sure that they're okay."
Bex Yeah, totally. Yeah, that sounds extremely intense. And I'm glad that...I'm glad that you were there. I'm glad that those other folks are there. And, you know, I guess like, in...like, as a street medic...or, like, I'm not into like, "Yeah, I hope I get to go out and like, see something gnarly so I get to, like, respond to it, so I can have some experience, like some personal experience of like, getting to do something." That is not what I'm in it for or like a mentality that I am at all interested in engaging with. But, like in that situation, if those other people hadn't shown up, like, yeah, you were overwhelmed, maybe scared. This like wasn't what you were expecting to see. But, you like, had your assessment tools and you like, had those skills, and if no one else had been there, you would have been a great person to have responded to the situation, even though you had that sense of relief of like, "Thank God, there's someone else here," or whatever. And I feel like moving from a place of like, "I just saw something happen to somebody or something happened to me and I have no idea what to do, like don't even know where to begin," or being like...like moving from that place to like, "Damn, this absolutely sucks. And I wish it wasn't happening, but like, I guess I could figure out how to deal with it." Like, that is actually like a really big difference. And I want to support people in moving in that direction, you know, even if it sucks to have to see shit like that. I don't know.
Inmn Yeah, if I'm, if I'm going to a....if I'm going somewhere where I expect there to be like a higher probability of like someone being injured--whether that's to a demonstration or whether that's to a youth hardcore show where people really like to like throw elbows--I hope that I'm not going to see anyone get injured, like if I'm providing medical care, like, either as like, "I am here to provide medical care" or is like someone who's just there and like has a little first aid kit--because that is a smart thing for everyone to have--then like, I hope that I never have to use it. I hope that no one gets injured. That would be a better day for everyone. But, it is like part of the like ritual of being prepared that we like learn how to deal with these situations even in small ways. Which, brings me to my next question for you. What are...what are...if you had to give like a short little blurb to people about like, if people want to learn more about first aid in like a small way, say they've read this zine, like, what is the next step for people and what what situations should people like focus on whether they're like at a demonstration or it's just like, another piece of like--saying normal doesn't feel like the right phrase--but like, part of their normal life, you know?
Bex Yeah, their everyday life. Um, there's a lot of different types of trainings that folks can seek out starting with, like CPR. A CPR, training is a great place to start. And now you can do, you can even like get CPR trained online and just like watch a bunch of videos. It's better to do like hands on practice, I think that's where we really like, can start building muscle memory around these skills. But, there's like CPR training. Places like the Red Cross offer a basic first aid training. And then there's also these like street medic trainings. So, if you have a street medic, group or collective in your area, like, seek out a 20 hour street medic training, or there are different organizations that offer Wilderness First Aid trainings that are, you know, definitely have some overlap with the street medic training in that both of these things are like you're in an environment where you can't just call 911 and expect that an ambulance is going to be able to like roll up in the next five minutes, either because you're like in the back country, or you're like behind the police line, or what have you. And then there's bigger trainings on the wilderness side that you can pursue like a Wilderness First Responder, Wilderness, EMT. A lot of counties, especially like rural counties that are having trouble staffing up their EMS, I know some folks who have been able to get an EMT training, like a three month EMT training, totally paid for by their county if they agreed to like, volunteer with the fire department for a year or something like that. So that's another way to get like a lot of training for free if you are willing to interface with the like, often shitty hierarchical structures that put you in the role of being like the sort of like, dehumanizing disembodied medic, but you can like bring to that, you know, you can try to like, bring a better, like, approach to that situation. But yeah, all kinds of things like that. And to go back to your point of like, being prepared for things every day and not just like when I'm like going out to a demo, but kind of like, yeah, what we do on the daily to like, prepare for different situations, I'll say that I keep a like a tourniquet and a trauma response kit in my car at all times, just like in a fanny pack strapped to the back of the headrest, in case I come across like a car accident while I'm just like cruising around. Or if, you know, like in today's fucking modern society like your like just as likely it feels like to respond to like gunshots when you're like like passing by a shopping mall or like outside of fucking school or something like this because there's like, there's just so many shootings. There's so much gun violence. There's so many like mass shooting situations that I think that like a Stop the Bleed training that different like organizations offer, even like that on its own is something that might be useful for folks that hopefully they'll never have to use but
Inmn Yeah, yeah. I mean, that is that is what we hope. Yeah, I feel like personally, if I had to recommend like two lower barrier things that everyone should go out and do it is learning about CPR and a Stop the Bleed training because these are like two pretty, like, easy to access trainings that can make huge differences in whether somebody survives an injury.
Bex Absolutely. I'll also say that like, I feel like I've like talked a fair amount of smack, as is appropriate, on like, the medical industrial complex and like the shitty hierarchies within sort of like clinical emergency medicine or like hospital settings. Those are these like, really like dehumanizing, disembodied environments that really take away patient agency in a lot of cases. But, within those systems, there are a lot of like, really, like, deeply radical badass, like incredible people working within those systems. And if you are interested in like getting involved with a medical practice professionally, or if you are already in that world, you're a med tech, or a nurse or a doctor or, you know, whatever, a paramedic, and you want to find other radical people who are interested in approaching that work together, there are people who are doing that. There's actually--by the time this airs, it probably will have already happened--but there's a really cool convergence happening on the east coast this month in May, that's the Health Autonomy Convergence that's for people who are working within the medical system but are coming at it from a anarchist, anti authoritarian, abolitionist perspective. And finding networks like that, like ways to decentralize our knowledge and skills and like, connect with other like radical folks who are interested in this is just so exciting to me. It's very cool.
Inmn Yeah, yeah. I just want to say that, like, a real good reason for everyone to learn about first aid and for everyone to learn these basics is that, one, as we're seeing things change in like how police violence or like violence from other sources of fascism occurs, like, we can't even rely on these kind of like networks as much for like, every situation and like, it is helpful for everyone to have some understanding of what to do in an emergency. One, because it like, takes pressure off of those other groups and also because like, it means that like, you know, the best resource that we have are people and so like another person to know how to do this thing or to like, not need as much like care from someone is a great thing. Like, we yeah, we should all be learning basics of these skills because it makes everyone's lives easier.
Bex Yeah, and supporting each other in it. Like if you...like, the number one tool that a street medic has in their kit is a buddy. You always go with a buddy. You don't go alone because it's easier to keep a cool head and have good decision making, and stay sort of like oriented and situationally aware and like know what's happening if you are running with another person, and you both have like, even if you have different levels of experience or training, like you've got another person there to help navigate that situation with. And we can can offer one another like so much strength and resilience just by like being present and like tuned in to the same stuff together. One time my medic buddy that I would always run with was like out of town and there was like something happening in the city where I lived and I was like, "I'll just go by myself. It's like no big deal. Like I don't need a buddy. I'm sure it'll be fine." And I was like, such a huge mistake. It ended up being like a fairly like traumatizing experience for me where I was like, "Oh, wait, actually like being in this alone and being like, 'I'm trying to like respond and be prepared,' and like I don't have someone with me who's going through that with me and like tuning into this with me," was...I wouldn't do it again.
Inmn Yeah, yeah.
Bex So, find a pal. Find a pal who's interested in first aid and fucking skill up together. It's like extremely fun. And you can practice your patient assessment on each other. It's great.
Inmn Yeah, yeah, learning is fun. And, you know, the more that we learn these skills now, the less overwhelming they will be, if we are ever faced with an emergency that we have to deal with. Like, yeah, learn it now so it's less stressful in the moment.
Bex Yeah, and like learn from sources that are reliable. Like the materials that Riot Medicine has available, like this zine is super tight. I haven't looked through all of their other materials, like in depth, but it's like very legit, or like going to a street medic training, or another training so that you know that your skills that you're building are coming from some sort of reputable source and you don't end up as like, the wacky chaos medic that everyone dreads who's like, running around in like head-to-toe camo with gallons of milk swinging from their belt. And, you know, like, don't be the chaos medic. Like, learn some real skills that are like based in...that are scientifically based and like vetted and bring calm to the situation.
Inmn Yeah, yeah. Speaking of calm... [interrupted]
Bex Take your chaos elsewhere. Your chaos has a place and it is not in medicking.
Inmn Speaking of calm. So, real quick, we have this last little segment since this is the Strangers podcast, even if you're hearing it on the Live like the World is Dying feed. We have a quick word of the month where this is a word that I learn a little bit about the origins of and then asked people if they know anything about it. And I've maybe given you a clue. But, Bex, do you know anything...Do you know the word anemone?
Bex Like a sea anemone.
Inmn Yeah, like I sea anemone. But, there are other kinds of anemones as well.
Bex Like the sea anemone of my enemy is my friend-enenomy?
Inmn Yeah, that's that's absolutely the origin. You just guessed it.
Bex Tell me more.
Inmn Do you have any guesses as to like what the word anemone means? Or, where where it comes from?
Bex Anemone, anemone? No, I do not know. But it really sounds like enemy.
Inmn It does. It does. So, anemone. So there's sea anemone, but then there's also like, there's a plant that's called anemone. And interestingly, this plant is used to...it's used for a lot of different things medicinally and, how I'm familiar with it is that it was...someone recommended it to me for like panic attacks. And in very low doses. Very, very low doses. This is a...
Bex Consult an herbalist.
Inmn This is a...this can be a dangerous plant. So, flowering plant anemone comes directly from Latin "anemone," and then from the Greek "anemone," which comes from two little pieces. There's "anemos" and a, you know, "feminine" suffix. So, "anemos" means wind. And so anemone literally means "wind flower" or "daughter of the wind." And some people think that...or like, you know, one one attribution to that name is anemone blooms only during a storm. And it's like...interestingly, its petals are attached to seed pods. And so when the wind blows, the flower opens, and it rips it apart. And the petals are like each attached to a little seed pod. So that is like...the flower is like destroyed and propagates by getting caught in the wind. But interestingly--and this is this is where I think it gets really fun and interesting--is there's a cognate in Latin "anima" or shortened to "ane" which means to breathe. And anemone, as we just learned, is a plant that you can take when having a panic attack to help you breathe.
Bex Dang. That is very cool. And that's like a very beautiful image. You have like, that description of the flower being like ripped apart in a storm, but like that propagating, and I feel like that really resonates with me in terms of like, the things that we face that like feel like this huge destructive force, whether that's like things happening like emotionally or psychologically or also like the literal violence that people witness and experience. And like, how can you like harness that, like, violence or destruction and like see where they're like seeds of beautiful things that will like, be planted or like can grow from that, even if like the destruction itself is like the loss of something beautiful, it doesn't mean it's the end of beautiful things coming.
Inmn Yeah. And like first aid, we can bloom and show and spread, unfortunately, sometimes through turbulent times. And this ended up being a very appropriate word that I kind of picked at random to be part of this episode. So, I know you'd have to run, but real quick, Is there anywhere on the internet that people can find you that you would like to be found? And the answer can be "No."
Bex No, there's nowhere to find me on the internet. But, you should check out Riot Medicine, which I legitimately am like definitely not a part of or have anything to do with, but it is very cool. And Oh, one other thing I'll just quickly say here for folks who have listened to the gunshot wound episode of Live Like the World is Dying, I would like to make a little amendment. When I recorded that episode, I had some outdated information about tourniquets. And in that episode, I described tourniquets as really a tool of last resort. And what we actually know is that tourniquets are a really safe intervention to use. You can, if applied correctly and if it is a sort of like legitimate tourniquet like the CAT gen 7, the combat application tourniquet, these can safely be left on for a really long time. There have been recorded incidents from our long history of global capitalist imperialist warfare. We've learned a lot about combat medicine. And there have been incidences of like a tourniquet staying on for up to 48 hours without that limb being compromised. Do not be afraid to use a tourniquet. Check out that episode if you want more information about specifically Stop the Bleed stuff. But, just take this little amendment to the tourniquet section.
Inmn Great. Thank you so much Bex for coming on the podcast.
Bex Thanks for having me.
Inmn Yeah, stay well.
Bex Bye.
Inmn Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please go take a first aid training, and then tell us about it. But also tell people about the podcast. You can support this podcast by telling people about it. You can support this podcast by talking about it on social media, rating and reviewing and doing whatever the algorithm calls for. Feed it like hungry god. But, if you would like to support us in other sillier ways that don't involve feeding a nameless entity then you can check us out on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Our Patreon helps pay for things like transcriptions or our lovely audio editor Bursts, as well as going to support our publisher, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness is the publisher of this podcast and a few other podcasts including our monthly feature podcast of anarchistic literature, Strangers and a Tangled Wilderness, which comes out monthly, as well as the Anarcho Geek Power Hour, which is a great podcast for people who love movies and hate cops. And just to give you an idea of some other stuff that Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness is up to, we are also getting ready to put out a new book To the Ghosts Who are Still Living by Ami Weintraub. The stories of our ancestors call to us from across time asking to be remembered. In retelling our ancestors experiences of love, tradition, loss and sorrow we not only honor their lives, but we come to understand our own. The trees whisper to the ones who will listen, "Come home." To the Ghosts Who are Still Living is a collection of essays by Ami Weintraub, coming out August, 2023 through Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. The preorder starts July 1st. And we would like to shout out a few of our patrons in particular. Thank you Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, Funder, Jans, Oxalis, Janice & O'dell, Paige, Aly, Paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, Theo, Hunter, Shawn, S. J., Paige, Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Kat J., Staro, Jenipher, Eleanor, Kirk, Sam, Chris, Michaiah, and Hoss the Dog. We seriously couldn't do this without y'all. And I hope everyone out there is doing as well as they can with everything that's happening and we'll talk to you soon.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This time on Live Like the World is Dying, we’re talking about something crucial to surviving the apocalypse: playing games with your friends. And Killing God Kings. That’s right, we have an actual play recording of us playing Penumbra city, the TTRPG that we’ve been working on over at Strangers for…a very long time. We are sharing this session of us playing the game in order to get you excited about our KICKSTARTER for the game, which is currently live. Right now! Unless it’s no longer June 2023. So, before you listen to this recording go to
www.kickstarter.com/projects/penumbra-city/penumbra-city
Join a Doggirl, an Occultust, a Rat King, and a Patchworker as they investigate a string of disappearances including someone’s missing date.
Find your friends. Live like the God King is dying.
We will have a normal Live Like the World is Dying episode out this week as well.
Margaret Killjoy: World Designer. On Twitter @magpiekilljoy or IG @MargaretKilljoy Jamie Loftus: Host of Ghost Church. On Twitter @JamieLoftusHELP of IG @JamieChristSuperstar Bea Flowers: The Voice of Penumbra City. On IG @Crimebrulee Robin Savage: Game Ilustrator on IG @Missrobinsavage Inmn Neruin: Game Designer on IG @shadowtail.artificery
This podcast is published by Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org or on Twitter @tangledwild. You can support this show by subscribing to our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness
Our Kickstarter for Penumbra City can be found here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/penumbra-city/penumbra-city
The Host is Inmn Neruin. You can find them on instagram @shadowtail.artificery
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Margaret talks with Sprout and Charyan from Sabot Media and The Blackflower Collective about organizing in rural areas and how that can be different from organizing in more urban areas. Sprout and Charyan talk about the different projects that Sabot Media and The Blackflower Collective work on, supporting unhoused people, the importance of having a music scene, and the unfortunate state of fascism.
Sprout (they/them) and Charyan(they/them) work with Sabot Media and The Blackflower Collective. Those projects can be found on Twitter @Blackflowerllc, @Aberdeenlocal1312, or Instagram @Blackflower.collective or @Aberdeenlocal1312, or on their websites https://sabotmedia.noblogs.org/ or https://blackflowercollective.noblogs.org/. They can also be found on Mastodon @Aberdeenlocal1312.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
LLWD – Sabot Media on Rural Organizing
Margaret 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. And I'm excited to talk this week about a subject that is very near and dear to my particular heart. And it might be near and dear to your particular hear or it might just be a subject of idle curiosity. I have no idea. I don't know where you live. You're in my head. I'm in your head. Something. Today we're going to talk about rural organizing, and we're gonna talk about some of the differences between rural organizing and urban organizing, and we're going to be doing that with Sprout and Charyan from Sabot Media and The Blackflower Collective and we're going to talk about that. First, we're gonna talk about the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. Bah duh duh duh dah [Margaret makes melody noises like she's singing] Okay, so if you all could introduce yourself, I guess with your your name and your pronouns and then like maybe a little bit about what Sabot Media and The Blackflower Collective are.
Sprout 02:32 Yeah, hello, I'm Sprout. Pronouns are they/them.
Charyan 02:37 I'm Charyan. They/them.
Sprout 02:40 We're here to talk about our new project in Grays Harbor County called The Blackflower Collective. And we're here also representing Sabot Media and our podcast Molotov Now.
Margaret 02:55 Where's Grays Harbor?
Sprout 02:58 It's on the coast, Western Washington. The main town is Aberdeen where most people have probably heard of it is because that's where Kurt Cobain was born and grew up.
Margaret 03:12 Oh, one of my favorite trans women in history. That is my contentious belief. Anyone who's ever wonder that. Yeah,
Charyan 03:24 I've heard the theory.
Margaret 03:26 Yeah. One of my friends was friends with Kurt and was like...and when I first started coming out was like, "Wow, you talk about your gender the same way that Kurt did." And so that's why I hold on to this particular theory so hard. But I'm not trying to...no one has ever been more mad at me on the internet as people were when I said this once on Twitter. So whatever, I'm not trying to specifically claim or not claim dead people...whatever. Anyway, that's definitely what we're here to talk about today. So, I guess really quickly, like what is Sabot Media? What is Blackflower Collective?
Sprout 04:09 Well, Sabot Media is a media project that we started because we saw a need for our own reporting of certain stories around the homeless and the mutual aid efforts that were going on in our town. The local paper record the Daily World and the other local stations out here were just not covering the stories at all that needed to be told. And so we stepped up to start talking about that stuff in our own community. We've got a website on No Blogs. Sabotmedia.noblogs.org, where people can go check out our articles. We've got comics, we've got columns, we've got a podcast as I mentioned. Yeah, so The Blackflower Collective was born out of another project here on the harbor that's been going for a couple of years Chehalis River mutual aid network. And the organizers for that project did a lot of talking to the community and discussing internally about what needs there were and how to meet those needs. And the solution came out as The Blackflower Collective. So our goal there is to have a piece of land, just outside the city limits, where we can have a sustainable ecovillage to house low income and unhouse...currently unhoused people, as well as pairing that with a social center and makerspace where we can have a business incubator and people providing social services.
Margaret 05:53 That's really...Okay, one of the things I got really excited about when I first heard about this project that you all are working on about it is because I think about how much...how impactful social center type spaces can be in smaller communities. Like it just seems to me...like off the top of my head, at least I think of like...I mean, a makerspace and, you know, social center space and stuff like that in a big city rules and is great, and I'm really excited when they exist, but it seems like a much higher percentage of the town's socializing or something...like it seems like a bigger deal in a smaller place. Am I like...Am I off base about this? Like, what are your kind of aspirations around that?
Charyan 06:34 Not at all. That's actually kind of one of the dichotomies that we talked about in our article. And on our interview on It Could Happen Here is like the modes of socialization feel a lot different from big city and large population big city communities and, you know, smaller rural towns and whatnot. For example, like in the bigger city, the way you meet people is like, you know, you have your job, or, you know, you go out to the club or, you know, what have you. There's lots of different groups and classes you can take part in. Like you walk into any building or storefront and there's going to be a wall filled with fliers for different events and classes and all sorts of stuff. A place like here in Aberdeen, you have to hunt and dig for that kind of stuff. And even when it does happen, you're more than likely not even going to hear about it. The mode of socialization in smaller places is usually through friends and family you already have. You know, you're hanging out at somebody's house and somebody comes to the door. It's like, "Oh, hey, here's my buddy, Paul," or What have you.
Margaret 07:44 Yeah, it always sort of occurred to me that, you know, living in a small town--I'm probably not going to do it, but I'm like, "Man, if I opened a punk venue, it would be the only place to go see music," you know? But that's also...maybe no one would come because there's like a tiny handful of punks in this town, you know.
Sprout 08:04 Well, that's actually what we're thinking about starting to do with Blackflower to raise some funds and get our name out there is hold some benefit punk shows. There's, again, there's just not really much in the way of music venues out here. And so what we're doing is just trying to find needs and then meet them. And that's a huge...you know, coming from a city--I wasn't born here, I moved here from a big bigger city area--so, you know, having a music scene was huge. That's what got me into political organizing in the first place. So, I think it's a good subculture to cultivate to try and get people on board.
Margaret 08:47 No, that makes sense. I mean, around where I'm at, like people go, people drive a long way to go to the punk show in the small town in the mountains, you know, that happens to be throwing that particular punk show or whatever thing it is. People go a long way to see live music because you have to. On the other hand, like, do y'all have the phrase "Country close?" Like where it's like, to go anywhere takes about 45 minutes, right, because it's all back country roads. I just think about how far people have to go to go get to places
Sprout 09:20 Yeah, no, I haven't heard that term. But I know the concept for sure.
Margaret 09:24 Okay, so the other thing I was thinking about when you were first talking about this is, you know, homelessness and mutual aid in a small town, you know, you're saying that the the mutual aid network is kind of what you all grew out of--or in response to or something like that--that's not something that people hear about much. And, you know, we hear about homelessness in big cities and stuff, but I have a feeling that people who don't live rurally might not be aware that this is also a presence in small towns across the US as well as like, you know, people living in tents and trying to make ends meet down by the river and stuff. So that's like...when I say problem, I don't mean the problem is that there are homeless people around I mean the problem is that they don't have homes. You know, that is like a big issue where you all are? [Inflected as question]
Sprout 10:15 It's a huge issue, especially in Aberdeen. It's kind of the confluence for the county wherever one goes. It's the only town in the county with like state social services. So, if you're homeless, you're going to be living in Aberdeen. There's a lot of conservatives who seemed to think that it is a big city problem, that everyone is being sort of imported from bigger cities or sent here from bigger cities, but a lot of who we talked to on the streets were born here and grew up here.
Charyan 10:52 Yeah, not only all that, but homelessness has been integral to the area that we live in as long as settlers have been coming here to be part of this area of Western Washington and the Pacific Northwest in particular has always been kind of the end of the line as people were coming out here because they had no place else to go. They came out to try to, like, you know, build new build new homes, not having to pay for stuff back east. All the draws of settler colonialism at West. It's...[Interrupted]
Sprout 11:31 Well, the homeless camp that the city evicted off the banks of the Chehalis River in 2019 had been there probably since the turn of the century in one form or another. Vagrants and poor people just living along the side of the banks of the river.
Charyan 11:52 When the port dock was still a thing before--the old one from the back like 1930s and stuff before it was finally tore out--during the days of like Billy Gohl. It was...
Margaret 12:07 I have no idea who Billy Gohl is. Sorry.
Charyan 12:09 Oh, just a local legend. And they tried to frame him as like a serial killer. But he was getting blamed for all the deaths from people in the mills and the factories and stuff. And the bosses would dump the bodies in the river. And they blamed them on this guy because he was a labor organizer.
Margaret 12:27 What's his name? Billy Gohl.
Sprout 12:29 Billy Gohl. Yeah.
Margaret 12:30 That's so metal. I know that that's not the takeaway I'm supposed to get from here. Also, I interrupted you. I'm so sorry. Okay.
Charyan 12:37 You're fine. There's a...If you want to learn more, there's a labor historian, Aaron Goings, who did a book recently called "The Port of Missing Men" if you'd like to learn more about that. Okay. But yeah, it was common practice for for workers, or vagrants, or whoever to get shanghaied here, you know. You go to the bar, they slip something in your drink, and then you'd wake up the, you know, out in the ocean thousands of miles away from home.
Margaret 13:06 Cool. That's so great. That's such a good system that is totally consensual for everyone, and a good way to build society. [Said with a lot of dry sarcasm]'
Charyan 13:17 It's Aberdeen.
Sprout 13:18 So yeah, it's definitely something that's existed here since settler colonialism showed up.
Margaret 13:27 I think it's really interesting how all different parts of the country or the world have these different types of darknesses to them. You know? And like, hearing about like, okay, yeah, this is the end of the line for settler colonialism heading west and things like that. And then you have workers dumping bodies and rivers and people that have Gohl [pronounced like "Ghoul"] are running around getting blamed for it. And then everyone's getting...It's like, I don't know, it's just like, really interesting. Not in a good way, but an interesting way. So, okay. One of the one of the reasons that I wanted to have you on to talk is you all recently put out an article about the difference between rural organizing and urban organizing, and that's kind of the core of what I want to ask you all about, pick your brains about is what are some of these differences between rural organizing and urban organizing? And also, what's the article called and where can people read it? Sorry.
Sprout 14:18 Oh, yeah. It's called "The Dichotomy Between Urban and Rural Political Organizing." You can check it out on our website Sabotmedia.noblogs.org.
Charyan 14:27 You can find it under the co-conspirator section under the Harbor Rat Reports
Margaret 14:33 Cool, and Sabot is spelled with a T for anyone's listening at S-A-B-O-T.
Sprout 14:37 Yes. So, some of the dichotomies that we highlight are the police in the city, the relationship between those entities and activists, the need for and difficulty in obtaining anonymity in a small town while you're organizing, and as Charyan mentioned already, the sort of modes of socialization that happens between rural and urban organizing, and just living in general. And then, there was a presentation to the National Association of the Rural Mental Health Association, rural mental health, that we highlighted, in which one of the professors for Minnesota State University laid out two general approaches to community organizing, one that he found was most applicable to urban organizers and one that was most applicable to rural organizing.
Margaret 15:41 Well, let's start there. What is it? What are these two modes? What is the difference?
Sprout 15:47 So, he proposed two general approaches to community organizing, the Alinsky model and the Eichler method. Saul Alinsky had a conflict theory and model, in which community power focuses on people, with underserved communities rarely having enough money to fight power but usually have strength in people. These are called the have-nots. And in order to gain power, the have-nots must take power from the haves. It's aggression oriented and it focuses on people as the agents of protest and creators of conflict. This is primarily the attitude seen in urban organizing, with large protests riots and police resistance actions framing the debate around who has power and trying to seize that power over others for oneself. In contrast to that, Mike Eichler came up with a consensus theory and model that was informed by Alinsky but focused on identifying consensus points between divergent groups. It sought opportunities to strengthen relationships between different groups' interests. It was more collaboration oriented and focused on each group's best interest in establishing trust, mutual agreements, and compromise. And then each method has its own list of rules.
Margaret 17:03 Okay, is Saul Alinsky the one who wrote Rules for Radicals?
Sprout 17:06 Yeah.
Margaret 17:07 Okay. This is so interesting to me because like, one, when you describe those things side by side, my thought is like, "Oh, the second one's better." and like, maybe that's not true. And also, probably when I was younger, I certainly didn't act in that way. Right? So what makes the second one not just better?
Charyan 17:28 The way I kind of view it from what I've read is it's kind of like the offensive and defensive arms of the movement.
Margaret 17:37 Yeah, I guess that's the other thing is that, like, whenever I see a dichotomy I want it to be false. And so I'm a little bit like, "Why not both?" Sorry, go ahead.
Charyan 17:43 So like, with...I forget exactly what where...how it shakes out. I'm certain they can expand more about in a second. But, it's kind of kind of like a yin-yang thing where like, rural communities will focus on one with a kind of a dash on together while urban communities would focus on the other one with a dash of...a little bit of both with.... [interrupted]
Sprout 18:12 It's not so much like one is better than the other, it's more like one is more likely to arise in a small rural area, and the other one is more likely to arise in a in a dense urban environment. I think a lot of that probably has to do with this main dichotomy that we highlight in the article between police and the city in a rural environment versus in an urban environment. A lot of what you see in big cities is the importation of officers from surrounding areas so that no one serving on the force in say, Oakland, is actually living in the city of Oakland. They're generally imported from the surrounding suburbs. So you get a sort of like invading force sort of feel. And here, majority, if not all of the officers live in the community. So while they're all police and they all have the same social functions, it looks a lot different. And the reactions...like the activists' reactions to those are a lot different.
Margaret 19:26 Okay. Yeah. I think about like the difference between...a really bad thing happened near where I live--that I don't want to talk about for sort of just general content warning type stuff--and of the police that responded to this bad thing, you know, the state police were how I'm used to cops acting where they were like, not so nice, right? And the sheriff treated everyone at the scene like a human, right, like, they treated everyone at the scene like they had just seen something horrible because that's what just...something horrible had just happened, right? I feel bad being so vague about this but whatever. People can deal. And yeah, because you can see in the state police...you know, where as the sheriff is like, well, the sheriff grew up with everyone who's involved in this. And so it's really interesting to me because you get this thing where it's like...I often wonder, I'm like, well rural culture is so into being outlaws, they're so into like--they do at least as much crime as anyone else if not more--you know, why are so many center-right rural communities, especially more recently, all bootlickers. And like, I guess if you generalize your idea of the police as being like, "Oh, well, that's Joe. He happens to be the sheriff," as compared to like, these storm troopers walk down the street and like kick everyone's heads in every...once a day or whatever, you're gonna have like really different conceptions of them. Am I completely off base about like kind of...I probably should have just asked....[Interrupted]
Charyan 21:02 Yeah, cause like in smaller towns right around here, you definitely get like that Andy Griffith kind of vibe from some cops, or at least from people's perceptions of the local police. Our local police definitely have their share of dirty dealings and unreported abuses and whatnot. I've known people personally who have been murdered by our local police department and it just...but it doesn't get the attention that someone in the bigger city might.
Sprout 21:32 We found that the police here have largely shown if not ambivalence, like tacit support for the mutual aid that happens here.
Charyan 21:43 We've gotten like the...what's the word I'm looking for? Like, thanks but a different word.
Margaret 21:51 A nod?
Charyan 21:52 Yeah, we've definitely received words of like appreciation and thanks and whatnot from the handful of officers or whatnot at like the meals when they drive by checking on people or whatever.
Sprout 22:03 And that's the officers as distinct from the city. The city would definitely shut us down in a heartbeat if they could, but the officers have no desire to do so.
Charyan 22:15 Some of them anyway,
Margaret 22:16 That is interesting. Because, yeah, very often in an urban environment, a lot of the elements of the city often support a lot of the mutual aids. Not always but like the police are more likely to be the primary antagonistic force. This might just be showing that I haven't lived in the city in a long time. But that is like my understanding. And it is interesting, though, because in both cases, the police are not part of the democratic existence of the society, right? Like, one of the things that I found so interesting that we saw more boldly during the past few years is police departments just straight up being like, "I don't care what we're supposed to do. We're not going to do that. And you can't make us do it." And then having the city back off and be like, "Oh, well, I guess we can't make them." And you're like...it was a good moment for people to realize that like the police are completely not democratically controlled or not controlled by the people. They're not, you know, they're just a wholly separate thing. So, it's still interesting that they're like, doing it in the good way. And that's probably why rural outlawy people tend to like the so-and-so cop because that so-and-so cop lets them get away with driving home drunk from the bar or whatever.
Sprout 23:29 They have a lot of discretion.
Charyan 23:29 Yeah. Like, the whole politics between the population as compared to the police is reversed or, you know, one of those dichotomies, where like, in the smaller town we have more liberal "chill" police as compared to a reactionary base, the reactionary population that shows up to the big city protests to mow people down in trucks and stuff like that, versus in the city where you have that more larger liberal population and outright fascist cops
Sprout 23:57 It does make it hard to push the "all cops are bastards" sort of rhetoric, right, when you have that sort of, "Oh, here's officer so-and-so helping this grandma across the road," kind of Facebook posts. Whereas if you're in a big city and you, like you mentioned, you have these sort of shock troop looking people coming in and beating people in your neighborhood up every so often, it's a lot easier to make that argument that "Oh, look at these police, you know, we need to abolish the police." But out here, the argument is still the same. We believe...we're not saying that we shouldn't abolish the police just because, you know, they're helping old ladies with groceries, but right it's a harder argument to make.
Charyan 24:51 Yeah, we're gonna be expanding on that too here soon in a article we're gonna be releasing soon and a episode of Molotov Now that we'll be discussing that article called "The Problem with Good Cops," trying to dive into this idea a little bit more.
Margaret 25:08 That's a really good idea and kind of an important thing because we need to, you know, I believe ACAB, right? I believe that the police are the worst. But, I also recognize why like, that's not going to be my main talking point around here, or like not my main starting talking point around here, partly because it is a more subtle bastardry because it's less obvious like, "Well, that person hits people for living," even though they still do, right? They exist to enforce violence. And, you know, one of the proudest strange moments of my life is I got a cop to quit once.
Sprout 25:48 Nice.
Margaret 25:49 Yeah, it was a weird...I don't think I've told the story on-air before. I wasn't...It wasn't solely me. But basically, I was like, at a nerd convention and I was like, complaining about police. And this one person was like, "I'm a police." And I was like, "What?" And then they were like, "But I'm a good police." They didn't, but they were like, "I'm good at..." you know, and we talked....
Sprout 26:12 They knew they had to make that argument.
Margaret 26:13 Right, totally. But then even from that context, I was like, "Well, you throw people in cages for living for breaking laws that aren't immoral like having weed." And they were like, "Well, I choose not to throw people in jail for weed," and I'm like, "Oh, so you support the system that allows this to happen," you know, and it's like, and I saw them at another convention--and I don't know if it's solely this conversation--but some other another convention and they're like, "I quit." And it's like, I think the ACAB...It's like the rural ACAB is a little bit more of a like it--depending on, I mean, some rural police are just as fucking awful and terrible as any other cop in a very obvious way--but you still have like...it's this...The role you are playing in society is bad. And your choice to participate in that role is bad and has negative consequences versus just like, "That guy's a piece of shit," you know?
Sprout 27:12 Well, and it's bad for the officers themselves as human beings.
Charyan 27:16 Yeah, there's a YouTuber, That Dang Dad, they do some videos. They're actually an ex-cop who are fully ACAB police and prison abolition now. They do a video kind of talking about how being a cop like messed with their mentality and mess with their mind because of the way that they do the training and the way that they're expected to act. And it does nothing good or healthy for them. Their channel isn't really like the ex-cop channel. They have a lot of other really good content as well, but they do have some good videos on those subjects.
Margaret 27:53 That's cool.
Sprout 27:54 So probably the most beneficial thing that we as abolitionists could do for police is to get them to quit their jobs.
Margaret 28:02 Yeah.
Sprout 28:03 You know, because it's not good for anyone. I often make the argument with people when I'm talking about the, you know, the wider social revolution, that it's desirous for everyone including Bezos. You know? I don't think that he's got a life that he's enjoying living, you know, a whole lot more than anyone else. I think that this system brutalizes and emiserates everyone and it's even those at the top who can benefit from having their social position taken from the hierarchies having being abolished.
Charyan 28:34 Yeah, and all this stuff requires us to do the same kind of organizing and the same kind of things that we're already talking about doing. Say, like, you know, preparing for a strike, for example, in the workplace, though, like, it's all the same stuff we would need to do to help cops be able to quit their job, you know, make sure that we're going to be able to feed their families, making sure that their house is going to be warm, you know, all these same kind of support structures that we're building for ourselves. We need to offer to these people but with the pretense of like, "You gotta stop being a cop."
Margaret 29:08 Yeah, totally. It's like, they're kind of like...Like, Bezos is like the person I'm like, least concerned about the well being of as relates to all of this. But I have always...I've gotten in arguments with people about it, where I'm like, "No, I want there to not be billionaires, by force if necessary but ideally, without force, you know? Like, I don't think that they like, need to be punished. Like, I don't believe in vengeance and punishment. I believe in problem solving, for me as an anarchist, like I believe...and sometimes that might look like stopping people by force, right? Like it's not...I'm not saying like, "Oh, we need to like think about the cops' feelings while they're in the middle of hitting people or whatever."
Sprout 29:52 But sometimes, the best thing you could do is to stop them by force.
Margaret 29:58 Yep, totally.
Sprout 29:59 For everyone, you know, so.
Charyan 30:01 Before you can convince someone to stop punching someone in the face, you kind of got to grab their arm.
Margaret 30:06 Yeah. And frankly, if you can't convince them to stop punching them in the face, you might have to punch them in the face harder. You know? Like, but that's not the ideal. The ideal is...
Sprout 30:18 It's not coming from a place of revenge, it's coming from a place of understanding that their actions need to be stopped.
Charyan 30:26 in solidarity with the rest of your community.
Margaret 30:29 Yeah. No, that's interesting. And this ties into what you all were talking about about the difference between Alinsky and Eichlers' models, right, this sort of...a slightly more confrontational one that's more urban and slightly more touchy feely one that is more rural. Okay, why is the more touchy feely one--I know it's not the most polite way to phrase it--why is it the more appropriate one for rural places. I can imagine, right, because you have these more deeper connections with the people around you? Or like, what's the deal?
Charyan 31:01 Well, I would definitely say it starts with like, the modes of socialization, where things are just a lot more personal in a small town. Everybody tends to know each other. There's a lot more deeper roots. Where in a bigger city, you're probably going for more of an appeal to the masses kind of tactic or whatever, but especially with like rural community, where we're wanting to make things community focused or whatnot, that is definitely going to be your biggest testing ground or incubator for building community, having those personal connections, which to be able to have that community, have those personal connections or whatnot, you actually have to, you know, put that work in. We need to be talking to people, we need to be having the conversations, we need to be, you know, not just going up to people and tell them like, "Hey, you're wrong. Here's how we need to be doing things." But we're saying, "Hey, what kind of problems are you facing in your life? What can we do to work together to solve those?"
Sprout 32:05 Well, and it's also a function just literally of the size of the groups. When you have a smaller group--like I know, our crew here is, is pretty tight--and when you have a small group like that you have to take into account everyone's thoughts and feelings a lot more than if you have to, like a General Assembly or something where there's a couple of hundred or fifty a hundred people, not everyone might get their personal opinion heard in that setting. Whereas if you're with five people, ten people, you know, you just kind of have to listen to everyone and come to a more of a consensus model. So it's kind of the environment itself that imposes the different modes of organizing,
Charyan 32:50 Yeah, and another aspect of that, too, is like, you know, in a bigger city, you're more than likely going to find more radicals. You're going to find more people who are already on board, you know, the like, "I'm for all the social justice issues, I'm all in for, you know, getting rid of capitalism, and all these things," which helps you like, avoid a lot of those harder conversations. And, it makes it easier to have that specialized group versus places like here, where we're having to do more work and finding the sympathetic liberals who are on that edge, bringing them in, and helping pull them the rest of the way left.
Margaret 33:30 Okay. And is the way that that usually happens is that you're working on an issue together and then they see, they end up sort of assimilating to the sort of like leftist values of that group and realizing that they're appropriate to the problems that they're facing? Or like, what does that look like, pulling people further to the left?
Charyan 33:48 Definitely its own tug of war. There's a lot of active work that needs to be done to keep groups from being co-opted by more liberal ideals or opinions and whatnot, which is always going to be a constant struggle.
Sprout 34:09 There's also an effect that we mentioned in the article, there's a study out of, I think, Washington University in St. Louis, that they found that it was actually the geography that dictated whether people would lean more towards certain political labels. But, it wasn't the...which kind of sounds like what you'd expect. But what they found digging deeper into the research was that it wasn't actually the underlying political beliefs of the people that changed. It was really just the labels that they used. So what you can find is a lot of the similar sort of libertarian tendencies that you might expect out of like a more social left kind of as we would conceive of it individual but being labeled as conservative or, you know, something on the right. So, there's a lot of like mislabeling, and that happens here in this country uniquely I think and sometimes deliberately where political ideologies are mislabeled.
Charyan 35:27 Libertarian is a big one. That means not what it means here everywhere else in the world.
Sprout 35:34 But, you'll find a lot of people who are calling themselves one thing. And if you don't dig into that, you just think, "Oh, they're conservative. I know what that means." But if you dig into it, you find, "Oh, well, actually you think, you know, people in your community should have their needs provided for and people should take care of one another. And you believe all of these actually sort of like leftist values." And it's interesting that it's actually, again, it's like the environment itself that imposes these differences and not like any underlying individual traits.
Charyan 36:09 I saw this guy at the bar recently. He was claiming to be like an anarchist, or whatever and this is unprompted, him having his own conversations when I got here, so I'm like, "What do you got to say about that?" And he started talking about Michael Malice. I'm like, "Alright. I'm finishing my drink. I'm leaving. I'm done here."
Sprout 36:27 Yeah. And then you have that in the bigger cities where everyone is like, oh, using the same exact label, but you find actually, you think something completely different from me.
Margaret 36:35 Yeah, you have the like, Democrats in California, who are--I'm not trying to be like, all people in California--but like the politicians and shit who have all of the same policies of like fund to the police, sweep camps, enact the war on drugs, like whatever.
Sprout 36:52 The law and order liberals.
Margaret 36:53 Yeah, exactly. And like, at the end of the day, there's not an incredible amount of difference besides like, what they like...I had this experience that I really appreciated lately. It's very rare that you could start a sentence with, "I was in a gun store talking about a conspiracy with the guy behind the counter, and it was cool." But that's...but it happened to me recently in this small town, and I'm like talking to the guy and his conspiracy was--and I agree with this. There's very few things that...he was like, "Yeah, I think that gun companies lobby anti-gun stuff constantly in order to spike sales."
Sprout 37:35 Oh, yeah.
Margaret 37:36 Yeah. And that's what...when I told someone this earlier they were like, "Oh, where is she going with this?" And they say that and they're like, "Yeah, no, yeah, of course," you know, like, we've got these, like, run on guns like, Y'all are in Washington. I, you know...I mean, in this case, it's--I dunno if valid is the right word--but, you know, Washington is poised to pass an assault weapons ban and so there's this run on guns in Washington. And that might be like...I mean, those are actually being banned. So if you go and get them now, it's legal. But as compared to like, federally, right, where Congress or whatever is talking about how they're going to pass an assault weapons ban, like, they're not. Like, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe. Whatever. But they're not. And it's like...and it seems like the reason that they do that...I don't know if it's actually the reason or not, and that's the...but the effect of it, is that everyone runs out and spends thousands and thousands of dollars on firearms.
Sprout 38:36 That's funny. That's, that's where my mind jumped to when you brought it up before we started recording. I was like, "Oh, well, they're gonna sell some guns with that." I mean, there are conspiracies. So.
Margaret 38:48 Yeah, no, totally. And, this one is a good example where it like literally doesn't matter whether it's a conspiracy or not. Like I also think that a huge reason as to why the Democrats don't actually ever do anything to solidify Roe v. Wade in law is so that they continue to use Roe v. Wade, hold people's right to choose over their head, hold bodily autonomy over people's head to blackmail people into voting for them. Right? Because as soon as it's solidified into law then you're not as freaked out and need to go run for the Democrat, vote for the Democrat every time.
Sprout 39:22 And no one's gonna vote for a Democrat unless there's a life and death reason.
Margaret 39:27 I know, because they're the least interesting political party that...All they've ever been able to do is be the lesser evil. Yeah. Have you all had the experience of having people explain about Trump being the lesser evil?
Sprout 39:41 No.
Charyan 39:43 Yeah. Unfortunately.
Margaret 39:46 It's so fascinating to me, because I'm like, this is just literally the conversation I keep having with liberals. This is so wild, you know, only inverted.
Sprout 39:55 When Trump was very first sort of running.... [interrupted]
Margaret 39:59 Nah,this was recently.
Charyan 40:00 I think it falls in with like, in line with the... [interrupted] I think it matches with this wave of like patriotic socialists and mega communists and all that other weird online Twitter shit.
Sprout 40:03 Well was like, "I'll just throw a brick. We're just gonna throw this brick in the window and burn it all down."
Margaret 40:15 Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. My other question then is how much does the weird...How much does the culture war in your experience filtered down to the actual people that you're around? Like, I know that you all are in one of the most polarized states in the country. It's a deep blue state with like pockets of deep red, right?
Sprout 40:40 Absolutely.
Charyan 40:40 That's definitely our area here.
Margaret 40:42 Is one of the pockets of deep red?
Charyan 40:44 Yeah. Our whole city council is pretty much far right. We have maybe one or two allies, quote unquote. And that's it.
Margaret 40:53 Yeah. Is that causing, like specific issues around the issues of like, are people getting harassed for wearing masks? Are people getting harassed for not wearing gender appropriate clothing? Are people of color being harassed? Like, I mean, obviously, these are...the answer, of course, on some level is going to be yes to all of these things because people are everywhere and stuff, but I'm just curious how much it is impacting people there, the culture war shit.
Sprout 41:18 There's been a little bit of the whole drag, anti-trans drag fear mongering but far and away the biggest thing on their plate is the homeless? Or I guess just poor people in general because it's hard to tell out here who's homeless sometimes and who's just wearing a real baggy coat because it's always wet. But they've been pushing that issue for going on five years really hard. And by they, I mean, Save Our Aberdeen Please is our local fascist contingency.
Charyan 41:58 Yeah. And so they recently tried to do a protest against like a drag show that they were doing for Christmas fundraising here recently. It was turned into a whole thing. But, ultimately, nobody ended up showing up. They got freezed out by the fog and the rain. And the property is also set back a ways from the road so there was no place for them to effectively protest at, but here last year or the year before--I'm bad with my time and dates--But there is a huge protest outside of a local Star Wars shop with a big anti-trans protests that resulted after a trans council woman that we had, at the time, had called out a local shopkeeper, the owner of the Star Wars shop, for some transphobic signs that he had displayed front and center at the business. It turned into a whole thing. They brought Proud Boys to town. It was a big ordeal.
Margaret 43:01 This offends my nerd heart very deeply. Nerd culture has always been one of the safest places for gender marginalized people.
Charyan 43:12 Yeah, and this guy was anything but safe. He was a groomer. He let his kid deal heroine out of the back of the shop. Just nothing but bad from this guy.
Sprout 43:27 Yeah, but this small group of old ladies who were just trying to pick up trash somehow coordinated like 50+ Proud Boys to show up for that event. So...
Margaret 43:41 Jesus.
Charyan 43:42 It also appeared on Stormfront before any local news. It went straight from local Facebook drama to Stormfront.
Sprout 43:50 Yeah. And then it was a part of the Right-Wing Outrage Machine for about 24 hours.
Charyan 43:56 They brought Matt Walsh to town. He put something about based grandpa in that fucked off documentary, whatever you'd call it that he made, the "What is a Woman" shit?
Margaret 44:08 Yeah, cuz he's never met one. So that's why he made that. It was the only to get women to talk to him. [said sarcastically]
Charyan 44:15 I saw Lance from The Serf Times talking about him and the crew from Daily Wire, about how none of them know how to operate a fucking washing machine. And it was just hilarious.
Margaret 44:24 I was thinking that shit. Imagine telling people that you don't know how to do your own laundry. Imagine thinking that makes you look strong.
Charyan 44:37 Yeah, and proud of it.
Margaret 44:40 Nothing makes it more clear that they believe that they own the women in their lives than the fact that it's like...because they're like all into...the right wing mythos is all about self reliance and shit, right? But it's like, "Well, I don't have to be entirely self reliant because I own this wife."
Sprout 45:00 Yeah, that's my wife [said sarcastically]
Margaret 45:02 and fucking...You all will be shocked to know that I don't like misogyny. God, imagine being proud of it. I can't. It's just doesn't make any sense to me like there...Okay, this is a kind of a question too, right? Because it's like, there's people I can talk to with different values than me, even values that like matter a lot to me, where you can kind of be like, "I see where you're coming from. I disagree strongly with your desire to protect women all the time, or the women, the girls sports team," or whatever fucking weird shit people are on. You can like, see where people are coming from...And then you have the fucking Nazis, where you're just like, how can anyone look at Matt Walsh and be like, "There's a man I can relate to?" I can't imagine anything he's saying.
Charyan 45:56 He's like, the most boring guy too. Like, all his content, like it...For all the inflammatory stuff, he says, like, there's no flavor to it, it's just the most boring monotone...
Margaret 46:14 And how do you deal with that? I mean, like, honestly, okay, as a question like, how do you deal with like, talking to people around you? This is one of the questions we get a lot, actually, on the show, is people are like," I live in a place--you talk about how part of preparedness is communicating with your neighbors, getting to know them--how do I talk to people, you know, in ways that are safe? How do I talk to people who are steeped in culture war, or might be steeped in culture war?" Like, and there's gonna be like, limits to this, right? Like, I'm not gonna like, go knock on the door of the person with the Confederate flag in a dress and be like, "Hey, bud, what's up?" Right? But I'm like, curious how you all navigate as organizers, because my...I just hide from everyone. My immediate neighbors know me, but I just hide from everyone, because I'm not an organizer. Like, how do you all handle that?
Charyan 47:06 Well, I have no solid answers. But one thing I definitely would say, it probably is a good start, is like finding the people who are closest to you, or at least closest to your immediate circle, and just do all you can to like help out, make yourself an asset to them in a way that you guys can start getting closer on some sort of other level. And once you've gotten to a point where it's like, alright, they care about you, and they care about how things affect you, at least, you might be able to start making that bridge, like, "Hey, here's something that affects you, here's something that affects me. This is shitty," but it's going to be different for everybody in every situation. That said, I don't really have any hard fast answers.
Sprout 47:55 No, I mean, when we've found the best approach has been to just ask people what they need and start there, and then don't over promise, you know, if they need more than you can provide. Let them know that. But, consistency, you know, showing up, and doing what you tell someone you're gonna do, those those can help build a reputation, you know, something that's going to generate respect regardless of your political views is you just being out there in your community helping people meet their needs. And, how you can do it as an anarchist is that element of asking what their need is and not going in as charity, saying, "Here's a bunch of blankets. I didn't call ahead to see if that's what you needed." But you know, like, going in saying, "Hey, what do you need?" And then helping them get that without judgment. That's pretty much what we've done and it's taken us this far. So, I'm pretty proud of it.
Margaret 49:05 Makes sense. Well, the main thing that y'all are currently working on we haven't talked too much about, but kind of here at the end, I'm wondering if you want to talk about your...you know, Blackflower Collective, you're talking about getting this space, right? How's that going? Like, what...what are y'all running into as things that are helping or not helping as you work on that?
Charyan 49:26 Well, our main obstacle and our main goal right now is finding land, being able to have property in the hand is vital for our project because between the hostile political environment in town, and all the other problems associated with renting property, we need to have a property that we can own to get this off the ground. And with property values rising and skyrocketing and us pretty much essentially starting from zero to get this off the ground, we are head focused on trying to figure out how we can do fundraisers, how we can launch some side businesses to help fund this project because we're looking at pretty much anywhere between $300,000 and a $1,000,000 we're going to need to raise for this property.
Sprout 50:17 Yeah. Right now we're focused on getting the word out because it's just a brand new idea and a brand new project, and starting to generate some sources of revenue. So we have Blackflower Bookkeeping, if there's any radical businesses that need bookkeeping services, hit us up. We also have Blackflower Permaculture. So, we're starting to do some design work around permaculture. And so those are two sources of revenue that we're trying to open up, as well as the--as I mentioned before--the benefit shows, which not only would serve to start to cultivate sort of community around the project but would hopefully be another fundraising effort.
Margaret 51:07 Yeah. Okay, so with the bookkeeping thing. One of the things that's come up a bunch of times...I've met people who've been like, "I want to be an anarchist." But people think that they're like, get kept out of anarchy because they're not like punks, or they're not like...their skill set is not like, organized...depending on what they think of anarchism, either they're not a punk, their skill set is not antagonizing cops, or their skill set is not organizing or whatever, right? And I've met people who are like, "Oh, I'm only good at spreadsheets. I don't know how I could be of help." And I just like, want to shake them and be like, "Every group I know needs a spreadsheet wizard."
Charyan 51:48 So, for a message for all the boozy radicals that are listening that are looking for their entrance into radical spaces, and anarchist spaces, and whatnot, we definitely could use a lot more of those skills that are removed from a lot of lower income people and whatnot. Like, for example, I need a fucking anarchist lawyer. Get me a Saul Goodman. Someone, please, come through for me.
Margaret 52:20 We'll talk after. There are good anarchist lawyers.
Sprout 52:25 I mean, we need every skill, you know, when you think about it. So yeah, there's no wrong place to get involved. That's the thing is, you don't have to be out on the front line throwing yourself at a line of police. You can do anything. Just do it for the revolution.
Margaret 52:45 Yeah, yeah. Fuck yeah. Well, that feels like kind of a good end note. If people are interested in supporting you, or hearing more about the stuff that you're doing, do you want to talk about your pod...Like, where can people find your...well, people can find your podcast where are they found this podcast. It's called Molotov Now. But, you want to plug any of the stuff you're working on?
Charyan 53:09 Well, if you want to find more of our projects from Sabot Media, you could find our website at SabotMedia.noblogs.org. Or check us out on your social media platform of choice @Aberdeenlocal1312.
Sprout 53:28 Ideally at Kolektiva's Macedon server. So, for Blackflower, the website is blackflowercollective.no blogs.org. And that has all the information about where to donate and what the different projects that we're trying to get off the ground are. And any information that comes up about new events or shows anything like that we'll be putting on the website as well.
Margaret 53:58 Awesome. All right. Well, thank you all so much, and I can't wait to hear more about what you all are getting up to.
Charyan 54:07 Thank you. It's been great talking with you.
Sprout 54:09 Yeah, thanks for the opportunity.
Margaret 54:16 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, you can go and start a rural organizing project. Don't call it that. There's already a rural organizing project called Rural Organizing Project. Oooh, I should have them on too. But, you can go organize, or you can just be lazy and tell people about this podcast. Or, you can rate, and review, and do all the algorithm stuff. Or, you can support us financially. Supporting us financially pays the people who transcribe and edit these episodes. One day it might even pay the hosts of this episode, wouldn't that be cool. Or the guests. I guess should probably pay the guests first. But you can help make that happen by going to patreon.comstrangersinatangledwilderness. Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness is an anarchist publishing collective that publishes this podcast and a bunch of other stuff, including the podcast Anarcho Geek Power Hour, for people who like movies and hate cops, the podcast Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which includes our features zines that we put out every month. And, if you want to know more about our features zines, you can go to patreon.com...I already said that part. But, you get sent those zines if you're part of our Patreon, and if not, you can look at them for free by going to our website, which is tangledwilderness.org. And it really is the Patreon that that makes all of these things happen. And I'm incredibly grateful to everyone who supports it. And in particular, I'm grateful to Jans, Oxalis, Janice, Paige, Aly, Paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, Theo, Hunter, Shawn, SJ, Paige, Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Kat J., Staro, Jenipher, Eleanor, Kirk, Sam, Chris, Micaiah, and Hoss the Dog. And if you want to hear your name listed in this list, you just head on over, and I can't do the...I can't do that voice. I'm not very good at the non earnest voice. But, it really it means the world. It also means the world that so many of you listen to this show and tell people about it. It's what makes it worth it. And take care
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
On this week's Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret and Inmn finish their talk about go bags. They talk about important documents, knives, tools, sleeping systems, shelters, coping with isolation, food, water, firearms, specific situations you might need a go bag for, and of course, DnD.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Margaret on Go Bags Part II
Inmn 00:14 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host Inmn Neruin, and this week we're continuing to talk about go bags. We have the second part of an interview with the founder of this podcast, Margaret Killjoy, where we continue our conversation from last week at literally the exact place that we left off. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. Doo doo doo doo doo. [Making noises like a song]
So Margaret, we've gone through hygiene kit, survival kit, and... I immediately forgot the third part of it.
Margaret 01:39 First aid.
Inmn 01:39 First-aid kit. And so that wraps up kind of like an emergency pack?
Margaret 01:44 Yep.
Inmn 01:44 What what what else goes in a bug out bag.
Margaret 01:47 So, now that we get to the bag itself, I would say the next most important thing is a water bottle. Specifically, I like--and I give to all my friends--single wall steel canteen style water bottles. And the reason that I like these is that you can boil water in them. The double wall vacuum sealed canteens, they rule for a lot of purposes, like actually, they're really good for like putting hot soup in your bag. If you're going out hiking for the day and you get to the top of the mountain you get to--as if I've ever climbed a whole ass mountain. By my standards where I live, the mountains are very short. And so when you climb up a whole ass Appalachian mountain, you can have your warm soup up at the top even when it's snowing and shit, you know. But overall, I use 32 ounce steel wall canteens. I like them a lot. And then you're also going to want to make sure that you have food in there, protein bars and other snacks. So that's the core. But then for the bag itself, it's really going to depend on what you're doing. So, I guess I'll go over the not camping stuff first, the kind of like...the stuff that is like...Okay, because there's all the camping shit. And that's really useful depending on your situation. But, things to put in your go bag: your passport. If nothing else, if you don't want your actual main documents in here, you're going to want to put photocopies and digital copies of your stuff in here, which is of course somewhat of a security risk. If someone steals your bag, they get this stuff, right. But for me, the threat model is that my passport is more useful to me in my backpack than it is at home in a safe when I'm 1000 miles away. So, your passport, which I would push anyone who was capable in the United States of making sure that they have an updated passport, especially these days. You want your important documents backed up. This could be some of your medical records. It could be your dog's medical records. It could be your children's medical records. And, you might want the deed to your house. You might want some of the vehicle registration stuff. You want your like stuff--not necessarily the originals in this particular case--but you want the documents of it in case you're like coming back later and need to prove some shit. You know? Because a lot of crises might disrupt a lot of the institutions of bureaucracy. And you would think that in times of crisis, bureaucracy will be like, "I guess we kind of get in the way of human freedom." But no, in times of crisis borders will still be like, "Oh, I don't know about you. You don't have the right document. I don't care that the road you're on is literally on fire." or whatever the fuck you know. Another way to back these up is to literally just to take pictures of them on your phone and have it on your phone. But I think it's actually a good idea to have a USB stick with these documents as well and you might want to consider encrypting that, which I don't know if all computers can do easily but at least my computer can do easily. And you probably want...you might want more of an expanded first-aid kit in this. I guess I gets into the other thing thing. And then the other thing that I think you're gonna want in your go bag is you want fucking entertainment. Like this gets over overlooked so much. But, when when Covid hit, the way that my mental health works I was very isolated, right? I could not put myself at risk to Covid because of my mental health. And so, I lived alone in a cabin without much electricity. And the best purchase I made was something called a Bit Boy, and I highly recommend it. It is this tiny...it looks like a tiny Gameboy and it has all of the Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and everything else games like on it. And it uses almost no battery. It's rechargeable. It's a little finicky. If you like turn it off it like fucks it up because it's like a it's like a $30 thing full of pirated shit, right? So it's super finicky. But, I swear that this thing had a better mental health effect on me then like almost anything else during that time. And the other thing that got me through it was I had legally purchased downloads of TV. And so even though I didn't have internet, I once a week, once a day, like sat down and ate my cold soup and watched fucking Steven Universe, and that she got me through it. And so like a USB stick full of like movies, TV, also, specifically, a USB stick full of like survival guides and information about how to build things, fix things, all of that shit. I think it's a super useful thing for a bug out bag. And I leave it up to...
Inmn 06:32 It's funny because I feel like this episode is something where we're covering a lot of stuff that--and I just want to start flagging things--we did a whole episode on how you can build a mesh network essentially to have things like libraries of entertainment, or Wikipedia downloads, or like survival bits. So, if you want to learn more about that then go check out that episode. I believe it's called Andre on Solar Punk.
Margaret 07:08 Oh, yeah. I forgot we talked about some of the mesh network stuff. That shit's fucking cool. And yeah, so have a library with you. You know, keep a download of Wikipedia on your computer. My computer bag is an example of the kind of bag that theoretically I should be a little bit smarter and kind of keep next to the bug out bag when it's not in use, right? Because I'm going to throw my laptop into my bug out bag if I'm running, right? And so it's like people are like, "Oh, but where's your like giant knife." and like, don't get me wrong, I have a giant knife on my bag. But. I also now have a Nintendo Switch in there, which is an upgrade from the Bit Boy. And like, I am proudest of that of all of the things in my bug out bag. I see that as the most likely for me to use. And I remember before Covid, I remember thinking to myself as I was preparing a library hard drive. And as I was preparing--well I didn't have the Switch yet--but I was like, "Man, what kind of Apocalypse leaves you with free time?" And I'm like, "Oh, Covid." or the next pandemic or fucking hanging out in a refugee center for trans people in Canada or whatever the fuck horrible shit we're gonna have to deal with, you know?
Inmn 08:24 Yeah, and just sorry, just to clarify, free time for a lot of people and an incredible amount of not free time for a lot of people.
Margaret 08:33 Well, yeah, no, I I think I mean more about isolation. It's not like I like...maybe I'm just being defensive. But it's like at the beginning of the pandemic, my cabin did not sustain life. And so I had to put all of my work into plumbing it, solaring it, you know, washing all my clothes by hand, like doing all this shit, right? But, I think that especially in times of isolation there's like downtime that people don't expect. And I could be wrong, but I suspect that this would be true almost no matter the crisis is that there's like downtime you don't expect where turning your...where not thinking about the crises that are happening is incredibly important. No, it is funny. You're right because I think in my head there's like the beginning of Covid a lot of especially middle class people were like, "Oh, fuck, I'm stuck in my house and bored." Right? Versus a lot of working class people who are like, "Well, now I'm still working in the middle of this nightmare," you know? I think that like...but I would guess that...I dunno, whatever I'll stop being defensive.
Inmn 09:41 Yeah, sorry, less of a push back and more just a bringing in this other piece of the piece of the context. But, you know, there were also overworked doctors who were separated from their families. And so, I imagine they also did have probably this weird amount of downtime where It's like, "Well, I'm not at work, but I'm not with my family. What am I doing?"
Margaret 10:04 Yeah, and specifically for me, games are a really good anti-anxiety because I definitely hold by the, "Busy bee has no time for sorrow." But then you're like, "Well, it's dark out and I don't have lights in my house. Fuck am I gonna do?" You know? Okay, so that's some of the stuff from a bug out bag point of view. That's the kind of...like;, documents and things like that matter a lot. You're also going to want anything that you need for taking care of other loved ones and or animals that you might have to do. Like, my dog has a smoke mask. He does not like it. If we were in a wildfire situation, he would deal with it. You know? And so there might be like different stuff like...I should probably get a muzzle for my dog. I do not. I do not muzzle my dog on any kind of regular basis. But, I could imagine a situation in which like, everything is so stressful that it would be necessary, right? And you're gonna know better than us what specifically other other stuff you need. But I guess we'll talk about more of the expanded survival stuff that a lot of people are gonna put in their bug out bags, if that makes sense?
Inmn 11:20 Yeah, totally. And sorry, just to keep flagging some things. So folks, if you want to learn more about other little pieces of this topic like how to prepare for needing extra medications in a world where like medication systems kind of break down, we do a whole episode on it. I'm blanking on what the episode title is. But I believe it's called "Taking care of your medical needs."
Margaret 11:50 That sounds right.
Inmn 11:51 And I forget who the guest was. But yeah, I love that we're having this go back conversation now. Because I feel like we can really tie a lot of larger topics that we've talked about before into it, which I'm really loving.
Margaret 12:08 Yeah. And then maybe we'll go through, you know, kind of some more of this checklist type stuff and then talk more about the different situations in which one might need to go bag. How does that sound?
Inmn 12:18 That sounds great.
Margaret 12:19 Okay. So, for the bag itself beyond the emergency kit, you've now added your documents, you've added your water bottle, you've added snacks. And for snacks from my point of view, I recommend snacks that you don't like because otherwise you're going to eat them beforehand. If you're me. [laughs] I used to keep Clif Bars and not Builder Bars as my snacks because I didn't like Clif bars, but I ate so many builder bars as part of my regular life as being an oogle that now I'm kind of sick of them. So now it's like reversed. And Clif Bars are my regular protein bar and Builder Bars are my my snacks I throw in my bag, you know. And, everyone's gonna do this a little differently. And then that stuff is like...most of the stuff in here is...Like I also pick things that don't really expire, but food expires. And also so does that medication, although the medication tends to just lower its efficacy rather than become dangerous. Other things I keep in my bug out bag: a collapsible plastic water canteen. These are useful for a bunch of different things. Like if you just need to hold more water for a while, you might want one of these. I also have moved to a hydration bladder. A lot of people move away from them. I've recently moved towards them. People kind of go back and forth in the hiking world about hydration bladders. As an oogle, I never used them. As a hiker, I really like them because you can hands free or like minimal effort drink as you go, you know. And, you know, more water good except for the weight part of it, you know? And you're also going to want, to keep talking about water, you're going to want to filter in water. And I think that this is true in most circumstances. I think that this is like...you know, some of this like survival stuff is very back woodsy, but a lot of the survival stuff also applies to cities. And it applies to cities where like if you got to boil advisory... like I don't know, anyone who's not had a boil advisory where they live at some point or another, right? You know, every now and then they admit that the water isn't drinkable in your area, and also a lot of like urban survival stuff is like...whatever, I've like slept on a lot of rooftops in my life and shit, you know? Like shelter from the elements is often easier to find in a city but not necessarily a lot of other stuff. So for myself, there's a lot of different water filters. A lot of them are designed for backpacking and those tend to be pretty good. I use a Sawyer water filter. They're these little tiny ceramic water filters and they have a bunch of different attachment sense to them. I used one of these at the beginning of Covid for all of my water because I didn't have a great water source. And, I was just like basically like...I set mine up to a five gallon bucket system where I put water in the five gallon bucket, and then it goes through a hose into the Sawyer filter, and then it gravity drips into a five gallon jerrycan. That's like a stationary kind of thing. For a go bag, you use the same water filter, but it has like one bag of dirty water and one bag of clean water. You can also just rely on chemical filter...not filtration but like purification. Some people like the UV filter chemical things. I've never used one. I don't totally understand them. I mean, I understand the concept, but I don't...I can't attest to them. It seems like most people are picking ceramic water filters. There's also a LifeStraw. And a LifeStraw is a perfectly fine thing to have. I keep one in my hiking day bag. These are these cheap water ceramic filters--like 15 bucks often--and you just drink through it. Usually I go up to the stream and you stick this thing in it and you drink out of the stream.
Inmn 16:09 It acts as a filter but also you can't get viruses or stuff?
Margaret 16:14 Exactly, it's a ceramic filter that...Yeah, all of these filters are designed to take like mountain stream water and make it potable. Actually, the thing that they're bad at is filtering large stuff like mud. And these can get like clogged up. It's the biggest downside of a ceramic filter. What a lot of people do is they take their bandanna or their...if you're an oogle you use a banana. If you're a military bro, you use the...I forget what they're called. They're the like, giant bananas that...Folk...I can't remember the name of them. Folks in the desert and like, you know, Southwest Asia and stuff tend to use, I think. You use one of those. And then if you're a hiking bro, then you use your...what did I decide they were called? Buffs?
Inmn 17:11 Yes.
Margaret 17:13 So, you filter all the water through that if you want to keep the ceramic water filter lasting longer. I haven't done as much like hiking filtering, I usually just bring enough water because I don't go on really long hikes. But, I mostly have used the ceramic water filter in a stationary sense. So that's like my personal experience with it. But, that's what I carry. You can also add, if you would like, you can add these more ready-to-eat food besides just like bars and stuff. They make these...it's basically Lembas [like in "Lord of the Rings"] bread. They make these like military rations that are like vacuum sealed and are good for five or ten years. And it's just like oil and flour. And it tastes like nothing. And it's just calories. It's just like a block of calories. And your body can go a fairly long time without food compared to water, right? But like, for peak efficacy--and also to not be a grouchy asshole--you want to at least put calories if not nutrition in your body. A lot of the survival food isn't really focused on nutrition because like it's not the end of the world if you don't get your vitamins for a couple days.
Inmn 18:21 Yeah, but obviously everyone has different, you know, body needs or like food requirements.
Margaret 18:27 Yeah, totally.
Inmn 18:28 And so this is like maybe a good time for folks with diabetes or just any any other kind of predisposition that requires to have more food around.
Margaret 18:39 Yeah, and different types of food. And I think it's actually worth having a variety of types of food also for the people around you because I think a lot of this is going to be based on sharing, because greediness in times of crisis, people are like, "Oh, that's when you got to be greedy." And I'm like, "The single most useful tool you can have is another person." Like I can't imagine something I would rather have in a time of crisis than someone else. And so like, yeah, having a variety of types of foods, I think is great from that point of view. No, yeah. And like, yeah, everyone's going to need different things. Okay, so next, fire. In most people's day to day life, fire is not a big component of it. And honestly, most random overnight...like, when I was in oogle, I didn't like fucking stop and make a fire in the woods most nights, you know? And if I did, it was kind of like a celebration type thing, you know? However, from a survival point of view, there's a lot of situations where being able to have a fire is really useful specifically mostly for warmth, also for other like, you know, signaling purposes and for like...you know, if you make a wet fire, it'll smoke more and things like that. And for both boiling water to...another way to, you know, purify your water or whatever. And also for cooking. It's kind of a morale thing for cooking a lot of times. A lot of foods you can just eat them cold and that's especially the kind of stuff you might want to keep in your bag. But for fire, you might want to have additional fire methods, but you've already got a lot of them going on in the rest of your kit. The kind of thing that I always sort of made fun of, but now I understand, is the big fuck-off knife. I mean, you're a knife maker. So you probably think about knives more than the average person. But...
Inmn 20:39 It's true and I think I'm curious what you have to say about the big fuck-off knife mostly because I've kind of worked my way back from it, because I used to have a big fuck-off knife all the time. Like when I was an oogle, I was that oogle with the big fuck-off knife.
Margaret 20:57 The big fuck-off knife has two purposes. One, is to get people to fuck off. It's not even about drawing it, it's about fucking open carrying it. It's just about being like, "Yeah, I'm in a miniskirt. And I have a like seven inch knife on my waist." Like, people just fuck with you less when you have a big fuck-off knife. And so that's like one of the purposes. But then, bushcraft. I didn't understand why survival knives were big because I was like a big knife...I'm not a knife fighter. I think anyone who is a knife fighter is not thinking about how long they want to live. Like, that's why I mean having a big fuck-off knife is to make people leave you alone, not to like fight them with it. But just to like fucking get people to leave you alone. But the giant knife is really useful for bushcraft. It's really useful for processing wood especially if you don't have a hatchet or something with you. That's what I've like come to understand as to why survival knives are big and how specifically they're bladed on one side with a wide--you're going to know these words better than me--like spine. [Inmn mummers affirmatively] And they have a wide spine so that you can split wood with it. You can take a stick and you can put it on it on the end of the stick and then you can hit it with another stick or a rock. And you can push the knife through the thing. That's [Inmn interrupts]
Inmn 22:18 Can I?
Margaret 22:19 Yeah. You know more about knives than I do.
Inmn 22:21 Yeah, yeah. Just to offer a little bit of re-contextualization. So you know, I'm not a bushcrafter by any means. I wish that I was. I'd be. God, I'd be so much cooler. But I do know knives pretty well and I've been asked to make bushcraft knives before and so you know, I did a bunch of research about bushcraft knives. And what I found was that and then what I found from use is that like the big fuck-off knife is not actually great for bushcrafting.
Margaret 22:58 Oh, interesting.
Inmn 23:01 Yeah, most Bushcraft knives are like they kind of max out at six inches. And a lot of people err more on the like, you know, four and a half to five and a half range. And what that gives you...because for bushcraft, it's like--you described batoning earlier--if you're batoning your knife through wood to reduce it you don't need a big knife for that. You need a sturdy knife for that. And with a smaller knife, you kind of get a lot more manual dexterity so you can do all of your other tasks. I love knives, I love big fuck off knives. I agree that the purpose of a big fuck-off knife is for people to fuck off. And, you know, I can imagine like survival knives are often longer because you might need them for heavier, larger tasks. But I'm honestly a fan of having a belt axe for that purpose because it's does that thing better. Sorry. That's my that's my segue into knife world
Margaret 24:06 No, that makes a lot of sense. And if you ever want to lose a lot of your life--and I feel like you might have also--read people talking about survival knife versus axe versus saw versus machete, about what you're supposed to bring into the woods, you know?
Inmn 24:27 Yeah. And what you're gonna learn is that knives...there's no single knife. That's good for everything just like there's no single bag that's good for everything. You need to pick the things that you're comfortable doing. And you need to pick the tasks that you need done. And then find the right tool for it.
Margaret 24:48 No, that makes a lot of sense. I will say in terms of saws and knives and all that shit, I have found that the little wire saw is sort of bullshit. Have you seen these?
Inmn 25:01 I always wondered.
Margaret 25:03 But yeah, I think...and the one...I haven't used that much. I think I tried to use one once. The pocket chainsaw is not bullshit, which is basically a chainsaw blade with two loops on either end, and you loop it around a limb, and then you like, saw back and forth. You know, I think those are not bullshit. Although I think, personally, I'd rather have a folding saw. But they're bigger. So.
Inmn 25:30 Yeah, yeah. And that's the key thing here is like if you want to build shelters, use the saw. Don't...You could use your knife for some of it. But yeah. You don't want to build a structure with like hacking 10,000 sticks into something. Get a saw.
Margaret 25:51 No, I think you've convinced me. Because I've been like, I've been pondering my--I have a survival knife on my bag--and I've been pondering its actual usefulness versus its weight and stuff, you know? And like, besides the like, I keep it on the outside of my bag and it's a little bit of a like, leave me alone, you know? I think that I have been seeing...Yeah, like, yeah, I think I want to fuck with this more. Redefined my own...Because the knife that I use on a day-to-day basis is my folding pocket knife. You know? It's what I use for almost everything. I'm not going to baton wood with it. Well, I would. It just wouldn't do a very good job of it.
Inmn 26:27 Yeah. And, you know, I say this as someone who is always going to have a big knife, probably. And I don't have a purely rational reason for that. But yeah, it makes me feel more comfortable.
Margaret 26:45 No, and it's like, and I think it's telling that backpackers don't tend to have large knives. They don't tend to have survival knives at all. Backpackers also tend not to have axes or saws because they're not really...they're focused on getting somewhere and camping, not like building large fires or building structures and things like that. Yeah. And then like, I think more and more, I think fighty type people have been focusing more on smaller knives anyway. Like the karambit is a popular fighting knife or whatever and it's not a big knife.
Inmn 27:19 Yeah, yeah. And if you see the...like a lot of the like, original from...I actually don't know where karambits come from. But, where they were developed, they're incredibly small knives. They're like inch and a half long blades. They're incredibly tiny.
Margaret 27:36 It's Indonesian. I just looked it up. Yeah. Yeah, no, yeah. It's not a like...Like don't fight a bear. Like a general rule. Don't live your life in such a way where you're fighting bears. And then, if you are then use bear spray. If you're not using bear spray, use a 10mm handgun. Like, you know? Oh, we haven't really talked about firearms.
Inmn 28:06 Anyway. Sorry. Derail into knife world over.
Margaret 28:09 No, no, I think that...I'm really...It was useful. I learned some. It's probably worth carrying some kind of knife sharpener. If you suck like me, you can use the pull through style--that Inmn is probably going to be disgusted that I use because it destroys the initial original bevel. If you know how to sharpen a knife properly, you can bring a whetstone. It's a little...
Inmn 28:31 But, whet stones are heavy.
Margaret 28:33 I know. And it's also...or you can also bring a little diamond sharpener stick and stuff like that. Yeah, what would you...Okay, what would you suggest? What would you suggest as your portable knife sharpener? Light and transportable?
Inmn 28:45 Yeah, so you know, a knife doesn't do much good if it's not sharp. And most people's knives are not very sharp. I would say that it is a great skill to invest in is learning how to sharpen a knife. There's a lot of stuff...
Margaret 29:06 I've tried it so many times. I don't believe in it. I don't think it's real. Anyway, yeah, let's continue.
Inmn 29:13 And yeah, like, you know, like what I have at home are these big series of benchtop whetstones. There's a million grits and...but one of the better things that you can have is a strop. Just a leather strop, which is just some like full grain leather. You want it to be fairly thick and use some green polishing compounds that you rub on it and you strop the edge, which helps maintain the edge. And, but as far as pocket sized sharpening devices, the strop doesn't sharpen the knife, the strap like helps redefine the burr on the edge. And there's a million different little pocket sized whetstones. But, the important part is that you want something coarse and you want something fine to like refine the bevel. And so like if I had to build a little to-go kit, I would get a little miniature like 400/1000 combo stone. That is probably not something ceramic because it's heavy. But, they make a bunch of different things. I'm actually less knowledgeable about these pocket things. Yeah, but you want something coarse and you want something fine. 400/1,000 are great grits and then a strop to kind of like polish out the edge with. With that you can't go wrong. Well, you can go wrong...
Margaret 30:48 Yeah, I will go wrong.
Inmn 30:49 I don't know enough to tell you how to go wrong.
Margaret 30:51 No, I will successfully go wrong. I've been trying to sharpen knives my whole life. I will continue to do it. I can kind of do it. I actually use a little all-in-one pocketstone, a little bit larger than the like stick ones, and it's a longish yellow piece of plastic with two sides. And then also has a little fold out part that can be used for filing in the saw parts. And it has kind of a guide, has a little bit of an angle guide built into it, and that's the most useful part for me. So that's the only time I've been able to sharpen knives to where they like can shave.
Inmn 31:28 Knife sharpening is is a skill. Don't...That would be my advice is don't think that you're going to...don't rely on learning how to sharpen your knife for the first time when you're in an in an emergency. Practice that now.
Margaret 31:40 And I will say as someone who has used all knives for almost everything over the years, it's like, it's all right. I mean, it's not as good. But, I can still cut a cord with a shitty knife, you know?
Inmn 31:54 Yeah, well, you know, the old knife making adage, "A dull knife..." or sorry, the old kitchen worker adage, "A dull knife is a dangerous knife."
Margaret 32:02 Yeah, so live dangerously. Cut... Cut paper with your knives and never sharpen them. Yes. Okay, let's talk about sleeping systems.
Inmn 32:06 Live dangerously? [laughing] Sleeping systems! Thank you for indulging my derailment.
Margaret 32:20 It's what we're here for. And some of this we might kind of like...some of the like camping stuff we might not dive as deep into. We're already on episode two of what was going to be one episode. So, I believe in the sleeping bag. And that's leftover from being oogle. I would say that the one thing I would carry in any kind of bag is a sleeping bag. This is not always true. I don't always carry sleeping bag. But, it's like almost a comfort item. It's a like no matter what I'm warm kind of item. I believe in sleeping bags with a good stuff sack. I personally don't use down. Backpackers tend to use down. It's lighter. It compacts more for the same warmth. However, it doesn't insulate once it gets wet. And that is a big deal from my point of view, from a survival point of view. When everything is fine, I prefer a non down one. They're also cheaper. And that might be why I have that preference. And also, I don't know anything about how the birds who produce down are treated. So, sleeping bag super important. A lot of backpackers have now moved to backpacking quilts. And then a lot of old timers will actually just use like wool blankets and stuff like that. I love a sleeping bag. You're gonna want to get off the ground. However, that said, in an urban environment you can use cardboard. You just need to layer it a lot. And it's not as good as a sleeping pad. But it is still useful. And you're going to need a sleeping pad that is appropriate to weather and desired comfort. If you want to hear me learn more about sleeping bags and tents you can listen to me talk to Petra a year and a half ago. I don't remember the name of the episode besides Petra being the guest. And that's where I learned that the combo move of an air mattress and a foam pad is is often really good. For shelter, the sort of three choices kind of is a tent, a bivy, or a tarp. This is not necessarily in a lot of bug out situations. It is necessary in my bug out situation and it might be in yours. And the advantage of a tarp is that it is like only one object. It is light. It is kind of easier to hide in a lot of ways. And I actually, when I'm sleeping in dangerous situations--like a lot of oogle life is like trespassing--I don't like tents because tents, you can't see out of them. Like it's like a little bubble. It's why people do like tents is that they want to be in their little bubble and I totally get that. And I'll probably be a tent person moving on because it's like comfortable, and safe, and stuff. But when I was younger and everything was well, not easier, my life was fairly hard. But like whatever. It was easier for me to not bother with a tent so I used a tarp. And then the other option is the bivy. And a bivy is like a...It's like a waterproof sleeping bag. And there's like ones...like I have one that has like one pole, just to keep the head of it off your face, you know. And these compact really small. This is what a lot of people who are rucking, who are doing military shit, tend to prefer are bivys. They're not popular among backpackers. The kind of closest equivalent is hammocks. A lot of people also use, but that involves there being good trees in the right place. However, hammocks can be light, and good, and stuff, too. And these are all gonna be preferences. And the reason I no longer fuck with bivys is I have a dog. And he's coming with me. And so I'm now probably a tent camper. Because if I'm sleeping outside, I'm just leashing my dog to a tree. But, I don't want him to get rained on. I want him warm. So I'm probably going to be a tent camper from now on. And then some tents now, a lot of backpackers are moving to these tents where you use your hiking poles to keep them up and then they're super lightweight and they're actually kind of cool. And they're a little bit...like some of them are like almost halfway between a tarp and a tent. And...
Inmn 36:06 I love as like camping technology evolves it just like...I feel like it gets more old timey and more oogley but with you know, fancy stuff.
Margaret 36:17 The $700 oogle tent. Yeah. Some of these tents are like fucking $600-700 and made out of like, space material or whatever. Yeah. What's your favorite shelter for camping?
Inmn 36:32 So this is funny. I once bike toured across the entire country. From the west coast to Chicago, I built a tarp tent every night.
Margaret 36:47 Like an a-frame?
Inmn 36:50 Yeah, I built like a little tarp tent every night, which I had to get really creative in the West. As you know, there's not a lot of trees everywhere it turns out. And then when I got to Chicago, I went out and bought the Big Agnes ultralight backpacking tent, which is like sort of halfway between....Yeah, it's halfway. It's like...It's not a bivy, but it doesn't have a much larger footprint than a bivy. And it was the best thing that I've ever spent money on. I'm embarrassed to say that I spent money on it.
Margaret 37:28 Whatever. Whatever.
Inmn 37:29 But, I did.
Margaret 37:30 I'm revoking your oogle card. You didn't scam it from REI dumpsters? I can't believe you. Yeah, yeah. Fuck yeah.
Inmn 37:41 All right. Yeah, but I love that thing. But, I would love to move to a bivy. Yeah.
Margaret 37:45 Yeah, I think that..Yeah, honestly, like, I've only...I haven't slept a ton in my bivy. But I was like, "Oh, this works." The other downside of a bivy is that your bag doesn't fit in the tent with you. And so if you sleeping in a bivy in the rain, you're going to need to work on waterproofing your bag. But that is something that like as a backpacker, you're probably trying to do anyway. The main ways that people do it is 1) a pack cover that goes on the outside. And then 2) people often either put things in dry bags, or just like fucking contractor bags, like trash bags, inside their bag and let the bag itself get wet. And if you're, if you're bivy camping, you're accepting that your bag is getting rained on and you just need to work around that. Which, is I think part of why it's the tactical person's choice or whatever. Because you're like, "Comfort doesn't matter. Surviving to get where I need to go shoot somebody is what matters." or whatever, you know. Or not get shot or whatever. Which actually, you're going to have to take into mind when you when you choose what kind of color for all of these things you want. I personally would lean towards the camo type stuff for my...I live in a red state. I could imagine having to leave.
Inmn 38:49 Yeah.
Margaret 38:50 I'm gonna like I'm gonna like speed run the rest of the camping stuff. You might want a poncho or a raincoat. Some people like ponchos because you can also turn them into shelters or whatever, but I think sometimes it's a little bit just fucking carry what you like. You want additional socks in your go bag no matter what, no matter what you're...Even if it's not a camping go bag, put some fucking socks in there and some other...change of underwear and possibly like better soap, like camp soap, like more hygiene type stuff. My go bag has a fucking battery powered Waterpik so that I can floss with water at night because I have spent a lot of money on my teeth. They are not in great shape and water picks rule. I also have a portable battery powered electric toothbrush that I fucking love. You might want an emergency radio. If you're like good at radio shit, you might want a Baofeng. It's like an all channel and it can send as well as receive. It's called a transceiver. It's really easy to accidentally break the law with a Baofeng because you're not allowed to actually use any sending signals on it most of the time. But they're very useful crisis if you know what you're doing. On the other hand, I would just say get one of those like, your little battery powered weather AM/FM radio. Have and put it in there. At home, I keep one of those like hand crank solar panel everything survival radios or whatever. But they're like a little bit bulky and a little bit cheap. And so, I like don't quite trust it in my bag, but I keep one at home. But, other people feel differently. I like having a monocular or binoculars in a go bag. I like this because looking at shit is cool. And sometimes also, I could imagine there are situations where I would want to look at and see what's ahead and not go there. If I had money, if I was a money person, I would have at least a thermal monocular if not full on like night vision shit. But that's money. You want the rain cover, the dry bag, you want to beef up your first-aid kit a little bit. You probably want an ace bandage at the very least. There's some other stuff like moleskin and other things for like long distance walking that you might want. I've heard good things about leukotape--and I haven't used it yet--but as like...people use it as a replacement for moleskin for covering blisters and shit. You might want cooking stuff, which I'm just not gonna get into cooking stuff here. And you might not. You can also like cold soak your food and just like put it in like a peanut butter jar with water and fucking have it turned into food. Whatever. You might want hiking poles. You might want a solar charger. You might want, as we've talked about, a folding saw, a hatchet or machete. You might want more light. Like some people like the collapsible LED solar lanterns. They're not like a great bang for your buck in terms of like, I mean, they're actually really light and shit, but like, you know, you can use a headlamp just fine. But, like sometimes if you've got like a family and shit, it's like nice to have like a little bit of ambiance and niceness or whatever. Especially like maybe if you're in like a building right when the power's out, you know, like that's the kind of thing that like is a little bit more likely and is useful. You probably want a plastic trowel of some type for pooping outside or a little aluminum trowel for digging a hole so you can poop into it. And alright, guns really quickly, and then...My recommendation is only carry firearms if you train in them. Unlike everything else. Carrying something you don't know how to use is fine if you know you don't know how to use it and you get someone else to use it, like your first-aid kit. Like, my IFAK for gunshot wounds, If I'm shot in the belly, it's for someone else to use on me if at all possible. You know. I am trained in how to use it, but so guns are the exception to this. Do not carry a gun unless you can keep it secure at all times and you pay a lot of attention to the ethics and also the legality around firearms. Those have been covered a lot more in other places on this show. Specifically, my current recommendation that I'm a little bit this is like do what...Whatever, I haven't yet mastered this. The handgun that I keep near my bed in a safe, in a quick access safe, would go into my bug out bag in a moment of crisis or be on my person. And then in the bug out bag is additional magazines with 9mm ammunition. 9mm is by far the most common ammunition besides like .22LR, which is a survival round meant for hunting small animals. But, for a self defense point of view, I believe a handgun 9mm. And if you are the type who wants long guns, if your whole thing is you're gonna be surviving in the woods or whatever, you might want to consider some type of backpacking .22. They make, I think it's the AR-7 is one type of survival collapsible .22. And then the other one is a 10/22 with a backpacker's stock that folds. What I personally plan on carrying if it was a get out past the militia checkpoint the US government has fallen scenario or whatever is a folding 9mm carbine, which is a rifle that shoots nine millimeter rounds. A lot of people don't like these from a tactical point of view. It's not nearly as effective at long range stuff as say an AR-15 or other rifles that are meant to shoot larger rounds, right, or not larger but more powerful rounds. But, the ability to use the exact same magazines that I already use for my other gun and the exact same ammunition makes it worth it for me for specifically a bug out bag scenario. I don't have enough money to do this yet. That is why I don't have that. My only bug out bag gun is my handgun that is also my home defense gun. And now everyone knows what I have at home. Anyway, that's my firearms.
Inmn 44:30 They know one thing that you have at home.
Margaret 44:32 Yeah, totally. Or do they!? They think I have a 9mm but really I have a 10mm. Whatever. Oh, and then the other thing. Randomly. Okay, if your other threat model, if you're in like fucking Alaska or some shit, you might want a 10mm, but you already know this if you live in Alaska. 10mm is a round that's better at shooting really big animals. It doesn't really have any like particular advantage against people in it and shit, right, but like against grizzly bears and shit. One, bear spray more effective. There's a bunch of studies, bear spray is more effective at stopping a charging bear than any gun that exists. Whatever, I mean maybe like a bazooka or some shit, I don't know whatever. Oh, poor bear. And then also, you don't kill the bear. It's just trying to fucking scare you and live its life. Yeah, yeah, that's my bug out bag. Do you feel ready? And or do you wanna talk about, really quickly, like some some scenarios?
Inmn 45:35 Yeah, I feel a lot more informed. I feel overwhelmed,
Margaret 45:40 I should address the overwhelm. And I should have led with this. I'm so sorry everyone. You don't need all this stuff. This is the "I'm building a bug out bag. And I have all the time." You slowly build the bug out bag. You slowly get prepared. There's no one who's entirely prepared for all things. And the purpose of a bug out bag from my point of view is to ease your mind. When I first made my bug out bag and my cabin in the woods, I was able to say to myself, "If there's a fire in this forest, I know what I will do. And now that I know what I will do, I am not going to worry about a fire in this forest anymore." And so the first little bit that you get is the most useful. You get diminishing returns as you spend more money and more size and things like that. Massively diminishing returns. The everyday carry, your cell phone is the single most important object. You know, the pocket knife, the pepper spray, the the basic shit is the most important. If you have purse snacks and a water bottle, you are more prepared than almost anyone else. Yeah, I should have led with that.
Inmn 46:57 Yeah. Oh, no, no, it's okay. I feel like, you know. We eased into it then it got real complicated. And I'm, grateful to think about the overwhelm afterwards. But, Margaret, so in thinking about a lot of these things, there's like...I'm like, okay, like, if I'm in real life DnD or if the literal apocalypse happens then I could see needing these things. But why else might one need a bug out bag? What is some threat modeling kind of stuff to think of?
Margaret 47:42 Yeah, I mean, like, again, it's gonna depend on where you are. If I were to pick where I'm at, I can imagine gas supplies running out, right? I don't think...or like getting interrupted in such a way that, you know, suddenly, there's a lot of limitation to the amount of fuel that you can have, right? I could imagine grocery store stuff. I could imagine like, you know, supply chain disruptions. We're seeing supply chain disruptions. People might have to leave because of earthquakes. People might have to leave because of fires. Like, natural disasters is like probably the number one thing, right? And where you live, you will know what the natural disasters are. Where you live, personally, I would worry about drought. And I would worry about water war. But, and I would focus my prepping around rain barrels and you know, keeping five gallons of water in my truck or whatever. I didn't even get into the shit you should put your vehicle. Some other time will the vehicle preparedness. And but yeah, I mean, like there's scenarios where like...it was completely possible that January 6th type stuff could have happened on a much larger level, right? They tried to have it happen on a much larger level. We could have had a fascist coup in the United States, because they tried. And in that scenario, you might need to leave the country or you might need to move to a safer part of the country. Or you might need to move to a place so that you can prepare to defend. God, defend the country. But like, fight fascism, even if that means being like, "Alright, it's us and the Democrats versus fascism," or whatever, you know? Like, I can't imagine like the partisans in Italy were like, "Oh, no, you're a bourgeois capitalist. I'm not going to fight the Nazis with you." You know? Like, I mean, actually, that probably did happen.
Inmn 49:46 Yeah, or how there's...there have been tons of anarchists who are fighting in Ukraine.
Margaret 49:52 That is a...Yeah. Yeah, totally. And like if we were suddenly invaded by Russia, there would be like us and some patriots next to each other fighting on the same side, and it would be real awkward. Right? Real awkward, but like, you know. Okay. And so I think that it was entirely possible, at that moment, that my threat model included, "What if I need to get out of the south?" you know? And if I need to get out of the south, yeah, I'm driving until I hit the points where I start thinking that there's gonna be militia checkpoints. And then I'm in the woods, you know? Yeah. And like, so. It's not nearly as likely as other things. But, most bug out scenarios, yeah, are like, "I need to go spend a weekend somewhere." It could even literally be like, a go bag is like, if I got the call that my dad was in the hospital and I just need to get in my fucking truck and go see my dad, right? Like, nothing else bad is happening in the world. It's still real nice to have the bag that I am grabbing and walking out the door. You know? Yeah. Yeah. What are some of the scenarios that you imagine that you would worry about?
Inmn 50:01 There's kind of, there's kind of a lot. I mean, there's, you know, there's a lot of scenarios, and I'm wondering if this is the potential for like, future episodes is like...You know, where I live, I do think about drought, I think a lot increasingly more about militia checkpoints, because I live in a--I mean, I feel like everyone lives in a place where there could suddenly be an active militia--but I think about those things. This is a whole episode that we should do. But, I think about friends who live in places where it floods, I think about friends who live in places where there's hurricanes.
Margaret 52:01 And a go back is also getting to go...If you need to go help someone who's in a tight place of crisis, you know, like having your truck--don't drive your truck into standing water ff you don't know how deep it is-- but like, if you needed to get into a disaster zone to help people, if you're more prepared, you're more able to do that.
Inmn 52:22 Yeah. Oh, and actually, could I suggest an addition to to go bags? Just as a thing. Yeah, I would love to heavily urge people to have in their go bags or to have this as a separate bag in your emergency kit is, you know, something that we're learning a lot from harm reduction communities and organizing right now is harm reduction supplies. Yeah, Naloxone or Narcan, fentanyl testing strips, drug testing stuff in general. And, you know, even if you don't use drugs, then I would suggest having stuff in case other people who do use drugs and need them to some extent or have complicated dependency around them, having that kind of stuff for someone else could be life saving to someone else.
Margaret 52:29 Of course. No, everything I said is the only stuff you can use.
Inmn 52:41 That is a really good point. Alright. Well, that's some stuff. Is there anything else we should talk about go bags. It's cool to have a go. That's what I'm gonna say. Don't let the right wing have it. It's fucking cool. Being prepared rules. People are gonna think you're cool. They used to make fun of you, but now...now they don't. I have two kind of silly questions, because I love rooting these discussions in humor and light heartedness. There's another word for it.
Margaret 54:14 I famously hate joy.
Inmn 54:16 Yeah. Okay, so we've just gone through this big list of stuff and do you remember Donny Don't from Crimethinc? Yeah, what is the Donny Don't of go bags?
Margaret 54:33 Donny Don't is a, just so people know, it's the don't do with Donny Don't does. And what is the Donny Don't of go bags? It's probably the like crazy overkill versions. Like I probably don't need an ice axe in my go bag. Now that I say that I'm like, I mean, if I had to cross into Canada on the East Coast I would actually need an ice axe. So, but like, gear obsession, I think that and letting go bags be an endless bottomless non fun thing. If it is fun for you to geek out and find the the version of the thing that's two ounces lighter, do it--as long as you give away the old one or like, you know, maintain it in such a way that it's useful to somebody else. But yeah, I think that Donny Don't is the overkill, like a bag that you can't carry. Unless, I mean, some people can't carry certain amounts of weight that they would need and then they need assistance and things like that. That's actually okay too. But like, but overall. Yeah.
Inmn 55:42 Cool. Yeah. And actually, that is my retrospective answer for which knife to bring is the knife that you will carry.
Margaret 55:49 Yeah.
Inmn 55:49 Is the knife that does not that does not impede you from caring it. And then my other comical question because I can't do a single interview without talking about it is: So in Dungeons and Dragons, you have the adventuring kit and what is the 50 foot of hempen rope, which every single adventurer uses at some point, and what is the like climbing like...not crampons. Pitons. What is the pitons thing that no one has ever used. If you use them, please tell us about it.
Margaret 56:32 Everyone uses the the eating stuff. The spork, the utensils. Everyone uses...Yeah, the stuff that everyone uses is the tiny light cheap shit. You know? It's the fucking BIC lighter. And know what what no one uses is the magnifying lens to start the fire, which I didn't even include. I actually include tiny little magnifying lenses in the kits because they cost like five cents, like little Fresnel lenses size of credit card. But, it's mostly so you can read small stuff. And that weighs nothing. I like throwing it in. But the magnifying lens. That's the Yeah.
Inmn 57:21 The piton thing.
Margaret 57:25 Yeah. Whatever it is.
Inmn 57:29 Cool. Thank you. Thank you for indulging my silly questions. Well, it seems like maybe we should do some more...Talk about this more some other time.
Margaret 57:41 Yeah, you should ask me about vehicle preparedness sometime. And home preparedness.
Inmn 57:46 Yeah, vehicle preparedness, home preparedness, like specific disaster preparedness. Yeah. Like, I know, we're gonna...we're planning on doing a hurricane thing at some point.
Margaret 57:58 We're just gonna throw a hurricane. Inmn's a level 17 Wizard.
Inmn 58:07 And, you know, maybe we like...do we eventually started talking about...Do we just throw you, Margaret, into situations and say, "How would you deal with this issue?" Like as an episode concept?
Margaret 58:22 I thought you meant physically. Like, while I'm on tour, be like, "Sorry, Margaret, you're suddenly survivor lady." And I'm like, "Wait!"
Inmn 58:32 No, no, I'm thinking of like, this funny episode concept where we come up with situations, almost like roleplay situations, but real life, and you tell us how you would prepare and deal it.
Margaret 58:46 Okay. Yeah, we should do that sometime. I guess I'll have to get good at this. Usually, because I'm like...Well, my whole thing is I'm not quite an expert. At this point. I think I do know more than the average person. But my whole point was like, I'm not an expert. I find experts and ask them things. But, I guess at this point, there's a lot of this shit that I either sometimes have hands on experience and sometimes I just fucking talk to people about it all day. So. Yeah, sounds good. Well,
Inmn 59:12 Well. Thanks so much for coming on this, what ended up being a two parter episode of your own podcast that I am a weird guest host of right now.
Margaret 59:24 No, it's our podcast. It's Strangers' podcast at this point.
Inmn 59:29 Yeah. Do you have anything that you would like to plug?
Margaret 59:34 You can hear me on my podcast, Live Like the World is Dying, it's a community and individual preparedness podcasts published by Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. You can also hear me talk about history. I spend most of my time reading history books and talking about it on a podcast called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff on Cool Zone Media. It's very confusing that one of my podcasts is on CZN and one of my podcasts is on CZM, but that's the way it goes. And my most recent book is called "Escape from Incel Island." You can hear me talk about a shotgun that I used to really want, the Celtic KSG which is what Mankiller Jones carries. It's no longer that shotgun I lust after. Now I want to Mossberg 59A1. But, you know, I don't know whether I want to change what they're carrying. And I'm on the internet. @MagpieKilljoy on Twitter and @Margaretkilljoy on Instagram and you can also follow...I'm now trying to make people follow our social media, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. You can also follow us on social media @TangledWild on Twitter and then at something on Instagram. I'm sure if you search Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness it will come up. Do you know what it was? What is our Instagram?
Inmn 1:00:48 It is @tangled_wilderness on Instagram.
Margaret 1:00:51 We did a really good job of grabbing all the...we've been around for 20 years and we didn't fucking grab good Instagram handles at the beginning. Yeah, that's what I got.
Inmn 1:01:00 Great. Great. Well, we will see you next time.
Margaret 1:01:04 Yeah.
Inmn 1:01:11 Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please go make a go bag and then tell us about it. But also tell people about the podcast. You can support this podcast by telling people about it. You can support this podcast by talking about it on social media, rating, and reviewing, or doing whatever the strange nameless algorithm calls for. Feed it like a hungry god. And, you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Our Patreon helps pay for things like transcriptions, our lovely audio editor, Bursts, as well as going to support our publisher Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. Strangers and in a Tangled Wilderness is the publisher of this podcast and a few other podcasts including my other podcast, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which comes out monthly and is usually our monthly feature of anarchist literature or something. We also put out the Anarcho Geek Power Hour, which is the podcast for people who love movies and hate cops. And we would like to make a special series of shout outs to some of our patrons in particular. Thank you Anonymous, Funder, Jans, Oxalis, Janice and O'dell, Paige, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, Theo, Hunter, Shawn, SJ, Paige, Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Kat J., Staro, Jenipher, Eleanor, Kirk, Sam, Chris, Michaiah, and Hoss the dog. I love that this list just keeps getting longer and longer and longer. And seriously, we could not do any of this without y'all. So thank you. I hope everyone does as well as they can with everything that's happening and we'll talk to you soon.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
On this week's Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret and Inmn talk about what goes in a go bag, or bug out bag as they are sometimes called, and how being oogles might have set them up for being preppers. They talk about the different purposes one might make a go bag for, the different smaller kits that make them up, as well as other kits that are helpful to build alongside go bags. Tune in next week for part two.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
LLWD: Margaret and Inmn on Go Bags
Inmn 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I am your co-host today, Inmn Neruin, and I use they/them pronouns. I'm obviously a new host, and today I have with me Margaret Killjoy who is, you know, the normal host, and we're gonna do some fun role reversal here. Instead of me teaching Margaret something about prepping, because I don't really know much about prepping--well, I mean, you know, I know generally about prepping, but a lot of the specifics I'm newer to, a lot of the technical stuff I'm newer to. Strong ideology. Low tech. But, Margaret is going to teach me about how to put together something that has daunted me a lot, but that I understand the importance of, and that is go bags. This podcast is also a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts and before Margaret talks to me about go bags, we're going to hear a jingle from another lovely show on that network. Doo doo doo doo, doo.
Inmn 02:35 Okay, we're back. Margaret, could you introduce yourself on your own podcast that you started,you know, with your name and your pronouns and just a little bit about what you're here to teach me about today?
Margaret 02:50 Yeah, my name is Margaret Killjoy. I use she or they pronouns. You might know me from such podcast as Live Like the World is Dying. But, maybe this is your first episode. In which case, welcome. We have many hosts now on Live Like the World is Dying, which is very exciting. So, I'm going to be talking today about go bags, sometimes called bug out bags, or as I first heard them called, oh shit gear or OSG. No one really calls it that anymore. But some of the first anarchist preppers I ever met like 20 years ago called it OSG. And my background for this is that well, I'm sort of a prepper. I also have lived off-grid more years as an adult than I've lived on-grid. I do currently live on-grid. Before this, I lived in a cabin. Before that I lived in a barn. Before that I lived in a van. Before that I lived in a minivan. Before that I lived out of a backpack. And so I do feel like I have a fairly strong basis in what you need in a backpack to live out of because I did that for about 10 years. But it is a different context, right? And we're going to talk a lot about that today, the context of being traveling crust punk versus having to go bag and all the other different contexts. Yeah, that's my background.
Inmn 04:11 Wonderful, and we're also trying to connect it, I believe to this lovely new book that you just put out through our publishing collective Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness and the importance of go bags, you know, not only in our completely real tangible lives and these very fictionalized versions of our lives like Mankiller Jones', to which there are absolutely no similarities. There are no similar threat models. Nothing. Nothing like that.
Margaret 04:48 Yeah, for anyone listening, I my most recent book is called "Escape from Incel Island" and the protagonist is a nonbinary afab person, named Mankiller Jones, who's trapped on an island full of incels--thus the name--and needs to escape using their wits and the help of friends.
Inmn 05:09 And their go bag?
Margaret 05:11 Yeah, although okay, I'm actually going to argue that there is a difference between a go bag--I'm going to talk about some different types of bag systems you might have for living out of, right. So there's the go bag, and I'll get to that last I would argue that most...a soldier or mercenary or someone in a tactical situation, the primary objective of their thing is combat or evasion or, you know, something in a very militaristic setting. Usually, that might be called a rucksack. And it might be called like rucking. And you're going to have a very different load out of gear for, you know, your tactical situation. You're going to use probably a different type of bag. You're going to use it a lot of different stuff. So, that's like one context. It is a context to consider in these United States of America that are considering a national divorce, and there's a lot of people who want to murder all the trans people and you know, people color and all that shit. So, it is worth considering that and we'll talk a little bit about that. Okay, some of the other contexts that are not go bags, but are in form all of this, you have backpacking bags, right? And within that, basically like, I'm going to go and camp for a couple nights and hike, right? A backpacking bag is designed for two things. It's for hiking, and for camping. And within that you've traditional backpacking, and you have ultralight backpacking. Traditional backpacking, you're going to be carrying like 20 to 50 pounds of stuff. Whereas like rucking, you might be carrying 30 to 80 pounds of stuff, you know. And then there's ultralight backpacking, which is defined as less than 10 pounds before you add like food and water and shit to your bag. And that is like to make the hiking easier, right? But those have a specific purpose and it is not bugging out. It is not going. It is backpacking, right? And then you would have something called a bushcraft pack and I'm making that term up. And this is closer to the tactical bag because it is going to be very heavy, probably, and a lot larger. And bushcraft would be like "I'm going out into the woods to go live in the woods," right? If you need to build shelters, you're going to need different equipment, right. For example, in ultralight backpacking certainly and most traditional backpacking, you're not bringing a saw or an ax. However, if your goal is to survive in the woods for an indefinite period of time, a saw and an ax. are very important tools to have available. Okay, so those are, I'm gonna-go-spend-a-lot-of-time-in-the-woods bags--or desert or whatever. And then you have a go bag. And it's really easy to kind of conflate these things. But they really are a very different purpose. I would argue that your primary goal with a go bag--this is the bag that is in the closet by the door, or is by the door, or lives in your vehicle, or is packed and ready to go at all times in case an emergency takes you out your door for an unknown length of time, or even unknown length of time. And so this is the one bag you grab when your house is on fire. This is a bag that you grab, or you already have in your car, in case you need to spend your night in the car. Like, you know, it's these...people tend to think of go bags as like 'the world has ended' bags, and that's not...the world is always ending and it ends and fits and starts, right? And so it's for disasters. It's for crises. If you need to spend a night in the car, you're going to be very glad that you have a toothbrush and toothpaste, you're gonna be very glad that you have your medications, you're going to be very glad that you have your Nintendo Switch. And, if you suddenly have to flee the country, which frankly a lot of us have to think about as a possibility. It's not in an inevitability and it's not crazy likely that all LGBTQIA+ folks will have to flee the country or whatever. But, it's something that's on a lot of our minds, right? And so, in which case that bag is going to need your passport, it's going to need the rabies identification for your dog, you know, the vaccine identification for your dog. It's going to need a lot of really specific stuff that if you have to run out your door right now this is the bag you would pack and you just keep it already packed. But, most of the time your go bag is sometimes in your car, if you go to your friend's house for a surprise weekend because, you know, there's a hurricane coming, or the boil advisory for your town keeps getting deeper and deeper and you're starting to get really distrustful, or a train derails and there's toxic chemicals in the air, or your ex is in town and he's scary, right? You know, it's just the like...or wildfires sweeping through and there's an evacuation call, right? That is what a go bag is. There might be camping stuff in it, depending on your situation, how much you feel like carrying, how you expect to carry it. If it's gonna mostly live in your car, have some fucking camping stuff. Or, if like me, you live in a fairly isolated place, you know, you live rurally, like, if I needed to get out on foot I would need to have camping stuff with me because I am more than a day's walk from the nearest place that might be safe. Right? So yeah, that's the basic concept of a go bag.
Inmn 10:55 Just to parrot some information back to you so that I wrap my head around it, so there's there's a few different kinds of bags. We have go bags, we have rucking bags, we have backpacking bags, we have bushcraft bags. And are go bags...
Margaret 11:20 I'm making some of those terms up, but...
Inmn 11:22 Yes. And then are go bags and bug out bags the same thing?
Margaret 11:29 Yeah, it's just a...If you're avoiding the sort of prepper terminology, which is understandable, you call it a go bag instead of a bug out bag so you don't sound as crazy.
Inmn 11:40 I see. I see. And you know, everyone can understand the need to go, but bugging out can feel a little different. And so within a go bag, the idea is that you want anything that you will kind of like immediately need if you have to leave for whatever circumstance?
Margaret 12:05 Yeah, it's a combination of things. That is one of the things, is stuff that you would immediately need. It's like your overnight bag. It's your toiletries bag. All that kind of stuff is going to be more important than most of the other like survival gizmos or whatever, right? You know, your camping folding shovel is gonna be a lot less likely to be useful than dental floss, right?
Inmn 12:29 But it's cool.
Margaret 12:31 Oh, yeah, no, I have folding camping shovel in my truck. And I ponder putting it in my actual bag, but I probably won't. And so okay. Should I talk about the types of bags, like what kind of bag you want?
Inmn 12:48 Yeah, okay. And we're talking about go bags here or just any bag?
Margaret 12:56 I'm going to talk about mostly go bags. I'm going to focus what I'm talking about on go bags and I'll kind of like dip into...Because your go bag--if a civil war starts, which it probably won't, but 'probably' has a lot more modifiers than it did 10 years ago--and then your your bug out bag, your go bag, is going to have a lot in common with a tactical bag, you know a rucksack, whatever. I think rucksack is literally just like what military people call their backpack in order to sound cool, but I'm not actually entirely certain about that. Don't @ me, or if you do, @ me at my Twitter handle, @IwriteOK Okay [Robert Evans.] And so, you know, and if you're planning to hike to a different country, right, or a different state then it might have a lot in common with a backpacking bag. And, if you're planning on laying low in the desert or the Canadian wilderness, I don't know, then you're gonna have a lot of bushcraft stuff in there too, right? But overall, the sort of core of it is a go bag. And it really...you know, there's kind of like one bag that you keep around at any given time generally, but you might change it based on how circumstances are changing, and where you live, and what your threats are, right? Like, if the most likely thing is run out of the house because wildfire and throw it in your car, one, you might just leave it in your car. And two, you might be able to afford more weight, right? But if you're most likely thing is set out on foot or your most likely thing is spend a weekend away, you know, or if...I guess what I'm saying is it can look a lot different ways. And so you will have different options. I mean, it could be anything, right? You can have a shopping bag as you go bag. I don't recommend this. You could have, you know, my personal current go bag, I'm probably going to change this, but it has been my go bag for a number of years. My personal go bag is a style of bag that usually gets called a three-day assault pack. It is a tactical backpack that lacks an internal frame. It can hold-- it kind of sucks. It can hold a lot of weight, but it doesn't distribute that weight incredibly well across a body. It is not a backpacking bag. It is a soldier's bag. And one of the reasons I like it is because unlike a backpacking bag with like a big internal frame or an external frame, but those are really rare these days, it doesn't take up as much like space, you know? An internal bag, like an internal frame pack is very unwieldy. And you don't...it's hard to put in your lap if you're in a car. I've done this as a hitchhiker many, many times, you know. And so, I've moved away from those and I've been using what's more of a day pack size bag. And I personally went for a tactical style one because I'm a nerd. One of the reasons to not consider a tactical bag...I like things that are all black basically is what it and day bags tend to be really brightly colored if they're hiking bags. And, one reason to not consider a tactical backpack is people argue that it makes you more of a target, it makes you look more like a prepper, it makes you look more like a soldier, it makes you look more tactical and therefore more of a risk. And this is the sort of gray man theory that's very big in tactical spaces, which is an attempt to look not like a tactical bro. Ironically, most people who try and do this still look like tactical bros because they're like wearing gray man tactical pants that still say 511 on them or whatever, which is a brand of tactical gear, that I totally wear. And the reason I can wear it, is that I look fucking weird no matter what. I'm not going undercover anywhere. I have a giant nose ring. My hair is long. I have bangs and might be wearing women's clothes. You know, I'm not hiding, right? And I also not going to look like I'm enrolled in the United States Army or whatever. Right? So yeah, a tactical bag for me has no downsides from this point of view because it's just like whatever, I'm a punk. I look like a punk. And tactical bags will have something called molle all over it, which is that webbing straps, which allows you to attach other bags and things to it. And it makes it modular. And this is a little bit, like most of the time you're not really going to bother modularing out your thing. But, sometimes it's nice. You know, mine currently has a little bonus modular water bottle holder and my bushcraft knife that is part of my bag but wouldn't be part of a normal person's bag, is strapped to the outside with molle, which makes me look tough.
Inmn 17:38 See, I would get the impulse to...I love modular things. So, I'm like, okay, wait, so yeah, it's...In your in your different...So you want to plan your go bag based on your, I guess your threat model, or your risk assessment, and your environment it seems like? And so could you have your base go bag and then like a little additions? Like, well, there's the go bag, but here's the piece that you attach to it that makes it a better camping bag or something? The this is the it when shitty ex comes to town and this is it when it's wildfire, and they're like easy to combine? Is that? Is that a thing?
Margaret 18:26 Yeah, yes and no. Molle is not the system by which you do that. Molle is a very secure attachment system and it's a pain in the ass to attach. You're basically like weaving webbing through webbing. And there's different systems people have to make it fast. And if you really practice it'll get faster. But, it's not like grab and go type of thing. However, what you're describing makes a lot of sense. And it's the reason for example--I don't keep a gas mask in my go bag. I do keep a gas mask in a bag next to my go bag. Right? So if my threat on my way out the door is Russia nukes DC--again, very unlikely but a lot more likely than it was 10 years ago. You know, I'm not in the immediate blast zone of that, but I'm in the trouble area, right? And so like, you know, the gas mask is there. And it would be the same like if wildfires are threat, right, you would want your gas mask or at least a good respirator immediately next to it as well. And actually, if you live in wildfire zone, you probably have the respirator in your pack. Or it's outside your bag because you need to put it on as soon as you fucking need it. But, and so the other way that people modular it is that people modular the inside using different like--usually they're called packing cubes--and you can get different packing cubes that--like if they're like more tactical, they'll be made out of thick nylon and they'll have molle on them even though there's literally no purpose for them to molle on them. Or if you're an ultralight backpacker, they'll be made out of this parachute cloth that weighs nothing but will eventually rip. Because that's the thing with ultralight backpacking is it's incredibly light, and it's effective, but the equipment isn't as durable, right? Or, if you're like a different type of backpacker, they might all be dry bags so everything stays, you know, dry and separate. But basically...or if you're like a tour...you know, if you travel by suitcase, you'll also use packing cubes. And it's like, "Oh, this one's all my socks," or whatever. But it could also be, "Oh, this one's all my like magazines," not for reading but for reloading ammunition. You know, it could be the folding nine millimeter carbine, or whatever, that you throw into it, you know? And so you can modular it out. But molle is not quite the way to do it.
Inmn 20:58 I see. I see.
Margaret 21:01 Oh, we didn't get those other types of bags.
Inmn 21:03 Oh, yeah, What kinds of bags are there, Margaret?
Margaret 21:06 Okay, so, you've got the tactical bags, right, you've got the backpacking bags, the internal frame bags, which if you're going to be walking a lot, is probably what you want. And these are also available...you can kind of like look at things as either tactical, or there's a word for it I can't remember....hiking? But it has some word...technical! Technical versus tactical. Technical is like outdoorsy stuff that isn't made for people who shoot people for a living and it's gonna be brightly colored and it's high performance stuff with all the bells and whistles. But, it's not going to be camo, right? You know, versus, you can get a hiking bag that's all camo and it's gonna be aimed at military or whatever, right? And if you're hiking through the woods a lot, you might want the camo one. You might specifically not want the camo one because if you're hiking through the woods because like your car broke down you don't fucking camo. You want blaze orange so people can see you and rescue you. But, if you're like crossing a militia checkpoint to leave a red state you're gonna want camouflage. Um, yeah, anyway. And so then you could also have...some go bags are literally just small duffel bags, right, that are designed not really to be carried on your back and they're just meant to be thrown in a trunk. And like, and that's actually a very useful form factor for a lot of stuff. And, it might be that your extra bag is that. And then also, you can be really low key about it and just have a regular--not a day bag like a hiking day bag but just a regular day backpack is an incredibly good bug out bag for many people, especially people in urban environments where resources are going to be easier to come by. You're not necessarily gonna be camping. You don't need to carry as much stuff because you will be able to blend in with this kind of bag much more effectively. It'll still carry what you need. I like bags. My basement is full of backpacks that I've collected over the years.
Inmn 23:01 You know, I really like bags as well. I don't have a lot of stuff to put in the bags, but I have a little collection of bags. Which, I feel like sort of hearkens back to...I used to be a lot more of a oogle and...
Margaret 23:20 Yeah.
Inmn 23:22 yeah. And I had a little...
Margaret 23:24 It's good training.
Inmn 23:27 Okay, so I didn't think that I was going to have much to actually contribute to this, but like now that we're talking about it. I'm like, "Wait, were like train oogles preppers?"
Margaret 23:39 Yeah, because you need everything because you can't rely on anything showing up.
Inmn 23:44 Yeah, yeah.
Margaret 23:45 It's why when everyone's like, "You need a tent." I'm like, "Do you?" Like I never traveled with a tent. I don't know. If it's not really cold I just fucking wrapped myself in a shitty tarp and hope the rain left me alone.
Inmn 23:59 Well, the...
Margaret 24:00 Tents are useful in some situations. Go ahead.
Inmn 24:04 The thing now is...God, what are they called?
Margaret 24:09 Bivvies?
Inmn 24:10 Yeah, bivvies. I was gonna call it a ghillie sack. And I was like, that's something else.
Margaret 24:15 No, I like bivvies. A lot of people don't like bivvies.
Inmn 24:19 Yeah, I feel like bivvies are pretty pretty popular in that world right now. And yeah, I used to be obsessed with finding the perfect bag for that kind of stuff. And it was hard because you know, the camping stuff is brightly colored. It's a little too..it's not the most durable. Like it's made for hiking. It's not made for like, throwing it off a building, you know?
Margaret 24:47 Yeah, totally.
Inmn 24:50 And...but then, like, you know, the army stuff is a little terrible in another direction. It's not comfortable. Maybe it is now.
Margaret 25:03 No, overall, it airs on the side of durability and not comfort because it's like it's being put on a disposable human. You know, they don't care that whoever carries 100 pounds this long is going to destroy their knees because they're expecting somebody to shoot you.
Inmn 25:19 [Makes an 'Ooph' sound. Sighing.] Yeah. I always hoped that eventually it would emerge that there was some, you know, like train riding bag maker that would just make the perfect bag.
Margaret 25:43 Yeah.
Inmn 25:44 If you're out there, please, please email us. Email me.
Margaret 25:49 Well, and what's so funny, right, is even among oogles you have a difference between hitchhikers and train hoppers in terms of the size of bag they need. You know, like,when I first started and I was attempting to hop trains--I was never good at it--and I carried an internal frame pack. And then for a long time I moved down to, it was an old skateboarding backpack. Not because I recommend skateboarding backpacks, it was just literally my backpack from high school, you know, and I just carabinered my sleeping bag underneath. And then when I got to where I was staying I would take off the sleeping bag and then have a regular day pack. You know, it's like, because you need so much less as a hitchhiker because you don't need to cook.
Inmn 26:30 Yeah, yeah, I went from like one of those big 70 liter hiking packs to a like bike bag, not like the Chrome side strap ones but those like the made out of...
Margaret 26:46 Foldy top?
Inmn 26:47 Yeah, the fold the top. But you know, they were durable, and waterproof, and fairly spacious but no frame, absolute murder on your back if you carry too much.
Margaret 27:01 But, that would be an amazing go bag for most situations because it's waterproof. It's durable. It fits in your lap when you're sitting. Ut doesn't have straps going everywhere. Yeah, like for a lot of people that style a bag is fucking perfect. You know?
Inmn 27:16 Yeah, and for folks who don't know what we're talking about they're these like bicycle bags. They're made out of like, vinyl or PVC. And then they're covered with really high strength, like durable like cordura. And, they're made to be on someone who's biking so they're comfortable. But walking is not always the same as biking.
Margaret 27:41 Yeah, totally. Well, and it's like, and so because most go bags you're probably taking public transit or you're taking vehicles, you know, you're...like most things...It's worth having something you can walk with, right? Like I wouldn't recommend your go bag be 150 pound pickle bag, you know, a duffel bag. But like, you know, should we talk about what goes in it?
Inmn 28:05 Yeah, what? Margaret? Margaret, what should I put in my collection of bags that could be go bags? Because, I don't have a go bag and I feel really embarrassed about that.
Margaret 28:17 I know I can't believe you don't have a go bag. There was that--I don't want to out where you live--there was a toxic thing near where you lived at one point. So okay, I would argue that a preparedness base...you can sort of build up to the bag and what's in the bag, but if you don't do these things before it, you put all of this in the bag, and that's fine too. First, there's your kind of everyday carry, right? If you tend to wear clothes that don't have as many pockets you can do this with a fanny pack. This is one of the things that's so great about being a queer prepper is I don't have to...Like, men will do anything to avoid having to wear a fanny pack. There's these like chest packs that are fucking, have a harness across the back. They're so He-Man. They're so gay. I love them.
Inmn 29:05 Yeah, I've seen those.
Margaret 29:07 And it's like just wear god damn fanny pack. And then like, one of the best off body carries for a subcompact handgun are like fanny pack specifically designed for drawing from. But, they don't do all that well because men are afraid to wear fanny packs. It's hilarious. But anyway, you can put all this in your pockets. You can put all this in a fanny pack. You can put all this in your punk vest. Whatever. The basis of a lot of it is wearing somewhat durable clothing and practical clothing as much as you can. I'm someone who wears maxi skirts. I swear you can go hiking in them. Sometimes you have to hike them up. Whatever some of the stuff....
Inmn 29:45 You can. I can attest.
Margaret 29:47 Yeah. No, it's funny. One time, I was like working outside and the mail carrier was coming up and I was like, "I really don't want to deal with being a crossdresser right now." so I just like hiked up my fucking maxi skirt and I was like wearing tights underneath. And I'm like, "Now I'm just a weirdo in tights." Like this is better somehow. So, things to consider carrying on your person. And this to me, this goes back to my oogle days. The first and single most important prepper tool is your cell phone. And there's stuff--we could do a whole separate episode about stuff to put on your cell phone. Offline maps. That's a big one. Various tools that help you do things. And so, cell phone number one. Other things, a Bic later. Some people wrap it in duct tape because the duct tape can be used as a fire starter. A multitool. Like I use a pliers style multitool. If you're older than a millennial, you'll prefer a Swiss army knife. A pocket knife, a folding pocket knife. This isn't as important because you got your multitool, but I've always sworn by having a pocket clip knife on me. It's useful for cutting all kinds of things. That's not even a euphemism. And, a flashlight. And, the reason I like a flashlight, a tactical style flashlight that is in my pocket at all times or in my fanny pack is because you can use it to see shit. I also like headlamps and I'm gonna talk about headlamps in a little bit. But, a flashlight is an incredibly important self defense tool. Specifically--it's funny because the tactical flashlights people are like "So you can hit people with them." And you're like, "No, it's so that you can shine it in their face." And they're like, "Yeah, with the strobe function," and you're like, "No, because the strobe function disorients you and the other person." No, if someone shines a really bright light in your face all of a sudden, you are disoriented. And so the number one self defense tool-- other people are you pepper spray too and that's great, and I just don't have as much practice with pepper spray personally And but pepper spray would also be in this sort of category--but the flashlight lets you see things and it lets you fucking blind people and run away. Which, is the secret to surviving fights is to not get in fights. And one of the ways to do that is to disorient or disable your attacker and then run away. Okay, so that's everyday carry. And then you might want to consider other self defense tools like pepper spray. A bandanna is an incredibly useful survival thing. Oogles. I learned this from oogle life. You can use it as a dust mask, you can use it to prefilter water. You can use it to wipe sweat. You can use it as a napkin. You can, like a little...hikers use something called a buff and it's just a...hikers... They just don't want to oogles so they use a buff instead.
Inmn 32:30 They just don't want to call it a bandanna or a?
Margaret 32:33 Yeah, totally, I mean, it's a slightly different thing. And it actually is a little bit better suited for hiking because you can use it as a headband and stuff. And like if I was like more of a hiker...like a year from now, because I'm getting into hiking, I'm gonna be like, "Nah, you just need a buff, like no matter what," you know, but I like don't own one currently. Another thing to consider as part of your everyday carry, depending on your threat model, depending on where you live, is a handgun with a holster and a spare magazine. And if you carry the capacity to do deadly force, you should also carry a tourniquet at the very least. If you don't carry a full IFAK, an individual first-aid kit meant for gunshot wounds, carry at least a tourniquet. And honestly, if you're in a situation where gun threats are a thing, I would carry a tourniquet before I carry a gun. It is a lot safer legally. It's a lot easier. And like my goal is on any given day is to not die. And the ability to stop bleeding is often more effective than the ability to put holes in other people. So, that's everyday carry and if you don't have this on your person, you're gonna want it in your go bag. A lot of these I replicate in my go bag. Okay, the next thing, and the most important thing from my point of view is what--and this is like kind of like the Margaret school is a little different than other people's school of thought around this--is that more important than a go bag is an emergency kit. I make and distribute these emergency kits. All my friends who visit me they leave with an emergency kit. I get a...actually, I get a tactical medical pouch. It's a five by seven, six by nine? I don't know. And it actually has molle on it so you can attach it to a backpack. So, if your go bag is full you can put it on your backpack. And the emergency kit is everything that is like small and light and useful. And this turns any bag you're carrying into a go bag. And it is small and light and if you make them in bulk it costs you 50-60 bucks worth of stuff if you put like everything in it. And I'm gonna talk about what's in it.
Inmn 34:42 Yeah, what's in it?
Margaret 34:43 In my emergency kit, it is three different things. It is a hygiene kit. It is a first aid kit and it is a survival kit. For hygiene, I carry a folding toothbrush and travel toothpaste. If you're an ultralight hiker, you're gonna have toothpaste tablets, I'm going to look into those but for now just fucking use toothpaste. Whatever. Dental Floss, which doubles as sewing thread, a compressed towel...
Inmn 35:07 Another oogle lesson.
Margaret 35:08 Oh yeah, totally. And this is what I wish I learned as an oogle is a compressed towel. There are these like little tiny tablets that if you put them in water they turn into washcloths? Yeah, they weigh nothing. They will...I carry tampons in a hygiene kit. This is not for plugging gunshot wounds. Do not use tampons to try and stop bleeding because they don't stop bleeding. They don't apply pressure. They absorb some blood. The amount of difference between the amount of blood someone having a menstrual cycle produces versus the amount of blood or gunshot wound produces....This is not what they're good for. Primarily I carry these to give to people, if we're in an emergency situation, who wish they had a tampon with them. They have some other purposes by pulling out the cotton and using it as fire starter., etc. But, I carry earplugs, just the foam cheap ones, unless I have my nice ones with me. Sometimes they're in my bag too. The ones that are like for concerts and shit. But, earplugs are for if you are shooting, if you're using heavy equipment, if you're trying to sleep in a rescue center, if you have ear damage anyway and you sometimes...Like earplugs are incredibly useful and they're light and cheap. Lip balm. I carry lip balm. I don't use lip balm in my day to day life. However, avoiding sunburn is like one of these super important things, and then also lip balm, some of it, can like double again as fire starter. stuff. Put it on cotton. Things like that. I carry condoms in case I have sex with somebody and then--or other people are trying to and don't want to get sick or you don't want to like deal with pregnancy or whatever, you know. There's like other uses for condoms. People are like, "Oh, you can use them to like store water," and stuff, but a lot of the survival uses of condoms are a little bit like people just trying to come up with uses for shit. And then also, you have to use unlubricated condoms for a lot of these purposes. However unlubricated condoms have are less effective at their primary task. I carry lube packets. Again, anything small, light, cheap, and useful is fucking great. I carry nail clippers. I carry hair ties. And, I carry soap strips. And this is a little bit like...I carry it but whatever. They're like little dissolvable papers with soap in it. That's the hygiene part of it for me. You might have a different one. I actually am kind of looking into figuring out how I'm going to put razors into here. For shaving. Usually, I just kind of have my electric razor on me, but I feel like if I'm backpacking, or whatever, it might be hard to...It's a little bit bulky. For first aid...Am I missing anything for hygiene?
Inmn 37:47 Not that I can think of. I'm also....Okay, so I said that I didn't have a go bag. And literally besides the emergency kit, I have a go bag on me at all times. I was like oh yeah, I mean, I'm an ex oogle. I have a giant fanny pack with a with multiple forms of self defense and like multitools and...
Margaret 38:17 That's what people forget, is they think of a go bag as this utterly separate thing but it's like...Like purse snacks is prepping. You know, like, again, men are really weird and like, if you go to a random...if you're out at a bar, the most prepared people in there are the women. They have so much stuff in their purse that is so useful. You know, the men might have guns--well, maybe they're smart and they're at a bar (you shouldn't combine alcohol and firearms) but whatever. But like, you know, what's more likely than shooting someone is getting hungry. You know? Like,
Inmn 38:52 Oh, yeah, yeah.
Margaret 38:54 Alright.
Inmn 38:56 But what's in a first aid portion?
Margaret 39:00 In the first aid portion, these are the ones I make, right. You can make your own depending on anything, right? I carry emergency packets because they make water tastes good and might theoretically be good for you. I carry alcohol wipes. These are sort of contentious. Well, they're not contentious for sterilizing things. If you need to lance a blister, you need to suddenly sew yourself back together or whatever, you're going to be glad you have alcohol wipes. Within the first day community, there's a lot of arguments about using first aid to sterilize wounds. Alcohol, slows down healing of wounds. It also sterilizes them. And so people have different opinions about the trade off of that. I carry superglue. Go ahead.
Inmn 39:42 Oh, yeah. Well, you can you can also use them for their intended purpose, which is preparing the skin for things like maybe you have some kind of injection that you need to do. Maybe you need to do sutures like you can use the prep pads for their purpose.
Margaret 40:00 Yeah, no totally.
Inmn 40:01 Cleaning off the skin.
Margaret 40:02 Yeah. And then also cleans a lot of other stuff. Like, having alcohol swabs around is just fucking useful. Anything that's light and cheap, especially if it has multiple purposes, just fucking carry it. There's like no reason not to have them. They weigh nothing. I carry a little thing of superglue. I am not currently of the superglueing your skin back together thing, but a lot of like old woodworkers and stuff will use it as like, kind of instead of a band aid, you know. They'll like close their wounds with superglue. There's like some bonus upsides and downsides to that. I usually use superglue to like fix small things, personally. And like use it and woodworking. Antibiotic ointment packets super fucking important. More likely to die of an infection in the woods than someone shooting you. I carry some band aids. I carry wound closure strips, either the steri strips or the butterfly bandages depending on what I have available. These are for like wounds that kind of borderline needs stitches, you know. I carry an irrigation syringe and this is like a little bit like bigger of a thing, an irrigation syringe. But, I carry it and I put it in every pack I include because irrigation syringes are what you use for puncture wounds and cleaning out puncture wounds. And if you're hiking in the backwoods and you step on the thorn, or whatever I don't know, and you need to clean something out, seems nice to have it. Avoiding infection is like a big part of what I learned by living out of a backpack for a long time, you know?
Inmn 41:34 Yeah, yeah,
Margaret 41:35 I carry tweezers for similar purpose for like picking things out of wounds, for plucking my eyebrows, for taking ticks off. Although I'll be real, I usually use the pliers on my multitool to take ticks off but don't do what Margaret Don't does. I carry gauze. Even though this isn't my like IFAK, this isn't my gunshot-wound kit, I carry gauze in case there's like deeper wounds that need putting packed in gauze. I carry petroleum jelly packets. These are also sort of like...some people use them medically, like put it on wound. Some people don't. People like to argue about it. I carry them...Honestly, I mostly carry them for fire starter, but I put them in the first-aid section because some people use it for first aid. And then I carry a bunch of different over-the-counter-drugs and I don't use over...like I just don't use drugs. But I carry them with me because other people might need them or I might need them. And like and this is one of the things that I like see people not...I think this is a really good idea. However, specifically with pills, the first thought I had was like, "Oh, I only need 10," so I'll buy a bottle, and I'll pull out 10, and I'll put them in a Ziploc bags. If you have to interact with police ever, this is a bad idea because now you have unmarked pills in a bag even if it's fucking Benadryl. And so what I carry is blister packed pills or like in tiny like one dose pack pills that are labeled from the manufacturer. The biggest downside is I have not found caffeine pills in that form yet. So the caffeine that I carry is caffeine gum because caffeine gum you can get in smaller pockets. It's a little bit more than I want to carry. I'd rather have a caffeine pill. But whatever. I carry loperamide, which is like Imodium. It's an anti-diarrheal. Because if you eat something wrong or drink something wrong and you have another like three days that you have to hike, diarrhea will fucking kill you. And so I feel like this is a thing....This is the one that I would say most people overlook. I carry Benadryl or diphenhydramine, which is its formal name, and this is an anti-inflammatory. You can use it to stop itching, which is a common problem in the woods. You can also use as an anti-anxiety, which for some reason might seem like a likely problem. You can also use it as a sleep aid. Don't use it and then use heavy machinery. Don't go chainsawing. And for painkillers I carry all three of them. I carry ibuprofen, acetamino--thing [said like she can't remember the word] and aspirin. Advil, Tylenol, and aspirin is like the common names for them, but it's ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and aspirin. They all have different purposes. Read the thing. Some of them are good for people different situations. But, being able to bring down fevers and being able to like...You're fucking old and you're hiking all the time like you fucking might need some shit to keep your knee happy enough so you can get out of there, you know? And also, carry potassium iodide, although now I am past the age where this matters. I think this is the kind of thing that preppers are like, "You got potassium iodide?" and like it doesn't really matter all that much. Potassium iodide is...it is for disaster. Okay, so yeah, if you are near, but not in the get-blowed-up range of a nuclear disaster, you might, there might be an emergency broadcast directing you to take potassium iodide and you only have have 15 minutes to do it before it's too late and there's no point anymore. And what it does is it floods your...I forget the word for it...thyroid. It floods it with iodine so that you don't absorb radioactive iodine because it's full. And this can prevent some cancers down the line. It is contra...it is also really rough on you if you do this. And so it is contraindicated for people who are 40 years and older. So, for my birthday, I should have just given away all my potassium iodide. And I think the idea is that it's just like...your body doesn't want rough stuff to happen to it. And also, they're kind of like, "Well, you're gonna die before you die of cancer anyway. You're old." I don't entirely understand the mechanism.
Inmn 45:46 I feel like they need to update that. I feel like they probably maybe need to update those.
Margaret 45:53 No, it's worth, I should probably look into it more and I still keep some around. And then, any personal medications that you might need. In this case, for me, it would be my dog's medication. And then also, I take famotidine to stop heartburn. One more thing for the emergency kit, the survival section. And this is not going to be like a super packed out section. Because again, this is not your full go bag. This is your little survival...your little kit. I keep KN95 masks in there. For some obvious reason. I actually kept masks in here before covid because it's important to like...like when COVID broke out, I had a bunch of P100 masks, which is like kind of the next step up from an N95 mask, and the reason I had them was like prepper shit where you're like, "I don't know, if you're in a city and there's an earthquake and there's dust everywhere," you know?
Inmn 46:50 Yeah, I will say that one of our other prepper landmates at the time, sent all of us text messages well before covid was much of a popularized thing and was like, "Y'all should really go stock up on like P100 and N95 masks," and I did not. And it is...like it haunts me that I did not listen to him.
Margaret 47:15 Yeah, no. Yeah, Inmn and I used to live together on a land project. And, there was me and one other prepper there, and even though we're like, anarchists on a land project, we mostly got made fun of for being silly, for being preppers. However, covid has turned everyone into preppers on some level, thank God. It is the one upside. Yeah, when it broke out, I was able to, like, have masks for people who needed it and that felt really good, you know. But, which actually gets to some of the point of prepping I talk about a lot on the show, but like, the point of prepping is to kind of like have your own shit settled so that you can then help other people, you know? Because even if I only had one P100 mask, well then at least I don't need someone else to get me a mask, right? And so everything that you have prepped is like you're one less person who needs to rely on the mutual aid network. And then everything you have on top of that is stuff you can provide to the mutual aid network, and that rules. Both of those rule. Yeah, okay. In the survival [section,] you've got a mask, you've got another butane lighter. Just carry a Bic lighter everywhere. Fuck it. Like you got two Bic lighters, you're fucking good. Little pieces of solid fuel, which is just little like tablets that you can burn and some of them are actually designed, they're like--I don't know how to describe what size they are--two Starburst? And they're like, designed that you can like cook a 15 minute meal over just burning one of these tablets, you know? But they're usually used to start a fire. I carry a little bits of tinder. The purpose made stuff isn't super expensive, but can also make your own. I carry a little needle thing with sewing needles with three different leather needles and six regular needles in it. And this is for repairing different equipment. I use the dental floss as my thread in an emergency. I carry fishhooks and line. I don't eat fish, but I would if it was me or the fish. However, I'd be fucked because I don't know how to fish. I actually think fishing is fake. I tried fishing so many times when I was a boy scout. I have never caught a single fish. I think what happens is that I go out...everyone else knows the fishing is fake. And they're like, "Let's just trick Margaret again." And so we go out fishing. And they're like, "Oh yeah, oh, I gotta tug on my line," and then they wait till I turn my back, and then they like pull a fish out of a cooler, and they're like, "Oh, I caught a fish." You know? That best as I can....
Inmn 48:07 Well, Margaret that's why they call it fishing and not catching anything. [Margaret does not laugh] This is my bad dad joke.
Margaret 49:09 Oh, I see. Well, if you're fishing for humor, for laughs, it's not gonna work.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
This time on This Month in the Apocalypse, Margaret, Brooke, and Inmn talk about a lot of stuff that happened in April. They explore the history of Mayday, what will happen if the US defaults on its debts, Brooke's reasons for not wanting to become a Dracula, strikes, a report from the Sudanese Anarchist Gathering on the current conflict in Sudan, a horrible string of murders, guns, syphilis, cheetahs, more syphilis, shirt slinging neo-Nazis, and some new news about the Stop Cop City movement.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
LLWD: This Month in the Apocalypse: April
Margaret 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the End Times. This is a This Month in the Apocalypse special where we talk about this month in the apocalypse, but even more than that it's the Mayday special because it's Mayday--not when you're listening but when we're recording--and that's what matters to me is the things that affect me. I'm one of your hosts Margaret Killjoy.
Brooke 00:33 Hi, I'm Brooke.
Inmn 00:35 Hi, I'm Inmn
Margaret 00:36 Inmn is joining us. Is this is your first time co-hosting the show?
Inmn 00:41 This is...yes...this is my first time co-hosting.
Margaret 00:45 That's very exciting.
Inmn 00:46 Yes, I'm excited and under....I'm here for playful banter.
Margaret 00:53 Great.
Brooke 00:53 If there's three co-hosts, should it be co-co-host?
Margaret 00:57 Or co...tri... No, I got nothing. Okay. So, co-co-hosts but not Coco Chanel because she's a Nazi.
Brooke 01:08 Yeah. Bad.
Margaret 01:10 Yep. Alright. So, this podcast is proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. Bop! [Said like the note of a song] That was my song.
Brooke 01:23 Beautiful.
Margaret 01:24 Thanks.
Margaret 01:42 And we're back. Okay, so, today is Mayday. What's Mayday, you might ask? Eh? Eh?
Inmn 02:26 What is...What's a May Day?
Margaret 02:29 Thanks. It's the thing you say when you're in trouble and you're in an airplane. [Brooke makes sad trumpet noise] Okay, so, Mayday is the international working holiday. I don't have any notes about this in front of me. So, I'm going to be off the top of my head. But I've have given this as a spiel multiple times in my life. Mayday has been celebrated in various forms, kind of going back to 1886. And going back to 1886 in Chicago, let's like [Makes scifi time machine noises]...now we're in 1886 in Chicago and there's this vibrant anarchist scene and it's an almost entirely immigrant culture, mostly German in this particular time and place as well as there are some like born in the United States anarchists who are part of it, kind of most famously, the power couple Albert Parsons and Lucy Parsons. Albert Parsons is a white guy who used to be a Confederate soldier, realized he was on the wrong side when he as a teenager, spent the next huge chunk of his life trying to fight actively against the thing he had fought for. He managed to get shot in the process. And then he illegally married a black woman, Lucy Parsons, because it was illegal for interracial marriages. So, they actually moved to Chicago even before it was legal there. They moved from Texas up there. And they were rad organizers, and Lucy Parsons was like actually way more interesting than Albert. No offense to Albert, you know. He's one of today's martyrs for May Day. And Lucy Parsons has all these quotes about like, "What I want is for every greasy grimy tramp to arm himself with a knife and a gun and wait outside the homes of the rich. And, as they leave, stab or shoot them." Lucy Parsons did not fuck around. Lucy Parsons knew that class war was a thing that was already happening to marginalized people and wanted to see it returned to the rich. And so, the anarchists on Mayday during this time, they would do things like they'd have these huge parades where they like, marched to the homes of the rich with like banners that said, shit, like, "We're gonna fucking kill you," or whatever, you know. I'm sort of paraphrasing here because I don't have my notes. Yeah. And so they had this like culture and they were building this amazing culture and there was also this, like...they had community defense organizations, they had plays, they had like--it's very actually parallel to a lot of the stuff that's getting built now--only we'll survive repression better than they did; I hope. Okay, and so at the same time there's this massive fight for the eight hour workday. And the anarchists were a little bit like, "I mean, that's cool, I guess. Like we kind of want the no-hour workday. Like, we're in it for the abolition of capitalism, but we'll put up with it. Right, that's all right." And so, they were a big part of the organizing, and--kind of in a similar way that anarchists participate in organizing now--and there was basically this idea that we're like, "Alright, on May 1, 1886, we're just declaring the eight hour day, and no one will work more than that, and it's gonna be this massive general strike." And it was it was this massive general strike all across the country. And in Chicago, at the McCormick harvester factory where they made harvesters,which were, you know, big combine machines used for farming or whatever, a bunch of people were like, "Fuck this. We're not working." And so they brought in scabs, and then people were like, "Fuck you," and they like threw rocks at the scabs and stuff. And then the cops were like, "Well, what if we just shot you?" and people were like, "We'd rather you didn't shoot us," but the cops weren't listening. So, they shot them anyway. And some people died. And it was bad. And that was on May 1st. And then there were several days of protests after that. But the anarchists were like, "Man, they're just shooting us now." And these were not the first labor people who were getting shot in the US during this fight, but they were like, "You know, if they're shooting us like, let's put out this thing that's like, you know, in both German and English, it's like, "Show up at Haymarket Square and get ready to fight. This is our time." you know, and it's this big kind of bravado thing. But then,the day of everyone was like, "Actually, let's just show up and be peaceful because it's like, kind of sketchy. Like, you know?" and I feel like we've all been in this kind of situation. And so then all of these people go up and give these speeches. And some of the speeches are, like, "Let's murder all the people who are trying to murder us." And some of them were a little bit more restrained. And...but, it was like, overall peaceful, and so this was on May 4th, 1886. And then the chief of police, he was like, "No, I want to fuck everyone up." And I'm not even like--I'm putting words in his mouth, but I'm not putting motives into his mouth--this guy like fucking hated the anarchists. And so he marched on down there with a ton of people. And basically was like...it was like, starting to clear anyway. It was starting to rain. A lot of people were like, "Hey, let's go hang out at the bar instead of listening to the speakers." And the guys who were out there being like...I think was Samuel Fielden, and he's up there, He's like, trying to give a speech, and everyone's like, "Oh, like, that's cool. We could go hang out the bar instead of listening to you." It's like just one of those protests, right? It's actually not a big deal protest. And then the cops are fucking up everyone. So, someone--unknown to history, probably a German anarchist, hard to say--someone honks a bomb at the cops. A bomb goes boom. The cops start shooting wildly into the crowd. And they just like murder a ton of people. I actually literally have no idea the number. I don't remember off top my head at all. And they also shoot a bunch of themselves. Cops, as we're gonna talk about in this episode, cops are really good at shooting each other. Critical support to the police for shooting the police.
Brooke 02:47 Comrade police? Hmmm. No.
Margaret 06:30 Comrade Friendly Fire?
Inmn 07:37 Comrade Friendly Fire.
Margaret 07:39 And like, one of the reasons we know this is a lot of like people go through and look at the evidence and the direction of the bullets in the lampposts and all this stuff--there's this huge trial, right--and so all of the evidence that comes out is like, basically the cops all shot each other, right? Which is like...Whatever, I wouldn't get mad at someone who shot back if they're being shot at, but I don't think that that's what happened. So this thing happens. And it's like, "Oh, fuck, that's a really big deal," right? And then the anarchists...the cops are just like, "We're gonna fucking arrest everyone now." Like all the anarchists "You're done." And they just start sweeping the city. They're showing up at everyone's houses, like not only all the organizers but all the just like the regular non organizer folks, and they're just like raiding everything, shutting everything down. One of the most interesting arrests, they show up at this guy's house, and they're like, "Hey, we want this guy!" and this guy who answers the door, Louis Lingg, is like, "Oh, that guy's not here." And they're like, "Well, you'll do. We'll take you." And so Louis Lingg is like, "Fuck you!" And he pulls out a gun and tries to shoot the cop. And so the cop manages to get him and then, theoretically, according the New York Times--which is not an unbiased source now was like really not an unbiased source in 1886--In the carriage, Louis Lingg, who was I think 22 at this time, he says the quote, "It all would have been worth it if only I had been able to kill that police officer." So, they all get taken to jail. And it's mostly not firebrands like Louis Lang. It's all of these organizers. So, it's like Samuel Fielden who's just like this guy--he ends up a Wobbly later in his life--he survives. And he's...or maybe he's like a rancher. I can't remember. He stays rad, but he just like chills out after he survives this nasty shit. And so they arrested a bunch of them, and there's eight 'martyrs'--that they get called, right, and they're all put on trial. And, the thing that they're accused of is literally being anarchists. There is no evidence that links any of them to the bombing. There's plenty of counter evidence. Some of them have interesting alibis, like Louis Lingg, our aforementioned 22 year old. He's 23 at the time that he dies. His defense in court is, "I could not have made that bomb because I was at home making bombs." which was true. He did not throw the bomb Yeah. Oh my god. And then Louis Lingg was also like, he was this like, he was super hot and everyone like copied his style. Like all the boys would like do their hair up like Louis Lingg in order to like, look hot at all the anarchy dances and shit. And you just have this like wide variety of different people. You've got this guy who...this like toy maker named George Engel--who I've got tattooed on my arm--and he's like the oldest of them--I want to say that he's in his early 50s, I can't remember--and he's just this like, he's like born fucking poor in Germany and he ran a toy shop and he's an anarchist. And I used to think of him as just like the low key down to earth one, right? But it actually turns out, he was like, part of the like, super radical faction. Whereas like Albert Parsons, right, he was like, kind of like one of the more like, liberally anarchists who was like, "Oh, let's like have good messaging and shit." And George Engle was like, in the background planning how to take over the city by force of arms to institute anarchism. He still didn't throw the fucking bomb. And so yeah, they were all put on trial. And they were found guilty. And five of them were sentenced to death. Three of them were sentenced to not-death. I think two to life imprisonment, one to 15 years. There's a whole thing where like, some of them asked for a pardon from the governor. There's like a...and then five of them were like, "Man, we're not fucking asking for a pardon from the governor. Fuck you. Like, we're done. It's over. Fuck it." And then while they're awaiting their death, Louis Lingg, someone smuggles him in some explosives, probably in cigars, and he takes his own life. And the other four are led up to the platform and hanged. And there's like this massive unrest outside, and Lucy Parsons--her husband is about to get hanged--and she's trying to break in. And they have really heartbreaking last--their speeches in court are something worth reading--And their last words are stuff that sticks with me, including two of them that basically just said, "Hoch the anarchy!" or, ""up" the anarchy, hurrah for anarchy." And, you know, they they believed very strongly in a world without the state and without capitalism, and they fought and they died for it. And, it was complete miscarriage of justice everyone knew was a miscarriage of justice. At the time, no one cared because it was a big anti anarchists fervor. But, as the trial went on, people started being like, "Wait, what?" And so it actually, it crushed the anarchist movement in Chicago; the movement that had been building in Chicago fell apart. And it was it was awful because it was an incredibly vibrant, beautiful movement with like eight different newspapers in different languages, and like, it's like, it's all a bigger deal than...I think sometimes anarchists think we were like really marginal throughout history. And that is like, just not the case. And before state communism became a stronger force, anarchism was absolutely the primary voice of the left besides like, kind of like liberalish, like progressive movements. So, it crushed the Chicago movement. But, what it did is it inspired a generation and it inspired a generation of anarchists and inspired a generation of labor organizers. And so Mayday has been the International Workers holiday ever since. And within a couple of decades, you could go anywhere in the world and go into a union hall, even if it's not an anarchist Hall, even if it's a communist Hall, or whatever, and you'll see the martyrs on the wall who stood for that. And so, I love Mayday. I love this story. I love seeing myself in these people from our past, I think that we can have heritages that are not just direct ancestral like blood lineage. And I believe that the anarchists who are alive today are part of the lineage from the 1880s. And that, that spirit lives. So I get real emotional about it. And anyone who wants, I would really recommend going to Chicago going out to I think it's Waldorf Cemetery, but I might be wrong. Again. I didn't take any notes for this. It's off top my head. And, there's a monument to the martyrs and it's also where you'll see Emma Goldman's grave and Lucy Parsons grave. And, yeah, it's beautiful. And it has always the cutest graffiti on it, because I don't think they would have minded. Maybe Albert Parsons would have minded, right, but like Lois Lingg would have done it, you know.
Inmn 14:09 I've heard it's become a new rite of passage to make out on their graves. Or at least it was it was like 10 years ago.
Margaret 14:21 I just go there and cry.
Inmn 14:26 That's also reasonable.
Margaret 14:27 Yeah, whatever floats your boat.
Brooke 14:28 If it makes you feel any better, they would have been dead by now anyway.
Margaret 14:32 Or would they have? Because, what if they're Dracula's?
Brooke 14:38 Not this again? No. No.
Margaret 14:42 What if a Dracula threw the bomb?
Margaret 14:43 And [that Dracula] now has a podcast. What if I threw the bomb at Haymarket? Is this a conspiracy theory I should spread?.
Brooke 14:43 No!
Brooke 14:52 Never.
Inmn 14:53 Yes, yes. You heard it here, Margaret. Killjoy is a Dracula.
Margaret 14:58 Yeah.
Brooke 14:58 You know, as we've talked about before, famous podcasters have superpowers that make things come true. So, you should not do any of that.
Margaret 15:07 Become a Dracula? Okay, so I'm really...I've given us a lot of thought. Actually, I'm curious about you all. Let's get your answers first. Brooke, would you become a Dracula?
Brooke 15:16 No.
Margaret 15:18 Inmn, would you become a Dracula?
Inmn 15:24 Yes. Yes.
Margaret 15:26 Okay. Let's get both your reasons. Brooke why no Dracula becoming? This is what people tune in for. This is about what This Month in the Apocalypse is about.
Brooke 15:36 Because I have seen and read every vampire novel, story, romance, you know, whatever. There's one for every generation and I've read them all. And it never goes well. It just never goes well. There's no...There's no history of it going well for Dracula.
Margaret 15:54 That's true.
Brooke 15:55 So, that doesn't seem like a good choice.
Margaret 15:58 Into it.
Brooke 15:59 I don't like living enough as it is that I don't want to do it extra long. I look forward to dying someday. Yes. I don't want to not die. I want to get off this fucking planet.
Margaret 16:15 Alright, Inmn what do you got? Why are you becoming a Dracula?
Inmn 16:19 Despite my belief that it actually is like an interesting thing to know that we are going to die, which I mean, I could still die as Dracula, can absolutely still die as Dracula. I think the like middle school version of Inmn that was and is still obsessed with like different fantasy worlds would never forgive myself if I passed up the opportunity to become a Dracula.
Margaret 16:53 That is fair.
Inmn 16:54 Yeah, I'm holding myself to the standard of 12 year old Inmn. That is the only standard that matters.
Margaret 17:01 I make decisions like that. I think that's a reasonable...like when you're like, "Do you want to do something or not do something?" and be like, "What would 12 year old me think?"
Brooke 17:09 I think 12 year old may be crying in her bedroom about, you know, whatever cute boy won't talk to her. So, she shouldn't get a say in my life.
Margaret 17:18 Yeah, okay, fair. Okay, I would become a vampire, or a Dracula as it's fun to call them, even though I'm incredibly squeamish, I'm vegan, I don't like blood, I don't like meat, I would hate to kill someone, but I feel like it would be like, it's just like, I feel like I owe it. It's like, like, who am I to turn down superpowers? Like, imagine what you could do if you were an immortal until proven otherwise by the sun or a stake?
Brooke 17:57 Could you solve the current conflict in the Sudan?
Margaret 18:01 I don't know. Would direct application of violence successfully solve that problem? And I don't know the answer.
Brooke 18:08 What about global warming?
Margaret 18:11 I respectfully declined to answer the question about whether direct application of violence would be useful in solving global warming.
Brooke 18:19 Would your powers help us with the government debt default problem?
Margaret 18:24 Oh, I could help with the government problem.
Brooke 18:28 Yeah, your superpowers could do something about that?
Margaret 18:30 Yeah. Because, imagine antifa super soldiers if everyone was like, 15 times stronger, immune to almost all damage, can only come out at night [inflected to be a disadvantage], and have to have a mutual aid blood bank. But I bet there would be volunteers, you know.
Brooke 18:51 You don't know for sure that that's what would happen if you become a Dracula because not all Dracula mythology has them getting superpowers other than just like living forever.
Margaret 19:04 Yeah?
Brooke 19:04 They might not be extra strong or fast or...
Margaret 19:08 Oh, they're like almost always like...but, you know, and if you're rolling the dice, you might be able to turn into a bunch of bats. If you could turn into mist...If I could turn into mist I like would volunteer to be tried for every crime that an anarchist does. "It was me. Oh, no." And then I turned into mist and I leave the prison. You know? Until they figure out I'm a vampire. And then they hit me with the sun. But...there's like some holes in this plan.
Brooke 19:36 Some? Some? Okay.
Margaret 19:38 Yeah, enough that bats can fit through.
Inmn 19:44 There are wilder concepts, you know, wilder things have happened in history than you becoming a Dracula.
Brooke 19:54 Like the Rutgers University strike that happened last month. That kind of wild thing?
Margaret 19:58 Is that what we're switching into? Is this a transition?
Brooke 20:00 You see how desperately I'm trying to divert to what we're going to be talking about.
Margaret 20:05 All right, let's go. Let's go. What do you got? What happened this month in the apocalypse? [last word said with an eerie reverb voice]
Brooke 20:11 Well, strikes being good things, the staff at Rutgers University went on strike for a grand total of five whole days in April. They did a pretty good job of planning it in secrecy, though, because everyone was super surprised when they sent out the email on April 9th in the evening, like, "Hey, we're going on strike tomorrow." And then suddenly, they were on strike. And everyone's like, "Wait, what the fuck?" So. It's very similar to what was going on with...whichever one of the Cali...UCLA? Whichever one of the California universities was doing strike stuff recently too, arguing for better pay and better treatment of graduate students and such.
Margaret 20:55 How did the Rutgers one end up?
Brooke 20:58 They have a tentative agreement.
Margaret 21:00 Fuck yeah.
Brooke 21:00 They still haven't finalized contracts, but it was impactful enough that it got the necessary people to come back to the negotiating table and, you know, get some progress towards their goals there.
Margaret 21:14 Fuck yeah.
Brooke 21:15 Yeah. Yay, Strikes,
Inmn 21:17 Yay, strikes,
Brooke 21:19 There was some other strike that's going on, or maybe going on soon, but I can't remember where or what it is, other than President Biden wouldn't comment on it.
Margaret 21:30 He's like, he's trying so hard to be the pro-labor President as he continues to do all kinds of anti-labor shit.
Brooke 21:35 Right? Fuckface. Yeah. Speaking of the government and how much it sucks, we're at risk of defaulting on our debt here in the US, again, which is a fun thing they like to battle every once in a while.
Margaret 21:54 Okay, so this is such an abstract thing that people keep talking about it and it's something that means nothing to me.
Brooke 22:01 Yeah.
Margaret 22:01 What does it mean? Not because it doesn't mean anything, but because the way it's presented just like, I don't get it.
Brooke 22:08 Well, so in order to prop up our whole fake monetary system that we've created, the government sometimes makes itself have to follow some rules so that we all...the rest of us still believe in it, too. And it likes to flirt with not following those rules in order to have drama that we can all talk about. That's what's going on. That's all you need to know,
Margaret 22:34 Well, what happens if they default? If they default do I lose? Like, like, what happens?
Brooke 22:40 Well, technically, then the government doesn't have money to pay for things like sending out welfare checks, or paychecks for federal workers, or funding to states for various programs that the federal government funds, paying for the military. Basically, all the things that the federal government pays for.
Margaret 23:04 So like, lots of bad and one good.
Brooke 23:07 Yeah, kind of.
Margaret 23:08 Well, from our point of view
Brooke 23:10 Internationally, you know, people who've invested who own government bonds, for instance, basically if you've loaned money to the federal government, you'd be like, "You're not gonna you're not gonna pay back the money that you owe us? Fuck you." and can affect the value of the dollar and international trade, and blah, blah, blah. The reason I'm being so whatever about it is because the government's not going to default on its debt. It just never...it's not that it's never has, it has four times in history, but it's just it could be potentially so disastrous to the economy and to our fake belief or belief in the fakeness of the monetary system that the government, just they're not gonna let it happen. Just want to make news.
Inmn 24:06 I hate that my brain can only think about things in terms of fantasy novels. But is this similar to like in Game of Thrones when they have to borrow money from the Lannisters? And the Lannisters are like "Nah, we're not giving you any more money." and then they try to get it from a bank and the banks like "Y'all are really broke. We're not going to give you any money." And...
Brooke 24:33 That's actually a really good analogy for what's going on because yeah, like the US in order to fund all the shit we do has borrowed money from, you know, other governments, other people outside the country, like, you know, we talk about how you can just print money, you can just make up money, we just say what it's worth, but the only reason that whole system, the monetary system, works is because we all agree to believe in it. And if the government breaks its own rules about the monetary system, the whole belief system can start to unravel.
Inmn 25:15 I see. What is it that kind of keeps? Like, is it just the belief in that that keeps that? Like, what? What keeps the cycle functioning?
Brooke 25:27 The monetary cycle?
Inmn 25:30 Yeah. It's something I've always been curious about, like, if the US is so in debt then like, why is the US a global economic power still?
Margaret 25:41 Well, what's wild is that it's because it's so in debt is how it's a global economic power. There's like weird ways of having people--I'm not going to do this justice and maybe Brooke knows it better--but I'm just, I read "Debt" once by David Graeber and now I'm smart about money because I don't remember anything--but literally, at least that book talks about the fact that if you're the hegemonic power, loaning money to people makes them invested in your success or failure. They don't want you to fail because if you default on a loan, they're never seen that money back. It's like actually a weird power play for the United States to have a debt like that. And it's like the King used to loan money or borrow money from people all the time in a way that there's like a question mark profit that I don't quite get grasp in there.
Brooke 26:30 Yeah, people will talk about, especially like Republican side of conversation, will talk about how we're heavily in debt to China, like the Chinese government has bought a lot of US Treasury bonds, basically loaned us a whole bunch of money, if you will. They'll say "Oh, well, you know, they can just call in their debt and fuck us up anytime they want to." But that would fuck them up too because they've loaned out all of this money and capital. And if they're just like, "Hey, you need to give it back." when they know, we can't pay it back then that's just gonna send the whole system into chaos, which will echo back to them and just fuck up the whole global economy. If that makes sense?
Margaret 27:13 Yeah. Okay, so what else we got? We got default.
Brooke 27:18 Well, the other thing I wanted to say about the default is it is different from--because there's another debate that crops up pretty often--and it's about government shutdowns and it's easy to get the two conflated, but they're actually about different things. The debt ceiling one that's being talked about right now is about 'can the government borrow more money.' Basically, it's going to sell more treasury bonds that were bought by China or, you know, whatever other nations in order to bring money into the US so the US can pay for things. That's the, that's the debt ceiling. That literally like...it's like, if you want to go to your credit card and get a higher spending limit on your credit card. That's what they're doing there. The other thing is the government shutdowns because of budgetary debates. So, the government has to create a budget for itself. And if it can't agree on that budget by a certain deadline then it doesn't know how much it is or isn't allowed to spend on things. And the response to that is that the whole government shuts down, the federal government, because they don't know how much they're allowed to spend on things even though there's money there. So, they're two, the debt ceiling is one thing that's going on right now and then government shutdowns are another thing that happens for different reason. They're all money related, but they're actually quite different.
Inmn 28:36 I see.
Brooke 28:38 Turning towards international news, I suppose y'all might have heard about this, but conflict is broken out in Sudan earlier in April, was like the mid month. I wanna say was like the 15th or so. Which, Sudan has a really long history of violence and unsteadiness as a country, a lot of conflict. It's been ruled by an autocrat for a long time. And that person was overthrown a few years ago around 2020 or either a little before or a little after. I can't quite remember. So, they've been in the process of trying to form a democratic government in the last few years since that autocratic leader was overthrown, but they haven't got there. And it's been a very tense place. And then, just a couple weeks ago the army and a paramilitary force started fighting in the Capitol, and I think a few hundred people have died already, and Western countries that have workers there, principally the US and the UK, have started to try to evacuate people who were there. They had a really short ceasefire over this last weekend in order for the Western governments to try and get their people out of the country, but it's, you know, looking to be another refugee crisis. People are are starting to pack up and migrate. And the fighting looks like it could get much worse. And it's also another one of those places in the world where it's kind of a proxy fight because Russia has a lot of interest in Sudan and what's going on in that region, and the US has shown a lot of interest, too. And so, you know, some of our old tensions between our countries are flaring up. Yes, Margaret?
Margaret 30:33 So, okay, a couple questions about that. I'm really curious about it. I've been following it a little bit. And I've only been able to kind of get a little bit of a picture. There's a...Okay, so I believe that the militia that is currently trying to take power is the Rapid Support Forces...
Margaret 30:52 Versus the existing government. And, do you know which side the US and Russia are each supporting?
Brooke 30:52 Yeah.
Brooke 31:01 I was not clear on that as I was reading through it. It sounded like the military, some of the military leaders, there's a general in particular, who's trying to become a politician and then possibly reelected as president, which we all know how that goes when the military then takes the power, which seems more like the thing that Russia would support versus the other forces being more in favor of democratic institutions.
Margaret 31:30 I know there's a there's a group called the Sudanese Anarchists Gathering. There's a group of anarchists who organize there that have been...I've been reading their dispatches through "Organise Magazine," which is spelled incorrectly. They use an S because they're British.
Brooke 31:46
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
James teaches Margaret about sourdough bread. He provides specific instructions on how to start a sourdough starter, keep it alive, and how to then turn the starter into tasty bread. Margaret and James also discuss the intricacies of British vs American English and Margaret learns about a magical Belgian spoon.
James Stout (He/Him) can be found on Twitter @JamesStout or on the podcast It Could Happen Here. James has a book out called "The Popular Front and the Barcelona 1936 Popular Olympics." You can find it here.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: James on Sourdough
Margaret 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host Margaret killjoy, and this week we're talking about that thing you're supposed to conquer: bread. We're talking about bread. Specifically, we're talking about sourdough. And we're talking with James Stout about sourdough. And that's what we're going to talk about. It's gonna be really exciting. I didn't make that sound exciting, but it is. Bread, and baking, and all that shit, something we haven't really covered on here before. And, it's something that I'm really curious about. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts, and here's a jingle from another show on the network. [Hums a nondescript "jingle" melody]
Margaret 01:36 And we're back. So James, if you would be so kind as to introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then kind of a little bit of your background with I guess, in this case, like bread or preparedness or stuff like that?
James 01:49 Yeah, totally. So I'm James. He/him for me. I have my background for this....let me think...I grew up in the countryside. So, I grew up like with animals around, with growing a lot of our own food too, just because that's the way we did stuff. And I think I moved to America in 2008. And without condescending too much, your bread is shit. And so, I was appalled by it. And I've been making my own on and off when I've been home long enough to do it ever since, I guess. And now I still live in the United States in San Diego. And I try and have a little bit of the, like the that sort of, I guess, like preparedness/countryside kind of life. Like, we have we have backyard chickens, and we bake our own bread, and we grow a lot of food too. So, I still try and keep up with all that stuff.
Margaret 02:41 And that's inside the city?
James 02:43 Yeah, we're not like...I don't want to make it out like we're in a high rise. I have a tiny yard. And then we've, I guess we've liberated the area in between the pavement and the road. I don't know what that area is called.
Margaret 02:58 A median.
James 02:59 A median. Yeah, it's been...because that's, that's like...
Margaret 03:02 Well a medians in the middle of the road. [Sounds unsure] Huh?
James 03:04 Yeah.
Margaret 03:05 I don't know. I should know.
James 03:07 Yeah, you know what I mean, that area that's like liminally public/private. And public, in the sense of owned by the city council, and you can do fuck all with it. Which, you know, isn't great. So, I obtained some lumber and I've tried to put planters out there as well.
Margaret 03:24 Oh, nice. What do you grow up?
James 03:25 Yeah, So I grow a number of things. I get them from...We actually had a very nice older guy...the other day and an older couple had left their keys in their car. And so I took the keys and put them in the house and left them a note saying, you know, "Come get them." And then they did, and they gave us a voucher when they came and got them, they gave us a voucher for a garden center. So, I'm going to restock my vegetables. But right now I think I've got kale. I like to go...so I do a lot of work in Tucson with a group of indigenous people there, and I like to buy indigenous plants. So there are a couple of nurseries in Tucson and go to. So, I think we have wolfberry. We have agave. We have golden currants. We have carrots. We have kale, Thai chilies, and beetroot.
Margaret 04:15 So this is a terrible...I haven't eaten dinner yet. This all sounds very good.
James 04:22 Yeah, this is...You're gonna be ruined when I bust out my bread from the oven.
Margaret 04:28 I mean, honestly, like bread is...I love bread. I understand that everyone has different body types and different diets. I'm so grateful. I'm not gluten free.
James 04:42 Yeah.
Margaret 04:43 I love gluten
James 04:45 Gluten is my guide star. If someone...I have diabetes, right? And it's like, I think there's a 10% coincidence of autoimmune diabetes and celiac, and I spent some time volunteering with diabetes education and various kinds of places and just...I remember like staying with some folks--and we all have diabetes, so it's fine--I was like, "Fuck, you have celiac as well? That sucks." Like, yeah, it must be profoundly difficult for people, and I'm sorry for them. There are ways to make your own--I think Bob's Red Mill has a pretty good celiac or gluten free blend that you could probably use with a sourdough starter. Certainly, if you fed that starter that flour over time and sort of messed around with your recipe you could probably get something going there. But it's not something I've spent a lot of time with. Fortunately, I'm blessed to be able to digest gluten.
Margaret 05:37 So, what is sourdough? Okay, I mean, I sort of know, but I feel like this is a good starting point, right?
James 05:45 Yeah. So, it's spontaneous fermentation bread, right? I guess...Like these days, people might be more familiar with like spontaneous fermentation beer like lambics and stuff.
Margaret 05:55 No, I don't actually know what spontaneous fermentation means.
James 05:58 Okay, so it's when you're capturing wild yeast--and capturing as a strong word--you're encouraging wild yeast from the atmosphere to come and live in a certain place. And then you're using them to ferment you're bread, or your beer, or what have you.
Margaret 06:11 Okay, so rather than going and getting yeast you're counting on...This is the way that you make alcohol in prison, right?
James 06:18 Yes, yeah. So I'm told. I'm sure. I mean I don't have firsthand experience with it. But yes, it is. And it's a way like ancient Belgian monks would make their beer, right? Like and you hear about back in the day, when people were making beer or making bread they had like a 'magic spoon' that they would stir it with, not knowing that the spoon was like, in fact, what carried the yeast growth from one batch to the next.
Margaret 06:44 Oh, that's cool!
James 06:46 Yeah. Yeah, it's fun, like a wooden spoon soaking in that yeasty mixture. So yeah, it's basically, your only ingredients for sourdough bread are salt, water, and flour.
Margaret 06:59 And so, and also a sourdough starter? But I guess you're saying that you don't start with that.
James 07:04 Well, yeah. The only things that you have to purchase or obtain, I guess. Yeah. So you need to get the sourdough starter, which we can get into, like, how do you encourage this bacteria to come and live with you. But you need to obtain it. And then, if you don't make it a favorable atmosphere for them to live, they will just die, right? So you have to keep them alive. And then once you've got those, then you can keep them in your fridge and feed them every week or two. And you can feed them less than that, actually. And yeah, then you've got everything you need, really. You want a big Dutch oven as well. That makes it a lot easier. But yeah, it's you could...
Margaret 07:41 Which is a big iron cooking pot with a lid.
James 07:44 Exactly. Like a casserole with a lid. Yeah. It's got to have a lid, but you can get those so cheaply now. Like I think I have a large one that is like 35 bucks a Target if you live near a target. I also kind of like to go to thrift stores and buy stuff like that. If I'm out and about I have a special one that I got that I use in like fires and cooking outside.
Margaret 08:08 So, why do people make sourdough bread instead of...what is regular [bread]? Because regular bread has yeast in it too, right?
James 08:14 Yeah, so it uses...what's the process called...there's a process through which it ferments more rapidly. It's like hyphenated. It's like two names, which...So like my bread--I'm making a batch of bread now, actually--and I started feeding the sourdough [starter] yesterday around around noon, and I build up my starter by adding flour and then I add that to my bulk ferment and then that bulk ferments and it will probably go in the oven tonight.
Margaret 08:14 Bog ferment? [Misunderstanding how James says "Bulk"]
James 08:33 Bulk. [Emphasizing the word.]
Margaret 08:38 Bulk. Sorry.
James 08:40 Yeah, like when you're bulking, you know? Yeah, so that...like it'll be the yeast, and the water, and the flour will be in contact for like 24 hours, right? So it's a much slower fermentation. And some people find this more digestively beneficial to them. Chorelywood process is what it's called when you speed ferment the bread. So, if you get your cheap bed, like Bimbo bread or whatever, and you sort of like...
Margaret 09:07 Bimbo bread?
James 09:08 Yeah, you don't have Bimbo bread?
Margaret 09:10 No, what's Bimbo bread?
James 09:12 You're from the east coast aren't you. Pan Bimbo? It's a type of bread. It's a little bear thing. I think maybe it's Mexican in origin and it's more in Latino communities or Latinx communities. But yeah. That...if you get your crappy bread.. See I don't know the American brands because I don't buy them, but Bimbo won. It just this sticks out. It sticks out in my mind.
Margaret 09:36 Okay, the cliche crappy bread that I don't know anyone who eats is Wonder Bread.
James 09:40 Yeah, Wonder Bread. Yeah. They sponsored a cycling team once. It was was very funny.
Margaret 09:46 That's funny.
James 09:47 Yeah, it's probably...That kind of bread is great to eat when you're like doing intense exercise because it just...[incomprehensible retort]
Margaret 09:48 I guess okay...Yeah, it just becomes sugar right away.
James 09:47 When I was racing in France, we had these things called quioche de posh, which is like pocket brioche, like the shittiest tier of brioche imaginable.
Margaret 09:48 I don't know what brioche is.
James 09:48 Okay, brioche like an enriched bread...ah, pretending it's a like anarchist's poor [undecipherable], which like I'm not judging anyone, but it's a like enriched bread. It's a milk bread. Like a sweet bread.
Margaret 10:09 Okay, I can't imagine this object.
James 10:22 it's just like this big, which is very useful in an audio medium. Yeah, I want to say it's the size of like half a cell phone or mobile phone and...Or a pocket knife, a pocket knife is a good analogy. It's about as big as a pocket knife. And then it's like injection filled with Nutella. It takes like to chews and it just it just goes to a goo.
Margaret 10:51 Oh, that sounds really nice actually.
James 10:52 Yeah, it's great. You need that while you're riding over mountain France or whatever. So like, cheap bread kind of does that, right? Or like sort of mass produce bread very quickly revert to this kind of pasty thing. Whereas, sourdough bread has a much better structure. And at least like I found it to be it doesn't cause any digestion issues for me. Because it ferments for longer, maybe it breaks down some that stuff a bit more easily. Some people will tell you it's more nutritious. I think that largely depends on the flour use and the ingredients you put in it. You can put other stuff in it like fruit or nuts, right. But, I like it because it's a lot more like...I can't imagine in any like...if you're looking at living more sustainably living more independently from capitalism, like, it's possible that you could grow your own grains and grind your own grains. People have done that for a while. Water would be an issue where I live in Southern California. But you know, if you have access...if you don't have access to water you're fucked anyway.
Margaret 11:55 Yeah, you have bigger problems than lack of bread.
James 11:58 Yeah. So, it's very sustainable in that sense, right. And I think it just tastes better. And I like making my own stuff like. I have all kinds of things that are...Literally before we spoke, I found a knife on the road, and I was regrinding so I can use it. You know, I like to grow stuff. I like to make stuff. So, it appeals to that side of me too. Yeah.
Margaret 12:19 Well, that's good too. Because I feel like there's often this weird gender division within DIY.
James 12:25 Yeah, it's strange.
Margaret 12:27 Yeah. Like grinding your own knife is allowed to one class of people. But, then gardening is allowed to a different one. You know? That's it.
James 12:36 Yeah. I think that's kind of bullshit. Like, you had a tweet today about how like trans ladies are becoming associated with firearms ownership now. Yeah, which I think it's great. Maybe cis men could be associated with doing some domestic labor as well.
Margaret 12:50 That would be...you know, the world would work a little better if people were like, "Oh, I don't know. He's just gonna go into the kitchen and do all the dishes." It's like, not even...It's like, I'd make sure I do that before he comes over. Because otherwise he's going to spend the whole party doing the dishes.
James 13:03 Yeah, ‘cause he's naturally inclined. Yeah.
Margaret 13:07 It's the upper body strength. It really helps get into the....
James 13:10 Yeah. The broad pecs really help get into the lasagna dish. Yeah, they were just made that way. Why are the hands so big? So they can cover a whole dinner plate.
Margaret 13:21 Exactly.
James 13:22 Yeah. You can't argue with science.
Margaret 13:27 Okay, so let's say I want to make sourdough, which I do. And I don't know anything about it. Which I don't. How do I make sourdough? I get flour.
James 13:39 Yeah.
Margaret 13:39 I get water. Did you say sugar? Did I make that up?
James 13:42 No, no, you don't need sugar.
Margaret 13:44 Salt?
James 13:44 Yeah, you do need a bit of salt. So, let's say you're about starting.
Margaret 13:50 Oh, and dutch oven.
James 13:52 Yeah, yeah. You're one of the 500 people who texted me this in like March 20th, 2020. It caused me to have a "copy-paste-er" on my phone. So what you would do is you would go out...and I'd say like, if you have all the flours...like say you have a good Co-op or nice supermarket available to you. I would suggest buying to start off with, some rye flour, whole grain rye flour, some bread flour. King Arthur is a good brand. Bob's Red Mill is a good brand. Some supermarkets have their own bread flour. It's just gonna have a little more protein, which is a little more gluten, which will give the bread better structure. And I like to have some all purpose flour as well because it's cheaper. So, like for when I'm just feeding my starter and I'm gonna dump it. If I'm gonna dump it I don't need it to be anything fancy, right? But rye flour is great. Yeasts love rye flour. So, what I start out with is like a jar, a glass jar, preferably you don't want a plastic one.
Margaret 14:48 Okay, like a mason jar.
James 14:50 Yeah. So a mason jar is great. And you want to be able to....flies, like all the little buggy insects love a sourdough starter. Like, I'll use it to catch them when they're becoming a problem that. But, you don't want them in it. So, you're want to be able to put like a little cheese cloth or something over the top of it. Okay, so mason jar is great, because you can use that sealing ring.
Margaret 15:11 Yeah, without anything in the middle. Yeah.
James 15:14 Yeah. But you do want to let it breathe. You don't want to close the lid, because then you'll get anaerobic fermentation. So, we're going to express everything that we do in terms of percentages of the weight of the flour. So, we're going to start out with 100% hydration. So that means equal amounts of water and flour. And sometimes I read that you shouldn't use tap water, but I think those people are just kind of getting a bit too namby pamby about things. Like it's fine. It's always been fine for me. If you want to use bottled water, if you have a well, more power to you, but I've used tap water and like our tap water is dogshit in San Diego, and it's been fine.
Margaret 15:52 Well, I have a well, so....although, I soften the water. So I don't know if that makes it better or worse.
James 15:58 Probably better. Ours very hard. It's certainly better a for your other domestic appliances.
Margaret 16:02 Yeah, that's why. Most complicated plumbing job I've set up.
James 16:08 Yeah, and it's worth it, though. If you live in a hard water area, and you want an espresso machine, you can normally find one that people think is broken and if you decalcify it it's normally fine. That's a little pro tip. Used to want to have no money. I'd buy them yard sales and fix them and sell them on espresso boards.
Margaret 16:28 You've had a lot of jobs.
James 16:30 Yeah, a great side hustle. Yeah, didn't have a lot of money so had to have a lot of jobs. So yeah, what we're going to start out doing is we're going to do 100% hydration, right?
Margaret 16:40 Okay, 1:1 water and flour.
James 16:42 Yes, one to one water and flour. So let's say we're going to do 100 grams of each. It's...you can work in American Standards units, if you really must, but it's so much easier to do percentages, etc, in grams. So, I would just just start there. And then after a day, we're going to dump half of that, and feed it again. Now the stuff that you dump, you can either use to start another starter and give that to a friend or have a backup starter. Or I like to keep it and there are recipes for like making crackers out of it and that kind of thing. And you can do other stuff with it.
Margaret 17:14 Wait. So I'm just putting...I'm putting some some flour and some water in a jar with some cheese cloth over it, leaving it, and then throwing half of it out?
James 17:23 And then feeding it again.
Margaret 17:25 By adding more of everything?
James 17:27 More of the flour and the water. So another 100 grams flour, 100 grams of water, and then you're going to dump half and feed again the next day. And the reason you're doing that is to get rid of some of the like metabolites and some of the flour that's been digested. And, you want to keep giving it fresh food and that will encourage the yeast to grow. And so once that starts to fizz and bubble, and you'll kind of see little bubbles and you'll...first it'll smell pretty bad, and then after four or five days normally it starts to smell pretty good. It's kind of got a sweet kind of...people say a green apple smells sometimes.
Margaret 18:01 This just seems like magic. You're not adding anything but flour and water to this jar and it's bubbling.
James 18:07 Yes, it is. I think...I forget...One of the places that used to say like that yeast was proof of God or something that like....Belgian monks used to make beer this way, right? And they convinced themselves it was either their magic spoon or like God's benevolent love. It's not.
Margaret 18:22 I mean, both of those things seem just as realistic as the little tiny things in the air that you can't see are eating the food.
James 18:33 Yes, yeah, yeah. Invisible flour eaters. Another way to do it is if you can get nonsulfated dried fruits...so you can...You know when you get the dried apricot and they're brown not orange and they taste better? Those are unsulfated. You can also leave those in a jar. Just close the jar. Leave them in a jar with water and close the jar and after a few days it will start fizzing.
Margaret 18:55 Close the jar like cheese cloth? Or like 'close it' close it?
James 18:59 Lid it. Lid on. Like screw on the lid. And then after a few days, you'll see that water start fizzing. And that's what's happening there. That's the yeast coming off the skin of the fruit. And then you can use that water to make your starter, right. So mix that with flour and then feed it just like you would before. You can kind of combine these two processes, right. You can do the fruit one first and then do that 100% feed it up. And then after a while that starch is going to start bubbling. This is why you want to use a clear glass jar because you'll see it growing, right. You'll see the bubbles all the way up and you'll see that like oh yeah, this is this is fermenting now. That's what's happening. You can even if you want to you can like Sharpie on the side of the jar, you know, when you feed it and then see if it goes up. And the speed at which it will double in size depends on the temperature where you live, right, and the temperature of the starter itself. So, your that's what you're looking for. You're looking for it to double in size about every eight hours. And that's when you know you've got a good fast smoothing starter.
Margaret 20:02 Okay, this totally real thing that happens. I know you're explaining this to me, but in my head this is not...when I go try this later nothing's gonna happen that's how I feel.
James 20:11 It will blow your mind. It is it's so cool
Margaret 20:15 I'm gonna come back and tell you that I believe in a Belgian God.
James 20:19 Yeah, you just become a monk in like West Flanders. Yeah, yeah.
Margaret 20:25 Okay. Is this the same yeast that is making that...Is this also alcohol?
James 20:33 Yes, it's the same. What? Lactobacillus? Fuck, I used to know what they were called in Latin but I don't anymore, but yes Saccharomyces, I think.
Margaret 20:43 Magic sky yeast.
James 20:44 Yeah, magic sky yeast. Yes, it is. Yeah, it's the same stuff. Brewers yeast, right when you buy it...So it's just...
Margaret 20:54 When I buy it it I can see it. But in the air is just exists?
James 20:59 Yeah, it's just floating around.
Margaret 21:02 All right.
James 21:04 Okay, so the yeast have come to live with you in this jar, right? And they are thriving, and you're feeding them. So now we want to take that to where we can bake from it. So, what we do is we take from us starter and we grab half of it, right? So half of...
Margaret 21:19 Half a mason jar?
James 21:20 Whatever...400 grams. Yeah, it would be the whole mason jar. But we let's say because we're dumping half and feeding every day, right? So we have that amount that we have, we're gonna split it in half.
Margaret 21:31 How many days before it's ready.
James 21:34 It kind of depends on the temperature. It will ferment faster in a high temperature. It depends on the yeasts that are available in your area, right. So, if I gave you a sourdough starter today and you took it to where you live, right. I sent it to you in the mail, and you started feeding it, it will become different over time because of the yeast in your area as opposed my area.
Margaret 21:52 But, I don't need to start from one that you sent to me.
James 21:55 No, you can start from from one that you made yourself. you captured yourself. Right? So, that will probably take five or six days, maybe maybe a week. Some people like to feed it was fruit juice instead of water? I don't know if that helps. Some people put apple peels in the water because there's yeast on the skin. Right. So, let's say you spend the better part of a week...and it's very minimal effort, right, it's about five minutes of your day. And you do that, and you start to see it bubbling up, right, you start seeing in the jar it's bubbling up, okay. Now you could. So you're going to take half of that, dump it in a bowl, and you're going to add 100 grams of flour and 80 grams of water, right? So you're at 80% hydration now. And then the other half that's still in the mason jar, you're going to feed that as you normally would, right, 100, 100.
Margaret 22:46 Just to keep it going?
James 22:47 To keep it going. Yeah. And then you'll let that sit...I don't know, sometimes I let it sit for four hours. You don't want to let it sit for the full eight hours, because then it would have consumed all the food and it will want feeding again. So let it sit for an hour or two and then I seal it in the mason jar or with a jam jar and I pop that in the fridge. So, that slows down the fermentation. So that now...that doesn't need that....That's what we call your storage starter. And that doesn't need feeding for about a week or two. So basically, if you feed it every time you bake you're going to be okay. Okay, so now we've got this other bowl, right, which has got 100 grams of flour and 80 grams of water in your starter. We're going to mix that up, leave it for eight hours. And at this point, we can transition from using the rye flour to using our all purpose flour.
Margaret 23:33 Okay, so the rye flour is just to make the starter? We're not making rye bread.
James 23:38 No, well, you can, or if your stater ever gets a bit sluggish, and it's not really fermenting the rye flour will spruce...because rye flour is lower protein, right, lower gluten, it doesn't make as good of bread because gluten is what gives the bread the structure. But the protein is not really digested by the yeast, right? That's why it remains in the bread. So, if we're giving it a flour which is lower protein, there's more of the other stuff that yeast want, and that's where they like the rye flour. But that's also why you can't make your whole bread out of rye flour, or it won't be too good if you do. So. Yeah, at this point, once we've captured our starter, I would start transitioning to the AP for the two feedings that we're going to do to build up...
Margaret 24:21 AP is all purpose?
James 24:22 All purpose. Yeah, sorry, I'm used to using baker slang. It's how you can tell I'm like down with the kids. So you've moved to your like--what we're doing now is called building a levain. It's a French word. And we're going to do two feedings of that, right? So, we're going to do eight hours spaced apart more or less. We're going to do 100 grams of water, 80 grams all purpose...Sorry, 100 grams of all purpose flour, 80 grams of water. And again, what we're looking for is bubbling up, right. So, you can also do this in glass if you want and you're looking for it to double in size and then you feed it again. But like, it doesn't have to exactly double in size, right? Like I don't really like measure shit. I do weigh stuff, but other than that I kind of...so it's March here. It's pretty cold for San Diego. Like, it'll be in the 40s at night and the 50s in a day. And so it takes a lot longer for my bread to bake now. In the summer, it's just like whipping ass. Like the whole thing is done in like, you know, from getting out the fridge to being done in less than 12 hours. But, it's double that in the winter.
Margaret 25:31 Is this making dough?
James 25:33 What we're now doing is making a large kind of yeast inoculated...a large yeast culture that we're about to put into the dough. So, the reason we're using AP here is because the yeast will consume more of it, right? And it's...So, then we do that twice, right, we do that feeding twice, which is...so 80% hydration feeding twice. Then, we're going to make the dough itself. I've tried to like refine my process to make it as low stress as possible. And it makes really good bread and it takes not very much time. So, I like to bake with 1500 grams of flour, right? So that's...500 grams of flour is is a good sized loaf, right?
Margaret 26:16 So you make three loaves at a time? Okay,
James 26:19 Yeah, I make three loaves. I have tried to make one giant choad loaf, but it just sort of...What happens is it will blow the top off your Dutch oven. You'll get like a mushroom. What I do is, I measure up my water first. And if it's cold, I'll use hot water, and if it's hot, I use room temperature water, right. So, right now I run the hot tap a little bit. And then I'm doing the same thing I'm doing 80% hydration, right. So for that, because I'm doing 1500 grams of flour. I want 1200 grams of water.
Margaret 26:46 It's so interesting because I usually think of things not in terms of...I don't usually think...I'm not much of a baker, but I don't think of things in terms of the weight of them. I think in terms of the volume of them
James 26:55 Weight is so much preferable to volume, like
Margaret 26:58 Yeah, no, I believe you. I'm not much of a baker.
James 27:02 Yeah, people say that cooking is an art and baking in science. But, I think sourdough was like a vibe...Like once you...once you get it down and you're vibing on the same level as your sourdough starter...
Margaret 27:14 Okay, because the other cliche there is, is if you can...if you can bake a cake, you can make a bomb. It's the other cliche.
James 27:24 I would not trust this method for bomb making.
Margaret 27:27 Yeah, don't vibe with that.
James 27:28 Yeah, I'm reminded of...my colleague Robert Evans and I were doing an interview with some some folks who are part of the resistance in Myanmar. They will bomb makers, and one of them's like, "Yeah, man, unfortunately, my friend lost his hand." And we're all sitting around and I know what's coming next, and Robert knows what's coming next, and the guy knows he's gonna have to say it next, and he was like, "We really shouldn't have been smoking, dude."
Margaret 27:56
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Margaret and Eric discuss the ins and outs of prepping from a more traditional perspective than usual. They go over the basic tenets of preparedness, outline some easy and manageable ways to start prepping, find new and fun ways to laugh at traditional bunker mentalities, and discover that community is once again the best resource anyone can hope for.
Eric Shonkwiler (he/him) is the author of the newsletter When/If: A Leftist Guide to Prepare for a Changing World. He can be found at https://when-if.ghost.io/ where you can sign up for his newsletter. You can also find Eric on Twitter @eshonkwiler
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Margaret 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what probably feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. And this week I'm really excited about this week. I've been hoping to do an episode...this particular episode for a while. This week, we're going to be talking about talking about prepping. And we're going to be talking about...well, I'm going to be talking to someone who writes the best newsletter I'm aware of for individual community preparedness, which is called When/If. And it's written by Eric Shonkwiler. And I'm really excited about this conversation. But first, I'm really excited to tell you that we're a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here is a jingle from another show on the network.
Margaret 01:34 Okay, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then kind of just a little bit about When/If, you know, the reason that I've brought you on here to talk.
Eric 01:45 Hi, I'm Eric ShonkWiler My pronouns are he/him. When/If is a newsletter on preparedness and collapse from a leftist perspective. I set out a couple of years ago to try to try to create some content around preparedness and prepping that was more accessible for folks on the left handed side of the political spectrum.
Margaret 02:13 Yeah, and just to...we'll ask you to shout it out at the end too, but how can people get this fine newsletter?
Eric 02:19 It might be easier to find me. My name is Eric Shonkwiler, a little bit difficult to spell. The newsletter itself is on ghost.io. Search "When/If." That's probably the best way to find it. It's a bit of a goofy address.
Margaret 02:36 Yeah, it's hard to...every now and then I've tried to Google "When/If" and then I realize that's not going to work.
Eric 02:43 But there are only two Eric Shonkwilers on the planet. So if you can remember my last name, you can probably find me.
Margaret 02:49 Whoa. Who's the other one?
Eric 02:52 Some kid in New Mexico.
Margaret 02:53 All right. All right. I'm the only Margaret Killjoy I'm aware of. And whenever that changes, I'm going to be really sad. So I don't know...Were you like sad when you found out you weren't the only Eric Shonkwiler
Eric 03:05 It was super weird. It turned out that for a little while we lived in the same town. I've lived all around the country.
Margaret 03:14 Are y'all related?
Eric 03:14 I don't...Like probably not really. I wasn't born and raised in New Mexico. It's just one of my favorite places to be and I was living out there working. And I I think I was looking myself up for something and found them on like a, you know, like a high school Spelling Bee sort of an article or something like that, you know, and found out he lived in the same town at the same time that I did. Super weird. Not a very big town. Very strange.
Margaret 03:44 I kind of like that. That's kind of weird. Maybe you just....
Eric 03:48 Shout out to the other Eric Shonkwiler.
Margaret 03:50 Yeah, totally. Okay, so. So you started this this newsletter and I kind of wanted to, you know...What do you cover in this newsletter? Right? What kind of stuff are you talking about?
Eric 04:04 Everything. I focus on kind of, in my head, the big three, which is climate change, fascism, and the ignorance of the government/police brutality, kind of the three fronts, as I see it, that are going to be causing problems for folks in the future.
Margaret 04:04 Isn't it kind of funny that--to me, I agree. These are, you know, probably the three big categories of things and then all three of them are ignored by right wing preparedness.
Eric 04:46 Yeah.
Margaret 04:47 Not always. Right? I mean, they claim there's a rise in fascism, but they claim it from a really odd perspective, not the people walking around with Nazi flags, but the people walking around with anti Nazi flags. And then Climate change. I feel like preparedness places used to talk about climate change. And then...I don't know if you experienced this? Did they just stop talking about it at some point when it became culture war or something like?
Eric 05:13 I haven't seen a whole lot about climate change addressed in particular. They will just sort of ally it and talk about weather preparedness. But at the same time, I'm doing a little bit of research because I'm trying to turn When/If into a book. And so I'm looking at comparable titles. And one of the comps that I looked at went immediately out of the gate in the first few pages. It talked about the dangers of hurricanes and then under a discrete subheading: typhoons. And I just wanted to tell the author, who's my friend, "Those are the same thing."
Margaret 05:57 Yeah, I was just thinking that.
Eric 05:58 Just in a different hemisphere. Like, it's just in a different ocean you. Like you're telling someone to prepare for the same thing twice but differently. Like the the instructions were a little bit different too. It was wild.
Margaret 06:13 They just googled "What to do with a typhoon" and wrote that down. Yeah. And they Googled "What to do in it?"
Eric 06:17 Yeah. And, and that's why I do what I do, so that there can be some actual help when it comes to emergencies like that. And you're not stuck getting your information from a guy who really wants you to buy a Faraday bag because the EMP is coming.
Margaret 06:17 Okay, so that's a really good segue into one of the main things I kind of wanted to talk about: one of the...I'm really excited to talk to someone who also sort of interacts in an intersection with a traditional prepping world, but then also cares about, you know, leftist prepping or community preparedness or whatever the hell we're going to call it because it seems like some of the information that's in traditional prepping is good, but we should talk about some of that like bullshit, like some of the nonsense that traditional preppers get wrong. Okay, so like Faraday bags, do you want to you want to myth bust the Faraday bag?
Eric 07:14 My biggest thing would be that we're not going to see the long heralded EMP blast. Like that's just not what's gonna come get us. I think that I think there is very limited utility to the idea of the Faraday bag, and it’s primarily in regards to protesting. Yeah, and it has much less utility than leaving your device at home. Yeah. So rather than buying a fancy bag or trying to guard your credit card chips from getting stolen at the grocery store, like I would just leave the things at home or turn them off. Keep them in your car if you're going to be someplace that you don't want to be linked to from a tower pin, you know? Yeah.
Margaret 08:16 Yeah, like people talk about EMPs as if they're like...the tactical EMP is right around the corner. And as a science fiction writer I appreciate it, but literally only because otherwise it's impossible to imagine how we're going to deal with like swarms of nano robots with facial recognition. You know? Like until we have the EMP shotgun we're just kind of like...or like EMP force fields or something.
Eric 08:41 I like the EMP much more all of a sudden.
Margaret 08:44 Yeah, no, it's...But as far as I'm--it's been a while since I've looked this up--but I believe EMP or electromagnetic pulse, people are worried this blast will destroy all electronic devices, all modern cars, everything with a computer, everything with a chip or whatever. There is some EMP hardened equipment out there. And then a Faraday cage is like something that protects certain types of radiation from reaching certain things and it also blocks communications. I'm under the impression that the only way that anything produces an EMP right now is nuclear blasts high in the atmosphere.
Eric 09:17 I think that's right. Yeah.
Margaret 09:19 So I guess if we get into a nuclear war some electronics might be messed up, but I kind of feel like overall we have bigger problems.
Eric 09:29 At that point, yeah. Yeah, we have a few few more things to worry about than the fact that you can't stream the latest season of whatever.
Margaret 09:41 Well, I think it gets into...I really like to use Faraday bags as the example, right? Because it's like, I worry about this a lot, right? Because--and I'm curious what your take is--I worry about being a fear monger professionally, right? I worry about like spreading worry. My goal is to spread calmness and preparedness and you know ways we can...Okay, I have a Go bag. So if there's a forest fire I know what I'm doing so now I don't have to worry about forest fire. But there is a version where you just worry about stuff more and more and more. And especially if you're trying to sell someone something it's a really good system. It's like if I'm watching something, and the thing they're trying to sell me is a Faraday bag, to me that's a big red flag that like, "Oh, you're just a grifter." Because in the abstract of once I have every object in the world that I could possibly need, I suppose I could Faraday cage my basement or something. Right? But like...No.
Eric 10:42 Yeah, that's a real problem because particularly when you tie your output to commerce you're kind of getting into Alex Jones territory where, you know, you're talking about chemicals in the water...and here's this water filter or here are these protein shakes that will solve everything.
Margaret 10:42 Turn you into a man again instead of a gay [Inaudible word.]
Eric 10:43 Yeah, and that's a big problem. You know, that creates a circular system where you just you spin people up and you give them the solution, and that isn't a solution at all. It might temporarily ease their worry, but they can just as easily get that by shopping at Etsy, you know, just any kind of consumption tends to ease that pang that we have. But if you're the one creating it, obviously, that's a different situation. Controlling that fear, or finding out the meter at which you should distribute it is, is something that I think about pretty much every time I hit publish. But at the same time, I'll stop and I'll look at the objective data that I've got, the new things that have occurred, whatever they may be new, anti trans legislation, the new IPCC report just came out last Monday and that really grounded some bad news about climate change. And you can't ignore the news and the updates that you receive on things like that just because you're worried that all that you're doing is making your readership afraid. I think that you should couch it appropriately. And how I do that is by at least trying to give the reader some actionable items at the end of my 1000 word screed where I talk about all of the awful shit that's happening in the world.
Margaret 12:57 Action Items is a really good point. Action Items is...You know we did an episode a while ago about mental health first aid, right. And, you know, one of the things that I feel like we learn over and over again is that acting with agency is one of the main ways to prevent PTSD during bad situations. And I feel like even if we can't stop what's coming, acting with agency as much as we can about how we handle it and things like that, is how we keep it from destroying us. Like, it might literally destroy us. We might all drown in the rising waters or get murdered bu fascists or whatever, right? But like, you know, we can...there's some cliche here about not letting it destroy us along the way or something, you know, but yeah, the action items. That makes a lot of sense. Okay, but I want to talk more shit on traditional preppers.
Eric 13:54 Okay, let's do it.
Margaret 13:55 What else are they getting wrong? Like, it's funny because it's like some of the stuff....Well, okay, you're talking about for example, if you tie your stuff to what you're selling--I think I've been thinking about this a lot--I make and distribute these emergency kits and I don't sell them. And I spend thousands of dollars at the time when I have it and create these emergency kits. And I covered in one of my YouTube episodes. And I give them away to my friends and family and stuff, right? And then everyone's like, "Sure, whatever, my crazy friend who..." You know, and then every now and then someone tells me, "Oh, it was actually really useful that I had band aids in my backpack," or...you know, and it's always these tiny minor things. It's never the potassium iodide or whatever, you know? And there's a chance that I'm going to start selling them but literally just in order to make enough money to make this not be this massive sinkhole in my life that I distribute these things. And I worry. I worry about being an Alex Jones. Also, I really want people to have stored food in their basement and so part of me is like, "Man, I'm just gonna get a freeze dryer. I'm gonna freeze dried ton of stuff and I'm going to fucking give it to people." And then I'm like, "And I guess we'll sell it," you know? And then I'm like, "Oh, God, where does this end?" At what point am I selling supplements to make people stay virile or whatever, you know. And I don't know....
Eric 15:16 I think that the way to avoid that is like I said to eliminate the circle. So you can't be directly addressing an issue and saying that the solution is on your website, that it's in your store. Once you do that you're just a shill. And and whether or not the product is even remotely relevant at that point, you're losing credibility, at least to people that know what they're talking about. And you may have followers who are addicted to that circle, you know, that cycle that says, "Here's this panic. By the way, here's the thing that will cure the panic." But if you avoid that then I think that there's...then you don't have to be worried about perpetuating that and falling into an Alex Jones trap.
Margaret 16:14 Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And there's a reason that we haven't started selling anything yet, anything along those lines, you know. I mean, at some point, we'll be putting out more books and stuff and that will be a selling. But I think we just have to...Cause I think about that guy who--maybe it's a perfectly fine book; I doubt it--but the guy who's like typhoons versus hurricanes or whatever, I suspect that this person is just trying to make a buck by googling some stuff and rewriting it poorly, throwing it into an e book, doing print on demand, putting it up on Amazon, and then selling it to this fear cycle, right? But then it's so frustrating because some stuff that comes out of traditional preparedness is useful. I think that a lot of their focuses are all wrong...Now I'm just trying to come up with the other stuff that I get annoyed about, right?
Eric 17:10 Let's talk about what they get right? And then we can shit talk on the vast majority of they get wrong. And that is always going to be the basics, you know, the very essential stuff. Because like you said, you know, you find it really important that people have food stored in their basement or if they don't have a basement, you know, under their bed in a tote or something like that. Just whatever they can do. And just as an aside, that's my circle. And that's where I scratch my panic itch. An every once in a while, I'll just buy a giant can of freeze dried vegetarian imitation beef.
Margaret 17:53 Oh, yeah, totally. Augason Farms.
Eric 17:55 Yes. Yeah. I just got a can last night.
Margaret 17:58 Yeah, the cheap brand.
Eric 17:59 Yeah, I just put that on my shelf next to all the other--shout out to Augason Farms--all of my other Augason Farms cans, and something in my in my lizard brain just went, "Yeah, yeah. Okay. I feel a little bit better now."
Margaret 18:18 Yeah.
Eric 18:20 But to bring that back to what the Right wing gets gets right...What those preppers get right is just the basics, which I think is actually sort of...it's letting them lay claim to preparedness, actually.
Margaret 18:35 Right.
Eric 18:35 And--now I'm getting into a different idea--but they shouldn't because preparedness comes from us living on the planet--
Margaret 18:43 Totally.
Eric 18:44 --Outside of the normal capitalistic cycle. The thing that I say...So this is how I launched When/If is that the first newsletter that I wrote was just called "Your Grandma Prepped."
Margaret 18:59 Yeah, totally.
Eric 19:00 Because she did. She canned. She had food stored away. My my grandma Skylar had three refrigerators. Two of them were almost as old as she was and I just ran like a dream. And they were full of food and water. And that's just--she had lived through the Great Depression--and that's where her inclination for it came from. And that got passed down to me. But I always knew if I was walking into her house, I could walk into the kitchen and I could open the cupboard and I would see 30 or 40 cans of whatever, Chef Boyardee, green beans, peas, you know, just as much food as you could want for probably damn near a month. And that's the kind of goal that I shoot for in my newsletter and for my own household. But it's the basic stuff.
Margaret 19:56 What you saying about like not letting the right wing lay claim to it and I agree with that. And I think that the sense of who actually--you know, I talk about that a lot that, like purse snacks as prepping, you know, like you go to a show, the person who has snacks in their purse is more prepared than the person with the handgun. Because there's a scenario in which the handgun is the right tool. It is a lot less likely than the scenario where you get snacky.
Eric 20:20 Yeah, absolutely.
Margaret 20:22 And a purse can hold both. Although, that would be an off body carry…Whatever, anyway. And so I think in my head, I've been thinking about traditional prepping, as in like, the kind of people who call themselves preppers without necessarily assigning that to the Right wing. It's like this thing that is fed upon by the right wing, but I don't think it's apparently right wing. And I've gotten some feedback from listeners every now and then, who are in traditional prepping, and could see the right wing kind of trying to be like, "And hate your neighbor." And they're like, "Wait, aren't y'all Christians?" And then being like, "Oh, thank god." It was less even that they were like, "Oh, thank God, a Leftist approach," although that's accurate from my point of view, but like, "Oh thank God, something that's not a right wing approach."
Eric 21:09 Right.
Margaret 21:12 You're right about the basics. And then I think sometimes they get some stuff right but they prioritize it wrong. I do believe that having, you know--depending on the situation that you're in and who you are and all these things--like firearms and things like that are incredibly useful tools. And if I want to know how much ammunition I should probably have, a lot of those YouTube channels and things like that are very useful for that, right? Because they've mathed out like being like, "Well, if you want to continue to practice at this rate, which is about the rate that you should stay in practice at..." And so I find that stuff to be very useful. But it's really easy to think that the sexy stuff, the violent stuff, is the main thing. The main thing is like first aid kit, food, and water, you know, and knowing not to run a generator in your garage. I finally got a deep freezer recently. And I was like, "I don't eat meat." I was like, "What the fuck am I gonna do with this deep freezer?" And now it's like, full of bread, frozen vegan meals. Like, it's great. I'm so glad it's there. And it's so...I didn't realize this but it barely uses any electricity compared to a regular fridge because it's full of frozen stuff and you open it up once a week. Like, the little tag on it is like, "Estimated electricity cost is $34/year" or whatever, you know, and I'm like, "Okay, okay, I can do that."
Eric 22:55 It's less than my washer. Yeah.
Margaret 22:59 Have you seen the stuff that's like...I feel like there's more and more. Maybe I just fall down YouTube holes too much about people just really getting ready to defend their giant castles of stuff or whatever, you know?
Eric 23:13 Yeah. And that's not a new thing, either. That has I think always been if nothing else, the popular idea of a prepper is that Right wing guy who post 2016 was wearing a red hat, and had a wall full of guns, and a bunch of food and water, and maybe some skills? Which is something we should talk about? But maybe not. Maybe all he knew how to do is shoot his gun and bury some Claymore mines in his yard because people were going to come get his stuff.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Carrot and Margaret talk about all things hiking, including thru-hiking and ultralight hiking. They talk about how to choose the right gear for the right purposes and how to minimize the impacts of long distance hiking on your body. They go through the complications of bringing dogs on long hikes and how to stay safer around grizzly bears. They also spend a good deal of time critiquing The Last of Us while developing a theory on how to hybridize many hiking strategies to develop the ultimate form of apocalypse travel.
Carrot Quinn (she/they) is an author, thru-hiker and hiking coach. She is the author of Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart and The Sunset Route. Carrot has a new speculative fiction novel coming out later this year, hopefully. Carrot is also an avid blogger and you can find them at www.carrotquinn.com or on Instagram @carrotquinn and Twitter @CarrotQuinn
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Live Like the World is Dying: Carrot on Hiking
Margaret 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. And this week we are talking about walking and how to do it, the legs, the one in front of the other, etc. And in order to do so, we're going to be talking to an expert walker, or hiker, I suppose might be a better way of phrasing it, Carrot Quinn. And so we're going to be talking to her about all this stuff. Carrot writes a bunch of books about hiking and does a bunch of hiking. And so I'm really excited, because this has been on my mind a lot. But first, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network.
Margaret 01:55 Okay, we're back. So Carrot, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns. And then I guess kind of like your background in hiking, thru-hiking, that kind of stuff.
Carrot 02:07 My name is Carrot Quinn, and my pronouns are she or they and I got into long distance hiking in 2013. And long distance hiking is different from other kinds of backpacking, because you're just out for longer, I guess. And usually also, you're on trails that have a really specific weather window, which means that you need to hike more miles per day than you would on a more leisurely backpacking trip in order to finish in a certain weather window, or because the water sources are farther apart. So, you need to hike a certain mile per a day to get to the water sources, which means that you end up using different gear, because when you're out for that long and hiking that many miles, it's a lot more strain on your joints. And so, in order to be able to do it, you need to have lighter gear that puts less strain on your joints, or else you get overuse injuries. And you also wear different shoes. So, there's this whole different kind of way of walking in the wilderness, which I got into because I'd always backpacked with a heavy backpack, and I was always in pain. And then I discovered this style, and I wasn't in pain anymore. And I was like, "Oh my God, if I do this, I can just like live outside and sleep on the ground every night and I won't be in pain." So than I got really into it. And I hiked the PCT in 2013.
Margaret 03:19 What's the PCT?
Carrot 03:19 The Pacific Crest Trail, which is 2,650 or 60 miles depending on how you count. It takes five months to hike. I got really obsessed with it for a while. So, I've hiked 11,000 miles. I've hiked from Mexico to Canada three times. And I've also walked across Utah, and Arizona, and done a bunch of other shorter hikes. And I've hiked finished trails where there's like a path on the ground that you walk, like the Pacific Crest Trail, and I've hiked trails where there's not a path on the ground, and you're just navigating through canyons and washes and stuff. And then I've also made my own routes, which is where you look at the maps and figure out where you can walk and then you follow the path that you created.
Margaret 03:20 I was gonna say that's wild, but I guess that's literally the point. That it's wild. Okay, and then you've written about this too, right?
Carrot 04:13 Yeah, so I have a writing career more or less, most years I make my living as a writer. And I was able to build that by writing about long distance hiking, because it's a pretty popular niche. I've been writing my whole life. I always wanted to be a writer, and in my 20s I wrote zines and then I started blogging in 2008. And then I started long distance hiking in 2013. And so every one of these hikes I've ever done, all 11,000 miles I've hiked, I've written a blog post every single day. And so that's how I built my writing career because then people started reading those and people love reading about long distance hiking, you know, because it's hard to get time off work. It's hard to get the gear. It's hard to access, and so people being able to read that from the comfort of their home is like really nice. And so then I wrote a book about my first long distance hike, which is called "Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart." And that book is great, because I made so many bad choices. So, it's like a very good story. Because you know, the best stories come from when you're like completely brand new at something.
Margaret 05:21 Yeah.
Carrot 05:21 And everything goes like horribly awry. Those are like the best stories. So, I wrote that book. And then my second book was actually a memoir about growing up in Alaska and my years riding freight trains. And that came out in 2021.
Margaret 05:37 What's that one called?
Carrot 05:43 And it's kind of sad. It's not like the happiest, but whatever. But then, I just finished a speculative fiction novel about this young person that is fleeing this destabilizing city and riding her bike across the country trying to get to Nevada. So, I'm editing that right now.
Margaret 05:57 Oh my god, is that out yet? Can I read it?
Carrot 05:59 No.
Margaret 05:59 Fuck.
Carrot 05:59 I hope it'll come out someday. I don't know what the title is, either, but, I'm editing it right now. And, if I self publish, hopefully I can get it out by the end of the year. And I'm leaning towards self publishing. So, we'll see. Hopefully, it'll be out sooner rather than later.
Margaret 06:16 Okay. Well, let's talk about that off camera. I think a lot about publishing speculative fiction, and I do it sometimes.
Carrot 06:26 Yeah, you write speculative fiction too.
Margaret 06:28 Yeah.
Carrot 06:29 We could just talk about that for hours and hours.
Margaret 06:33 I mean, I also like talking about that. Can I out us to the audience about how we know each? Is that...you seem pretty public about that.
Carrot 06:41 Yeah, totally.
Margaret 06:41 Yeah, I first met Carrot--actually, I don't remember if it's where we first met--but, we lived together in a squat in the South Bronx in 2004. And so, I've been following Carrot's career from afar since then being like, "Oh, shit, fuck yeah, another crust punk who became a writer."
Carrot 07:00 And I've also been following Margaret's career and like hearing little updates about her life over the years and being like, "Oh, that's where Margaret is, that's what Margaret's doing. Oh, it's super cool."
Margaret 07:10 Yeah. Yeah. I'm really excited to have you on to talk about this. And, I admit one of the reasons I'm really excited to have you on about this--because there's a couple reasons--one is because this topic is really interesting to me and has been for a while, you know, during say, the last presidential election when there was a decent chance of a fascist coup, and there was, you know, an attempt at one, myself and a lot of other people probably had to sit there and think, "What would be involved if I had to go on foot a long way to get away from here?" Right? And I think that that kind of thing is probably on a lot of people's minds, especially on a state by state basis right now, as a lot of states become increasingly unwelcoming and things. And of course, at the moment, people are allowed to leave states by cars and stuff, but whatever, we'll get to that. But, the other reason I'm interested in is because I've recently gotten more into hiking, and I've been obsessively watching YouTube videos of thru-hikers, and mostly these people really annoy me, but the stuff is really interesting. And, your name gets mentioned a lot in the sort of pantheon of thru-hiking writers as the person that everyone's like, "Well, I'm no Carrot Quinn," or whatever. So, I just think that's really cool. That's probably why I'm excited to talk to you. So, what is involved--and this is a very broad question, but what is involved in deciding that you want to go on a very long hike?
Carrot 08:42 What is involved? Well, so, I really love this intersection of topics that we're talking about because those are the two things that occupy my brain all the time is overland travel by foot, and near future societal collapse. So yeah.
Margaret 08:58 Yeah, you're writing a book about that.
Carrot 08:59 Yeah. And, in the novel I just wrote, she starts out on her bike, but the bike breaks, and then she's just on foot. And, one thing I love while thinking about this stuff is like--for example, have you seen The Last of Us?
Margaret 09:12 Yeah.
Carrot 09:13 So they're on a long overland journey, a lot of it is on foot. And there are all these plot holes in my opinion because there are things about the way they're traveling on foot that just aren't realistic. Like their footwear is uncomfortable. They never drink water. None of their gear is waterproof. They're not properly dressed for the weather. So, I think that's really....
Margaret 09:29 Yeah, they have these tiny packs, but not not in an ultralight way.
Carrot 09:33 They're tiny backpacks. They're just these bottomless pits of whatever they need. Somehow they have batteries, which like, you wouldn't have batteries. So, something I'm also really fascinated about, like thinking about near future collapse, is how we're going to be living in this hybrid time where we'll have all these materials available to us that are from this society where things are mass produced, but we'll be in a society where things are no longer are going to be mass produced. So, we'll be sort of like transitioning over the course of decades, from having access to certain materials to not having access to any of those materials. And that's like really interesting to me. And The Last of Us is set 20 years after collapse, so a lot of the stuff they have access in the show I don't think they would have anymore.
Margaret 10:19 They a little bit talk about it where like, "Oh, the gasoline isn't quite as good. We have to stop all the time to siphon," but then they're just kind of like, "And then we just drive," you know?
Carrot 10:28 Yeah, but like the batteries, you know, for their flashlights, they just...But yes, that's really interesting to me, thinking about for example, like a long journey. Like right now, the only reason I can long distance hike is because I have all this really high tech gear because you know, 30 years ago, to do a trail, like the Pacific Crest Trail, all of the gear was super heavy. So, you had to be sort of this like elite athlete in a way. Like just anybody couldn't do it because everything was so heavy, it was really hard on your body, like it was brutal. And now, because of this like really high tech gear we have, our packs are much lighter, and we just wear trail runners, and so it's much more accessible. And so, that's the only reason I can do it physically. And the only reason I enjoy it. Like, I wouldn't enjoy it otherwise. And so, it's interesting to think about, like, you know, in the future what people would use. But, to answer your question, if you wanted to do like, you know, where we are precollapse, if you wanted to go on a long hike--you know, the thing is that one of the things that's hardest for people is getting the time off. I like trails that are more than a month long, because walking long distances is our special secret human superpower. Like, no other animal can walk long distances the way we can. Like, people think that that's how we evolved from apes is we started like walking our prey to death, because a lot of animals…
Margaret 11:50 Yeah, persistence hunters!
Carrot 11:49 Yeah, a lot of animals sprint and then they sleep and they sprint and they sleep. But, we can just like zombie forward like endlessly, like just fucking zombie until our prey just like collapses with exhaustion. It takes--but a lot of us like the way we live, we don't spend a lot of time walking every day. And so, it takes time to sort of unlock that ability and get our tendons--that's like the biggest thing--like, our joints used to it. And so, if you were going to do a trail, like the PCT for example, that's like a five month trail, you would start out really slow, like say doing like 15 miles a day. You know, you would train beforehand so that you could do 15 miles a day. And then you would start doing that. And then, if you started feeling any pain in your joints, you would take days off, or pull way back. And then after about a month your joints get used to it, and that like superpower is unlocked. I've seen this happen so many times, because so many people the PCT is their first trail and they start right off the couch and they're not athletes--you don't have to be an athlete, like I'm not an athlete, I'm just a regular person--and as long as you don't get injured, or have some sort of illness you can unlock this superpower. And then, it's like, it doesn't hurt anymore. And you can just walk, and walk, and walk and it's really cool. So, that's why I recommend doing a trail that's more than a month, because it takes a month for the pain to go away and to feel like you've unlocked that superpower that I think all humans have, you know, barring injury or illness. And so, if you hike like a five month trail or three months trail then you have a month of discomfort, but then you have several months where you get to exist in this really cool body. But, it's hard to get the time off. So, a lot of people who long distance hike work seasonally or they'll you know, do the kind of work where you can--like in tech or as an engineer, as a nurse or whatever--where you can work for a period of time, like a couple of years and then quit, and then go back to work. The biggest demographics on a long trail are people just out of college and retired people, because those are the two people who have the easiest time finding that chunk of time.
Margaret 12:30 That makes a lot of sense to me. I've always kind of wanted to do this, and it's never quite been a high enough priority. And this brings me to not the most important question, but my main question about it. I know that you can't thru-hike any of the existing like triple crown, meaning Pacific Coast Trail, Appalachian Trail, and whatever the third one is...Continental Divide Trail? What's the third one?
Carrot 14:12 Yeah, yeah.
Margaret 14:13 I know you can't bring a dog with you on those three because they go through National parks. But what do you do about dogs? I mean, like because in my mind my dog has way more energy than me, but I'm realizing that my dog has way more energy than me not necessarily in the sustained persistence hunter way that you're talking about.
Carrot 14:31 Exactly.
Margaret 14:32 So, I'm curious what is a limit of--I mean, obviously every dog is gonna be different and things like that-- but can you thru-hike with a dog if you're going way slower and you're not doing the seasonal running thing? You're just like....yeah, somewhere there's a question in there.
Carrot 14:52 Yeah, totally. So you can. People do bring their dogs on the long trails. You kind of need a support person, so you can hand off your dog before you go through the no dog sections, and then get your dog back. It's considered cruel to bring a dog on a five month hike, because the way they exercise is so different than the way that we exercise.
Margaret 15:11 Right.
Carrot 15:11 They go really hard. And then they need more rest than we do. Like in Alaska, they have the Iditarod, which is this big sled dog race. And, it just happened. It just finished, and it's 1000 miles long. And the person who just won did it in eight days. So, his dogs ran over 100 miles a day. And so, these dogs trained really hard. And that is like the pinnacle of what they can do. So they could go really far, but they still can't necessarily go 20 miles a day, everyday for five months. And so, it's actually really rare for someone to thru-hike with a dog. You can do it, but it goes against their natural kind of the way their energy is throughout the day.
Margaret 15:48 Right.
Carrot 15:49 And so, one reason it's discouraged is because it's really hard to know, if your dog is too hot, it's hard to know if your dog is tired. Like a lot of dogs will follow their person, you know, to the point of injury, you know, because they just want to stay with you. So, people do it. But, it's rare. It's not natural for them. Like, we can do it and thrive. And they just kind of are low key suffering and maybe about to break. It's hard to tell.
Margaret 16:28 Yeah, no, and so I guess I'm kind of curious. There's like two scenarios I imagine. One is because there's no one I can leave my dog with for a long period of time. So, I just sort of assume I will not be thru-hiking anytime soon, right? Because, you know, there's a creature I'm responsible for, and no one else is currently responsible for that creature. But I'm like, is there a sense of like you don't want to take your dogs on a month long hike? Do you want to take your dogs on a two week hike? Do you want to take your dogs only...Like, my dog loves going on day hikes with me. And from when I was like, you know, an oogle, a crusty traveler, like a lot of the dogs that I was around--I mean, obviously, not all of them--some of them were treated very badly. But, many of the dogs were very happy in that they got to be with their person all day and they were always like exercising and stuff. But, that wasn't like we're walking 20 miles today. That's often like we're walking five miles today, we're, you know, hitchhiking. We're doing all these other things. I'm just wondering if you have a sense of 1) The limit in terms of like the now, and then 2) If there's a sense of what you would think for if your protagonist escaping the apocalypse has a dog like, what are ways to work around that? Like I could imagine...like, if I had to leave, right, do I get a dog backpack? It's about 45 pounds. I would be sad. But like, if you know, if I'm not hiking for fun and I'm hiking for "I gotta get somewhere," right?
Carrot 17:58 Yeah. So, people hiking the long distance trails, there's like a standard sort of blanket mileage that varies, but people generally say like 20 miles a day is kind of the standard. And so, over the course of like a month, three months, five months different dog breeds are different, but depending on your dog that could be too much for your dog. Like, your dog might need more rest days. But like, maybe your dog could do 20 miles a day for three days, but then they would need a day or two off, you know?
Margaret 18:27 Right.
Carrot 18:27 And so what you would have to do is instead of being tied to the weather window of the trail, you would be tied to how your dog is doing. So, you would just have to really be in touch with all your dog's signs, like does your dog...Like, know how to tell if your dog is too hot, if your dog's feet hurt, all these different things, and then you would just have to adjust your travel based on your dog. So, you just wouldn't...you wouldn't necessarily be able to hike the PCT in the five month window. And you would end up if you were in an arid area you would end up carrying more water. Because if you go slower than it's farther between water sources because the West is so dry. So, you would carry more water. But yeah, you would just plan the hike much differently. And it would be your own journey with your dog.
Margaret 19:13 Yeah. Okay. Yeah, no, I realized...I pretty quickly disabused myself of the notion that I was going to be hiking the Appalachian Trail, or PCT, or anything anytime soon. Secretly, this podcast is me just asking people for advice about my own life and problems and then hoping it's universally usable in some ways. But that makes sense to me. And then it does seem like, you know, everything I'm reading about, what you're talking about, like hiking with lighter packs and all of that, and how it has all these advantages in being able to go further and be more sustainable and all of these things. And it does seem like a lot of the choices that people would have to make in different survival scenarios might counteract that, because if I'm talking about like...Okay, if I was hiking through the desert with the dog, I need way more water, which means I'm carrying a heavier pack and then also if I'm out longer I might need a different level of survival equipment. It seems like it would kind of escalate pack weight very quickly?
Carrot 20:07 Yeah. But, I think that the sort of minimalism that one learns--like, it's the sort of strategic minimalism that you learn when you do a five month hike because all you have to think about every day is like what you're carrying and how heavy it feels and so you get really good at like...Just, it's like strategy. And so I think that would carry over, where even if you, you know, didn't have all these high tech materials, were in the desert, had a dog, like all these different things, your pack will still end up lighter than if you didn't use this sort of really fun strategic thing that I'm sure you've encountered on YouTube.
Margaret 20:44 Yeah, yeah. No, go ahead. Sorry.
Carrot 20:47 Yeah, yeah. But, it would be heavier. But then you would just work around that. Like, if your pack is heavier you don't go as many miles a day because it's harder on your joints. And you just, you know, you just work around that too. Like, last fall was my second season hunting in Alaska tagging along on my friends hunts, and I've never had to carry a pack as heavy as I do hunting. And that's been like a whole new learning curve being like, Okay, this is a 60 pound pack. Like, I can only go this many miles. You know, I have to really be careful like all these different things.
Margaret 21:21 Yeah. Yeah, that is the thing that I because I, you know, I come from this background of like failed train hopping and regular hitchhiking. And like, these long distance walks and things like that, but not hiking. And I would need what I need to sleep and all of these things. And so, you know, we used to kind of make fun of ultralight hikers, who are like, you know, shaving off every ounce of what they could And it's like, well, I knew Pogo Dave who traveled with a big metal Pogo stick or whatever, right? And, you know, walked across the country pushing a shopping cart and shit. But then you just realize how different these setups are, and what their goals are is so completely different. And so yeah, I don't know quite how to phrase it, but I'm so interested in the difference between the 60 pound hunting pack and the 9.8 pound, you know, backpacking pack or whatever. And i did, I ran across these people. And I My first thought was like, "Well, fuck that. Just like carry what you need. Whatever," you know. And then slowly, when you see the people who are like less annoying about it, you're like, "Oh, I think I get it. I think I understand why they're doing this," you know?
Carrot 21:21 Yeah, it's about injury prevention not being in pain and knowing what your goal is. So, if your goal is to finish a five month trail hiking 12 hours a day for five months, your chance of injury is really high. So, the lighter your pack is, to an extent, you know, the lighter your pack is the lower your chance of injury, and the less pain you'll be in. So, it actually really increases your enjoyment. The only caveat being--the rules I tell people because I do long distance hiking coaching and I do these like guided trips where I help people like make their gear lists and stuff--the rules...Here are the rules: you need to be warm, well fed, comfortable enough at night to sleep well, and be prepared for all the different weather you're gonna encounter at that season in that area. And as long as your gear fits those rules you meet those guidelines. Like, the lighter your pack is the more fun you're gonna have.
Margaret 23:28 Yeah, it makes sense to me. I just have so many questions about ultralight stuff. It's just so fascinating to me. It seems like one of the things where people go without, to me, what seems like emergency equipment. Like, because I think about...it seems like I'm watching people--and I expect them wrong, that's why I'm presenting this to you is because you have a lot of experience with this and have tried different types of hiking--but it's like, if there's something that I keep around just in case, right, in case something terrible happens or whatever that I don't use it on a daily basis, and so it starts becoming one of those things that you could imagine getting rid of. And then you're like, "But when you need it, you need it." And so it seems like that is what I worry about when people talk about barely having first aid kits and shit like that, you know, or the kind of gear that if like the weather gets a lot worse unexpectedly--because it seems to me that if you have this very minimalist setup that works for most days but then it doesn't work for like the sudden really bad weather days--It doesn't seem like it's a good enough piece of gear. But, maybe that is being taken into consideration and I'm just being annoyed at people or like retro actively defending the fact that I used to carry this ridiculously heavy bag and I injured my chest with it once when I was like 28. I don't know.
Carrot 24:48 Yeah, that's the thing is if your pack is too heavy it will injure you, and that will ruin your hike. So, it doesn't matter what emergency preparedness stuff you're carrying, like the emergency is that you ruined your hike and you have to get off trail and your hike is ruined. So, the thing is things are knowable. Like the world is knowable. Like when you go to drive your car you know what's likely to go wrong. And you know what would be a freak accident that you're not going to prepare for, like the stuff you have in your car. Like my car burns oil, so I carry oil. I carry coolant just because my car is old. I carry jumper cables. It's winter, so I carry a sleeping bag, you know, because I'm in Alaska, and I have an old car. These are the things that are likely to go wrong. I don't carry anything for if I get struck by lightning because there's not--I mean, if I lived like in the high mountains in Colorado in July, I would have to consider lightning--but in Alaska it's all central [uninterpretable word], so you don't think about lightning. I don't carry anything for shark attacks. I carry bear spray for a bear. But so, it's just knowing what's likely to happen versus freak accidents that don't make sense to be prepared for. So, people might not carry a generic first aid kit, but they do carry supplies for all of the medical problems that actually happen regularly. Like I don't carry just some generic first aid kit from REI because I don't know what to do if I break my leg. If I break my leg like I need a helicopter, you know? But that would be a real freak accident. That's extremely unlikely to happen. But, what does happen and what can end your hike and does end people's hike a lot are infected blisters, sprained ankles, and things like that. And I carry stuff, and I have treated stuff that like multiple times. And, I always have what I need. Or, like gear failures. Like I carry dental floss with a needle inside, which I learned from riding trails. And that's come in handy. So, I always have...and then things for chafe because chafe happens a lot and can be really painful. So, that can get you off trail. So, people actually, they might not have like, they might not have something for like a trauma wound, which would be like...I don't even know what a trauma wound...I don't even know what I'm saying. But like...or a puncture wound. But, that would be like a real freak accident. But they do have, in my experience, people do have stuff for the things that actually happen, and the same with the weather. Because, the weather in every spot on earth for whatever season you have to be there is knowable. You can research it, you can know what the trends are. Even with climate change, you can know what's likely to happen. You can talk to other hikers. Every long distance trail every year has a Facebook group. And people as they're hiking, will post on that Facebook group. So you can know like, "Oh, I'm climbing to 9000 feet tomorrow. And these people ahead of me say there's ice. I should have microspikes." Or like, "There's a storm coming in, and the people ahead of me say that the river is really swollen and it's gonna be hard to cross so I should like take a day off and wait for the river to go down." So, it's just..it's instead of carrying a bunch of stuff and having no idea where you are or what's happening, and just having all this stuff you just do your research. And like long distance hikers obsessively research when they're on trail because that's all you have to think about all the time. So, as long as--I mean, you can be reckless and not have any of that stuff--but then that will affect your chances of actually finishing, which is what everyone wants to do. Because, you want to have this like fun, full immersion experience. So generally, in my experience, people are prepared even though they don't have like generic first aid kits.
Margaret 28:13 No, that makes sense. I think I have a like defensive maximalism, you know? It's not a maximal...Well, I mean, I guess it depends what you're trying to do. Like, it's not a like I'm going hiking and I need a folding saw, you know? Although if I'm gonna go live in the woods for a while, I want a folding saw, but like, you know, it's a very different goal, right? So I guess I wonder...
Carrot 28:39 Okay, can I say one more thing?
Margaret 28:40 Yeah, yeah, please.
Carrot 28:41 They say that you pack your fears. And, so say you're afraid of getting hurt on trail. So you're like, I should bring all this extra stuff. That extra weight will hurt you. So, that's the irony. So that's like the irony in all of it. And the thing is, a lot of people start long distance hiking that way because that's kind of the way we all learned about the outdoors because we're an urban...Humans are urban. Like, humans in the US are urban. We're not little feral creatures that live in the woods. We don't have these like intimate relationships with like what the wind is doing, or like when the poppies are blooming, you know? And so we go out there and we don't have any idea what the fuck is going on or where we are. And so we want to pack our fears. And then as soon as you start a long distance hike every ounce you're carrying hurts. And so all day, every day, all you have to think about is sort of--as you're being like punished for carrying all your fears--all you have to think about is like, "What do I actually need?" And so that's really common for people to start with really heavy packs and then really quickly they're like, "Okay, I know what I really need and what I don't need." And you also start to learn what you as an individual need on trail because everyone is different. Everyone has like a different sort of comfort zone. So, it's a process because we're not...We're urban. We're like, we don't know what the fuck is going on in nature.
Margaret 30:06 Well, I think a lot of the outdoorsy type folks will also over pack, but kind of in a different way. But it's more of the like...it's not thru-hiking. It's the like bushcraft version. It's the like, I'm gonna go build up a cabin version, you know? Which, I think is overkill for most people. Like most people, when they're imagining like disaster scenarios and the escape from disaster scenarios you don't need to go build a log cabin in the woods. You need to like get to a state where they're not trying to kill you for being trans or whatever. And it is a different thing. So, I guess I take back my own caveat.
Carrot 30:42 Yeah, I think long distance hikers love to make fun of bushcrafters and probably bushcrafters love to make fun of ultralight backpackers. You know, I was thinking about bushcraft the other day, because I was skiing--or I was trying to ski, because I'm learning so I don't really know what I'm doing--and I was just looking at my gear and looking at my friend's gear and I was like, "Everything we have right now is because of plastic. Like literally everything." And then I was like, "What would this even be like if we didn't have plastic?" I was like, "We'd be wearing like wool, and leather, and like animal skins, and everything would be made out of wood." And then I started thinking about bushcraft. And I was like, "That's kind of what it is." Bushcraft is like outdoor stuff without synthetic materials in a way.
Margaret 31:23 Yeah.
Carrot 31:24 Which is like an interesting way to think about it, which is really different. It's really different. And so, if your gear is just heavier, there's just different things you can do. It's like just a whole different kind of thing.
Margaret 31:35 Yeah, I really. No, that's such a fascinating way of thinking about the difference between bushcraft and hiking and then like...You know, I think it's funny because it's like, if someone decides that they're like, "I'm gonna get into outdoors walking stuff." There's all of these different cultures and ways of looking at it. And you have the bushcraft version and you have the ultralight hiking version and then you have like--traditional backpacking seems like sort of the weird in between--and then you also have the tactical version, where it's like, "This is how you get into enemy territory with like, you know, when you're stuck carrying like 30 pounds of ammunition." or wherever the fuck. And it's like, it's so interesting to me how it breaks down even to different like shelter types, right, like the bushcrafters like--although it does go full circle. I would say that bushcrafters and ultralight hikers are both the ones who are like "A tarp is all I need," or whatever, versus traditional backpacking where you're like, "I want a fucking tent." You know?
Carrot Yeah, it's really interesting, our different relationships with nature in this year of our Lord, 2023 in the US.
Margaret 32:41 Yeah. And there's ways that people have to think about kind of all of them if they're trying to prepare. Although I can see how you can get lost over preparing in thinking about every single possible thing that could go wrong. If you're traveling in a vehicle, it's a little bit easier to do that. Right? It's a little bit easier to be prepared for every possible contingency or whatever.
Carrot 33:02 Can I tell you an interesting story?
Margaret 33:04 Yeah.
Carrot 33:04 I love thinking about this stuff. So, we we live in a time in human history where we're very urban, the most urban we've ever been, and so a lot of people don't spend much time outdoors at all, which, you know, is like they just can't. Like, they don't have access or there's so many different reasons. And, the people who do spend time outdoors, access it through these really different channels that almost aren't communicating with each other.
Margaret Yeeeeah.
Carrot 33:31 But, the tactical hunter versus the ultralight backpacker, and it's really interesting, because they've developed outdoors cultures that are so different. Like, in Alaska, for example, there are a lot of grizzly bears, which grizzly bears are dangerous, but they're also very knowable. So, you can kind of get to know grizzly bear culture and then you can do sort of like best practices and your chances of being attacked by a bear become extremely low. And so, depending on what you're doing, different people have ideas about what those best practices are.
Margaret 34:04 Bear spray versus 10 millimeter?
Carrot 34:07 I mean, bear spray works better.
Margaret 34:09 Yeah, no, I know. Yeah.
Carrot 34:12 But, for example, a few years ago, I was going on a four day backpacking trip in the Brooks range with some of my friends from Anchorage. And the Brooks range is in the Arctic. It's really remote and ironically, the Grizzlies are much less dangerous up there because the area we were going has no salmon. So, there are much fewer Grizzlies. There are just way fewer Grizzlies. And also, we're north of treeline, so there's no tree cover. And when Grizzlies are dangerous...if you see a grizzly from a distance, and it knows what you are, if it can smell you, it will run away like so fast. But, if you surprise a grizzly at close range, they feel like they have to like defend their honor and that's when they attack. It's like okay, they think it's like a challenge. They're like, "Now I must fight you!"
Margaret 34:58 Understandable.
Carrot 34:58 So, you want to avoid brush and trees in areas where there are grizzlies like as much as you can, avoid brush and trees. So, the Arctic is north of treeline. So it's a really safe place because there are fewer Grizzlies. And if you see one, it's like really far away and the two of you can just give each other a wide berth, because they're actually very scared. So, I was going on a trip with my friends, who are all from Anchorage, which is actually a very dangerous place because there are tons of grizzlies and like once a year someone dies. But, my friends were like, "Oh my gosh, we're going to the Arctic. What are we gonna do about the Grizzlies?" And I was like "You guys, like it's actually safer there. There's fewer bears." And they're like "We should bring Ursacks," which are these like Kevlar bags that the grizzlies can't bite through. It's like a bear can, but lighter. They're great. They're like, "We should bring Ursacks and we should line Ursacks with the scent proof plastic bags and we should put the Ursacks really far from our camp." And I was like, "We can do all that. But actually, it's like safer there than where we live." Like, hiking the Arctic is safer than going on a day hike in Anchorage, like 20 times safer. And, and I was like, "You guys go on day hikes all the time." Anyway, we went and we were all like super careful. Like, you know, when we set up camp, we would go cook like on a hill over there. And then we would put our food in our Ursack, and we could go put it on a hill over there. And then our tents would be here. And it would be like, you know, we would be up wind of where we cooked and like all these different things. And I was like, "Okay, great, you know, that's fine." And then a few weeks later, I went on a moose hunting trip with my friend Birch, who his whole way of knowing the outdoors is hunting, which is also really common in Alaska. And there were five of us and we were hiking eight miles into this drainage through Willow Brush with pack rafts and then we were going to get the moose and we were gonna pack raft out. So we got in and he got the moose. And we processed it. And you know, we were covered in blood. The pack rafts were covered in blood. Like, everything was covered in blood. And, we had these huge pieces of moose in cotton game bags that were soaked in blood like piled our pack rafts. We got we got to camp...Oh, no one has bear spray. I'm the only one with bear spray. You know? They have rifles. But, what good is a rifle gonna to do when you're in your sleeping bag? You know what I mean?
Margaret 34:58 Yeah, totally.
Carrot 35:29 Like that's when the bear could come for your blood or whatever. And, we get to camp and we like take these huge pieces of moose and lay them out on the gravel bar just overnight out in the open. And we all have our tent set up. And I was like, "Hey, Birch, do you ever use an Ursack?" And he was like, "What's an Ursack?" And, our moose hunt was in an area with way more Grizzlies. And there was brush everywhere and we saw like three grizzlies. And it was just so funny, because they weren't concerned at all. And, I think part of it is that guns give people this like false sense of confidence around bears, even though with bears like things happen really fast and you need something you can grab really fast. If you need to be like a sharpshooter, it's not very accessible, like you need something that anyone can use and another part of it....Go ahead.
Margaret 38:07 Also, if you shoot a bear--I'm not speaking from experience, I'm speaking from reading about this-there's been a bunch of studies that shooting bears is not a particularly effective way of stopping bears in the short term and pepper spray or bear spray is very effective. Like, even if a bear is charging and I manage to shoot it that doesn't mean I'm safe.
Carrot 38:25 Yeah, you have to have a certain gun. I don't know that much about guns. You have to have a certain gun and you shoot it in a certain place. So, the odds of all that happening like extremely fast...Whereas bear spray, you spray them in there. [makes a shrieking sound like a bear that's been maced] "It's burning!" You know, and then they run away.
Margaret 38:41 Have you had to do that? Have you ever sprayed a bear?
Carrot 38:43 No.
Margaret 38:44 Okay.
Carrot 38:45 But, I've been around a lot of bears, but I haven't yet had to spray one.
Margaret 38:49 I'm glad. I'm just curious. Anyway, I interrupted you twice. Please continue.
Carrot 38:55 Yeah. So, his conceptualization of what the danger was...Oh! That's the other thing. So, I think part of the reason hunters don't--this is my theory--I think part of the reason hunters don't think about bears is because the guns give them this false sense of confidence, even though bears do sometimes attack hunters. The other thing is bears have bear culture. Like, in different areas, bears learn different things and pass that knowledge on to their cubs. Like, some places, if you do a bear hang, the bear doesn't know what it is. And it can't get it. Other places, bears are really good at getting bear hangs, you know? And, I think that bears know when hunting season is and they know what hunters smell like. That's my theory.
Margaret 39:40 And they're like, "I'm staying the fuck away from them. They all have guns." [inflected as a question]
Carrot 39:43 I don't know if that's true, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was true. And that that's one reason that hunters don't have to take the same precautions.
Margaret 39:50 I mean, it's sort of interesting because guns are notorious for a false sense of security. But, in this case it's like, even though it's sort of a false sense of security, it's not the right way to handle a bear, but maybe that kind of like confidence of walking through the woods with a group of people and doing your thing, maybe that's a better way to live. Like... [trailing off laughing]
Carrot 40:18 There's also...so when an animal is a predator, it moves differently walking than when an animal is a prey animal, and hunters move the way predators move, and hikers tend to move, I don't know, all sorts of ways, but hunters move the way predators move. And so that could be something that communicates to the bear that these are hunters. And to be more scared, I don't know.
Margaret 40:35 No, that's so interesting. I'm really fascinated by these different ways of interacting with the forest. Because, it's like, you know, I live rurally. But, it doesn't actually...it provides me access to nature in that, I can walk out my door, and there's a lot more trees than houses. I can see one house, and I can see 10,000 trees, you know? But, there's also just like private land everywhere. So, I actually can't go hiking out my door. I'm as far away from hiking here as as if I lived in a--not a big city, but a medium city. You know, when I want a good scenic five mile hike, I drive an hour. It's not as many miles, because rural roads take you forever to get anywhere. But, it's just such a different way of interacting with... And then, all like folks around here are a lot more likely to drive down with ATVs, and go like ATVing and shit like that rather than specifically go hiking. But, they are still people who are interacting with the woods constantly. And so, in my mind, I feel like I'm trying to find...I'm on this quest to find out which like culture's way of interacting with the wild and specifically around gear honestly, is the best for the preparedness person. And this is obviously going to be completely different depending on what your fucking threat model is, where you live, what your goals are. But, I think I'm subconsciously doing it. I'm trying to be like, "Do I want to be like a hunter? Do I want to be like a tactical bro? Do I want to be like an ultralight hiker? Do I want to be like an oogle? Like, you know, which method?
Carrot 42:16 So, I have a lot of thoughts about what you just said. I think this would be my strategy, which may be the path I'm taking.
Margaret 42:22 That is the goal of me asking you things, is to find your strategy.
Carrot 42:25 Yeah. Because I also believe--well I don't know if this is exactly what you believe--but I think that all supply chains and infrastructure, and grids, and things are going to collapse in the next few decades.
Margaret 42:39 Yeah...[On a] long enough timeline: Yeah.
Carrot 42:42 I think if one learns the strategy of ultralight backpacking, which relies heavily on really high tech gear--that is currently being manufactured using these intensive processes that rely on supply chains and things--if one learns ultralight backpacking and hunting sort of strategy and gear, and like bushcraft, I think between those three skill sets, one would have the best chance of creating this like hybrid model for like, say, if you needed to walk across the country. Like in The Last of Us in their walk across the country--so, their world is like 20 years post collapse of supply chains manufacturing, like all those different things--I don't think they're carrying the right gear. So, knowing what they more or less, like guessing what they had access to, some changes I would have made is: They're wearing like leather boots. I think Ellie's wearing...What are they called?
Margaret 43:45 Maybe Chucks? But I can't remember?
Carrot 43:47 Yeah, Chuck Taylors.
Margaret 43:49 I think. I can't remember. Yeah.
Carrot 43:51 Like, if they have access to shoes, obviously, which maybe is unrealistic, but in the show, they have access to shoes. I would get some running shoes, or trail runners. And then, their backpacks are made of looks like heavy canvas. And, I would get a backpack made of a lighter weight material. And then I would line it with something like a trash bag to make it waterproof. Because, that's what I do now. I just carry a trash bag folded up, and I use that. And then, they weren't filtering their water. And also, all of their layers seemed to be cotton, which eventually, you know, in the future, we'll get to a point where we'll just have like natural materials again. But, if you still have access to a cotton like denim jacket, you can probably still find synthetic layers which are much smarter when it's cold and wet. So, I would have them wearing synthetic layers if they could.
Margaret 44:46 That makes a lot of sense to me. Okay, but I've read--again, I expect I'm wrong and I'm running things past you for this reason--I've read that one of the reasons that people wear trail runners, but they sort of expect them to not last, necessarily even a full thru-hike, as compared to like hiking boots, which are expected to last like multiple thru-hikes. Am I wrong about a durability difference between these types of shoes?
Carrot 45:15 You're right. So, the trade off is with hiking boots, they last a long time, but they turn your feet to hamburger if you're walking very far day after day. So, in The Last of Us they were walking. I mean, just like guessing by like how far they walk, they were walking all day, every day, day after day. So, in that circumstance, the hiking boots would last, but they would destroy your feet and maybe keep you from being able to continue on your journey. So, I guess the question would be...Like, the way I long distance hike right now, I change my trail runners every 400 miles because that's when the cushion gets more compact. And so, they don't provide as much cushion. So, I'll get more foot pain. But, if I was in a situation where I didn't have access to a lot of trail runners, I would just wear them for longer. And then,...I guess it would be a question of, can you eventually get to a point where your feet have adjusted to leather boots so that you can do that many miles day after day? Because, in traditional backpacking, people just didn't do as many miles day after day. Or, there's also you know, there's a lot of different...
Margaret 46:26 Maybe they're only going eight miles a day?
Carrot 46:29 But they went really far. I don't remember, but...
Margaret 46:32 I think that's movie magic.
Carrot 46:34 But, they went from the East Coast to Wyoming so...
Margaret 46:37 I think they break down and they get most of the way out in car and then they break down. Anyway. Sorry. Please continue.
Carrot 46:43 Yeah, maybe they were taking lots of breaks. Okay, so there is an alternative, I think, in this scenario. So, in Mexico, there are people, indigenous people, who are long distance runners and long distance walkers. I don't know if it's more than one tribe, or...I don't know. But, that book Born to Run talks about these people a lot.
Margaret 47:04 The barefoot...
Carrot 47:04 But yeah. So, they make sandals out of old tires. And, that's what they wear. Because sandals...So, the thing about hiking 20 miles a day, day after day, is it's less like backpacking, more like running a marathon. So, you want to think "Would I run a marathon in this?" because whatever you're wearing will rub you to death. So, boots will rub you to death. So, say trail runners aren't accessible, if you made sandals out of old tires, those are so minimalist that they might not rub you to death the way boots would, but you would be able to make new pairs and they would last a long time. So, actually, people in Mexico have maybe figured it out. Like, that might be the answer is sandals made out of tires.
Margaret 47:47 I consciously believe you. But, I've been wearing boots my entire life. And in my mind, they're like...I mean, in my head, the compromises that I used to wear lace up steel toed boots and now I wear like tactical boots with a zipper down the side that are like, mostly mesh, and stuff. And in my mind, I'm like, these are clearly the perfect boots. These are clearly the best boots for every situation, how could they possibly be bad? But, I accept that you have the experience and you're probably right. My brain won't accept it.
Carrot Would you want to a run a marathon in them?
Margaret 48:26 I don't have the lung capacity to run. I have never been able to. So, I can't. That is a meaningless thing for me, right? Because, I've never been able to run. I mean, I can run, right? But, I like I lose....I can't imagine. But, I don't know. I mean, I used to just...whatever, I used to just be an idiot and kind of an asshole. And so I would just be like, "Oh, whatever. Like why are people complaining? Just toughen up. Just wear steel toed shoes all the time." Whatever. Bullshit. And, I'm no longer on that page. But, in my mind, I'm like... [makes grumpy noises and trails off]
Carrot 49:01 Yeah, so I have two more thoughts about footwear. One is..so the reason backpackers used to always wear boots is because their gear was so heavy. So, when I go hunting--I actually had to buy my first pair of hiking boots, because if I'm carrying a 60 pound pack--you know how we occasionally roll our ankles when we walk and it's not a big deal? It doesn't really sprain your ankle really. But, if you're carrying a 60 pound pack, it's like much more likely to sprain your ankle. So, that's the point of boots. So, when I'm hunting, I only walk eight miles a day and it still hurts my feet, because the boots really hurt my feet. But, it keeps me from worrying about spraining my ankle if I roll it. Whereas, with the backpacking gear that exists now, it's not as heavy, so you can roll your ankle without spraining it, so you can wear trail runners. So, in this scenario, if your pack was really heavy, you probably would want to wear boots and then you would just compromise on how many miles per day you could walk, and your feet would be in pain.
Margaret 49:56 That makes sense.
Carrot 49:57 And then my other thought...but, hopefully in this scenario, you would be able to create this sort of hybrid kit with all your knowledge of like hunting, bushcrafting, and ultralight backpacking and the materials, we still have access to that your pack, maybe your pack wouldn't be crazy heavy. And, then my other thought is: So, in Mexico, there are people who run long distances who create these sandals out of old tires, which is a resource that will be around for a bit. And then in North America, or like further north North America where it's colder, traditionally, people had footwear that they made that they could walk long distances in that also was warmer, like things like moccasins and different...more like, flexible comfy footwear that also wasn't a boot. So, I think even if you didn't have access to trail runners, I don't think the only option would be boots for their durability. I think you could make like some sort of show. Yeah, that's my theory.
Margaret 50:54 No, no, no, this is really interesting. Because, I'm like, imagining like the ultimate setup, in my mind, would be like, nonshiny materials, because in my head, I've heard it referred to as like, outdoors gear being either like tactical or technical, and sort of an aesthetic difference in a lot of ways. Like, everyone's wearing fleece, but some people are wearing camo fleece, and some people are wearing, you know, bright colored fleece or whatever, right? Except for me. I'm walking around in a fucking hoodie. And, this is...I'm slightly smarter than that. That's not true, the last time we went hiking, I was just in my Carhart coat over a hoodie. But, it also wasn't long distance. So, it doesn't really matter.
Carrot 51:39 I mean, if you know there's not going to be cold rain, you probably won't get hypothermia.
Margaret 51:45 Yeah. Yeah. So ,if you, I guess you're already north. If you had to leave on foot, you would be going for sort of a hybrid setup? I guess if it depends on the situation. Now, I'm already answering for you in my head. Never mind.
Carrot 51:45 Yeah, let's say I had to walk into Canada, for example, which it would be really easy to sneak...I'm not allowed in Canada. But, it would be really easy to sneak...Because, there's one protest in particular on my record that they don't like from 2003. And then, there's all the like misdemeanor train stuff for my 20s. But, that's old enough that they don't they don't care about it. But, they really don't like this protest thing So, they just don't let me in. But, it would be really easy to sneak into Canada at the Alaska-Canada-border. So, let's say that's what I wanted to do. Well, the thing about Alaska is, there are a lot of really big rivers to cross. So, you would have to consider that like, would you either carry a pack raft, which would add weight, like between the pack raft, and the paddle, and like a PFD, you know, that would add like 10-15 pounds.
Margaret 52:16 What's that? What's a PFD? A personal flotation device?
Carrot 52:54 Yeah, just like a life jacket. Yeah. Or, would you, you know, just build a raft every time you got to a massive river and just case by case basis troubleshoot trying to cross these rivers. So, and then another consideration would be, so wherever you are, if you decide to go on a long journey, like where you are, for example, you'd want to know how the plant communities change at different elevations. That would help you plan your route. Like, if you were like, "At this one elevation, there's this really thorny brush that's impossible to get through and really terrible." And so, as you were passing through that elevation, you want to find like a road, or a trail, or something that goes through it as you're making your route. And then, if you were like, "Well, at this elevation, it's like this open forest, it's really nice." So then, you would plan your route as much as you could through the landscape that was easier walking. Or, you would be like, "There's these old roads." Like, Alaska doesn't have many roads, but like other places have a lot of old logging roads and mining roads. So, like finding those, you know, and then planning your route. And then, for me, it's pretty rainy in the summer, so, I guess I'd want to have a rain jacket, and rain pants, and trash bags to keep all my stuff dry, and good synthetic layers that were warm, even when they were wet. If I have a down sleeping bag, I'd want to make sure to have like really good trash bag waterproofing system for my sleeping bag in my backpack so it would stay dry. And then, as far as like, fuel goes, I guess it depends on what's available, maybe backbreaking fuel isn't available. Maybe I'm just making fires. And, the challenge would just be drying out if it happens to just rain for two months straight, like figuring out when I can dry out, which maybe it would be a matter of like making fires if the rain never stops. So, staying dry to prevent hypothermia would probably be like the biggest challenge, and then getting over these big rivers. And then for food, if backpacking food wasn't available, I have no idea how i would survive. I think, Okay, this is what I would do. I would have...Let's say that things have collapsed to the point where no one is regulating hunting. So, for example, like, as an Alaskan resident, even though I'm an Alaskan resident, like, I can't hunt seal. The only people who can hunt seal and whale are like, people in native communities in really specific areas. And so, I can't hunt seal, but realistically, if one is to live off the land in Alaska, you're gonna get most of your calories from fat from sea mammals. So, I would need to have figured that out in advance. Like, I would need like seal oil, and berries and dried salmon and dried meat, but I would need a lot of fat to get most of my calories from because there aren't any carbs up here that you can eat. Yeah. I think that would be my strategy.
Margaret 55:58 Okay. Okay. That all make sense to me. Yeah, in my mind, because where I live is like, if I had to walk to Canada, I would be skirting back and forth across roads. On the other hand, maybe all the bridges across all the rivers is exactly where they would like, you know, the militias would be laying ambushes or whatever, you know. So actually, maybe all that stuff, but it never even occurred to me that there's something called a packraft until today. It's a neat concept.
Carrot 56:27 You could bring a pool floatie.
Margaret 56:29 Yeah, yeah, totally.
Carrot 56:30 Just raid a CVS or a Walgreens.
Margaret 56:35 I'm planning...I'm saving up to buy a freeze dryer. This is my like wingnut prepper thing that I really want. They're like, they started about $2,500 for home ones. And then, I can just give everyone backpacking food forever.
Carrot 56:54 Cool.
Margaret 56:55 But, it would work better if I was combining with, you know, honestly, if you're in a city and around people who dumpster dive, that's where a freeze dryer shines. Take your free food and preserve it forever. Or, if you garden a lot, or grow a lot of food. Okay, well. There's so much I want to talk to you about, but I think we're kind of running down on time.
Carrot 57:18 We've almost figured it out.
Margaret 57:19 I know. It's a combo of all of the...You have to multiclass between ultralight and hunter and then you're pretty much good. And with a little bit of bushcrafter, which I feel like the hunter is a little bit close to. Go ahead.
Carrot 57:34 There's definitely a lot of skills I don't have that would be useful in this scenario. Like, I can't snare a rabbit. That would be really useful. I guess I would want to be hunting, but like, I don't know if I would have enough bullets or like, what kind of gun or like...Would I have like a bow and arrow? I don't know enough about hunting to know what kind of hunting I would be doing, or if I would just be carrying enough seal oil and dried moose meat to make the whole journey. So, I don't know. I don't know about that bit.
Margaret 58:06 Yeah, no, I basically have already decided that my veganism lasts until it's like me or the animal. You know? And I actually believe very strongly in that...Like, I actually don't think there's anything ethically wrong with hunting at all. I just have no personal interest in an eating it. But...For anyone who's listening is wondering why vegan says that, in this case, I believe that you're not raising the animal in captivity, it lives free, whatever, people eat things, that's fine. This is the thing we get the most angry people writing about is whenever we talk about either veganism or nonveganism, people get really upset about, and vegans always hate me because I'm like a self hating vegan or whatever, because I'm like, I don't think there's anything ethically wrong with eating meat. Anyway, I just avoid thinking about all that stuff, which doesn't work because then I can't just be like, magically after the apocalypse, I like...I'm a decent shot. So at least I have that. Right? But, I don't know, fucking how to stalk, or dress, or cook. You know? But I'll just magically learn it in a survival situation. That's always the best time to learn. [Said very sarcastically]
Carrot 59:19 Yeah, they say that people learn fastest when you're like a little bit stressed out. So also, you live in an area where you can grow a lot of foods. So, like you wouldn't be as reliant. In Alaska, you can't grow grains. You can't grow beans, like you can't. Traditionally, people lived off animal fat for most of their calories.
Margaret 59:41 Totally.
Carrot 59:43 I think it would sort of like quickly revert to that like, "Okay, we have a lot of fish." But, where you are, it would make sense to like grow a lot of like grain and stuff and that would be really good food to have.
Margaret 59:56 Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna have so many freeze dried potatoes. A fucking entire basement full of freeze dried potatoes. What could go wrong? Well, is there anything? Last last thoughts? Or you know, do you want to talk about, you want to advertise your books again? Or, talk about the stuff that you run or where people can find you?
Carrot 1:00:16 Sure. I'll I'll talk about this. Can I talk about this book, this novel I've been working on?
Margaret 1:00:21 Yeah.
Carrot 1:00:23 So I think...
Margaret 1:00:25 But don't spoil it.
Carrot 1:00:25 Okay, well, no spoilers. It's been really fun to think about, like everything we've been talking about, like if someone is on this long journey, like what would they have access to? What would still be around? How would they survive? So, that's kind of what I try to do. And, I kind of skip over the dark collapsing bits to get to the long journey part, because I think that's what's like fun and interesting. And, I think it gives me a sense of hope to try to be like, okay, what, what will things actually look like? This is one reason I love The Last of Us so much, too, is because you got to see how they like imagine like, oh, what would be left in a mall? Like a shut down mall. What stores would have been raided? What would still be left? Like, what materials would people have access to? And so, I think that's really fun. And, she does have a little dog. She has a chihuahua, that rides in her bike pannier, and nothing bad ever happens to the Chihuahua.
Margaret 1:00:39 That's good.
Carrot 1:00:49 Nothing bad ever happens to the dog. So, that's great. [The transcriber does not know if Carrot is being earnest or not and has not seen The Last of Us to discern whether this is a sarcastic statement or not] And, I think some people I think, maybe think thinking about this stuff is kind of dark, but I find it really comforting.
Margaret 1:01:32 I agree. It's, yeah. Yeah, there's so many reasons.
Carrot 1:01:39 I also, you know, I've read too, that in a survival situation, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what skills we have. What matters is like our ability to organize with other people, because, that's obviously how we've survived to this point is, you know, we're not rugged individualists, we're really highly social animals. And so, no matter what your skills are, no matter where you live, no matter what you have access to where you live right now, like, I think what humans are really good at is sharing their skills in moments of crisis and organizing together. And, you know, so if you...Like, you're gonna have a bunch of freeze dried potatoes, and then maybe your friend will know how to, like, deal with puncture wounds. Or maybe you all also know that, you know what I mean? But like, together, and then maybe you have another friend who's really good at like, hunting or whatever. And so, when people come together, I think that's a really magical thing, too. You know, like, I don't know anything about herbs, but that's going to be really useful someday. And, hopefully, I'm know somebody who does.
Margaret 1:02:43 I agree. And that is essentially one of the mottos of this show, is how, you know...Even the like, the prepper thing about, like, 'I'm gonna have all of this stuff.' Like, the most useful thing I could have in any different disaster scenario is someone else. Like, even if that other person has like, no skills, if we can talk, like, that will help my mental health, you know. And I'm saying that as like someone who's like, kind of low key a hermit, I'm not very low key about it. Yeah. So yeah. Okay, well, what are the names of your books again?
Carrot 1:03:21 The first one is Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart. And that's about the Pacific Crest Trail. And then, The Sunset Route is about the years in which I first met you. Yeah. So, my years riding freight trains, and about my childhood in Alaska. And then, this one I've been working on doesn't have a title yet. But hopefully, maybe it'll be out at the end of the year. I don't even know. So
Margaret 1:03:43 I hope so. I want to read it.
Carrot 1:03:45 Thanks.
Margaret 1:03:47 All right. Thank you.
Carrot 1:03:48 Yeah. Thanks for having me on. This was really fun.
Margaret 1:03:51 Yeah. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, you should tell people about it in person, or on the Internet, or in graffiti format. If you do the latter, you shouldn't, you shouldn't tell us, but not blame us if you get caught. Only graffiti property you own? Does that still count as graffiti? I'm not sure. You can also support this podcast by supporting us on Patreon, we're at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness which is the name of the publisher that puts this out, as well as several other podcasts including the Anarcho Geek Power Hour, a podcast called Strangers in Tangled Wilderness, which has a new episode every month with different pieces of fiction and memoir and stuff. And, some other ones that are coming up soon. You can hear about soon. And if you support us there, there's all kinds of cool stuff that you get. And one of those things is we say thank you on the podcast to some of the backers. And in particular I would like to thank Jans, and Hoss the dog, and Michaiah, and Chris, and Sam, Kirk, Eleanor, Jenipher, Staro, Cat J, Chelsea, Dana, David, Nicole, Mikki, Paige, SJ, Shawn, Hunter, Theo, Boise Mutual Aid, Milica, Paparouna, Aly, and Paige. You all make this happen and you pay for the person who produces it, and you pay for the person who transcribes it, and the person who does the audio editing, because people deserve to get paid for their labor, and you let that happen. And that's cool. And I will talk to you all soon. Bye
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Brooke and Margaret talk about every thing that went wrong this last month, and some good things. Sort of. They talk about more chemical spills, storing water and water filtration, tornadoes, more news on anti trans bills, inflation, super fun fungi, not fun at all guy Trump and his indictment, and how a drone (or satellite phone) could save your life and also make you a vampire.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
This Month in the Apocalypse: March, 2023
Brooke 00:16 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying ,your podcast for it feels like the end times. This is the March]April installment of our segment This Month in the Apocalypse. I'm Brooke Jackson and with me today is the infamous Margaret Killjoy.
Margaret 00:30 I'm infamous now, what did I do?
Brooke 00:33 Well known for being famous? Oh wait, that's not what that word means.
Margaret 00:37 No. It means famous for bad.
Brooke 00:41 Well, bad means good. [Laughing]
Brooke 00:46 You're bad. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts. Before we dive into today's episode, we'd like to share a little jingle from another pod on our network.
Brooke 01:08 And we're back. Margaret. How are you feeling today?
Margaret 01:11 I have a toothache and I'm grouchy. How are you?
Brooke 01:15 I'm doing okay. I have intermittent sunshine.
Margaret 01:19 Oh, does that mean it's almost not Pacific Northwest winter?
Brooke 01:25 Well, it's intermittent with like super heavy rains and or hail.
Margaret 01:29 Oh. The weather is much nicer where I'm at.
Brooke 01:32 Yeah, it's Oregon doing its 'hold my beer' weather.
Margaret 01:37 Well, do you wanna hear about some shit that happened this this month?
Brooke 01:43 I definitely do.
Margaret 01:44 A ton of shit happened this month. It's always funny to do these, because there's like all of these huge events. There's like one huge event a week and then it's like they're already out of our collective attention spans. So, on March, 26th, a pipe broke at the Trensio PLC chemical plant near the Delaware River. This is the the Philadelphia spill, right? It spilled ethyl acrylate, methyl methacrylate, and butyl acrylate into a creek called Otter Creek. Between eight and twelve thousand gallons of this stuff that is used...It's basically synthetic latex or it's like the precursors, I believe, to synthetic latex.
Brooke 02:21 That's a lot of 'lates' spilled.
Margaret 02:24 Yeah. And one of them is double meth. But, it actually has nothing to do with meth. I'm sorry. So, it ended up not being....well, it was a big deal. But, it was almost a big deal as in like the entire city of Philadelphia or rather the eastern half of Philadelphia and like millions of people were going to be like completely fucked and out of drinking water. And so we had this fun scare. Not me. I'm not in Philadelphia. People had this fun scare where the city of Philadelphia sent out like, "Oh shit, don't drink the water alert." And then later, they sent out a, "Wait, it's okay to drink it until midnight on Monday. You better fill up some jugs." And it was just like...but during the OH SHIT scare, right? Like there was just like, no fucking bottled water on any shelves immediately. Right? And in the end, the city's water was not impacted. And this isn't like a coincidence. It wasn't like, "Oh, oops, our bad, nothing was actually wrong." It was actually like credit where it's due, it was the coordination of the Department of Public Works and some other folks. And they like got their shit together. And they closed off the water treatment plant that was bringing in water from the river and all that shit. And do you want to know how to get butyl acrylate out of your water in case you have to?
Brooke 02:38 Do I want to know?
Margaret 03:44 You can't.
Brooke 03:48 Okay, so I already know how.
Margaret 03:49 I mean....Okay, I'm gonna say you can't and then I'm gonna go into more detail. Because water filtration is something I did a bunch of research about this week. And it's something that's like always been sort of on my radar as a weird prepper. Chemical contamination in water is one of the hardest things to filter out. The way it's handled on an industrial level, is some shit with some fucking little tiny goober plants that eat the chemicals or whatever. I don't have the name of it in front of me because I'm not good at my job. And it's not something that people are doing on a home scale. There are other ways that people can minimize the chemicals in their water. Overall, when you're trying to filter water, chemical contamination is the hardest thing to get rid of. It is much easier to get rid of heavy metals. It is much, much easier to get rid of protozoa, bacteria, viruses, all kinds of things, right? You're not boiling away your butyl acylate. And, you're not filtering it out directly. However, through the process of adsorption, which is absorption but backwards. 'Ad' instead of 'Ab.' Basically, the charcoal filter that are like in your like fucking Brita water filters and stuff like that, that is closest to the DIY version. They are not rated to do this. Do not drink this shit thinking it's safe because some girl on the internet said....Well actually I said it's not safe. But overall, removing chemicals from water of the various DIY filtration methods, passing things through an activated carbon filter is more effective, because more of the various particles stick to that than like most of the...it's kind of funny, because overall, like the kinds of filters that you usually want for like hardcore stuff are not home filters, they're like, like camping filters and stuff, but it's just like not actually the case with chemical stuff. But overall...
Brooke 05:46 Okay, but what if I doubled Brita it? If I just if I just pour through the Brita filter twice? Is that? Is that enough?
Margaret 05:52 Like, if I was going to die of thirst, and I had some water from the Delaware River, what I would do is I would filter it over and over again, maybe through different charcoal filters. And then I would hope that...and I would only do this because dying of thirst is more immediate of a problem than dying of like whatever poison that you're getting through this shit. But, there is like some advice that I want to throw out there about how to prepare for this kind of disaster. This is obviously not the first time some of these similar acylates. I can't remember which of these ones. I can't remember if it was butyl acrylate or ethyl acylate was one of the main things that spilled in Ohio. So, it's something that is like increasingly on people's threat analysis, right? The main way is to have water stored ahead of time. The main ways to find different sources of water. And so, one thing that's like worth knowing is that water does not really in and of itself go bad. Water, like, has stuff in it, that goes bad, right? But if water is like, correctly treated and sealed properly, it does not itself go bad. What I would recommend to people is if you're lazy and easy go get several gallons of bottled water and just keep it around. So, like worst case scenario of some drinking water during time of crisis. Because you can't boil advisory this shit, right? And then the other thing is, if you want to store your own water....oh, and then that water you get, you should replace every two years or so. Just because even though it doesn't go bad, the plastic that it's in tends to degrade. They tend to be clear bottles, and you keep it out of heat and sun and it'll last longer. Go ahead...
Brooke 07:31 Is it not just refilling the containers? Because I have like a bunch of one gallon water jugs that I'll you know, put on the garden and then refill. But should I replace the jug itself too in those cases? It's not a long term jug. It's like the whatever store brand in a gallon jug.
Margaret 07:52 Well, so it's funny, because a store brand gallon if you never open it and don't fill it yourself and it's sealed, is a reasonable thing to store for several years. Especially if you keep it out of the sun, and you keep it in a cool place, because then the plastic degrades less into the water. But if you're filling up your own jugs, especially if they're clear jugs, and especially if you've ever drank out of them, like directly, you just replace the water fairly often. And you like look for smells and growth and all that shit and keep it in a cool dark place. I don't keep store bought water, I keep five gallon jerry cans, and then I refill them. People say to do it every six months or a year. I do it closer to every year. But just having enough to have like emergency drinking water on hand during the time of a crisis where it takes time for water to come back online, or for you to set up a way to get it from elsewhere is something I recommend to people. That's what I got about the Philly spill. Unless you have other questions about water storage?
Brooke 08:54 I feel like we could do a whole thing on water right now, but I'm not going to dump into it. I do have several kinds of different water storage. I have some of the little one gallons from the store and I have some, you know, five gallon heavy duties. And I have some big barrels of water and a whole set up. But, I'm curious if....You mentioned something at the very beginning about a like boil water advisory or something like that. And is that a common thing for other people? Because I feel like that's a common thing for me where I live, that we have those often enough that I've had to deal with it and learn how to do that on a regular basis. But, in other places, is that normal? I guess probably not.
Margaret 09:32 No, it happens a lot in the US now. It either didn't used to, or it used to be more insulated from it. But, I've been in a bunch of different cities where they've had boil advisories for various lengths of times. If the boil advisories around like bacterial stuff, which I think is what most of them are, I am now speaking off the cuff. You can also filter it, but not with your Brita. You can filter it with a camping style filter if it's a protozoa are bacterial worry, as long as the micron size is like .2 or so, you're fine. If it's a viral worry, which is almost never the case in the continental United States, your micron size needs to be .02. Instead of .2. Maybe it's .01. It needs to be rated for viruses, which is rarer, and mostly camping filters don't do that.
Brooke 10:25 Yeah, okay. That makes sense. Well, speaking of water stuff: air.
Margaret 10:35 We need that.
Brooke 10:36 Yeah, we do. Just all the elements. Weird weather. Have you heard about the tornadoes that that were happening over this last weekend?
Margaret 10:45 Yeah, there's too many of them.
Brooke 10:47 Yeah, It's kind of wild. So, as we're recording this, it's early April. We just got through the first weekend of April and there were at least 50 separate tornadoes that hit the American Midwest, South, and parts of the East Coast. They hit like a bunch of states, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey. There were four separate tornadoes in New Jersey alone, which I don't think of New Jersey as being a tornado prone state. But, maybe that's just me not knowing things. But, they're also expected to have more tornadoes coming up by the time you hear this they hopefully have come and gone. But, they're supposed to affect as many as 16 states and all in the next couple of days. With the most serious risks two parts of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa and Northwest Illinois. [Said like "Ili-noise"] I watched a video....
Margaret 11:42 What was the last state?
Brooke 11:44 Illi-noise.
Margaret 11:47 Never heard of that state.
Brooke 11:48 Ilii-noooise. I refuse. Also, I'm sorry, I said Arkansas wrong. It's Ar-Kansas, Ar-Kansas. Tornadoes. So sorry for my mispronunciations there. [Laughing].
Margaret 12:05 Our-Kansas as compared to the Their-Kansas.
Brooke 12:10 Yeah, I watched a fun video of there's someone who was trying to film a tornado with her phone. And the tornado came up and slammed into the building that she was in. And the phone kept filming, but it was just like, debris and shit flying around and just total chaos.
Margaret 12:29 We might have different definitions of the word fun. Did she survive?
Brooke 12:33 Yeah, she did.
Margaret 12:34 Okay.
Brooke 12:35 Okay, I think she got pretty well banged up and bloodied and stuff, broken glass and all that. And she posted to whatever social media, the video, and the comment of "If there's a tornado coming, don't try and film it. Get cover. I had to learn it the hard way."
Margaret 12:53 Yeah.
Brooke 12:53 Which makes you feel like it's not someone who's maybe in a tornado prone area, because I get the instinct like, "Oh, I'm gonna film that tornado." But not a great idea.
Margaret 13:01 I mean, it's funny because like, after selfies became such a thing, like more national parks, we're seeing more...or like more hiking places were seeing more falling deaths as people climbed to try and get selfies on precarious rocks and all that stuff. And I'm not above all of that. Like, I can't tell you that I wouldn't try and film a tornado. I don't know. I can tell you it's not a good idea. But, that doesn't relate one-to-one to what I would do.
Brooke 13:25 There was documentary that came out in like the 90s. And there was some really famous people who did it. It was all about tornadoes, and they chased them around and we're trying to catch data or something like that.
Margaret 13:35 Twister?
Brooke 13:36 Oh, yeah, that one. That one. It's a documentary, right?
Margaret 13:39 Yeah, sure. Tornadoes aren't real. It's funny that people keep spreading this theory of tornadoes, but I've never seen a tornado. Have you seen a tornado.
Brooke 13:52 I've seen some little dust spinneys.
Margaret 13:55 Yeah, no. Tornadoes are fake. You heard it here first.
Brooke 14:00 But wait, then Margaret. How did all the houses get destroyed and all of the things that are left in the wake of so called tornadoes? What did it.
Margaret 14:09 Did your parents not raise you right? Like, do you not know what the Big Bad Wolf is?
Brooke 14:14 So, all the damage is fake too?
Margaret 14:15 No, it was done by the Big Bad Wolf.
Brooke 14:19 Oh!
Margaret 14:20 Who huffed and puffed and blew all the houses. Yeah, this is....
Brooke 14:24 I didn't think he was that big. I didn't think he was big enough to blow over apartment buildings and stuff.
Margaret 14:29 Yeah, I mean there's no reason why her couldn't. There's like a bunch of them. They stand on each others' backs.
Brooke 14:34 But, he couldn't blow down the brick house that the smart pig built so....
Margaret 14:38 No, correct.
Brooke 14:39 So, I feel like he shouldn't be able to knock down all the concrete buildings and stuff that we see.
Margaret 14:45 Well, actually okay like, to go back to actually believing in tornadoes, brick houses and concrete houses are like remarkably more resilient against....
Brooke 14:54 Did you just waffle on tornadoes? Was that just a giant tornado waffle?
Margaret 14:58 Yeah. I did. I couldn't keep the bit up, because I got really excited about the fact that brick houses and concrete houses are remarkably more weatherproof than other houses, which it's one of the things that matters about understanding tornadoes, right, is that, like a lot of things, they impact poor people substantially more and most of the...it takes a much more powerful tornado. I've spent a while this week reading about tornado classifications. It takes a much more powerful tornado to tear down stick built house...What's the word I'm looking here for? Drywall, and two by fours and shit, then taking down like a trailer, right, that a lot of people don't have as much money live in. Those are easily destroyed by tornadoes. Drywall and studs, are a little bit harder. And then when you get into like brick houses and shit, you start getting houses that are like substantially more weather resistant. And, there's going to be remarkable class things about that. And like the most damage you hear, and the most deaths you hear about during tornadoes tend to be like trailer parks and shit. And it fucking sucks. It sucks that it impacts poor people more.
Brooke 16:02 Yeah, for sure. One small happy story that came out of the tornadoes from last weekend anyway, is that there's more than half a dozen Ukrainian refugees who were living in Minneapolis, who when they heard about the tornado damage, volunteered to drive down to Mississippi and help out with the tornado relief efforts.
Margaret 16:22 That's nice. That's better than... at the start of the story I was expecting it to be like, they left the war zone and then died in America from climate change weather.
Brooke 16:35 Nope, they're here and they're refugees of the war, and they're going to help Americans. So that's pretty dope of them.
Margaret 16:43 Well, speaking of good things...nope. I was just gonna talk about trans bills. There's really nothing good here.
Brooke 16:50 Trans people. Trans people good.
Margaret 16:52 Yeah, I can give you the trans report. I'm still here, still gay. The war on trans people continues. It will probably be about as successful as the war on drugs in that we had a war on drugs and now you can't buy drugs anymore. Or, it'll be like successful war on drugs and lots and lots of people have their lives ruined by it and nothing will be impacted. Well, in this case, to me, there's like literally nothing wrong, like trans people aren't doing anything wrong. Obviously, individual trans people are doing things wrong in the same way that individual everyone is doing something wrong. As of...this is a couple days old. So, already people are going to be like, like I wrote this two days ago and now by the time y'all hear it, who fucking knows. Kentucky's Congress just overrode their governor's veto of one of the worst anti trans bills in the country. Trans kids can't use the right bathrooms in school. Trans kids are forcibly detransitioned. Shit like that. North Dakota's governor...this is actually really interesting to me, these governor people vetoing things are interesting because they are across party lines. Off the top of my head, and again, I wrote this a couple days ago, I think Kentucky's governor's a Democrat and North Dakota is a Republican. And North Dakota's Republican, again, could be a different state, i could be messing all this up, just like knows trans people. So, he was just like, "I can't...What? I can't in good conscience sign this bill that like fucks over my friend." or whatever, you know. So, North Dakota governor vetoed a similar bill and as of...and it's gonna be overridden. And, in North Dakota, teachers can't use the kids correct pronouns unless the kid has a note from their parents that is cosigned by an administrator of the school. And government agencies can't require people, like who work for them, to correctly pronoun their co workers. And so it's just this like government oversight of everything bill that's just like "No, no one's allowed to be like." Like no workplace is able to be like "We're a trans accepting workplace," you know. And then, West Virginia passed a law prohibiting gender affirming care for trans youth. It does have more work arounds than many similar bills. Two doctors and parents all have to sign off before puberty blockers and all those things can be prescribed. So, it's less of a ban and more of like, lots of roadblocks. And it's interesting to me, because in many ways, this is like way better than an outright ban. However, it will be harder to...if we get this like wave of people defeating these trans bills, these ones are going to stick around longer. These ones that are not outright bans. They're much harder to challenge in court, is the theory that I learned from asking someone about it.
Brooke 19:43 Yeah, so they put up roadblocks or speed bumps more than roadblocks.
Margaret 19:48 Yeah. And a 2017 study says that West Virginia has the highest per capita rate of trans youth in the country. And another study says--and this is the dark thing behind all of this about like denying health care to children---another study says that West Virginia trans youth are three times more likely to attempt to kill themselves than their cisgender peers. So, God forbid we do the thing that all the Medical Association's agree ends that risk. Stopped Clock, the Libertarian Party, is standing up for trans people in some situations. Like some of the state libertarian parties, which tracks, but then again, you also see individual libertarians going on about like, "Well, I'm not paying with my taxpayer money for this degeneracy." And I'm like, "You're not a libertarian. Fuck you." And I'm like, I'm not even...like, whatever. It's just fucking conservatives calling themselves that.
Brooke 20:41 I mean, I get why libertarians would come out against all the trans bills because small government.
Margaret 20:48 Yeah, yeah, totally.
Brooke 20:50 It's consistent with what they believe. But, allegedly, Republicans also believe in small government, but that never pans out that way.
Margaret 21:00 That's the state of trans bills. It's bad. That's the state of it. And it's gonna get worse.
Brooke 21:04 How much effort and money is being wasted into worrying about trans youth and trying to block that as opposed to real issues that we have going on?
Margaret 21:05 I mean, okay, so like, from my point of view, and I think it's a wedge issue. It is specifically designed to...like, the sports thing is designed...it's not because people care about that teenage cis girls get to compete with only teenage cis girls. It is designed to make people angry at trans people. And then that is used as a wedge to then have trans people themselves be the wedge to pull off from LGBTQ, right, and get left with LGB. And you can already see that they like want...in the same way that like Roe v Wade. It's like they're going to come for...and they are already trying to come for birth control and all kinds of other shit too. You know? And they want...probably eventually, they'll get the sodomy laws back and premarital sex and whatever. You know? Handmaid's Tale shit.
Brooke 22:08 Let's hope not.
Margaret 22:09 And so, but there is this theory that they're gonna die on this hill, because the trans thing doesn't really win elections, because like, most people kind of don't give a shit what other people do with themselves. Like a lot of people give a shit, right, enough that there's all these bills being passed. But like, there's still a majority of United States-ian's who support access to trans health care, including for teenagers. And I won't say across party lines, because the majority of Republicans are opposed to it. But like, overall, you still have this, like people are kind of like "What the fuck is going on? Like this makes no sense?" Like, even the like it kind of icky people. So yeah, that's trans bills. Hooray.
Brooke 23:03 Yeah. I just like, I don't want to jump off that topic, because it's so important and affecting so many people that I love, and, you know. This queer person, that is some of the other letters in that acronym is not gonna let go with a T. Trans people are staying here in this alliance.
Margaret 23:24 And like, and I think it is worth understanding that like, it is already directly affecting large numbers of people. Entire families are leaving states with anti trans laws that are forcing the detransition of youth, and have to move to other states in order to access health care that keeps their kids alive. And so we're going to see an increasing amount of that. Whereas I would guess, a slightly higher percentage of adults, one aren't as...Trans adults aren't as directly affected yet. And also they might have more agency about staying and fighting. And I want to like just continue to say that I think it is absolutely worth offering full support to both people who choose to stay in dangerous situations to fight and people who choose to leave those situations, and full support to all people who are making either these decisions
Brooke 24:13 And to help the people who want to leave the situation, but don't have whatever means or opportunities to do so. Well, I don't know if this is any less evil, as we talk a little bit about our old friend inflation.
Margaret 24:34 That's where suddenly money's worth more, right?
Brooke 24:38 Close. Really close, Margaret, but the other direction
Margaret 24:42 We're worth more as more money.
Brooke 24:43 We'll go back to our friend the banana example. Bananas....
Margaret 24:53 I know what inflation is. I'm just being a dick.
Brooke 24:57 That's alright. We forgive you. Yeah. All right, inflation is where you can buy fewer bananas with your buck than you could before.
Margaret 25:07 But, I want more bananas.
Brooke 25:09 Yeah, they're gonna cost you more money. The same bananas are gonna cost you more money.
Margaret 25:15 I guess bananas are still dirt cheap. I mean, how much could have banana cost? What? $5? [Margaret laughs] I made a meme. I said a meme.
Brooke 25:24 Do you know that you're quoting a thing?
Margaret 25:25 Yes. I'm smart.
Brooke 25:28 I think she actually says $10 or $20.
Margaret 25:30 I dunno, my pop cultural literacy is as literate as she is about finance. Soon enough, it's just gonna be accurate. People are gonna look back at that and be like, "Yeah, no, that's about how much of banana costs. What do you want?"
Brooke 25:44 It's funny, because I think it is $10. And that was like 2003, so 20 years ago. So, it's a little less obscene now than it was when she said it.
Margaret 25:55 Bananas are the cheapest fruit. This is why I like them so much.
Brooke 25:59 I don't think I knew that. Well, your bananas are gonna cost more money or have been costing more money. I had to look it up for one of my other jobs the other day, so I just felt like doing an update on it. So, prices right now, compared to one year ago, are up about 5.5%. And I realize we haven't necessarily talked about what normal inflation looks like. Inflation is is a normal thing that happens in our society. There was a time in history when inflation was not normal, when things did not rapidly increase in price, or really have much of an increase. But that's a normal part of society. And normal inflation is closer to like 3% in a given year. So we're at close to double that with 5.5%.
Margaret 26:44 Isn't that still down from what inflation was a year ago?
Brooke 26:49 Yeah. So if we compare it from the last two years, so where prices are right now, compared to two years ago, they're up 13% when when we would have only seen maybe a 6% increase under normal inflation or less. So, still more than doubled. But it also depends on which things you look at. Like food is up more like 18% over the last couple of years.
Margaret 27:12 Okay. But not important stuff?
Brooke 27:16 No, not things that we need to survive,
Margaret 27:18 Like TVs?
Brooke 27:20 Yeah, of course. And, it's really interesting when I look at the charts of where the inflation is, because it's summer 2020, you know, like, right, as the impacts of all the pandemic shutdowns and supply shortages are starting to hit is when those prices start to do a clear difference in the way inflation hits, you know, goes for being that normal 3% rise to boom, much sharper.
Margaret 27:45 What can people do about inflation? Get all their money out of the banks, put it in a cash envelope and put it under their mattress?
Brooke 27:51 You know, that's actually going to be the opposite of what you want to do.
Margaret 27:54 Yeah, I went that was on purpose again.
Brooke 27:56 I know. Yeah, anything you can you can do with your money to have it earn at least some amount of interest, you know, if your bank offers a savings account that has a slightly higher rate of interest, and you could put some more of your money in there, or filter it through maybe a different type of checking account at your bank that perhaps offers a little bit of interest. Generally, interest rates never keep up with inflation. Like I just bought a CD that I think, is at four and a half percent or something like that over the next year? Which
Margaret 28:33 What band is it? [Brooke laughs] What's a CD?
Brooke 28:42 Yes, people don't know what either kinds of those are anymore. Certificate of Deposit. It's like a really short term investment that's with a guaranteed return on it. It tends to be a very small return. Generally doesn't keep up with inflation, but it's better than not getting any kind of interest. So, unlike a savings account you can't touch, or you can but then you get penalized, you don't get your interest on it.
Margaret 29:11 Can I tell you my 'it sounds like a joke,'but is actually my financial strategy?
Brooke 29:16 Oh, boy. Sure, you can. I can't promise I won't tease you about it
Margaret 29:20 During times of high inflation, feast or famine. The thing that you want is not going to be cheaper tomorrow than today.
Brooke 29:28 This is true.
Margaret 29:28 So ,holding on to cash right now, I hold is less useful as an overall strategy than investment in the material goods that you expect to be using, whether it's the material goods that you use for your art to turn into things, whether it's like you know, shit you're trying to turn around and sell, or whether it's just tools or even fucking experience....like, kind of in that same way that like nothing's better later. And we're all gonna die one day and we can't control when, I feel like it's like extra true during a...like smoke if you got them, right? But ideally it's like....like I do consciously think about this where I'm like, "Well you know what, a table saw is going to stay useful to me many years from now if I take care of it, and the amount of money that that table saw will cost me is going to be 25% higher in three years," or whatever, you know. But that's only I mean....I don't know. Don't listen to me. I mean, I guess that's the point of the podcast is to listen to us. But don't.
Brooke 30:42 You know what's interesting, though, is the economic theory, the economic textbook and stupid fucking Keynesian economics, would would agree with you there that your money is going to become less useful, so you should you should go ahead and spend it now.
Margaret 30:53 Hell yeah. But I'm gonna write an economics book called "YOLO."
Brooke 30:58 No, Keyne's already did. And should be ceremonially shot in the head. But yeah, I guess. Go ahead and go out and spend all your...No, no, no, I'm not even going to finish this. That's terrible financial advice.
Margaret 31:14 I mean, like, hold on to like not die. But like, I don't know. Like, I don't have retirement fund. And I'm not saying like, no one should have a retirement fund. I'm saying I made some decisions in my life about how I was going to live that did not prioritize having a regular job. And I'm like, but I will have a table saw Right? Like, I don't know.
Brooke 31:34 There is something to that though, to consider about, you know, purchases you might be making, you know, medium sized purchases, not super large purchases, like cars and whatnot. But yeah, if you need a table saw it might be a better idea to get it sooner rather than later. And it is a durable good. So it's not it's not as consumable.
Margaret 31:56 Yeah, four Lamborghinis.
Brooke 31:59 Probably not? I don't know what the resale value is on a Lamborghini, but that's probably not going to be worth it.
Margaret 32:05 I know a Lamborghini is a car. That's all I got.
Brooke 32:11 Okay, all right. Anyway, yeah, inflation continues to suck. Buy some shit, if you have some money to spare because prices are going up.
Margaret 32:20 Okay, well in other fun...We really need to get better at having some intentionally positive things in this show, because for This Month in the Apocalypse, but in other fun news--actually, this one is like almost fine, right? Like there's a super fungus going around called Candida Auris.
Brooke 32:40 Super fun. Can't spell super fungus without super fun.
Margaret 32:44 I know. That's right. Or Gus. Don't trust anyone named Gus. Is Gus short for something? Gustav? I'm going to ask the next Gus I talk to. I know a Gus. So there's a new fungus. It's been around since 2009. Basically, it's just like there's this like kind of like constant war on...like the same way that like antibiotics are like an arms race where we like we get the new upgraded penicillin and then the biotics, the bacteria, is like, "Whatever, fuck you. I'm like penicillin resistant." So we're like, "Well, now we've got [mutters nonsense word]," and then you know, we're like, "Well, we're [nonsense word] resistant." And that happens in the fungal world as well. Candida Auiris. It was first noticed in 2009. It came to the US in 2016. I'm mostly saying this to say this is not worth freaking out about. This is a thing that like some news articles are telling us about--and I don't think it's bad for news articles to tell us about, right? But, it is not worth freaking out about unless you're in very specific situations, in which case it is worth paying attention to, and I don't mean to disparage, it is mostly currently in hospital settings. It is mostly affecting immunocompromised people who are in hospital settings. If you get it, it's sketchy, right? It has a very high mortality rate. But, it's not airborne. It is surfaces and direct contact. Most people...when I say 'get it,' I mean like get it and it creates its effect, its disease thing, and basically people start worrying about because it was antimicrobial resistant. And that's why people started freaking out about it because it was resistant to like, off the top of my head, I want to say, two of the three main things that were treating other forms of Candida...fungal problems, yeast problems. But, already since this has become a problem, two new anti fungal drugs that are effective on it have been passed by the FDA. So, I guess I'm saying this one to be like, this is a thing that people are like, most than use articles about it are like on your like local news station, you know, like the ones that want to tell you about smiling dogs and about how we're all going to die. Again, it's still worth understanding and keeping an eye on. But it's not worth freaking out about right now. What do you got? What's next?
Brooke 35:21 It is kind of positive news, because it is a super fungus, but then they found some things that actually do work on it. Okay, well, I want to I want to insert another short happy thing, since we're talking about happy things. That I read. And this is universal. Scientists discovered, I think just the last couple of weeks, that the rings around the planet Saturn actually help to warm the atmosphere of the planet. Yeah. Just a happy scientific discovery.
Margaret 35:57 So, in order to solve climate change...
Brooke 36:01 Oh, boy.
Margaret 36:02 We need to blow up the moon. It's gotta be worth just a couple of degrees.
Brooke 36:10 You know, I think that's gonna fuck up some other things that we don't want to do.
Margaret 36:15 I didn't read a whole novel called "Seven Eve's," by Neil Stevenson about what would happen if the moon blew up.
Brooke 36:20 Yeah, also as an indigenous person, and the moon is considered our grandmother, I have some feelings about blowing up my grandmother.
Margaret 36:28 Everyone dies.
Brooke 36:30 I'm gonna. I'm gonna pass.
Margaret 36:31 All the people die. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, everyone. I have a tooth ache. I'm sorry.
Brooke 36:39 How about some other great news that will make you really happy? Okay, about our former president, Ruffled Dumpagins?
Margaret 36:45 We put him on the moon and then we blow it up.
Brooke 36:48 Hey, okay, that...I might consent to blowing up my grandmother in that regards.
Margaret 36:54 All right, all right. Maybe just put him on the moon, and just let them see what happens. And then your grandmother could take care of them. We don't have to get rid of the grandmother at all.
Brooke 37:02 There we go. That's an even better plan. My grandma will definitely take care of Donald Trump.
Margaret 37:07 Okay. All right.
Brooke 37:09 So, as we're recording this, the former president was indicted just last week by a New York grand jury on more than 30 counts of stuff. And we don't know exactly what the various counts are. That's being kept secret. But, we know that it surrounds the hush money payment that was made to the former porn star--or maybe she's still a current porn star, I don't know which, but good on her way either way--Stormy Daniels, which, in case people don't realize this, paying the hush money isn't actually illegal. It's the way it was paid that was bad. Because it was filtered through the campaign. And yeah, the Dumpikin's former attorney, Cohen, I think was the one, has already been found guilty on this and is serving jail time over it. So, definitely illegal shit happen. What they're trying to argue now is whether Trump himself knew about it, and how involved he was in the illegal activity. So by the time you're listening to this, Grumpikins has already been arraigned, and he's probably gone back to Florida, and he's probably back to campaigning. So you'll have more news on this than we do. But it's that happy thing that I want to mention. An unhappy part of it is that in the three days following the announcement from the grand jury that he was going to be indicted is the disgraced former President raise $7 million in campaign funds for his current presidential bid.
Brooke 38:09 You say million or billion?
Brooke 38:43 Million. In three days. So, yeah, not a bad return on $130,000. But the payments...
Margaret 38:54 Okay, so I have a new way that we can make money. Nope, sorry. Go. Ahead.
Brooke 38:57 Yeah, there we go. I mean, and I'm okay if I get to hang up some porn stars too. That'll make me happy.
Margaret 39:03 We can become right wing grifters.
Brooke 39:05 No, Can we be left wing grifters?
Margaret 39:10 Okay, let's find out. Everyone who's listening, send us $10. And then you become an official Live Like the World is Dying host, who can then get other people to send you $10, of which you will turn around and send us $5. But, don't worry, because the people under you will be earning...
Brooke 39:28 No, no, no, no. You're describing something that's shaped roughly like a pyramid, which I'm pretty sure is...
Margaret 39:34 It's devil worship. Triangle is devil worship.
Margaret 39:34 No, it's a triangle. It's the strongest shape in nature.
Margaret 39:41 It's the A-frame. It's the a-frame financial model.
Brooke 39:48 The former president is also facing other legal challenges, which haven't brought forth charges yet but some of them certainly will. He's under investigation for things including the January, 6th attack on the US capital. Federal election tampering in Georgia, mishandling of classified documents, a civil lawsuit for fraud in New York against the Trump Organization, and a defamation lawsuit, amongst other things.
Margaret 40:10 What a good guy.
Brooke 40:11 Yeah, super awesome.
Margaret 40:14 I do love all the like...You know, it's like the like, the prison abolitionists, anarchists who are too good for electoral politics like, myself and many other people, but it's like, I feel like there's just like a little bit of like, "Alright, well, we can still take some fuck that guy." Like, fuck that guy. I don't care. Yeah. You want to hear some some list of stuff?
Brooke 40:38 What else is going on out there, Margaret?
Margaret 40:40 Well, there's a diesel spill in West Virginia from a derailed train. I spent a while trying to look up how you filter diesel out of water. But, unfortunately, most of the information is about how to filter diesel out of water...how to how to filter water out of diesel cause people want the diesel.
Brooke 40:58 As long as you capture the water, that might not be the worst.
Margaret 41:01 Well, it's like, because the water that they're pulling out might some diesel and they don't care. They're getting rid of that water. They're probably throwing it in the fucking creek or on the ground. But like, because you don't want to put watery gas or diesel into your engines order, but the way that people do it is that water is denser than diesel so it sinks to the bottom of the container. So I guess if you're a life or death....I'm not even going to make that advisory. Like don't drink diesel water. Artificial sweetener erythritol, one of those--I think it's one of the alcohol sugars--seems to be linked to heart problems. Doubles your chance of bad shit. It's in some vegan ice cream. So beware.
Brooke 41:35 Oh, good to know. Hey, before we go too far from the train derailment.
Margaret 41:38 Oh, you wanna do the train thing.
Brooke 41:40 Well, just there was another train derailment that made me think of in Montana just over this last weekend. And they were carrying a lot of...
Margaret 41:48 Ice cream?
Brooke 41:49 Coors Light, and another brand of beer that's similar to that.
Margaret 41:57 That's just funny. There's no. Okay. Hell yeah.
Brooke 41:59 So, you don't need to filter the beer out of the water. You can just go ahead just drink it.
Margaret 42:04 Yeah, it's really good for you. It hydrates you more effectively than water.
Brooke 42:08 Its water beer in the first place. So.
Margaret 42:11 Okay, that's fair. Speaking of Oregon, we weren't, but a guy who was trapped in the snow, managed to get an SOS out on this phone. This is like a survival tip. This is not a survival tip that applies to almost anyone. He attached his phone to his drone, and flew his drone up until it got enough service and the message sent and he was saved. And that rules.
Brooke 42:35 That's fuckin rad.
Margaret 42:37 That said, in terms of getting out emergency signals, one way--satellite communicators are a more effective method and cheaper than drones. Not a lot cheaper than drones. I'll be real. There in the like, $300-$400 range, however, and I bet more and more phones will do this. The newer iPhones. I don't have one. But, the newer iPhones have built in satellite communication SOS systems. Where the satellite communicator is like more like what like people hiking in the backwoods and stuff have and it like lets you like text. It's a little bit slow. But like, no matter if you can see the sky, you can get a message out with satellite communicators.
Brooke 43:15 You have one of those, don't you, Margaret?
Margaret 43:16 I do. I spend some time in the backwoods. And so it's nice to have,
Brooke 43:24 Well I have a drone. So, I'm just gonna take my drone and just follow that guy's success. It's like a $300. Drone. It's not a special drone.
Margaret 43:33 Yeah, you gotta keep that in your car at all times. You will literally die if you don't have that in your car at all times.
Brooke 43:42 Will I not die If I haven't my car? Will it protect me in other situations?
Margaret 43:45 I think we're getting off topic.
Margaret 43:45 In this specific situation that this man was in, he's immortal now. Because the the signal was interrupted by some vampires. And they came over. He's not allowed to see the sun anymore, which is like a heavy price to pay. Right? And he consumes blood and there's like a lot of like, ennui attached to that. He's a vampire now.
Margaret 44:06 So, here's a list of worst air quality in the United States listed from 1 to 10: Bakersfield, California. Congratulations. You've the worst air quality in the United States. Los Angeles, Chicago, Northwest Indiana and the industrial areas like Gary, Indianapolis, Houston, St. Louis, a bunch of rural Pennsylvania managed to like really come in hard for the rural areas. I'm glad to see that rural representation. These are mostly localized to a few hotspots, because you're like in the mountains and there's a factory there and they don't care about you because you're poor. You'll notice that a lot of these places are poor. Atlanta and Birmingham, Alabama. I'm sorry. Finland is joining NATO, so Putin's weird war is having the opposite of the desired effect, and I don't really have an opinion about that, but it's like worth noting. Most of the current like prepper news you can go out and read is gonna be like, "Today, World War III is about to happen tomorrow." And it's like the same person will say this like over and over and over again. And they always have like some reason, as we like inch closer, and they're not even usually like wrong about their reasons. Like the China, US. and Russia are like playing a fucking crazy game right now, you know? And there's like nuclear capable planes from the US like flying near that little weird part of Russia that isn't attached to Russia that's like, south of the...the like Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, you know, there's a tiny piece of Russia under there. And then like, US planes are like, playing a like 'not touching, can't get mad,' game about nucular war. And that's like, not great. But, I'm not like those...I know, I'm now saying the thing that I just said don't worry about, but like, it's...I don't know. I don't feel like we're any more likely to have nuclear war tomorrow than we were yesterday. Personally.
Brooke 45:58 We're all going to die anyway.
Margaret 46:00 Yeah, except for that guy who sent his drone up to talk to the vampires.
Brooke 46:06 Vampire man.
Margaret 46:07 Metformin taken during COVID is looking like it's reducing long COVID cases. At least according to some studies. I'm not giving you medical advice, but it's like promising, right? What's promising is that there's more and more information about how people are handling long COVID, which is also really promising because there's a lot of long viral problems like Lyme and things like that, that have been ignored and the people who suffer from them have been mistreated by the medical establishment for decades. And I am optimistic that the research into long COVID--Because long COVID can't be ignored because of the scale at which it's happening--will help people who suffer from these other viral infections. That is my hope. The far Right government in Italy has stopped registering children born to same sex couples. I think it's basically like same sex couples were going to other countries in order to have kids via surrogates. And then now they're like not able to come back to Italy. I don't have the absolute details about...Italy's being fucked up and homophobic.
Brooke 47:13 They can't like get a birth certificate?
Margaret 47:15 It's something like that,
Brooke 47:17 Wow.
Margaret 47:17 The the news article was clearly translated and not incredibly well. That was the best I could figure. China is on track to destroy American exceptionalism and become the number one cause of climate change. So, we're gonna have to step up our game everyone.
Brooke 47:32 No.
Margaret 47:35 On--well, we are stepping up our game because--on March 13th, Biden approved...this could have been a whole separate topic. But, Biden approved a project called Willow and I am offended because "Willow" is an amazing movie and an amazing tree and not a oil development on federal land in Alaska that's the size of fucking Indiana.
Brooke 47:54 Yeah, I heard about that.
Margaret 47:55 It is key habitat for polar bears and caribou. It fucking sucks. It is like, absolutely a spit in the face to any pretense that one of the most powerful nations on the planet would possibly stick to what it claims about the--not deindustrialization--but de fossil fueling and or whatever...
Brooke 48:15 Yeah. Gross.
Margaret 48:17 Positive environmental news that is no longer in positive environmental news is electric cars were getting a $7,500 subsidy from the federal government. Except it's a big confusing mess. And no one can tell...like not even the car companies know whether you have to lease, if you can buy, which ones you can buy. And it all has to do with this like pissing match thing where they want all of the...the subsidy cars have to have a certain percentage or maybe it's all of it, I'm not sure, of the components made within the United States. But, at the moment, all of that is a nightmare mess. So people don't know which electric car they can get $7,500 subsidy on.
Brooke 48:53 But, there is a $4,000 federal subsidy that is more straightforward and not all fucked up and confusing.
Margaret 49:03 That's good to know. Like Virginia recently passed a gun law that makes a lot of sense to me. I'm not opposed to all gun laws, I guess, except in the abstract way or I don't like law as a system, but they passed a thing that's just like subsidies for people to get gun safes. It's not a requirement. It's not a like safe gun lock up requirement, although I think that that should exist, but maybe not in a law way but in a cultural norm way. But yeah, like if you want people to change an economic system, and we do. We need a different economic system, or a different...Well, we did a lot of different things to be changed, but whatever. I don't know. Okay, so Finally, my small thing is that the Inter governmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC released a new report. We're fucked. I mean, we're almost certainly going to overshoot the Paris Agreement, of capping climate change at 1.5. C [degrees Celsius change] And 1.5. C is where you start getting runaway feedback loops, at least according to...I mean, everyone's given different numbers. Some people, I've heard 2 C [degrees Celsius] or whatever, but like, yeah. It's bad and things need to change more dramatically than I believe the current system is capable of changing things. So as much as I'm like, "Oh, money for electric guitar," Guitars? Electric guitars for everyone. Because then if you're all vampires, you can like [makes guitar note noises] like, the Crow. But I think that fundamentally and dramatically shifting the way that our governmental and economic systems work is a more likely way to stop climate change than convincing our current governmental system to effectively address it.
Brooke 50:49 Right there with you. I bet our friends over It Could Happen Here will probably read that report and talk about it in depth. I know they did last year when that report came out. And that was pretty good info they distilled down there and so hopefully they'll do that again for us.
Margaret 51:04 They're not our friends. We hate them. We're starting beef with....No. They're all so nice. They're also, they want to...I also work for them. But yeah, okay.
Margaret 51:16 They play games with us. We like them.
Margaret 51:22 Yeah. What else? We're coming up on an hour. We got anything else?
Brooke 51:27 Oh, that was my list.
Margaret 51:30 Okay. Well, I think we can change things fundamentally. And I also think we can build the systems by which to mitigate the worst effects of the changes that are going to happen. And I think we can do that by building together in community minded preparedness ways. Brooke, do you want to start a podcast with me about how to do individual and community preparedness? We can make it be weekly. Give it some name, like Don't Die Weekly or....
Brooke 52:07 I feel like Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness already produces something like that. And we might be on it right now.
Margaret 52:17 Whoa.
Brooke 52:18 I know. You can listen to it starting weekly, starting right now.
Margaret 52:24 Whoa. Yeah,
Brooke 52:26 It's actually called Live Like the World is Dying and Margaret, you do most of it. Though, I think the toothache is making you forget.
Margaret 52:34 The Vampire Cast.
Brooke 52:37 Come to Oregon. Become a vampire. Or not.
Margaret 52:39 Yeah, it's true. Oregon's could still hang. I mean, my toothache is fucking me up. I'm not even on drugs for it yet. I'm just excited to finish so I can take ibuprofen.
Brooke 52:50 Well, how can we finish?
Brooke 52:57 Thanks so much for listening to the latest installment of This Month in the Apocalypse. We come to you as members of the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness publishing collective. We produce three, soon to be four other podcasts, create zines and publish books. You can check out that great stuff on our website, Tangledwilderness.org. We're also on some social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter.
Margaret 53:20 And Vampire Freaks.
Brooke 53:23 We are able to do these rad things because of our Patreon supporters.
Margaret 53:27 Myspace.
Brooke 53:34 You make this Friendster. Do we have Friendster?
Margaret 53:38 We only add you on Friendster if you support us on Patreon, I'm sorry, them's the rules.
Brooke 53:44 Our patrons make this work possible. And if you're interested in supporting our work, please check us out on patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Those who support us that $20 a month level get a special shout out at the end of every podcast.
Margaret 53:56 They're in our top eight.
Brooke 53:58 Top eight?
Margaret 54:01 Were you not a MySpace kid?
Brooke 54:03 I was but I don't...Oh! Yeah! The little the board thing with the squares. Yes. Okay, I forgot we called it that.
Margaret 54:09 Your top eight friends.
Brooke 54:11 Yep. All right. We want to say thanks to Hoss the dog, Miciahah, Chris, Sam, Kirk, Eleanor, Jenipher, Staro, Cat J, Chelsea, Dana, David, Nicole, Mikki, Paige, SJ, Shawn, Hunter, Theo, Boise Mutual Aid, Milica, paprouna, Aly, Paige, Janice, Oxalis. And yes, thank you so much.
Margaret 54:32 United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, Peru, Republic Dominican, Cuba, Caribbean, Alabama, Alaska. El Salvador too,
Brooke 54:39 Colorado, Connecticut.
Margaret 54:44 We actually like you all individually. I'm sorry that we made it...it's a toothache. Bye, everyone.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Margaret and Agatha talk about mutual aid in Ukraine and Agatha's experience trying to go there to fight in an anti-authoritarian platoon, but ending up doing a bunch of mutual aid supply distribution work instead. They talk about he intricacies of relief work and some of the special circumstances in Ukraine. Heavy content warning on this episode. Towards the end of the episode around 46:00, Agatha starts to tell a really intense story about being in a war zone. Around 56:00 is when it begins to get graphic.
Agatha (they/them) can be found on IG @jalutkewicz You can donate to their mutual aid work on venmo @agathawilliams or on Paypal @jalutkewicz@gmail.com
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Agatha on Ukrainian Mutual Aid
Margaret 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for it feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. And I'm really excited about this week's interview, I am going to be talking to an old friend of mine from quite a while back who haven't talked to in a while about what's involved in anarchists mutual aid in war zones, and specifically, Ukraine, and in the things that are going on there. Yeah, I'm really excited for you all to hear this conversation. But first, I'm excited for you all to hear that we're a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network.
Margaret 01:13 This is Margaret, from the future, coming back to say that this episode deserves a content warning near the end of the episode and there'll be some heads up. We will be talking about, "Hey, so I hear you were attacked." That part contains graphic descriptions of war and violence. And so listener discretion is advised.
Margaret 02:05 Okay, we're back. So, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then kind of a brief description of why you are in a good place to talk about anarchists mutual aid in places of active conflict.
Agatha 02:20 So my name is Agatha. My pronouns are they/them. Yeah, I went over to Ukraine last year about this time to do mutual aid support with anti authoritarian units and anarchists units. Things got fucked up on my way over there. So, that wasn't a possibility any longer. So, I just started doing aid runs with a convoy of other solo operators who went over there to try and do something to help alleviate the suffering of folks. Yeah, I'm here to talk about that.
Margaret 02:57 So one of my questions about that, is, what do these aid runs look like? I'm under the impression there are different organizations working to try to get new vehicles and armor and all of these things that, you know, to frontline units, to anti authoritarian units. And these are like, organizations from outside Ukraine that are like sending people and supplies to then deliver the supplies? Like what does this look like?
Agatha 03:25 Yeah, so me and a few other folks went over there with a group of cash all of our own, you know, what I mean, and we use that for operational costs, which was, you know, feeding ourselves buying diesel in Poland. And then we worked with some more wealthy sympathizers to the cause, who, one person we worked with owns a distribution company, and they have a giant fucking warehouse in Warsaw, Poland. And, you know, they would make sure items that needed to get to folks close to the frontline, where bigger NGOs wouldn't go, could get things that they needed that were not getting there, i.e. like medicine, sanitary products, food, you know, and then later on body armor and diesel. So, this person would basically...they have a bigger organization that looks a lot friendlier on their website, and you can go and donate money and it has pictures of like Ukrainian kids smiling. So, the run would start like this, we'd get a text from this wealthy patron and they'd be like, "Alright, I've organized another run," you know, "Meet me at my warehouse Saturday at four in the morning and bring four vans," you know, "and eight drivers." And like, we wouldn't know where we're going. We wouldn't know what we're doing. And then we'd get there at four in the morning and then there'd be all these like, gnarly angry Polish dudes just like moving boxes around and making piles. And then the, you know, the person who lead everything and orchestrated everything, she's just a very strong, amazing woman. And she would come out and just start barking orders and be like, "You, you're driving this van, and you're putting all this in your van, but like, I have some other shit to hide at the bottom of the pile. So don't load it yet," you know, "load this van." And then she'd like really quickly, have one of her cronies, bring out a pallet full of body armor inserts that were like, made at a metal shop out of like, AR500 steel that can withstand 556 and 762 rounds.
Margaret 05:31 Yeah, gun Twitter will be very upset about this.
Agatha 05:35 What's that?
Margaret 05:36 I said gun Twitter will be very upset that they're using steel.
Agatha 05:40 I know. But if you're out there fucking around, you want something more than nothing, and it's not gonna spatter, AR500 is at least not going to spatter on you, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's not going to create any spalding. But, that regardless, you know, she did her own research on what steels are like the most bulletproof and then she fucking contacted a metal shop with a brake press that could you know, bend quarter inch thick steel that was hardened. And then she had them plasma cut out the designs that fit into vests that she had manufactured from different tailors around Poland, you know, it was just like, it was 100%, DIY, you know, ballistic vests. And it was just amazing. And she'd be like, "Alright, you're delivering all this, like toilet paper, and ibuprofen, and like, you know, baby food to this one location, then you're going to meet with my people at this location, and you're gonna give them these 10 boxes," you know, and those had whatever in them. I never asked, you know, but and then she'd be like, "Give them these 50 vests," you know, "they have like a poorly equipped unit that needs them. They have a mortar unit that's taken a lot of casualties because they're so ill equipped," like, blah, blah, blah. And then she'd be like, "Also, the next van, we're gonna fill it with all toilet paper. But, at the bottom of the toilet paper pile, we're gonna hide 300 gallons of diesel, you know, in these little containers."
Margaret 07:02 Why are you hiding it?
Agatha 07:05 Because there's like tariffs involved with transporting body armor and transporting fuel across conflict zone lines, apparently. I don't know very much about it. I just know that like, there was like, a big to do. And you had to file a lot more fucking paperwork that took weeks and weeks, if not months to get like 50 fucking vests across the border, and then to the east of Ukraine. Whereas she was just like," I don't give a fuck, you're going there anyways." I mean, she was crazy. She was like, linked up, she'd be like, "Alright, these are your things you need when you get to the border. If you get there early, wait till 5:30 shift, change or whatever. And wait till this one dude is working. Show him this paperwork, and he's gonna let you through without giving you hassle or looking in your van. If you go at other times, I can't guarantee you're gonna get through without a hassle." So, she had stuff going on, that I didn't know about. And I didn't care to ask about. I was just into helping and I was good enough just bringing food and medicine. You know. When I found out we were bringing other shit and like hiding it. I was like, "Oh, that's cool." I was like, "I'm into it. Like, I'm sketchy. Like, I'm down." you know? And so we just like, we would wait, we'd pack up all the vans at four in the morning when we met her there. And then there was a few Polish dudes who would run the convoy once we were on the road. And we all had radios. So, it's like, you know, head convoy dudes like, "You guys got to pick it up, we need to make better time." or people in the back would be like, "Hey, head of convoy slow down, we're losing ya." Yeah, because all our shit was painted drab green and had the organization we were working for plastered all over the side of it. So, we wanted to look like a convoy while we were in Poland and the West of the country, and stick together. And then once we'd get across the border, and hit Lviv, you know, then it scattered and we would take magnets off, and we didn't want to look like a convoy, because convoys get targeted and like, all this other junk. So we had basically leave Warsaw at like five or six in the morning, we'd drive for fucking ever, we'd get to the border, we'd sit there forever, you know, we'd give our slips to the guy we were supposed to give them to, they would just wave us through, they wouldn't search our shit. And then we drive fucking forever to Lviv. And then at Lviv, we'd unload like 80% of the stuff, you know, four out of six in the convoy would go back to Warsaw. And then you know, I was generally one of the ones who would go further east. So, I'd stick around, we'd get coordinates to a new warehouse that we didn't know about, and then we would go refill our vans and Lviv with other shit going further east. And then from there, we'd hit Kyiv. We'd drop a bunch of shit of in Kyiv. If we were transporting vehicles, we'd bring them to the specific units that was asking for them, basically just four by four vehicles that can carry around and a little Assault Squad through mud and shit that they didn't have. And then we'd deliver that shit. And then, you know, we'd spend a night in Kyiv and then we'd get more coordinates the next day. We'd go to another warehouse. We'd fill it up with whatever the fuck was planned for us. And then all this is going on while we are like doing our own shit. Like, last time we were in Zolochiv, they needed salt because their bakery had run dry of salt. They had everything to make bread for the frontline troops except for salt. So, they're like, "We need three vans worth of salt" you know, "We need like 5000 pounds of salt." So, we'd be like moving our salt around to make room for our wealthy patron's shit that she wanted to go to specific units that she had friends in, or whatever that were hard up. You know? So we were just have to like, juggle shit around. And then like, make sure everything fit, throw our 50 gallon drums of diesel on the fucking roof of the car and siphon it out and fill our fucking tanks back up, because you just can't get diesel in Ukraine when we were there. So we had to smuggle in all the diesel for the entire trip. And then, we'd be on our way again. And then we'd eventually get to Kharkiv or wherever, in the far east of the country, get rid of all our shit. And then just like, usually pick up some passengers who wanted to get the fuck out of Kharkiv or wherever the fuck they were, and bring people back and get them out of sketchy situations. And then we'd slowly make our way back to Poland. And we didn't really stop when we were driving. So, some days we drive for like 48 hours straight or some couples of days and then we would take naps and switch out drivers. But on the way back, it was a little more relaxed, like we'd get a hotel or something like in between Kharkiv and fucking Kyiv and try and take showers and get like a good night's rest and then whatever. And then we finally make our way back to Warsaw or Krakow, wherever our next pickup was. We'd rest for 24 hours without doing shit. We would just eat food sleep, nap, like fucking whatever the fuck we felt like doing. Go on walks. Then we'd get another another call from from our person who was funding a lot of this and she'd be like, "Meet me at the warehouse, Tuesday at 1"30 in the morning and bring seven vans this time," you know, so yeah, that's pretty much the cycle that was going on when I was there.
Margaret 12:42 Yeah. Okay, so I have a bunch of questions about this. There's so much that's curious to me. Yeah, one of them is like, like, what's in it for this lady? Like, I don't know, if you want to like out her specifically or whatever. But like, it's international solidarity? Is it like...
Agatha 12:57 I couldn't tell.
Margaret 12:58 Is it just like, we don't want Ukraine to fall because then we think we're next? Is it just the same reason you're there, we just got to fucking help each other? Like, what's going on?
Agatha 13:09 So, everything I gathered from talking with this person was that she just like, thought what was going on was super fucked up was like, disgusted that like civilians, were paying such a high price for the actions of, you know, a fascist imperialist government's need to try for a land grab and was just like, honestly disgusted about how little the rest of the world seemed to care about these people who, like, were fucking starving to death and are still starving to death and like fucking living in occupied villages that change hands every couple of weeks, and like, can't get anything because NGOs won't go there. Because Red Cross thinks is too dangerous or whatever. Yeah, I mean, it is but like, that's your fucking job. Like, that's what you should be doing. And it like, came down to like, hundreds and or thousands of like, solo operators who have like these little groups, there's a bunch of us, like, but it's like, hard to...It's hard to say what her end game was. Like, she had a bunch of fucking dudes who, I don't speak Ukrainian or Polish, but there's some words that are the same, you know? And I mean, like, we'd be driving and the radio chatter would be all Polish. And I'd hear like "Americanski,"" and then, "Blah, blah, blah," and then nothing for a minute. And then you'd hear like, "Blah, blah, blah, Pistoleta, blah, blah, blah." And I'm like, what do they got in their van? You know what I mean? But I'm not asking, you know. The most I ever asked was like, the lead dude who took us on the convoys just seemed like he knew his way around a warzone, knew his way, you know, bunch of those motherfuckers were into Brazilian jujitsu. And that's where we like, connected a lot, because that's something I'm into, and they all knew how to handle themselves. They all seem like ex military or something. And one day, I was just like, I was like, "Hey, dude, like, are you ex... It's like, don't answer mean if you don't want to, but like, are you ex military or like current military or something?" And he says, "Kind of." and then walked away. And I was like, "Okay, that's enough." You know what I mean? So like, I don't know what their motivations were. They were like, super not into Russia, I can say that. It like, a little uncomfortable for me because like... and especially the closer you get to the border of the Russia, the more you start hearing terms like 'orc,' and like, stuff like that, as opposed to 'Russian.' I don't know, they had seen more shit than me at that point, had really strong opinions and like, as much as I could tell, they just wanted to, you know, kind of ease some of the suffering that normal everyday people were going through because of the conflict.
Margaret 15:47 Yeah. Okay. So that brings it back to like, you know, you mentioned that you, you headed out there hoping to specifically work delivering aid to the anti authoritarian units and stuff. Is that work that you got to continue to do or like?
Agatha 16:03 in some ways. So, just to clarify, I originally went out to fight in an anti authoritarian unit made up of English speaking foreigners. That was my my first goal. I had issues with getting my passport in a timely manner. And then there was this like, horrible incident where the unit that had accepted me, they knew when I was coming, they had someone picking me up to bring them to the base and get me situated and fucking geared up. But they're like, "You need body armor. You need a ballistic helmet. You need your own IFAK. You need like, your own fucking compass, you know, basically full kit was needed to be provided by me, because all they were going to....they're going to stick me on a mortar team and I was going to be like, stuck with that mortar team with whatever I brought, or essentially, and then, on my way over there, something happened where the platoon leader was found dead on base. They got assigned a new Platoon leader. This dude was like, "You guys can still fly you're anti anti authoritarian and anarchists flags as a unit, but we're not taking in any more foreigners. And that's that." So while I was on my way there, I was told, you know, "No go on the, on the infantry unit. Blah, blah, blah." So I just like, didn't know what to do. I had like $5,000 worth of tourniquets, and quit clot and fucking chest seals. You know, I had I had ballistic helmets, I had a level four ceramic plates with me. I had more shit than I could carry. I looked like an asshole coming from the Warsaw airport to my hostel, you know. And then I couldn't leave my hostel for like, a week and a half, because I had like, all this gear in there that wouldn't fit in my tiny little safe and like, everyone was like, "What the fuck are you doing with all this shit? And like, why are you here?" And I didn't want to say anything. So I just like seemed sketchy. And then I eventually found a group that was working directly with anarchists fighters at the front. And I was like, "Hey, I brought all this medical supplies. It's basically only heavy bleed stop supplies to treat gunshots and amputations and things of this nature. Do you want it? Like, how do I get it to you?" And they're like, "Yes, totally. One of our people, we'll get with you soon," you know. And this is when I started my waiting game in the hostel trying to like, not leave my shit for too long. And be there waiting for the call. And like a week and a half went by before I got any kind of information. And honestly, I was like, kind of bummed out. This group seemed like they knew what they were doing. Their social media presence was like on point. They were like, just vague enough to like, promote their cause, but like, not giving too much information out. You know, they're just like, whatever. So, I was like, I'll deal with these guys. Fine. I'll give them this medical equipment. And then they just like, totally dropped the ball. And like, they kept saying, someone's going to call me. Every day I texted them. I'm like, I'm sitting on all this crap, I need to get rid of it and be on my way and try and find another way to like, do what I'm trying to do. And it just kept going on. And then, you know, a week and a half. I'd never left the country before I left for this. And I speak no other languages. I'm like super neurodivergent, have like really high anxiety and was just in this foreign city where I didn't understand anything. And just like, every day felt like a week. You know, I was just waiting for my phone to ring and then I could hand the shit off. And like, I had a couple of leads on folks who were like, "Yeah, when you're done doing your thing, like, give us a call and we'll set you up doing some aid work." So I was just waiting and waiting. And then they finally called me. They're like, "Go meet this person at this address. And they'll take all your shit from you." And I was like, "Okay, great." So, I take a fucking cab like across Warsaw, I ended up at this place. I eventually find out it's like, basically like a methadone clinic for like houseless people. I was like, oh cool, whowhoever's doing this also works doing this kind of work you know, but then I just look like a sketch ball, sitting outside of this place with like three fucking duffel bags, waiting for....
Agatha 20:09 Yeah, I have no idea who's coming to meet me. Every person that walked by I'm like, "Are you them?" You know like, yeah, I don't know shit. I'm there. Like the time they're supposed to meet me goes by. I got there like half an hour early because I just wanted to not fuck this up. And then like the time they're supposed to meet me comes and goes and then it's like an hour later. And I call my dudes and I'm like, "Hey, your person's not here yet." They're like, "They're on their way." and then they hang up and I'm like, okay, like literally like four hours goes by of me doing this. Like I'm just like, whatever I'm so bummed and then this like, door flies open to this place and this little person comes out and they're like, "Hey, are you Agatha?" And I was like, "Yeah," and they're like, "Alright, I'm gonna take this shit. Like thanks a bunch." and then like, drags in three duffel bags really quick and slams the door shut and I'm like, fuck like they knew my name, but like I'm pretty sure that was who I was supposed to give this to you know, and then I go back to my hostel and then like whatever. So like, it was like super disheartening to be told I couldn't be in this fighting unit, and then like it was super disheartening to have trouble handing the shit off, but like, in the end, it was probably the best thing that could happen to me, because like, after being there for a while, I was like fuck, "I don't know if I could have been of service in a unit where I have no military training," like, you know, I probably would have been a liability more than anything. So like, Thank God that happened. And then I got hooked up with these people who like, it was like perfect for me. You know, I just drive for 30 hours and then like that was fine with me you know? Like I traveled the country a million times as like a dumb useless punk. Like this was like the same shit, just like felt better because I was like helping people you know what I mean?
Margaret 20:09 Thousands of dollars of gear.
Agatha 20:36 For everyone that's listening. That's how we that's how we know each other, is being dumb, useless punks traveling the country.
Agatha 22:02 So, I just applied whatI knew about like traveling and being comfortable being uncomfortable with like, doing shit and it was like a perfect fit. So, I originally went over to do that. Yeah. And then it switched to this. And then I was only there for like six more weeks. But, I did a bunch of shit while I was there. And, you know, I will probably get into it later. But, I needed to do like a lot of trauma therapy once I got back and like, it's been a year and I just felt comfortable enough to buy another plane ticket there and I'm on my way back. But this time, I don't have to figure anything out. I already have a crew. We have a fleet of nine vehicles. We have deliveries lined up for fucking months. So it's like, I can just jump right back in you know, and like, it's just nice when you like hand a bunch of fucking hungry people food or you know, yeah, like. And that's the thing that struck me most is I went out there as an anarchist and then while I was there, I kind of just turned into like a humanist. I was like, you know, I just didn't give a fuck who I was working with anymore. I was like, "Oh, you're hungry and you need food. I'm gonna bring it to you," and it didn't matter to me anymore who was picking it up. You know, I even worked with some known fascist units who supposedly kicked all the Neo Nazis out, and anti Semites got kicked out, but they still have unscrupulous pasts as like street gangs and stuff, but like, you know, I was bringing them stuff to like, keep people alive. I didn't. I just stopped caring, you know, about political affiliation and shit.
Margaret 23:39 No, it makes sense to me though, like, because one of the things that has been so interesting to me about like studying disaster stuff and disaster responses, right, are these like, you know, there's this moment that I wasn't there for but sticks in one of my head, my head is that one of my best friends. I've probably mentioned this on the show before, but one of my best friends is this, you know, crusty traveling punk kid who went to go do flood relief in a place that you could normally drive into, but could only be flown into. And the people who were flying in, were all of these people with like, tiny airplanes, which means rich libertarians. And you know, and so my friend is like talking about being like, and you know, and they're nervous person, and they're in this tiny airplane driving and like flying into a storm with this, like, random libertarian guy, right? And it's just like, and they were fine. And they landed and they delivered supplies and they got food out and got stuff out to people who needed it who were trapped and hungry. And I think that's what's so interesting about disaster, whether it's, quote unquote natural, like the accelerating climate disasters, or, you know, the invasion of an imperialist power into your country is just this like....like the goal isn't to help anarchists. The goal is to help people who are being destroyed by an imperialist power. You know?
Agatha 25:05 Yeah, exactly.
Margaret 25:07 It's interesting to me, because I do have I have a...like it's like cool, right, supporting the anti authoritarian unit specifically. It's cool and like anarchists organizing this is cool, but a lot of that is like...well, I'm excited that an anarchist is at least one of the drivers of this organization that you're working for, you know. Like you. You know? What is it? What is it like interacting as an anti authoritarian person within this like...you know, yeah, you have this like, rich industrialist lady who's just like, pouring everything and all kinds of risk into just providing things for people and I presume you have this very...like is it this melting pot environment. Like, what is it like socially?
Agatha 25:50 It's fucked up, man. Like the guy I got stuck with like, when the group I started driving for wanting to vouch for me, they're like, "We have a solo run. It's like not very sketchy. We're not going that far east. We're just going like outside of Lviv. It's like a fucking shit ton of sanitary products. And then like, you're going to come back to Częstochowa and you're going to fill up the van full of strollers and bring it to this orphanage that's only run for orphans that were victims of losing their parents in fucking Bucha you know.
Margaret 26:21 Well, it better be anarchists babies, because otherwise they don't deserve strollers.
Agatha 26:24 Yeah. But, the fucking guy picks me up and he's wearing a fucking Black Rifle Coffee Company t shirt.
Margaret 26:30 Oh shit.
Agatha 26:31 And I was like, What the fuck is this? You know? And I was like, this sucks. And I was like, cuz I knew they weren't going to be anarchists. But I was like, this dude is wearing just a straight up fascist companies t shirt.
Margaret 26:44 Yeah, this dude wants to kill you in the United States.
Agatha 26:47 Yeah, well, he's from Canada. And that's the thing, like, his view on it was like totally different. I was like, you know, after like, nine hours in the van and like 18 cups of coffee. I was like, "So what's up with your shirt, dude?" And he's like, "Well, I just really like their coffee. And like, they have pictures of guns on their shit. It's like good advertising." I was like, "You know those are the assholes who like bailed out Kyle Rittenhouse, right?" and he's like, "Who the fuck is Kyle Rittenhouse." and I'm just like Jesus Christ. And, it was just like, super fucked up and like, we had like really long conversations about what like being an anarchist means to me. And you know, the more we talked, the more I realized our like end goal was exactly the same. He was like, just a farm boy from from South Central fucking Canada who grew up on a fucking....what's that stuff called? I don't want to say the name of it cause I hate it. And there's another name for it. He's from a canola farm. And he joined the military when he was young. And he's like....I'm a pretty tall person. I'm like 6'2", and he's like three inches taller than me, built like a brick shithouse.Just look like the dude you don't want to run into as an anarchist in like a war zone wearing a fucking Black Rifle Coffee Company t shirt. But the more we talked, the more we were just like yeah, we just want to fucking help people. And like that's it. Like, I just don't care anymore. Like it basically came down to everyone in our group wanted to ease some suffering that was happening at the behest of like, fucked up agitators who were acting on like imperialist like logic, you know? And yeah, that's basically what it all boiled down to. So, like I went there as an anarchist trying to support anarchist endeavors....and because they were helping just normal people, right? And and then it just turned out like, you know, circumstances change. They didn't...like multiple groups didn't want any more foreigners. You know, I was never given explanations as to why....Someone said it was because my social media presence was too hard about going to Ukraine, and they didn't want people getting their spots blown up. But, I was like literally all I said is I'm going to Ukraine, bringing medical supplies to anarchists units. And if you want to donate, donate here. I gave zero information on what unit I was delivering to, where I was going, who my contacts were. It was like vague as possible to just get donations, so I could buy more tourniquets. That's like all I was doing. That's that's the most explanation I got, which never added up.
Margaret 29:19 They must have had their own shit going on. There must have been like something that had happened recently or like something within the internal structure where they were like trying to hold on to their anti authoritarian unit within an authoritarian structure, you know?
Agatha 29:34 Exactly. And I later found out like, once I was back from a couple runs, and the unit that had originally accepted me, and said no more was like, "Hey, we got a guy coming to Warsaw and he wants to meet you." And I was like, "Okay," and it was just like the most giant man I've ever met and he was just like, decked out in like fucking workout gear and he's like, "I'm coming from the gym and I only got an hour I'm going back to the gym. I'm with this unit. I'm on leave blah, blah, blah." And I guess what it was was like, you know, it was other foreigners who were in the group who were posting shit online they shouldn't have been, you know, and one example was, there was someone who posted a picture of themselves outside of a building being like "Training for the good fight," or whatever. And whatever fucking Russian like ops that we're monitoring social media saw a picture of the building, did a bunch of fucking research, found out where it was, what the building was, and fucking a missile strike happened and like 500 volunteers died or some shit.
Agatha 30:39 It was like super fucked so like, I totally got it, but like, and I wasn't gonna argue with them, you know what I mean? I was like okay, I'll find something else to do, but like that's not me. And that's not what I'm doing, but like, whatever I'll try and help out some other way. So, I think that's the kind of shit that was happening that led to me not being invited into these like strictly anarchist groups, because I mean, you know, fucking anarchists. Everyone's like security culture. Like the feds are like bugging my phone because they want to know what dumpsters I'm hitting or whatever. You know what I mean? It's like...
Margaret 30:39 Oh my god.
Margaret 31:12 Only here, it's like they're actually throwing missiles at you.
Agatha 31:15 Exactly. Exactly. So I was like, I get it but, like whatever, so I think that's really what it was and like I couldn't fault them for it. I was like whatever, but yeah, I'm just some like scumbag from America anyways. Like you don't know me. Like you don't know if you can trust me like. Sure, I have tattoos on my face, but like whatever. Like you know what I mean? Like yeah, so I got it but like, I don't know. I'm kind of rambling at this point. I'm gonna let you direct the conversation a little more.
Margaret 31:39 No, no, I'm really curious about all of this kind of stuff, like I'm very curious and I think the audience will be curious about....I mean, even down to like how do people take you as this tall, you know, person who presents somewhat masculine, but often has a non masculine name, has face tattoos, doesn't have like, you know isn't like mister Mr. heterosexual cis man, but also is like a tough as fuck looking, like face tattooed punk, right? Like, what do people make of you? Like how did that go?
Agatha 32:18 It just depended, you know, some people were just like, "Who the fuck is this guy?" Like? Yeah, cuz I mean, I do have a lot of visible tattoos, but just to like, give it some context. Like my tattoos are like of puppies and like, I have a giant heart on my throat. You know what I mean? They're not like tough guy tattoos. Aside, I have some air 15 magazines tattooed underneath a "Do not resuscitate," tattoo on my chest. My chest looks like some pre-schooler went to prison and got tattooed or something. It's like light hearted. There's like skulls and puppies and yeah, rifle parts and like a 'do not resuscitate,' banner and like shit, but like, that's not stuff people generally saw. But they'd see my heart tattoo on my throat and my shit on my face. And like my hands were all blacked out. And you know, people were either like...A good example is like, people either didn't say anything, or they'd be like...like, one time we were in Kyiv we're kicking this grifter who had gotten caught up in our shit out. We needed like five to six hundred litres of diesel that we had shoved in his van. We needed to get that out before we kicked him out. Because we knew he would just steal it from us. I mean, I found out the guy had gone through my phone when I was sleeping. There was like links to his aid organization to the like, PayPal link on my phone. Like my Safari was open. And it was like, please enter your Paypal password to donate to this group. And I was like, "Who the fuck is this group?" And then we realized it was this guy and we needed to kick his ass out. But like, whatever, we didn't know where to kick him out. Like we didn't know if he was gonna get violent with us. So we picked like a super populated spot and Kyiv which is where we were at the time. And we're like, "Meet us here," you know, "at this parking lot for this fucking train station." But the parking lot was closed. And, it was like, all the spaces were empty, but we couldn't get in, and there was this like drunk ass dude wearing a body camera in this little booth. And he was like....we just went up and we're like, "Hey, are you the one watching this parking lot right now?" And our interpreter could not understand a fucking word this guy was saying. He was so drunk. And it's like the farther east you go like, the more the dialects change, so like our interpreter was 18 years old from from Lviv. He had never been this far east, you know, which Kyiv isn't even that far. But like, you know, if you've never been to Kyiv really and you get there and then there's people from the opposite end of the country who you know, I mean, it's just like, there's a big disconnect with with local dialects. He could only you know, figure some shit out. And we eventually paid the guy like a bunch of grivna not to fucking, just do this deal real quick. We're like, "Hey, we'll give you this wad of cash. Just let us park here for like 20 minutes, this guy is going to meet us. We're going to move a bunch of shit around from Van to van, and then we'll be out of your hair," and he's like, "Alright, fine." But, he was like fucking hammered. And he would not leave us alone. And he was like, uncomfortable drunk where he was like in our faces, like breathing on us, asking us questions. And our interpreter was trying their best to like, fucking answer. And then it just got hot during the day, and I went to take my shirt off, and all my tattoos are black line work. They look like fucking prison tattoos. And this guy, I see him catch my eye as my shirts about to go over my head for a second. And I pulled my T shirt down real quick. And he's like, "Ah, prison." And I was like, "No, no, no, no, not prison," and he's like, "Prison." And I was like, "No, it's not prison," and the guy just wouldn't shut up about it. He just kept saying "prison" to me and like, give me the 'okay' sign with his hand. And I'm like, "No, dude," you know? So, it's like, it was like, stuff like that. And then other people just being like, "You're a fucking freak American? Are they all like you", kinda shit. it was just like, I don't know, it was super weird. I got some shit for it. But like, most people, like I would talk to them for five minutes. And they'd be like, "Oh, you're just a person who wants to like, do shit." You know what I mean? But then, the more I got into this shit, and the more I was like, getting deeper into the east of the country, like, it got like, less and less about personal identity and what you what you were presenting to the world, right? Like I am an assigned male at birth guy who's six foot two inces and like, I have tattoos everywhere. And I carry myself like, like, really confidently, because I'm a martial artist, and blah, blah, blah. I'm just like...and I don't take shit from people like...It just was like a little easier for me to get by. But like, I was with this really well known fascist unit, who was giving personal protection to this trans woman, who was in the east of the country and had been there for months. Like she had gotten fired from her news organization because she started using the term 'Orc' in her in her pieces, and they're like, "You're no longer unbiased." And she and she was like, "You can't be unbiased. If you've been out here," like, "These Russian soldiers are fucking pigs. Like, they're like, they're raping people. They're killing children. They're doing all sorts of shit. They're bombing schools. They're bombing hospitals, like, and all these people could just shoot their officers and come across the line with a white flag. And the Ukrainians would treat them fine, right? Like yeah, but they're not doing that they're doing what they're told. And they're being complicit in these atrocities, blah, blah, blah." So she was like just going around doing all these pieces and her personal protection unit was all these supposed fucking homophobic, you know, fascist pieces of shit and granted, I never got drunk with these guys. I didn't have beers with them. I don't know what they really think but, they thought what she was doing was important enough to like give her a pass, you know what I mean? And like protect her, and get her to these like places to interview these people. And that's the kind of like, shit I mostly ran into, was like, you know, you don't have to agree with me right now, but we have a goal in mind. And once the Russians are gone, fuck it. We'll figure out our differences later, but like right now, like were chill, and I got like pretty hopeful about it till I met this like, platoon leader in an infantry territorial defense unit who, after...we were bombed at one point our fucking vans got destroyed, and we were looking for a mechanic to fix our shit, so we could get out of the east of the country. And this dude who spoke perfect English came up to us and was like, "What are you doing? What are y'all doing?" We told them what was up and he was like, "I'll try and find a mechanic. I got a mechanic buddy, like right around the corner, blah, blah, blah." And then while we were waiting for a callback, me and him just like got some coffees and like, talked for a while it turns out, he's like, uh, you know, he was a fucking, like, a human rights activist who was a lawyer forever, and like, graduated college in '92, and started his own organization to help like, LGBTQ refugees from like Belarus and shit, you know? And I mean, he was like, super fucking cool. Yeah. And the guy just eventually was like, "Yeah, I went to school at a military accredited college. So when I joined the territorial defense units, they're like, "You're an officer. You're, you're in control of a whole platoon,"" and he like, tried so hard to convince them that he was not their guy.
Margaret 39:44 That he has the wrong platoon.
Agatha 39:46 Yeah, he's like, "No, dude, I don't know how to fight blah, blah, blah. These are all like seasoned infantry men that I'm supposed to be...." So he's like, "I just fucking started listening to the most experienced dudes in my company and like, like, let them decide basically," and then, but like I got talking to him, I was like, yeah. You know, I introduced myself to him as my birth name. And he's like, yeah, you know? And then we started talking and it became apparent that he was not straight and all this other shit. And I was like, "Yeah, like, we've been working with this one group," and he's like, "Oh, yeah, they're bad news, you know?" And I was like, "Are they, though? Because like, they've shown me to be like, pretty decent to like, a lot of marginalized folks. As far as I can tell. I don't know." Yeah. And I was like, "I go by Agatha in the states and like, my crew calls me Agatha. But like, I do feel scared enough to not introduce myself as Agatha to the people in this unit, because they're, they're staunchly fascist, right? Like, you know, they, they're not into it." and they're like quick like without missing a beat they're like, "Oh, yeah, no, do not introduce yourself to these motherfuckers as Agatha. They're like, they did get rid of a lot of antisemites, they did get rid of a lot of overt racists, but there's like homophobia is still a huge problem in the Ukrainian military and population in general. It's very conservative. And so like, he like really opened my eyes that like, I was like, "Yeah, we're all in this together. Like, who gives a fuck your political affiliations? You know?" And then he was quickly like, "Yeah. No, people still disappear all the time during wartime. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, watch your fucking ass and like, keep doing what you're doing. But like, don't get too comfortable with these people." And it was just like....It was hard because like, I fucking was just feeling good about, working with people of different ideological backgrounds. And it felt good to just feed people and have this shared goal. And then just to be like, brutally reminded that, like, that's not actually the case. And it could get backwards really quick. You know what I mean? If I like yeah, said the wrong thing to the wrong person. Like, I have like an antifascist action pin on my hat. It's just like, you know, the little two black flags. It says "Anti-fascist action." He's like, he's like, "I wouldn't wear that, you know, I just wouldn't. you know, and I was like, "Okay." I listened to the guy, you know, he's fucking awesome. And I like, kept in touch with the dude through Telegram, and it was fucking on and then he got captured by the Russians, and he's still in captivity, and like, they're trying to act like he's a super Neo Nazi, because, like, that's what they do to human rights...and you know, people who are obviously leftist who get who get taken prisoner. But, you know, he's facing fucking 12 years in prison in the Donbas now, you know, and I'm just hoping, because he's an officer, they're going to do a prisoner swap, you know, but they're like not into it. And I, you know, if I had weird questions, I'd ask them, and then they'd always give me like, a nice response. And, you know, didn't treat me like an idiot American. They're like, yeah, "You just don't know the culture, blah, blah, blah." So, now what?
Margaret 42:48 Yeah, that's, that's a really good...it's a sad, but it's an important counterpoint in this conversation we're having is to realize that like some of the civility between these units is probably short term, probably a veneer, and like, probably necessary veneer to drive out the invading force, but it makes sense to not to get too comfortable with it. And that's sad, but it's interesting because it's like, I hold, perhaps naively, that a lot of center Right, people really are distinct from far Right people, and like, have, you know, some really good ideas in terms of "Hey, what if we all left each other alone and sometimes took care of each other?" And it's like, easy for me to say as like someone who lives in a rural center Right area, but not a far Right area. And that's an important difference, you know?
Agatha 43:45 Yeah, but I think that's like a pretty fair assessment too, of people out there. It's just it doesn't...you just can't count on that for long because even though like you could be a center Right, dude, and then you spend nine months in a fucking infantry unit full of fucking mutant goons who are espousing all this hate and it's easy to go from center Right to far Right, you know?
Margaret 44:05 Yep. Yeah, no, totally. And it's...Yeah, fuck. Well, to go from that light subject to another really light subject. You mentioned that you were attacked, your caravan was attacked.
Agatha 44:20 Yeah.
Margaret 44:21 Do you want to talk about that? Do you want to say what happened? Is that right?
Agatha 44:24 Sure. It's hard for me to just like, do it kind of like, you know, like, give you the synopsis. Like I kind of rant about it when I start going into details, because I start going into like lizard brain thinking about how I felt while I was there. So, with the caveat that like I want you to like be like, "rein it in," if you're like...if I'm given too many details, or if I'm going off on a fucking rant or whatever. Basically, we had done....we had been driving for like 48 hours on and off. We left Krakow. We got to Lviv. We dropped a bunch of shit. Picked up a bunch of shit. Got to Kyiv, dropped off a bunch of shit, picked up a bunch of shit, and this all started like insane. I was at the fucking ladies warehouse, loaded up like usual. And that grifter dude we were working with....so his thing was, he was working with the....What the fuck is their name? Not the Rotary Club. They're like something like that. The Lion something? Do you know what I'm talking about?
Margaret 45:28 Yes, one of those like weird things. It's like not the Masons, but it's basically the Masons.
Agatha 45:32 Yeah, t's not the Masons, but it's kind of like the Masons, and they do like whatever.....So, he, I don't know how he fucking did it got a bunch of funding for them, bought like two brand new vans and was out there, under the auspice that he was working for them. But he had all these weird things he was doing that he wouldn't share too much information on. And he had a Land Rover and it was one of those fucking British Land Rovers with a steering wheel on the wrong side, or the other side, not the wrong side.
Margaret 46:01 When we're British people, we can say the wrong side. That's fine.
Agatha 46:06 So, we're loading up all the shit. I'm waiting for the rest of my crew to get there. We got there a couple hours early. We get all loaded up. And I'm like, "Hey, person who runs the shit, like, what can I do to be of help while I wait for other people? Do you have shit that needs to get like moved around in the warehouse? You know, like, what do you need for me? She's like, "I need you to get this fucking guy off my back. He won't leave me alone. He wants to leave right now. And I told me, he's got to wait till the rest of the convoy gets here so you all get to the border crossing at the same time when you're supposed to. And you can give this paperwork to the guy who needs it." And I was like, "Okay." So the guy won't shut up. Eventually, they get in a huge fight. He says, "We're leaving," and looks at me. And I was like, "What?" and the lady's like, "Alright, good luck crossing the border," you know. And he's got his own van and he's like, "You're gonna drive this Land Rover full of shit by yourself. And you're just gonna follow me to Kyiv where we drop this off to a unit of American volunteers who are all ex military. And they're working on their own outside of the Ukrainian military. And they need a four by four vehicle to get in and out of like weird spots." And I was like, "Okay, fine." And then. So, I call the main planner of my group and I'm like, "Yo, dude is trying to be sketchy. He got in a fight with Lady. They're at each other's throats. He just wants us to leave. She wants us to get the fuck out of there just so she doesn't have to deal with like, this, like sketchy male bodied person yelling at her. She just doesn't need this, you know?" And he's just like, "I'm so sorry to do this to you. But like, just go with him. Just like get out of there with him, like, help him out. We need his van space once we hit Kyiv because we have more supplies than we can bring to Kharkiv in the space we have. So, I was like, "Okay, fine, whatever." And this guy like we eventually....She looks at me, she gives me a big hug. And she says, "I'm so sorry about this." And I was like, "Sorry, about what?" And then she looks at the guy and she's like, "Have fun crossing the border," and handed him a thing of papers and like was like, "See you guys." And then she's just like, "Please stay safe, Agatha." And I was like, "Okay." And and then I was like, I don't know what's going on. This dude throws a radio on my lap. I had never used a fucking CB radio at this point in my life. And he's just like, he's like "Try to keep up." And then he like fucking takes off on me. And I was like, What the fuck, and I'm like, racing to keep up with him. But, he's passing all the semis on the highway and I'm driving a right handed vehicle. I have to get all the way in the other lane to see if there's oncoming traffic, which is sketchy as fuck. I have never driven one of these things. It's still like normal driving lanes, you know what I mean? It's just a different driving side on the car. And it just was like the most stressful thing that's ever happened to me. For four hours trying to keep up with this guy. And then we finally get to the Ukrainian border. We're well outside that window of time she told us to get there. And he's like, "Don't worry, let's skip the line. Let's drive on the outside of the line in this like break down lane and get up to the gate and I'll get us through." And I was like, "I don't think that's gonna work, bro." And he's like, "Whatever." We get all the way up there. I'm still sitting in the car. I see him arguing with the border guard. The border guard's just pointing to the back of the line and then I'm like, "Fuck," and then eventually he's like, "Oh, we gotta try again blah blah blah." And he like turns around and we go...we do this like three times. He argues with three different border guards. And eventually we just have to sit in line for like eight fucking hours like Lady told us we were gonna have to do if we didn't fucking wait and he's all griping about it and blah blah. Yeah. And I'm just like I want to be like, "I fucking told you so." I don't like this guy already. He's like, super macho, has no regard for other people's emotional like capacity for anything and it's just about him and blah blah blah and he's got to get this vehicle to this unit or they're fucked and blah blah blah. We finally get through. He does the same shit, and I don't know if you know anything about Ukrainian roads, but they are that was fucked up roads I've ever seen in my life. Like, before the war. Like there's just like...they are fucked up. It's like the main highways are just packed with potholes that like, are just so devastating when you hit them. You're like, Oh my God, and like, he's just flying down this highway and like, he's like, "Keep up," like I keep hearing in the radio get more and more staticky. He's like, "I can't see you back behind me. Like keep up. Blah, blah, blah." And I was like, "Dude, you're going too fast. Blah, blah, blah. We do this for a whole day. And we get to Lviv and then whatever....I missed a detail. It wasn't Kyiv we were going to deliver this vehicle to. It was Lyviv, which is much closer to the border. We get we get to Lviv, and he's like, "We gotta meet this fucking dude, and hand off this fucking vehicle. And I was like, "Okay, fine, whatever." We finally get to this gas station. And there's these two dudes dressed in fatigues with their weapons out, like totally out of place, and they're holding gas cans. And he's like, "There's my dudes." And I was like, "Okay."
Margaret 51:16 From the Lions Club or whatever?
Agatha 51:18 Yeah, yeah. Well, no. He didn't tell me how he knew these guys. He alluded to the fact that he was in Afghanistan for a while working with Blackwater motherfuckers doing the same shit, but just equipping Blackwater units like not other stuff. So, I was like, alright, this dude's got sketchy friends. Whatever. Turns out this dude doesn't know the fighter at all. They met through the internet. He's not donating this vehicle. He's selling it to them and then fucking dudes like all sketched out because he looks at this Land Rover and is like, "So, this thing's good to go. It's all like mechanically sound?" And dudes like "Yeah, it's good. I had a mechanic look at it and everything in Poland blah, blah, blah." And I was like, "Yo," I could not shut up. I was like, "Yo, I drove this thing from fucking Krakow and it is not sound. Like you at least need new tie rod ends." Like I'm a proficient mechanic. "I was like, You need new tie rod ends and or like fucking drag link for your steering unit. And like, I don't know if you've looked at the back hubs, but like, they are rusted to fuck, like, Good luck getting the rotors off of the hubcap kind of shit. You know what I mean?" And he's like, "Well, what the fuck, I can't use this dude, we already paid you. I told you this was to get infantry units into hot zones, to do some sketchy shit. And to get out. Like, you told me this thing was going to be mechanically sound, and it just wasn't and like, blah, blah, blah." And I still had my whole kit from when I thought I was going to use my time there fighting. So, I feel bad for this guy. And I was like, "Hey, do you guys need any like, PPE or anything for one of your members of your unit? Like, he's like, "Yeah, the Russians just overran our base. And we lost everything. Some of our dudes are wearing jeans and sneakers." And I was like, "Okay, I got like, three sets of BDUs. I got a pair of combat boots. I got knee pads. I have a fucking thermal imaging camera. I have weapons sights. I have, like, you know, weapon attachments," all this shit. And he's like, "Oh, fucking A. Thank you so much." And he's like, you know, "Fuck this dude. I don't know how I got mixed up." I was like, "Whatever, just take all my shit. And we're gonna get out of your hair. I'm so sorry this happened. Yeah, blah, blah, blah." We get to Kyiv. We kick them out like I told you we did with a drunk dude. And then. And then like, another day later, we finally ended up in Kharkiv. We get rid of all our shit.
Margaret 53:32 Okay, how much of this is lizard brain? I'm just...
Agatha 53:35 A bunch. But I'm I'm at the point now it's starting to matter.
Margaret 53:40 I appreciate that you're telling like a hitchhiking story. So it's like, it's very relatable to me. Yeah, please continue. Sorry.
Agatha 53:46 So, we're in Kharkiv. We've given up all our shit. We've re-supplied and done that shit like four times. We have one more delivery to do. And then we're going to head back to Poland. And....
Margaret 53:57 Wait, who you with at this point? This is the rest of...The rest of your crew has caught up with you at this point?
Agatha 54:03 Yes, yes. The rest of the crew has caught up. They caught up with us after we handed off that vehicle to the unit. And they caught up with us in Kyiv. We did a bunch of drop offs. We did a bunch of pickups and then we all drove as a unit after we kick that dude out to Kharkiv, which is, I don't know. It's like 20 miles from the Russian border or something like that. I could be wrong. It's not far. I mean, while we were there, you could hear artillery going off in the background. Yeah. You know, whatever. So we have 75 IFAKs to deliver to this one particular unit who, we had another wealthy benefactor, those two were in contact, the unit and this wealthy benefactor, this wealthy benefactor said "I know these people who will deliver it to you," and that was us. So, we have 75 IFAKs. I don't know if you know what an IFAK is.
Margaret 54:51 Yeah. Individual first aid kit. It's a trauma kit for gunshot wounds, for anyone who's listening.
Agatha 54:56 Yeah, it's got a tourniquet. It's got some quick clot. It's got a chest seal. It's got like a aluminum brace, it's got all the shit you need to like, stop some bleeding for 20 minutes to hopefully get them to like a more well equipped place but...
Margaret 55:08 They save a hell of a lot of lives.
Agatha 55:10 They save so many lives and they're so important and like...So, we were delivering 75 of those. We're meeting this unit at this restaurant. It's one of the only restaurants open in in Kharkiv that we can find. There's like three Ukrainian families eating there. And we just start hearing artillery getting closer and closer to us. And we're like, "Fuck, this is getting scary." Like, we start feeling it in the table. Our glasses start shaking. And my friend with the Black Rifle Coffee shirt, he's like, "Fuck, they're bracketing us." And I was like, "What is that?" And he's like, "It's when you have a, you know, an end goal in mind of where you want to hit. And then you like launch a round of munitions. And through whatever means whether it be like drones or whatever you see where it hits you readjust your calibration on your aiming device, you launch another round. It gets closer and then you're getting closer to your target, right? Yes, I think they're bracketing us." The shit is getting closer and closer, because we're at the base of the Soviet monument. And it's like a 100 foot tall statue of a Ukrainian dude wearing like Russian combat gear from World War II and it's like, supposed to be a Soviet monument to people who lost their lives fighting the Nazis in World War II, but someone had climbed all the way up there and taped a huge Ukrainian flag to their to their gun and it was like...it just seemed like that's what they had to have been aiming for because it was like a big "Fuck you," to Russia, you know what I mean? And yeah, so we're like okay, and you know, we're trying to get our social media presence up so we can get more donation so we ended up with this fucking Tik Tok'er with 2 million followers with us. And he doesn't want anything to do with us most of the time. So, he got an Airbnb. We're getting bracketed. We're waiting for the....
Margaret 56:56 This sounds like a movie. You've got a Tik Tok guy with 2 million followers....
Agatha 56:59 It's insane. It was fuckinginsane and we're waiting for this military unit to come pick up the 75 IFAKs. We have our food boxed up. We're like as soon as we give these dudes this shit we're out of here. We're leaving Kharkiv. And then someone's like, my buddy, who's the main planner is like, "Yo, y'all need to go get dude, he's at an Airbnb, like fucking 10 blocks away." So, we're like, okay, so me and Canadian infantry dude get in a van and we start like going like 110 kilometers through the middle of Kharkiv literally shit blowing up all around us. We're trying to get to this fucking dude. And we finally get there. And we're like, "Where are you?" on the phone? We're like, "We're down here. Get the fuck in the van." He gets in the van. We throw him a fucking vest with like body armor and give him a helmet and we start racing back to the fucking restaurant and it's just like...there are just like artillery munitions going off all around us. it was fucking terrifying. And then we finally get to the park where this monument is that and we have to park, walk through the park itself to get to the restaurant where all the rest of our crew is at, right? So, we park our last two vans we have in the convoy. Me and Tik Tok'er get out. Dude I'm with gets out. Se start walking across the park and I mean even with....like people are just used to artillery going off in the city right, so there's like old people everywhere soaking up the sun on benches and shit like that and people just like ignoring it and then we get like about I don't know 30 minutes or 30 meters into the park and then all of a sudden I hear this explosion really close behind me. I turned around I see all the glass in our vans get shot out all at once. And then something blew up like right next to me and I lost consciousness. I woke up on the ground. Tik Tok'er was confused and like we both didn't know what was going on. I couldn't hear anything. All I heard was like the biggest like ringing in my ears I've ever heard. My chest hurt from the impact of like the sound wave hitting me.
Agatha 59:10 Yeah, yeah, I couldn't breathe. I was just like freaking out. I just started like grabbing my body armor and seeing if there was like blood anywhere. I was like whatever, and then I realized I'm okay and then I'm like, "Fuck all the windows of the the restaurant that my buds were in are blown out and it's like fucking on fire. It was like....so I run over there. Buddy is trying to....military dudes trying to tell me to get back in the van. I was like "I'm not getting back in the van, like that things like destroyed and blah blah blah." And so I just follow him and we both run in and he's just like "Boys, boys, where are you?" and we hear them yelling from the kitchen and everyone that was in the the dining hall went to the kitchen and we're hiding behind this like knee wall and the military unit we were supposed to give this shit to was there and I was like "Fucking great. Like, there's someone who knows what they're doing." Yeah. And everyone's like, "Are you okay? Are you okay? Like, what's going on?" And Meantime, there's still rounds hitting all over the fucking place. And he's like...everyone's like, "What do we do? What do we do?" And I was like, "Yo, we got 75 IFAKs in the van right now. And there are people like hanging out with like, missing limbs and like, screaming, bleeding everywhere outside, like, we need to get out and try and help people. And I tried talking to the medic who was with the unit that we were meeting up and he just like, didn't understand me. The interpreter was having a hard time. They lost their shit, you know? Yeah, everyone's freaking out. And like, I'm just trying to get these people to follow me. I was like, "Just come to the park. Like, we know how to put tourniquets on. We know how to pack wounds, like, please, like, let's just do this." And everyone's like, I don't know." A few of the people in my crew were like, "Yeah, let's do it." And then the people of this unit, like pissed me off, they're like, "No, we should just hang out here till the artillery barrage stops." And I was just like, "Fuck you. I'm going." And then like me and four people went out. We ran to the vans, we fucking grabbed all these IFAKs and then we just like, dumped them on the ground and started ripping out tourniquets. And then we split off into different little teams and just started fucking tourniqueting people who were bleeding everywhere, like this one dude was like missing limbs and was just like screaming. It was like the most intense thing I've ever experienced. He ended up fucking dying. Like, it was just like, so nuts. And that went on for like, 25 minutes, 30 minutes. And, um, and my personal IFAK that I wore on my chest rig was like, that was the first one I ripped off, you know, and yeah, tourniqueted at this lady was bleeding heavily from her inner thigh and I was scared it was like a femoral artery or something. And, after like, 30 minutes, this ambulance shows up. And they're just creeping by the park. They're not stopping. And I was like, "Fuck," and I like, stopped what I was doing because I had treated everyone I could find at this point. And I was like, in like, crazy mode. I was like hiding under a tree that would provide me no protection from an artillery round, but I was like, freaking out and then I saw them ran up. I was like, "Yo, you guys gotta get out of here. There's people bleeding all over the place. Blah, blah, blah." And then the military dude, I realized the medic had never even opened his fucking med kit. He was just standing there with hi AK watching us like tourniquet up...watching us of civilians like tourniqueting up all these people, and then fucking whatever. They're like, as soon as the EMTs arrived, they eventually get out. They start tending to the people, we had been triaging. And then the military dudes just like, "Alright, we gotta get out of here." And we get in our vans. We realized neither of them start. There's like shrapnel gone through the engine compartment. So you can see a huge hole, yeah, radiator, whatever. So we get into their one of their vans, and we're following them, then their car dies, because their shit was parked right next to us. And then eventually we make it to this military mechanic. And then we're just sitting there and we don't know what to do. The military unit doesn't know what to do with us because we're kind of their responsibility now. And they're like, "We have a safe house in Saltivka." It's one of the biggest like developments in Kharkiv. It was, you know, it kept getting made bigger and bigger by more successive leaders of the Soviet Union trying to make their mark and blah, blah, blah, but huge apartment complex. And they're like, "You can hang out here till we fix your vehicles." And then basically we just hung out in this like barren apartment, drinking and taking our medics Tramadol, and trying to like not think about anything, and like, had like a corner of the apartment where all our bloody clothes were stashed. And you know what I mean, we didn't want to go near it. And we hung out for three days getting bombed until we got our shit fixed. And then, you know, it was another two weeks before we finally got out of the country because their shit kept breaking. We kept coming across fucked up situations, but, and that's eventually why I left you know, like, I was super traumatized. I had never seen someone die before. I'd never seen these fucking kinds of wounds before. You know, I'd never heard anything so loud before. Even that was scary. You know what I mean? And I was just, like, useless. I was like, "Guys, you can't rely on me anything right now."
Margaret 59:10 The concussion.
Margaret 1:04:19 I mean, you weren't useless.
Agatha 1:04:20 Well, yeah, I mean, I was like, "You guys can't rely on me for anything. I can't drive. I can't like, go get snacks." You know what I mean? I was like, in the back of the van just like crying. I was like, I didn't know how to process what had just happened. And and as soon as we got...two weeks later, as soon as we got to Krakow, I like use the last my money to buy a plane ticket home. And, you know, I started doing trauma therapy again, because like, I've done a lot of trauma therapy from like, childhood abuse stuff. And, you know, I was like telling my therapist, I was like, I fucked it up. I was so good with my PTSD. And now I redid it and they're like, "No, this would be way worse if you never did all that trauma therapy for the other stuff. Like you're good. Don't worry about it." So, it's just been like a year of trying to like come to terms with all that shit. So, that's the short and long of it. I'm sorry, I went lizard brain on you.
Margaret 1:05:07 No, no, I mean, one. I hope it's like useful for you to talk about and I hope it's useful for people to hear.
Agatha 1:05:12 It really is. it really is. And I don't mean to interrupt you again. But like a good talking point to that is like, I have no one to talk to this about with like, yeah, other than the people I was there with because like, I don't want to trauma dump on civilians and like, or people who haven't been in, in these kinds of situations because like, the few times I've been like, people are like "You want to talk about it?" And I do this and I tell them and they're like, "What the fuck?" You know what I mean? They're fucked up from just hearing about it. I'm like, I didn't want to do that to you. Yeah. And then like, the other option is like, I've tried finding like vet groups where like, it's all combat vets who want to talk about shit. And I'm not invited there. You know, I'm a scummy anarchist, who was not in the military, but they're like, the only kind of people I can kind of relate to or whatever, but so that that's, that's a big thing. So it is really helpful. And I appreciate you holding space for it. And like, yeah.
Margaret 1:05:13 Yeah, you know, we're...I feel sort of bad that this is kind of coming in at the end of our end of the episode, but um, do you think you could talk....Do you want to like....So like trauma therapy? Is that the answer to how to deal with this kind of stuff? Is trauma therapy? Is that the kind of?
Agatha 1:06:25 For me. Yeah, I don't know about other people. You know, I was just talking today on Signal with some folks who were there. I was like...they were like, "We're so glad you're coming back." Well, because a bunch of them never stopped. You know, some of them military dude from Canada went right back home. A couple other people went right back home. Our interpreter ended up hitting anti tank mine in the Donbass like fucking three weeks later, and everyone in his crew died except for him. You know, like, other people did different things. But like a bunch of us kept doing what they were doing. And I was like, "Yeah, I'm really sorry, I needed to take so much time. I don't know how you guys got over it so fast or dealt with it so fast." And they're like, "We didn't. We just have different ways of dealing with it." So like, for me, it's trauma therapy. For other people, it's different things, you know?
Margaret 1:07:07 Yeah. Well, do you, like out of this are you hoping, you know, for people to support the work that you're doing? Is there something...or whether it's supporting you directly? Or are there other things that you would like to point people towards if people who want to support getting shit to where it needs to go in Ukraine?
Agatha 1:07:31 I mean, honestly, like, I can be, like, selfish and be like, donate to our org and like....
Margaret 1:07:36 I mean, you can if you want.
Agatha 1:07:38 I know, but like, it's just like, at this point, I'm like, if you wanted to help by now, you you probably would have. I don't know. I'm like super....
Margaret 1:07:46 No, don't be cynical about it. Like what? There's like someone who's listening who probably gave some stuff at the beginning, or maybe their financial situation has changed since the last time that someone reminded them you know?
Agatha 1:07:56 Exactly, I would say for anyone who wants to help and is like, not wanting to go there and physically help rebuild houses or like help at an orphanage and change diapers or like bring aid to someone or go fucking fight like whatever. If you can't do that, I would pick an organization that is really transparent about what they do with their money. Talk to the people doing the actual runs, because in my experience, everyone's more than welcome to tell you what they're doing, what they're spending money on, how they could use more money. Determine whether or not it's like a good thing for you. Like if you want to focus on just you know, medical gear going to places who need it or food to like villages where it's only the elderly left, who haven't left, who can't leave, you know, whatever, aligns with your specific worry about this conflict and donate some fucking money to him because like, you know, most of my friends ran out of their savings. They fucking used everything they had. They're in debt now. Some of them just stay there because it's cheap and they don't have any more money and they can be of service there you know? So like, that's what I would do. I raised like 5 or 6 thousand bucks my first trip and I totally exhausted all of my funding resources, so I have no more way to like get funding other than I've just been working on for like seven weeks straight.
Margaret 1:09:18 Do you want the people who are listening to this to fund you is what I'm getting at?
Agatha 1:09:21 Sure yeah, if you want me to drop my Pay Pal on my Venmo.
Margaret 1:09:24 Absolutely, please do.
Agatha 1:09:26 So my Venmo is @Eric-Woodbury-2. That's my birth name. I don't give a fuck I'm not....
Margaret 1:09:36 Can you spell Woodburry? And Eric actually can you just spell that for people.
Agatha 1:09:38 Capital E-r-i-c dash, capital W-o-o-d-b-u-r-y dash 2. And my picture on there is a picture of my ex holding my son. Yeah, and then my my Pay Pal is @jalutkewics@gmail.com.It's my mom's maiden name. I'm Polish from the Ukrainian border. Live my heritage. So, I've just always embraced my mom's maiden name, but that those are my things. I'm hesitant to give the name of the organization I worked with, because I haven't talked to them. Any money you give to me will go right to them.
Margaret 1:09:55 Yeah, I think people now believe you from....as you're describing the amount of work that you have gone through to give people the things you bought.
Agatha 1:10:30 Yeah, you know, I just always feel like a fucking beggar or something. You know what I mean?
Margaret 1:10:42 No, I mean, I understand feeling that way. But no, like, don't feel that way for at least in this context.
Agatha 1:10:47 I've saved up like five or six grand working in the last two months. And I'm just using. I'm just paying my own way. And using that, so yeah. But I want to thank you for having me on and giving me space to like kind of rant about this stuff. I don't talk about it a lot. And I would like for other people to, to, you know, be able to hear what's going on and like know about some of these experiences people are going through and if anyone out there wants to reach out to me, my instagram is @Jalutkewics. My profile picture is a tooth with a giant hole out of it that someone ripped out of my face, because I have bad fucking teeth, because I grew up in fost care, about like, whatever I'm down to like talk about shit. If you want to talk more about like how you can help, I can give you some direction or whatever, or just to say hi, like,
Margaret 1:11:19 Okay, well, thank you so much for coming on. And I I hope that we get to have you back on to talk more about the stuff that you're working on in the near future.
Agatha 1:11:51 Thanks, Magpie. And I really appreciate you know, you reach now with our history and stuff. I was a scumbag when I was younger to all the listeners and like not the coolest guy, but like I always had good good moral compass and blah, blah, blah. But what....
Margaret 1:12:05 You were the first person who is visibly amab with a woman's name that I hung out with.
Agatha 1:12:12 Oh, really?
Margaret 1:12:13 That was really useful for me.
Agatha 1:12:14 Oh, that's great. I know. I'm surprised now like when I meet that, like, it's still kind of rare. But I like you know, gender queer politics and like, I don't ever identify as like a cis man, whatever. So it's been great. Like reconnect. I'd love to come back on.
Margaret 1:12:36 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please well probably support Agatha. But, you know, please tell people about this podcast. Please. Also check out our other podcasts on the network Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness which includes Anarcho Geek Power Hour and the podcast Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. And, if you want to support us more directly, you can do so by supporting us on Patreon. Your your Patreon donations help us pay for transcriptions. We're trying to get transcriptions for the other shows that are on our network as well to help accessibility and you can support us at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. In particular, we'd like to thank Hoss the dog, and Michaiah, Chris, Sam, Kirk, Eleanor, Jenipher, Staro, Cat J, Chelsea, Dana, David, Nicole, Mikki, Paige, SJ, Shawn, Hunter, Theo, Boise Mutual Aid, Milica, Paparouna, Aly, Paige, Janice, Oxalis, and Jans. Your support means so much. And I hope everyone is doing as well as they can with everything that's happening. And we'll talk to you soon.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Janet and Margaret talk about sustainable foraging, herbalism, wild tending, constructive ethics on why you might choose not to wildcraft, ways to impact your food intake in small but meaningful ways, unlearning extractive tendencies when harvesting food and medicine, and upholding indigenous wisdom around wild tending.
Janet (she/her) is an herbalist and teacher at the Terra Sylva School of Botanical Medicine. Janet can be found on wordpress at Radical Vitalism The school can be found on Instagram @terrasylvaschool. Janet does a podcast called The Book on Fire.
Janet recommends reading The Honorable Harvest by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Janet on Sustainable Foraging
Margaret 00:14 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today, Margaret Killjoy. And this week we're going to be talking about herbalism and foraging and sustainable foraging of herbalism, and forage....[Trails off] That's what we're gonna be talking about with with Janet Kent, who you all have heard from before on another episode from a long time ago, about herbalism. And I think you'll all get a lot out of this episode. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network.
Margaret 01:12 And we're back. Okay, so Janet, if you could introduce yourself with your name, which I guess I already said, and your pronouns and kind of what you do for a living as, which would help people understand why they should listen to you about this topic.
Janet 01:44 I am Janet Kent, my pronouns are she/her. I run a school of botanical medicine that's located about an hour outside of Asheville, in southern Appalachia, and in so called Western North Carolina. And I'm also a clinical herbalist. And I also live in hardwood co [conifer] forest. And so I'm surrounded by wild plants. And specifically, like this region of southern Appalachia has a long history of settler wild crafting as a kind of hustle. And there were a lot of...when most pharmaceuticals came out of plants back in the day, this was a huge nexus of harvesting and distributing, and people extracted a lot of plants from the wild as a means of survival and sold them to the pharmaceutical companies. So, that is partially because this is a really ecologically rich place. But, I say all that just to say that I'm surrounded by plants that have medicinal value, even in like the larger market outside of the home forager or home apothecary. So, it's something that like, we have to really think about here and are forced to. Even though we're surrounded by the medicine, the ethics of that are something that I think about pretty regularly. So, I might be better situated than some to consider that. Yeah,
Margaret 03:13 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And that's why I wanted to have you on to talk today, right? Because I feel like this is this question that is coming up more and more as foraging becomes a little bit more mainstream. Or? Well, I guess, actually, to start with, we were talking earlier, and you talked about how there's sort of a foraging craze that's coming from the pandemic, I was wondering if you could kind of talk about that, like what's happening right now in foraging?
03:38 Yeah, I mean, while I do think there was a much more of a burst during the pandemic, when people were getting outside more. Public spaces, and parks became more visited once they were open again. And you saw just a lot more people out. I don't know, like how much time you spend in public spaces. But, there was a huge increase in people national parks, and national forests, State Forest, all of those kinds of places. And even just in city parks and such. And I think that there has been a lot of social media content that's being created around foraging. And it is like a way that people can get excited about gathering their own food. It can be a really nice, like gateway to like relationships with plants, because people start to learn to identify plants and learn what is food. And I definitely think that there's no small part of this that is also connected to people wanting to spend less money on food. I mean, we have applicants for school sometimes even say, you know, like, I want to learn more about plants that are useful for food and for medicine, because I need to spend less money. So there's like an economic incentive here, as well. And I should probably spend some time on that in a bit. But, also I would just say that over the last...I don't know, it's probably been more than a decade, there has just been a surge in interest in wild plants, including for food and for medicine.
Margaret 05:10 Yeah. And that's either really good or really bad depending on who you ask, Is that what's Is that what's happening right now?
Janet 05:19 Yeah, I would say that there can be pretty binary of viewpoints on this. And it's interesting, I mean, something that you probably see with a lot of people that you interview or with different communities that you might be in as there is a rise in awareness of just the colonial project that we're all part of still. And so that this is still occupied territory. There are indigenous people here whose land settlers are occupying. There is a certain level of guilt that can come with that awareness...[interrupted]
Margaret 05:56 Right?
Janet 05:56 [Continues] If you are someone who is not indigenous to turtle islands, and the way that I see that play out sometimes, not always, is with people sometimes seeing kind of stark black and white ideas around what is good and what is not good, and relationship. And we see people who hear like, "We shouldn't wildcraft," or they memorize like this all wildcrafting, which is the word that herbalist and people who are into plant medicine will use to describe harvesting herbs for medicine specifically. I don't actually hear 'wildcrafting' used to refer to food. Yeah, but so wildcrafting can be seen as strictly extractive and people just taking from the wild, because as I mentioned in the introduction, there is a long history of plants being taken en mass from the forests, to serve the pharmaceutical industry. And even now, there are certain plants that are threatened and endangered because they are used, even in European markets.
Margaret 07:03 Like what?
Janet 07:05 Black cohosh, specifically, is an herb that is seen as being helpful for some menopausal states. And it's used in...So in Europe, it's more license legal to be a doctor who uses plant medicine. And so you can prescribe herbs there. It's more regulated as well, but definitely tons of black cohosh are sent abroad every year. And from what...I met someone who works, is sort of like from a root digging family, like a traditional Appalachian root digging family, but she said she'd been in warehouses where there was just like piles of rotting roots of black cohosh, you know, cause people...
Margaret 07:48 Oh, God.
Janet 07:48 Yeah, the work of, as in is usually the case, like the piece workers, the people who are gathering are paid shit. And then the stuff is piled up. It's not stored very well. Some fraction of it will make it into medicine. And so there is very much a problem with extraction en masse of plants, especially when the root is what's being harvested, because that kills the plant. Right?
Margaret 08:12 Yeah. Ginseng is like one that I feel like I hear about too.
Janet 08:16 Absolutely. Ginseng would be a great example. And interestingly, I mean, you may even live in ginseng country. I do, for sure. But, that's something that's, you know, has been historically, as settlers came into these mountains, have shipped abroad, because by the time the Revolutionary War happened here, already, there was a dearth of ginseng in China because so much had been wild harvested, and they hadn't really put in cultivation yet. And so, as soon as the global market, people within the global market figured out that there was a similar ginseng here, they started shipping it abroad, and actually ginseng sales helped pay for the Revolutionary War.
Margaret 09:02 Oh, god. Uh huh.
Janet 09:03 Which is just so wild. Yes. So, there is very much history of extraction of plants.
Margaret 09:10 Yeah. For the extractive project that is the Revolutionary War
Janet 09:14 Yes, absolutely, a huge scale. So, when we are thinking about our own personal use or serving our communities or, you know, a lot of people will try to make herbal products as a side hustle, then we do need to confront our personal relationship with that legacy. That's obviously really important. However, the amount of time and energy people spent in policing other people's foraging and wildcrafting is a lot, as you may imagine.
Margaret 09:42 Yeah, social media is particularly good at getting us to level our weapons at each other. Yeah.
Janet 09:48 Right. So, we see a lot of that, and I feel like the the climate has not been very nuanced for this conversation, because what's true, and this is probably a part of what you're wanting to get out with this episode is that there's a really big difference between digging up a 15 year old root of a plant in the forest that took that long to get that big and taking the whole root and killing it, than there is actually harvesting weeds or harvesting invasive plants or plants that are here in abundance. And actually, you can harvest some kinds of plants in a way that is supportive to the plant community that they live in, because they're opportunistic or taking too much space. And so, I think when we have a black and white rubric around this, and much like all wildcrafting is extractive, we're also forgetting that there is a way for humans to be in relationship with plant communities in a way that fosters diversity and richness in the ecology. And can be a form of wild tending. And that is how Turtle Island was maintained by all of the indigenous folks who are living in so many different plant communities around the continent before Europeans showed up and disrupted that.
Margaret 11:04 Okay, so what are some of the...I like, examples. It makes it really more concrete in my head. Like, what are some of the examples of plants that you're helping that plant community by foraging or or by? Yeah.
Janet 11:17 Okay. Yeah, that's, that's a good question. And there's, I'll share with you a book, there's a whole book on invasive plant medicines. And so I'm going to say 'invasive' here, I know that that's a controversial word to some people. But, what I mean is plants that came after 1492, and are opportunistic and can take over spaces, and take up space. So, that's what I mean when I'm saying that, and we can say 'non native' or 'invasive' or just 'opportunistic,' but I'm gonna say 'weedy' and 'abundant' plants here. Plantain would be a weedy and abundant plant, and mugwort can be quite opportunistic, and take over in some places. Mimosa tree, the really beautiful pink firecracker looking tree that grows in the southeast pretty abundantly is pretty opportunistic. It can take over spaces for sure, you know, and sometimes native plants are also pretty weedy as well. Yarrow is a plant that comes from Europe, that there are some native varieties too, but they tend to not be as opportunistic. A lot of garden plants that have escaped, like catnip or horehound you might find in other places, sometimes lemon balm goes feral, in some places, as well. So, those would be some examples. But, a lot of trees that you see...[corrects self ] well, it's hard to say...Trees that were planted for landscaping, and then kind of move out like, Tree of Heaven is an example. There's a lot of different trees that got brought in at various points that have spread out and can really out compete other trees. Yeah.
Margaret 12:57 This is really interesting to me for a lot of reasons...I mean, I'm kind of notoriously bad for someone who like often lives off grid or like, you know, I live mostly alone on a bunch of acres in a mountain or whatever in Appalachia. And I'm like, kind of notoriously bad at actually knowing the plants around me and how to engage with them besides being like, I swear, one year, I'm gonna be here in the fall and eat the acorns. You know, has been my plan for however many years. I've done every step of acorn harvesting at various points and never actually finished it and eaten them. But, so it's just, it's kind of interesting to me because as I walk around, you know, the place that I live, I become more and more familiar with some of these plants and it's interesting to think about them in different ways. And then also think about, like, whether or not I have a desire or like, a role in sort of shaping what plants grow around me. And like, I don't even know the answer that yet. Like, I mean, what I sort of in my head, I'm like, I believe both the pines and the Oaks near me are fairly, you know, native to this area, or whatever. But, I'm like, but I like the Oaks more. And so I'm like, Is it bad to start, like, kind of cutting back the pines and like trying to propagate more of the Oaks? Like, maybe the tree level is a higher level of thinking about because they take a lot longer, but is that something that like, people should be doing in the kinds of....should be is a weird question....but [people] could think about doing in the places that they forage or, like thinking about what the current plant environment community is and what it could be shifted towards? Or is that like, do you stay out of it? This is not a question. Sorry.
Janet 14:39 Yeah, no, I, I think I can pick the through line in there, which is that: what would a good relationship look like when foraging? And to me, you know, I wasn't taught this way at all. I definitely came up in herbalism when this was not part of our conversation. But, I think in general, wild tending is the way to go where you actually have a perennial relationship with the plants that you live around or the plants that you visit, or the places that you'd like to harvest so that you can pay attention to when they're healthy and when they need support. See which plants are taking up some more space, you know, I mean, depending on what pines you're around, you know, those would have at one time been controlled partially through fire management practices, because they burn more than oaks. So, you know, that's like...I mean, not that we're trying to like, go back to some pristine era, because that's not possible. There's just sort of moving forward from where we're at. But, but it is true that in a lot of places where there were mixed forest in that way, there would be periodic fire for....support hunting, which would have taken out the pine. I mean, I think that personally, preferential treatment of different plant communities and landscapes feels pretty intuitive. And also, if you look back through history, but also if you just look at different cultures that are living in a sort of a tending/stewardship relationship with the plants around them, there is usually preferential management practice, which that's kind of like a boring way to say it, but yes, like favoring the plants you would like to see do better and favoring plants often that are useful to humans, and wildlife. You know, before the American Chestnuts went through, they're blight, they're not extinct, there are still a few left, but before the chestnut blight took out such a large amount of the chestnut trees on the eastern coast that was the dominant tree. And yes, they were taller and larger than most of the trees in the forest, but there was a level of preference for those because they made tons of food every year. And so humans and birds and other animals that like chestnuts, propagated the chestnuts by moving them around, even a squirrel burying a bunch of chestnuts is going to make more chestnuts come up, you know? So I think that that is a pretty natural way to relate to the plants around you, which is to favor some over others, you know. And when you start to pay attention to like, who's just kind of taken over, which can be plants that are actually from here too. And you want....ecosystem's tend to benefit from number of connections and number of members. And so you want to see richness in both of those numbers. You want to see more members and you want to see more connections. So, when you have any one member dominating, you're having less of both. And I think if we can think of tending towards, you know, the word diversity is almost destroyed at this point for usefulness, however, I could say that ecologically, what I mean is like, yes, strengthen members and connections.
Margaret 17:57 Okay. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense to me. I don't know, I've been really enjoying just like, you know, I have a dog now. So, I have to walk around a lot. And actually, like, pay more attention, because he's always like finding all of the things and making me pay attention to it. I don't know where I'm going with that. There's cactus where I live. And it confuses the hell out of me. Yeah, I live in West Virginia.
Janet 18:21 Are they prickly pears?
Margaret 18:24 I don't know. They're small. They're like low to the ground. They're like big, round, green lobes kind of like hanging out on the ground. There's not a lot of them. But, it confuses the hell out of me. I have no idea if they're native to this area or not. I don't understand. I don't know why I'm telling you that. Now everyone knows I have cactus.
Janet 18:51 Dogs are wonderful for getting us out of the house and out into the world, you know, and then you start to pay attention to who else is around, you know, the dog leads you to the others. Right?
Margaret 19:00 Yeah, totally. It's how I know about all the turtles on the property is my dog finds them in and hangs out with them and just sort of stares at them. And then I watch them.
Janet 19:07 Are they box turtles?
Margaret 19:08 Yeah, there's some kind of. Yeah, I think they're box turtles. They're not, uh, they're not doing so well. I looked them up. There's not a lot of them. But, I live somewhere where there's not a lot of roads. So they don't die as much.
Janet 19:22 Right. I love box turtles. I actually wanted to bring up a different similar creature when I was thinking about this topic earlier, which is that I think that, while I can be like, it's all you know, 'we need to turn relationships, we need to be stewarding land,' all of these things, it is worth noting that generally, wildlife and plant communities are under pressure when people get hungry. And you know, I was in Florida near some of the beautiful springs down there a few years ago, and I've also seen these In parts of the Gulf South, but there are these really cool tortoises called gopher tortoises. Have you ever met one of those?
Margaret 20:05 No,
Janet 20:07 They're kind of big. I just realized I'm using my hands and you're able to see my hands on the podcast. However, they're pretty big turtles.Tortoises. And, they're so cool. One of the things they do is they make these burrows That's why they're called gopher tortoises, but they help a lot of different creatures survive hurricane flooding and other like vast flooding, because other animals will hang out in their burrows. They're like, wombats or something. They're like a helper species that makes habitat for other animals. But, I was reading about them when I was down there and in the Great Depression, the locals down on the Gulf South and in Florida, called them Hoover Chickens. Because they were naming after present President Hoover, who they were blaming for the Great Depression and just got....because they eating so many tortoises to survive, okay, and the tortoise population just like dropped out during that time, and they're slowly getting back, but they have a hard time too, like the box turtles that we live near. And so when I read that I just, it made me really...it made me think about foraging honestly, and how much I had seen this like uptick, with the economic dip, and made me just understand the level to which we need to be emphasizing what's abundant. And what you know...a tortoise....Tortoises are not abundant. They were not abundant even back then, probably. But like, what species are there a lot of? Which species does harvesting actually help the larger plant community? But, also with individual species, there's plants where if you harvest in a specific way that helps propagate them, then you can help increase their numbers as well. And that's going to differ from plant to plant. But, I think that what I would like to see with people getting more and more excited about foraging and wild harvesting of herbs in general, is that actual consciousness about what it is to help their numbers grow so that it's not as much of an extract of relationship?
Margaret 22:14 Yeah, no, I remember reading one of the things that like really stuck with me, I read a long time ago, it was about how during the Great Depression, like squirrels and deer were hunted to near extinction in various places. And like....
Janet 22:29 Wow
Margaret 22:29 Yeah, exactly. And, you know, these are the things when I think of abundant animals, right, I think of deer and squirrels, at least where I live. And, and so that, that realization that we actually have an impact, you know. Like, the small amounts of destructive things we do really can add up. Obviously, we're living through a, you know, climate level of all of that coming. But no, that's, that's makes me sad about the tortoises. But okay, so So what are some examples then of these? I know I just keeping like, give me more examples, because I like the stories of it. But like, what are some of the plants that you're like helping? I can imagine, for example, like, I mean, obviously, chestnuts are very complicated right now. But, you know, harvesting chestnuts, of course, doesn't necessarily negatively impact the tree. And earlier you were talking about basically being like roots are like much more complicated to extract, or there are like ways of extracting roots that are less bad? Would you mostly say to anyone listening to this unless you know, better just don't mess with roots and work on some other stuff?
Janet 23:39 Yeah, you know, and actually, you're reminding me that when I have been seeing a lot of like, more like virally popular foragers, they don't tend to emphasize roots, which I feel grateful for. And yeah, I would say that in general, unless you have a perennial relationship with a plant community than just staying away from roots is a good idea. But with a lot of plants, there are ways to harvest where you're not actually greatly impacting the plant. Let me think of some examples of that. I mean, I almost don't want to bring up ramps because they are so over harvested in some places. Those are wild leeks for people who might not know, but what is true is that if instead of harvesting the bulb, the white bulb, it's kind of like an onion, garlicky thing and each can just take a leaf and harvest leaves from a big patch instead of digging them up that's gonna make a huge difference. Now when you see restaurants start saw offer foragers money for ramps, at least in my neighborhood, I started to see much more like big holes dug where they're just digging up clumps of them at a time and then just taking them wholesale out to sell, you know, and so, I would say like, yeah, the above ground parts are always always gonna be more sustainable to harvest. But also, if you're taking flowers from a plant, for example. I'm trying to think of like a good example of this. I love peach flower medicine, I love peach flower for grief and for hot agitated states and there are feral peach flower trees and, and there's old orchards that are no longer sprayed. And when you're harvesting peach flowers, you can actually support the tree because they need to not let all of those flowers go ripe and become flat fruit because it's too much. So, if you selectively just pick a couple blooms off the into clusters, that's actually going to help the plant overall, you know? Or I'm thinking of, I wanted to give another example of something in a more urban setting. but linden trees are plants, there are some linden trees that are native to this continent, they're called basswood trees, that's the name here. But there's European lindens that are planted ornamentally There's a bunch of them in downtown Asheville. But that's like, where there'll be a huge tree covered with thousands of blossoms and the flowers are the medicine there too. And they're always covered with bees. Bees love them. But, if you see something like that, where you're like, it's impossible to even imagine how many there are, then you can take some flowers, and you're not going to hurt that tree. You know, I guess if we all did that, that would be something we're thinking about. And that's why having a perennial relationship where you see the shifts through the years, see who's getting hit. And, if an area is being over harvested, you can tell because you've been paying attention, that would be something to do. But yeah, I would say like there are a lot of like flowering trees where you can get the flowers or you could even prune some of the branches and have some of what you need. But also with urby plants, the above ground plant, you can kind of see the parts, the aerial parts is what we call them, and notice how much has gone. And usually you can tell if someone else has been there, right. So, that would be what I would say. But again, if you if you're sticking to really weedy abundant plants, then this is going to just be less of an issue like goldenrod, for example, is a gorgeous endemic plant, or a plant that grows on a lot of parts of Turtle Island, which is a really excellent allergy remedy. Not so good for food. But they're incredibly weedy. You'll see a giant field of them right over the place, you know, and so if you just stuck to plants that were pretty weedy and abundant like that, even if you got as much as you're going to need for the year, it would be very little in a dent of even one plant stand.
Margaret 27:45 Yeah. Okay, so I took a bunch of notes on what you were saying, because there's so many pieces that I want to pick apart. And one of them is this, I've been running across this thing more, and I suspect you've probably run across a mortgage or rent more in these circles. But this idea that like, the concept of nature is sort of a colonial construct. This idea that like, when we create the idea of nature, we're talking about something that is distinct from humans, and how that's like, kind of this thing that like gets us off the hook. Like when we imagine like humans as only bad. It like lets us off the hook for being bad as compared to like, it seems like you could talk about either you show up and you dig up all the roots of these, you know, ginseng or whatever that's been there forever, and you just like mess everything up, versus they're like other plants that do very well for humans as part of the ecosystem interacting with them in the same way that they do very well for having bees in the ecosystem or birds in the ecosystem. Whatever. Yes. I don't know, it's really interesting to me. And I'm wondering if that's like a conversation that...
Janet 28:46 I think that's been a helpful conversation, I think, for people to have around not just having black and white thinking around it, which is what you're gonna get, I think, which is that, if we're actually in relationship, then we're going to be able to care for the plants instead of just taking or just ignoring. I mean, there's definitely, unfortunately, a pretty big segment of people who are into environmental biology who do have a very hands off, 'don't interfere, just leave it,' you know, kind of perspective.
Margaret 29:21 The Star Trek approach.
Janet 29:23 Definitely, which is I mean, ridiculous given that there are no plants left on the planet who are not being impacted by human activity. So, you actually going in and maybe... So, part of, this is like, kind of an aside from what we're talking about, but there's this concept called assisted migration, which when you're like, "These plants hate how hot it's getting right here. We should move them further north." You know, and so there's all these people who are like, "No, no, we can't interfere. We might ruin everything." You know, it's like time traveling or something like we actually, like do one thing wrong and everything will be, it'll be a clusterfuck. And the whole system will collapse because we move this tree up there. And who knows who else is on there. But then there's a lot of people who there's actually like secret groups who meet to help with assisted migration and to propagate. It's really wild. Anyway, I say all this just to say that, like I'm not on a never interfere with, because I think the interference is happening already. I mean, it's not my life's work to move trees around to places where they might make it. Right. But that is something that, you know, even the research we have about this extinction crisis is just that the loss is huge. And are there places where we could support life becoming, like diversifying and strengthening, plant communities as other trees are coming out? Like right now, where I live? I don't know if this is how you're where it is where you're at or not, but the ash trees are all dying.
Margaret 30:56 The ash borer, whatever? Yeah.
Janet 30:58 And it's really happening hardcore where we live. So yes, it is true that there will be other trees that are going to come in to those canopy gaps, to live. But we are seeing these forests change dramatically right now. And it's just, it's going to be interesting. Like, there are people who, because the hemlocks are dying out as well from the woolly adelgid along the rivers and streams, and some places around here, there are people who are like, "Well, what are the plants that we could put in here intentionally, that would help shade that would support the trout and support the life in here?" You know, and so those kinds of ecosystem design frameworks make people really uncomfortable because of the level of damage that has happened through the inadvertent introduction of certain species.
Margaret 31:48 Right. Well, it's like, if we fucked something up so bad. And 'we' is a weird word to use in this context. But sure, you know, I mean, I'm a settler here and I, you know, reap the rewards of that in terms of like, the foods available to me at the store, whatever, tons of shit. But okay, we fucked this thing up so bad. I can understand people's like, "Oh, no, we fucked it up. We just shouldn't do anything." But, but that's a little bit like, pushing someone over. And then they're like, "Help me up," and you're like, "No, last time I interacted with you, it went really bad. So I'm just gonna walk away."
Janet 32:25 No, I mean, exactly. Like, we're gonna just watch the destruction happen that is in the wake of this economic system, and not actually do anything to change it, because we might hurt something. I mean, it's absurd when you actually lay it out that way.
Margaret 32:41 Yeah, we set the house on fire. And now we don't want to run in and help people because we just make everything worse, so we should avoid everything. I mean, it's because I think that it makes sense for people to not be like, wildly cavalier about deciding that, you know, they should just get to reengineer the way that ecosystems work. I like, Oh, that's such an interesting tension that I don't have any answers for but...
Janet 33:07 Well, I mean, there is a lot of tension with it. I mean, I think a lot of times when I see scientists who are taking a really hard line, 'no interference' stance, they are people who don't study indigenous land management, and don't understand the level to which humans normally play in ecosystem, design and movement, and construction. And so I think that in general, what would be the wisest thing to do for anyone would be you know, what, if you're not indigenous to this place, what are the indigenous folks around you saying about what is wild tending? And what does support and stewardship of this land look like right now?
Margaret 33:45 Right. Yeah, though, that makes sense. What is involved in...you know, I'm not indigenous and what would be involved in trying to find that out where I'm at? Do I look for people who are like kind of talking about that publicly? I assume the answer is not just like, go find my friends who are indigenous and be like, "You there..."
Janet 34:05 Well, it depends. I mean, it really depends where where people live. I mean, there are in many places around the continent, I'm learning more and more about this, there are actually are cultural centers where you can talk to folks and be like...who are working on land management stuff, right then you know, within whatever tribal sovereignty they have in that situation. Here, this is unceded, Cherokee land, but you know, we are in contact with folks who are doing wild tending and talking about...a lot of the schools there in the Cherokee where the actual reservation is, they are actually trying to introduce more and more wild foods, you know, and so through talking to folks who are part of that project, we've been able to be like, "Okay, like, what, would be helpful for you to have more of?" Also, one thing that I would say in most places, there's some tension between what indigenous groups...what land they have access to and in the Cherokee area, I mean, a specific part that they're still have control over right now, you know, I know a grandmother who was given a $500 citation for picking herbs in the National Forest, for her daughter's memorial, you know, and, at the same time, like they had to have...the Cherokee folks had to push through to try to get a permit to be able to pick this plant called sochan, which is a wild perennial green that people eat in the spring especially. And so through communicating around with those folks, like I've been able to, like learn, like what plants are being prioritized with them, but also like supporting them, you know, like, they had to petition the state for us to be like, "Can we pick herbs on this land?" Right? Yeah. And so actually, like, as annoying as it is supporting that getting the word out, making sure that there's a shit ton of signatures sent to the State Forest, which are just like that this even a question is absurd, right? Especially because there are plenty of settler foragers just going out and foraging with no sort of impact. I mean, they're having an impact, but they don't have to deal with any consequences. So yeah, I guess I would say is like figuring out who's just around you, you know, and usually, and the thing is, is I don't know how the regions are all over the country, but it definitely in the west and southwest and in some parts of the southeast, too, it's not that hard to find cultural centers, or people who are working on land and food sovereignty, where they're at. And so I would just say, I don't know about specifically where you are and that's an interesting question. But, there are cultural centers in a lot of places that will have people working on food, wild food support, and often just like land tending and medicine ways. And I know, in the West, like, we've had a couple of students who actually are doing fire management, intentional fire trainings with with different indigenous tribes out there. And so they're actually learning to do the fire management practices from the people on the ground who had that tradition. And I think that's a fascinating way to learn to and to be like...because that can be somewhat dangerous as you're learning, right?And so like, that feels like a pretty big service to me, to be like, "Could you help do that kind of work somewhere?" And you would learn as you went, what plants are being prioritized, which plants need support, what plants are problems, you know, through through that work as well.
Margaret 37:55 Okay. I liked that. I liked that's...I feel like usually that kind of question the like, "Well, what can you do?" doesn't have as good of a concrete answer as that I really appreciate that. One of the things you were talking about earlier, you're talking about, you know, the ramps that are being sold to the restaurants and stuff, right? And I was just thinking about how it seems like when you're talking about foraging, and when you're talking about wildcrafting, obviously, scale matters, but also when money gets involved, it seems like it gets real messy. And like, I wonder how people like, like, is there any ethical wild foods that introduce into market environments? Or is it like pretty much, if you're going to be doing foraging, you should be feeding yourself and your family and maybe your community but not doing it at like market scale?
Janet 38:49 Yeah, that's tough. I mean, I don't know. There's definitely some folks around here who do like a wild food, food share even. And then there's people who do wild food...there's like a wild food booth at the farmers market because of this. That's how it is around here. There's just more people with that interest who are willing to pay the big bucks for foraged items. And so I can imagine...
Margaret 39:07 Which is just like ironic, but anyway.
Janet 39:09 Yeah, if you could see what's on the table at this spot, it's pretty wild. But um, anyway, but so that feels like a scale....it's not that....I'm like, who's actually....like, how much are they actually selling at the farmers market every week? Like, you know, I don't know, it doesn't seem like huge but once we think about like actually scaling up to like, say, like, provide for several stores or something like that, and it does get kind of out of hand. And I know that in some places, like mushroom foraging has gotten pretty wild in a way that can be destructive, but again, that depends on the mushroom. I mean some mushrooms, it actually helps them to have a lot of people in there just sort of disturbing the ground and like spreading the spores around, while some mushrooms when it's not actually the fruiting body like Chaga or something it can be somewhat damaging harvest a lot of it. It really just depends. I think that, if, say like your product was something that was a really, a plant that's causing a lot of trouble in a whole area? Like around here there's there are people who are working really madly on kudzu root production and using kudzu root for for starch and using kudzu root to make paper. They have this kudzu camp every year and like dig a ton of kudzu root and just trying to figure out how many ways they could work with kudzu root. If that was what was entering the market, then that would be fine. Because as you know, having lived in the southeast, there's no shortage of kudzu for people to work with. So, if we were actually making a marketable item out of opportunistic and aggressive plants, then that would be not a bad idea, actually. I mean, yeah, who knows? I'm sure it could get weird.
Margaret 40:59 Yeah. Right, because you could eventually enter the nonprofit trap. Like, I'm not anti nonprofits. But at some level, every nonprofit has a financial incentive to continue its problem existing.
Janet 41:10 Oh, yes. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So you'd be like, "Oh, God, we've got our kudzu. What are we gonna do?"
Margaret 41:15 Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's a good problem for us to run into, right?
Janet 41:22 Yeah, definitely.
Margaret 41:23 And then, like, I was thinking about one of the other places I've been with the most, like intense invasive things, I think of like, the Himalayan blackberries in the Pacific Northwest, that will just like, take over every field. And, and in some ways, I'm like, "Oh, yeah, great, you know, blackberries." And then I'm like, "Oh, I think if you're just picking the berries, you're actually just propagating."
Janet 41:42 Totally,
Margaret 41:43 We would need to instead like have the commercial product, 'heart of BlackBerry root' or something, you know?
Janet 41:50 It would need to be the root. Probably, yeah. Which is just so wild. If you've ever removed a lot of that stuff, it's so intense.
Margaret 41:58 Yeah, I used to do landscaping. And that was, most of what we did is remove Blackberry, BlackBerry root balls or whatever. It's been a long time.
Janet 42:08 I think also, since you brought the Northwest up again, I just wanted to say that like part of what I would want to just share here, since we're giving different specific examples is that really, it just matters like place to place even weedy and abundant plants in some places can be a problem if you're harvesting them other places. Like here, stinging nettle is like pretty aggressive. It's abundant. There's a lot of places where you can harvest a huge amount and make barely a dent in the stinging nettle patch. But, I know that there are places in the Northwest where there's actually been a problem. And there are certain butterflies who exclusively lay their eggs, that have caterpillars that feed on nettles, which I don't remember what kind of butterfly this is, and so those butterflies have become endangered because of the foraging craze around Portland specifically, because it's a very small area that they inhabit. So, while I could be like "Nettles, great, just take the top third of the plant. It's a huge patch, it won't matter." Like that doesn't translate to everywhere across the continent, right? So part of what we have to do if we're going to be foraging much for food or medicine is to actually know what are the conditions for the plant where we live? And not just have...I can't give a list of what's safe to harvest everywhere. That's why invasives can feel a little safer. Because generally, if you know something invasive, then you already know that it would be helpful to right take some of them out, but other plants not so much. You know.
Margaret 43:41 That's actually one of the things that's really interesting. I think there's a lot of topics that we talked about on the show where you kind of can't learn from this show. You kind of can't learn from this like: "Oh, I follow a forger on Instagram. therefore know all this stuff." I mean, like, I'm sure you can learn a ton of stuff that way. I'm not trying to disparage that, or my own show. But it sounds like local knowledge will always be necessary in a lot of different fields that are the kinds of fields that we like, we as a species need to like learn or we as a culture or whatever, like need to learn in order to survive what's coming anyway are a lot of these skills where we're actually interacting with the places we're at in terms of you know, whether it's like making microclimates that the temperature doesn't change as much or being able to continue to eat food on a regular basis or whatever. as we as we move more local, a lot of the knowledge has to move local. That's really interesting to me.
Janet 44:35 Yeah, that's definitely true. And I would also say that it's something that like you have to kind of pay attention to over time, because we have local knowledge as of now, but the climate is shifting so quickly. And a lot of people I know are in zones that have changed already in the past five years. And so, we also need to be paying attention to like who amongst the plants is impacted by this shift to warmer and erratic weather, and who is thriving like that, you know, and so it's also just paying attention to those changes. And and that's something that it really just helps to be an observer over time or to speak to people who've been around for quite a while. And within that, I think it's probably important for us to think of the concept of the shifting baseline from ecology. Which, the shifting baseline means that like...Okay, so my example would be like, when my dad was a kid, my dad's 87. When my dad was a kid, there were so many more kinds of birds, there were so many more animals of all kinds all around like wild animals. There are a lot more specific kinds of like big birds that eat big insects, like Whippoorwills, there are more Bobwhites, there were all these....there were more birds that have now you know, I think the estimation is that there's maybe some people say 30%, some say 50%, less birds than there were 50 years ago.
Margaret 45:59 That is so depressing.
Janet 46:00 It's incredibly depressing. But when I was growing up, I would not know that if I hadn't read that, or hadn't talked to my dad about how many birds there were, or how many fish there were, or whatever, because I would think like this is how many how much of x there is, you know. And so when you grow up with less, you think less is normal. And we have generation after generation growing up with less and less and less. We have lost an incredible amount of biomass globally. And we don't always know that. So, what I can say like locally living somewhere where there's been like, I don't even know how many herbs schools over the past two decades, there have been so many herbs, schools, and so many foraging schools and places where people....and it just draws and attracts people who are interested in doing that kind of stuff. But also, if you're not already, you will probably will be if you stay here for long enough, I guess. Anyway, the impact on wild plant communities where plant walks happen often, where herbs schools take their students often has been very notable. And it's because, you know, we have like, there's just like, year after a year of alumni, of cohorts of students, of different people who have moved here who have gone and taken classes, and those people continue to visit those spots. Sometimes even if teachers have asked them not to. And they bring their friends, you know, and there's this whole, exponentially more people harvesting plants of certain kinds, there's certain ones that are specifically more exciting than others, probably. And so, just in seeing what's happened since I moved here with some of the more accessible spots with specific plant communities, I'm thinking of pedicularis specifically right now, which Wood Betony is another name for that herb, that's a plant that's very cool and easy to identify, but also has like sort of a relaxing, muscle relaxing feel to it. So people really like it cause it has a little bit like, body relax, feel. And so those patches have just been decimated. And when I see that I'm like, you know, a lot of herb schools, at least in what I was taught traditionally, it was like people would be like, "Go in. And you can have like, you can take about one out of every 10 plants." You know, and that would be like the maxim that we were taught at a certain point, 10%. And, but if everybody comes and takes 10%, what does that even mean? So, that is something that I've seen here specifically is like a cumulative effect of over harvest, over time. And it's increased not just with the people in the field that I'm in, but just with an increase in learning about wild plants and learning what they do. Because people want to take care of their own health or they want to feed themselves, you know, like, I mean, it's not coming from the worst place. It's just that when we're not in relationship and don't know, the baseline of what that patch looked like fifteen years ago, then we don't know that we're in a decimated area, or where we're with plants that are under stress. That's something that you know, from yearly visitation.
Margaret 49:07 Okay, and so it seems like then the 'answer,' I hate saying the 'answer,' because I'm sure it's more complicated than anything I could say after that. But like, is this thing that you're talking about, about being in relationship with these plant communities, rather than a quick maxim about like, "Oh, go visit and just it's totally chill to take this stuff," versus like, knowing what's actually happening there and how things are changing. That makes sense. And then as you're saying, with like, a few exceptions, where you're like, "Look, it's fine to take plantain. Fuck it," or whatever.
Janet 49:40 Yeah, right.
Margaret 49:43 Okay. Yeah, it ties into this thing that I keep thinking back on is like this concept of like, the wild feels infinite, you know? Well, of course, I can't affect the number of...I mean, if you can even look at this, like in a negative sense, right? It's like, :"Oh, I can't affect the number of ticks in my yard." But you actually can. I know the number of ticks in my yard, my yard in particular, feels infinite. How can I possibly have an impact on the number of ticks? And there are ways that I could impact that number of ticks and like, so like, if I had guinea hens or whatever, and they ate a bunch of ticks, you could actually create a notable difference, even though it seems like you're digging from this infinite pool of ticks. This is a very gross metaphor. And so that makes sense that yeah, either these things that feel abundant, and as long as you take 10%, but you're not thinking about how everyone does it. I mean, the whole baseline shift thing, I like...nothing is more depressing to me than thinking about the lack of biodiversity as compared to a hundred, years ago, even.
Janet 50:49 It's so wild.
Margaret 50:51 Yeah. Which leads me to the sort of conclusion of like, I think I have a difference in opinion than a lot of my friends and a lot of my community, like, I have more of this, like, "Great, we all need to start growing food inside," like, this very, like opposite method of solving it, or rather, specifically, because I think a lot of people are like, "Oh, well, we'll all go forage," right? You know, as this like, "Ah, well, nature will provide for us," and it's kind of like, well, nature did provide for us, and then our culture, our settler culture, like fucked that up real bad. But, I like this thing that you're talking about, about like, one of the main ways to solve that, on a small scale, at least is to grow into community with the place that you're harvesting from, to not be extractive.
Janet 51:42 I think that there has to be kind of a mix too. I mean, I agree with you, like, I encourage people to grow their own medicine and to grow their own food as much as they can. But, also, I can say that like as a...I'm a clinician, like, you know, I have a clinical practice with herbs. And once you actually see the volume of plant material it takes to keep even a few people on a formula, or on a tea, it's really wild. Like if I was not using some grown plants with also some weedy plants that I can just harvest, like, I don't know what I would do. And that's just me. Like, if we were all doing what I'm doing, then the amount of plant material would be pretty enormous. I mean, I think about how, you know, in China, it's amazing, they have still pretty intact herbal medicine tradition that's part of their medical system. I mean, it got homogenized after Mao, for sure, and changed, although they're still people who practice pre Maoist Chinese medicine, but they have an enormous amount of land given to a monoculture of growing herbs for that industry. And so, you know, when I have folks be like, "Well, we should just grow our own plants," I'm like, "Well, when we're actually, if you were actually talking about the scale of supporting a lot of people's health, that is a lot of land." And and for feeding, it's going to be even more or land, because the caloric intake we would all require is more than that, that we need with herbs, right? So,how much land are we talking? You know?
Margaret 53:15 No, that that makes a lot of sense. One of the things you brought up at the beginning, that you said you wanted to return to and we're coming near the end, you were talking about how like more and more you're seeing maybe students coming to your school, because they're interested in herbalism. And they're interested in forging and wildcrafting out of economic necessity. Basically. Like, you know, I think about, you're talking about, like, your wildcrafted table at the farmers market where everything is like wildly expensive. No pun intended. And, you know, versus like, kind of the whole point of foraging is that it's free. Right? And I wonder if you want to talk more about that, about like...because I do think that there is even if I'm like, obviously there's a million problems with foraging, it does seem like it still could have a way to be useful to help people on an economic level as like food prices go through the roof and wages stagnate or disappear. And all that.
Janet 54:11 I do, I do think it has a place. And I will say that like you know, just for the record in case my students are listening to that, there's always a fair number of people who have come in like staunchly anti wildcrafting as well. So there's definitely a pretty good mix. But, I but I've been noticing more and more every year there are more people that are like, "I think this is a survival skill," with the economic downturn that's happening, which is what you're referring to. And so I do think that wild foods that are abundant and weedy can be a really helpful supplement to other food. For sure. I think that actually trying to live off of it is challenging. That's something people will learn. But, you know, it is true that there's some things we get with wild foods that we do not get from the domesticated food that we eat normally and I should just point out that I think that unless people can afford to eat organic foods, especially if it's organic food with restorative agricultural practices, which is not a lot of organic food, we're usually eating food if it comes from the grocery store, and in some cases, even the farmers market that is coming from extremely depleted soil, because the pressures of capitalism, of the market require people just to like, not ever let the land be fallow. They just have to continue to pump the land and extract that food from it in ways even though they're growing the food. And so most of the food that we eat is pretty nutrient deficient, compared to what it would be in a more restorative agricultural system. Now wild food, if it's not in a place that's very polluted, that's a whole other topic that we should probably mention, is going to be growing out of a place that's not just having like a cycling of harvest over and over again. And so they tend to be more nutrient dense. So, if you could pick nettles in a place that doesn't have a lot of toxins in the soil, it's going to, they're going to be nettles, that actually have a lot more mineral content than the greens you get at the grocery store. The same is true for dandelion greens. So, while you might not be able to really like, bulk up your diet with a ton of calories from the wild, although you could, it just honestly takes a lot of time and energy that not everyone has. You will, even by supplementing a little bit with dandelion greens or other wild greens, you are going to actually get more of a nutritional impact. You'll get more minerals. You get this bitter flavor that's been mostly bred out in the domesticated greens and lettuces. There's not bitter any more. Bitterness actually has a purpose, which is that it helps the liver function, it helps with digestion. So, I do think that if people supplemented their diets with some wild food, it would be beneficial in more than just those calories and in more than just the money saved, because we are eating from such a depleted food system. So, this is all to say that as our budgets are being impacted by the level of inflation and how much food cost, which is just going to get worse is what it looks like, it's also just true that we're we're buying food that doesn't have as much nutrition as it should. You know? And so, you're getting more than just like that handful of greens on your salad, you're getting actually like pretty dense nutritional food.
Margaret 57:35 That makes sense to me. At the beginning of the pandemic, I basically like lived off of my prepper stash, supplemented by wild greens for like, a month or so, which I wouldn't like immediately recommend anyone has like fun and joyous. But, I was really, really grateful, like none of my calories came from the wild greens, but the sense that I'm actually like taking care of my body came from the wild greens.
Janet 57:59 Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And that does change things. You know, I mean, I think that's what I would say, is I'm not sure how much it'll like reduce cost hugely at this point to be adding in a lot of other food, but that improvement in your health is going to be noticeable.
Margaret 58:22 Okay, well, we're coming up on an hour. I'm wondering if there's anything in particular that we missed that you wish we had talked about or like?
Janet 58:33 Oh, I do have Yeah, I do have one thing to talk about. So, this may also makes sense to you, having lived around here at some point, and it's that I was going to recommend that people read this essay by Robin Wall Kimmerer that's called "The Honorable Harvest" and I can send you a link to that because there's PDFs of that online, but she admits I was....Yeah, I was reviewing it today and she reminded me of something and it's that so, for a while, this is getting to be less the case, but for a while, within different herbs circles and foraging circles that I was adjacent to there was a sort of a nod towards respectful relationships with the plants you might be harvesting and Robin Wall Kimmerer says in her piece, like you know, "Always ask permission from the plant." But, there's something that I was seeing like pretty commonly in settler foragers and herbalist, which would be like just like a really quick like, "Is this okay?" to the plant and then they're like, "They said, "Yes,"" and then they would just go ahead and harvest very quickly, you know, and like, just like I swear, like immediate, like plants they'd never hung out with before like, this happened in front of me, like I mean, you know. And so, I had always been like kind of turned off by the exchange, well it wasn't really an exchange, but like by that whatever gesture, gesture towards pretending to have communication. Which it doesn't mean there's not communication but, there was this really awesome way that Robin Wall Kimmerer talked about it where she's just like, "You have to use both parts of your brain for that conversation. You're not just using the talking and listening, you have to also use the part of your brain that's assessing that circumstances, assessing the health of the plant, attention over time. It's not just about intuition and communication with the plant world. It's also actually about empirical understanding and paying attention," you know. And so to me, and what I've seen in my life is that like, I'm like, I sometimes know, it's not even appropriate to ask. I'm just like, "This standard is not doing okay. I'm not going to harvest plants here right now," you know. And so, the idea that all that we need is like a really brief exchange of like, "Is this cool? Cool. Got it," you know and move in. It's like, that's still very extractive. But, it makes you feel like you did something.
Margaret 1:00:52 I mean, there's a really obvious comparison here to like the way that consent culture and sex is like not handled incredibly well.
Janet 1:01:00 Sure.
Margaret 1:01:00 Yeah, where people are like, "Whatever. I asked," versus like, "I should try and figure out how everyone actually feels."
Janet 1:01:07 Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So just to say that, like, it's more than asking, like asking, and listening,. Listening means actually listening over time. It's not an instant gratification listen, you know? Yeah, that's my last note, which would just be like to actually learn to listen and pay attention and observe and not...Unlearning extractive tendencies. And unlearning the entitlement that we all carry, live and breathe in settler colonial capitalism is a lot of work. And it requires patience and time. But also, I will say that if you see someone else behaving in a way that you're not that into, you know, understanding that probably yelling at them is not gonna make them change their mind or behavior very quickly. So, also to have patience with other people who were on different learning edges here with this, you know?
Margaret 1:02:05 Yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. Well, where can people...do you want people to find you?
Janet 1:02:16 Yes, I have. So, I have a blog that's called Radical Vitalism with my partner, Dave. And our school is Terra Sylva School, which we run with Jen Stovall. I can put that stuff in, I'll send it to you to put in the show notes. And then we also have a podcast called The Book on Fire. And we're about to start our third season. And we're going to actually talk about the "Dawn of Everything." So, that should relate...
Margaret 1:02:41 Oh, I love that book.
Janet 1:02:42 Yeah, so good. So good. So, it relates to kind of some of what we're talking about at least.
Margaret 1:02:46 Cool. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much. And I'm sure have you on again, at some point.
Janet 1:02:54 Yeah. Thanks a lot.
Margaret 1:02:55 Thank you so much for listening. if you enjoyed this podcast....Well, first of all, if you enjoyed hearing from Janet, I highly recommend that you check out the earlier episode with Janet and Dave about herbalism and herbalism for emergency medical needs and all of that. They have a lot to say. And if you enjoyed this episode, and you enjoy this podcast in general, please consider supporting us by telling people about the podcast and telling the internet about the podcast and telling algorithms about the podcast by rating, and reviewing, and subscribing, and all of that stuff that has a larger impact than one might expect. Much like killing ticks in your yard, you can also support us financially. This podcast pays its audio editor and the transcriptionist. And we're very proud to be able to do that work. And we are supported in that work by the people who support Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness on Patreon, the publisher that publishes us. That's what makes it a publisher. It's called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. We have another podcast called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness that you can check out, that comes out every month and has different fiction, and memoir, and poetry, and essays, and all kinds of fun stuff that comes out once a month. And if you support us on Patreon, you'll get a zine in the mail every month. Well, if you support us at $10 or more on Patreon, you get a zine in the mail every month. And in particular, I would like to thank Aly and Paparouna and Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, Theo, Hunter, Sean, S.J., Paige, Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Kat J., Staro. Jenipher, Eleanor, Kirk, Sam, Chris, Michaiah, and Hoss the dog. You all make it possible, make the dream work. You're the team work...anyway, I will talk to you all soon and I hope you're doing as well as you can.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Brooke talks with Alissa and Alex about horrors of the legal system. She walks through both of their legal ordeals from the circumstances of their targeting, arrests, court appearances, and current statuses. Alissa and Alex were both arrested separately in connection to violence from the far Right.
Alissa Azar (she/they) is currently in need of support to retain legal services. You can find her fundraiser at https://donorbox.org/help-alissa-get-proper-legal-defense. You can also find her on Instagram @r3volutiondaddy, or on Twitter @AlissaAzar.
Alex (He/him) can be found on Mastodon @betacuck4life.
Brooke can be found at Strangers helping up keep our finances intact and on Twitter and Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Surviving the Justice System with Alissa and Alex
Brooke 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm Brooke Jackson, your host for this episode. Today we are talking with a couple of wonderful leftists about their experiences with the American court system, and how they've been supported by their community and by mutual aid. Without revealing your names or any details, would each of you like to say, "hi" or "hello" to our audience?
Alissa 00:37 Hi.
Alex 00:40 Hello
Brooke 00:45 All right, before we officially unveil today's guests, you know I gotta show some love to fellow members of the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts. So let's hear a little about one of those other cool pods. Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo.
Brooke 01:52 And we're back. Friends, thank you for joining me today to talk about the injustice of our justice system. Would you please each actually introduce yourselves and share your pronouns?
Alissa 02:02 My name is Alissa Azar. She/They.
Alex 02:04 My name is Alexander Dial. He/him.
Brooke 02:12 Well, thank you. So both of these friendly, lovely folks have had to deal with, as I just said, the injustice of our justice system. They've both been arrested and charged with crimes. And Alex has been through kind of the whole system: jail, bail, going to court, living on probation, including having to do community service and reporting to a probation officer. And Alissa is kind of in the midst of that grinding system with some uncertainty in the future of what's going to happen. So, why don't we go ahead and you know, if each of you want to take a few minutes and kind of tell us a little bit about your backstory of, you know, the circumstances in which you were arrested and what happened there and, Alex, it's your turn to go first.
Alex 02:56 Okay, yeah, I was arrested on August 17, 2019. At sort of a big deal to-do street event here in Portland, Oregon. Much Ado was made about this thing, by the far Right, mostly from out of town CHUDs you know. As usual, it's pretty typical for most of the time for us to get invaded....Although it's probably worth noting that they haven't been around lately. I got picked up after a couple of well publicized confrontations. Probably the most famous one was the the bus incident, which I suppose we can get into in detail in a bit here. But, I was arrested that day, and taken into custody, released and then subsequently taken back into custody a little later under some, I don't know probably typically shitty circumstances with regards to how our legal system works here, especially when it comes to cases that are media sensitive, I guess you might say. And today is actually kind of a special day with regards to all of that, which is something else we'll get into I suppose when the time comes, but I've been put through the wringer and am just now getting out the other end here nearly five years later.
Brooke 04:21 Yikes. Okay, I'm gonna circle back to more details of the of the 'bus incident' in a second. But Alissa, if you want to tell us a little bit of your story, too, and feel free to throw in some more details to
Alissa 04:32 Yeah, so I probably should have said this in my intro, but I am an independent journalist. I don't work for anyone but myself and the community and my situation, actually it was another, you know, fascist invasion. There was a counter protest to a demonstration that was going on countering the Proud Boys and I was there that day as a journalist. I was reporting and covering the event. And it was it was a pretty wild and scary day. I'll get into more detail about that too, later. But anyways, I would say like, maybe five or six months or so after that day had passed, I had received an indictment in the mail notifying me that a grand jury found me guilty and that the DA was pressing charges, including felony charges. And, yeah, it's been, it's been really, really difficult, you know, that in conjunction with, you know, something else that happened more recently, just finding myself being targeted for the journalism and, you know, the coverage that I do provide, both by the State and by, you know, just citizens of the United States that are, you know, members of the far Right. And yeah, it's been Hell to say the least, and not in a good way, not the good kind of Hell.
Brooke 06:12 Yeah, I should have said this more at the top too, just to really emphasize how grateful I am that you're here and willing to talk about it when you're, you know, in the middle of going through this hell. I mean, that's I that's got to be incredibly difficult. And I'm just really grateful that you were willing to make the time and talk about it with us.
Alissa 06:31 Thank you. Yeah, I really appreciate that. My my trial is finally set. It's just a few months away. My trials in April. So yeah, definitely a mixed bag of feelings and emotions, for sure.
Brooke 06:45 Yeah, I can only imagine. Alex, I want to circle back to you.
Alex 06:52 Sure.
Brooke 06:54 Because I think the details of the bus incident. People probably heard the story or will remember it. I certainly remember seeing the photo which was some what iconic. If you want to just briefly talk about what happened on that day.
Alex 07:09 Sure. Yeah, um, you know, it was a day like any other. I woke up, donned to my armor, stepped into the streets to confront an invasion of fascists from out of town. You know, regular Thursday stuff. That particular day, I mean, I've been to a lot of protests, I have been an activist for longer than I've been an adult and, you know, things do get sort of predictably hairy, but everybody remembers how the tone in the streets really shifted, probably starting right around 2016. You know, I don't really remember that sort of ruckus, since like, the WTO stuff back in the day, you know, I mean, I mean, barring like a few other flashes in the pan, but the situation out there, just kept escalating, you know, for years, and I was down in Southern California, for the first part of that time, you know, and then I moved up here to Portland, and I was like, "Well, I'm still an American. So I guess I'm gonna get back out there." So out there I went. And that day was a mess. You know, I mean, everybody remembers how....The way that the Right had been touting this event as like a 'bloodbath.' And I need it in their words, "Buy guns," said Joe Biggs, you know, "Bring ammunition. Get concealed carry permits." He was showing off a baseball bat covered in spikes that had Trump's name on it, specifically related to this event. That day, August 17, 2019. You know, they were talking about like, 'taking the the streets of Portland,' and like, 'cleansing' them. I mean, this is all their language, you know, I'm quoting them. So we were, you know, understandably pretty alarmed out here. And, I wasn't running around out there with an affinity group at the time. You know, I had been out in the streets before then. So people, some people recognized me, but
Brooke 09:28 You were doing group OpSec wearing your betacuck shirt too?
Alex 09:32 Well, you know, a lot of people ask me about that. And the answer I usually give people is, you know, I don't think it's always appropriate to make ourselves small and to shrink back from these threats. You know, there's a time to present yourself and I feel like they were talking about coming here and murding us. And I was like, "Well, at least they're gonna recognize me. They're gonna know who they're trying to kill," you know?
Brooke 10:09 Yeah.
Alex 10:12 So, you know, the day really wasn't too extraordinary. I mean weirdly enough. I mean, it's crazy to say that now, but at the time, in terms of a Portland Street event, during those years, it was like, not that weird. In fact, kind of low key. There weren't really that many really gnarly confrontations I was party to or saw. But, things got really pretty wild when the Nazi bus came back. A lot of people don't know that they they left. And by the time I confronted them along with, you know, many other Portlanders up on the bridge. They had left Portland and had turned around and come back to reconfront us.
Brooke 10:59 And then for listeners who might not know, you know, talk about what specifically happened with you and them in that bus.
Alex 11:06 So, we should start, I think by talking about who was on the bus, because this has been, you know, contested information in certain parts of the internet. The people on that bus were primarily hardcore Neo Nazis, from a group called the American Guard. These were not just like Trump supporters or Second Amendment enthusiasts, although they were both, you know what I mean? These people were members of a hate group, tied to the Vinlinders Social Club, which is another group of Neo Nazis founded by Brian James. And they've been linked to a handful of murders here in the United States. So they're very dangerous people. And I knew who they were. That's the thing. I knew who was on that bus. So, when I saw them on the bridge, after having already watched them leave town, I was like, "They came back." You know? There were some people down there with me in the streets, a couple of people I had, you know, sometimes just sort of snowball with people that you meet out there and your roll together for safety, you know? So I was out there with a couple of people I had met, and I saw the bus up there on the on the bridge, and we talked about it, and I was like, "That's the American Guard." You know, "They came back," and we talked it over a little bit. And I said, "Well, let's go get them." And so we went up there. And we didn't actually assault the bus, which was a popular meme at the time of Right wing media, espoused in particular by our very own fascists propagandist, Andy Ngo, we didn't attack the bus, unless you count like a couple of thrown plastic half full water bottles and me flipping them the bird, you know, people stood around, they shouted at the bus, we heckled them. And then they opened the doors. And the first person who came out of that bus had an eight inch blade in his right hand. They had been brandishing both a pistol and a hammer through the windows before they stepped outside. So, we knew they were armed. The doors open, they came outside, and for better or for worse, an elderly man who was among us rushed to the doors, and apparently startled the first Nazi, the one with the knife, who fell on his ass just immediately.
Alex 13:55 Right, yeah. And a little tussle ensued between this old man and this Nazi. And during that scuffle, the man in the bus, one of the other Neo Nazis, an American Guard member named Mark Kwan, the one who had been brandishing the hammer through the windows, he stepped into the doorway above the fight going on in the door of the bus and started swinging this claw hammer down at the skull of this elderly man, who at that point was losing the fight that that he had gotten into, and was in the process of being abducted into the bus by the formerly knife wielding Nazi who had dropped his MAGA hat. I saw what was happening. I set down my water bottle, which was made of metal you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't want anyone to get hurt. So, I ran up there and I seized the hammer in mid swing from Mark Kwan. Mr. Kwan. And together with some of my allies from Portland, we wrestled it away. The Nazis fell back into the bus. They released the elderly man. I tossed their hammer back inside, where it you know, allegedly glanced Mr. Kwan, although there are no victims in my case, and nobody was ever able to contact him for some reason. Yeah, it's crazy.
Brooke 13:55 Yay!
Brooke 15:34 Mysterious, Mr. Kwan.
Alex 15:35 Yes, it's wild. Yes, that Mr. Kwan, if he exists, that was written in my case file by my attorney, "Mr. Kwan, if he exists." And this prosecution never followed up on whether he exists. The door is closed. I kicked in one of the panels on the doors, you know, just having witnessed and attempted murder in process. My blood was a little up. I do admit it. And a nameless hero released a cloud of tear gas into the bus and the bus sped away down the completely open lane in front of them that they could have taken at any time. And yeah, that was the story. That's the Bus Incident. The whole confrontation took, I don't know, maybe six seconds, perhaps. And it's informed my life for nearly five years.
Brooke 16:28 Yeah. Were you immediately arrested at that point?
Alex 16:30 I was not immediatly arrested. I was arrested nearly an hour and a half later.
Brooke 16:37 Okay.
Alex 16:38 Yeah, I had an opportunity to help some other people.
Brooke 16:41 Yeah. So that's interesting. It was still the same day, same event. But, a little while later in that, and at the time, were you arrested for the bus incident, specifically? Or for---[Alex interupts]
Alex 16:54 Yeah. So, that's a really interesting contrast to Alissa, what you were saying because, you know, you went to the event, and you went home, and it was months later. So, I'm curious if you are able to talk at all about what actually happened the day of the event, and then what you were later accused of doing and charged with?
Alex 16:54 I'm assuming so. It's tough to say. The the paperwork I got is a little unclear as to what the probable cause was. It cites reports that the Portland Police had received reports from people.... I mean, the truth is that Andy Ngo poached that footage from Elijah Schaefer. And they gave it directly to the Portland Police, who took it as evidence and snatched me up at the first opportunity. But, it might not have been that video that did it. It could have been something else they referenced. The paperwork isn't really clear on that. And in my case, is closed now, so I can talk about it all. But, it's tough to say really what it is precisely that got the cops to get me, but when they tackled me, this gaggle of bacon-backs, [Brooke and Alissa laugh] you know, and stomped me into the pavement and tried to tase me, but couldn't because I was wearing a bulletproof vest, they told me I was under arrest for assault. So, you know, I mean, but that's really all they're gonna tell you. The cops are not really well known for, for knowing things.
Alissa 17:32 Yeah, I'll share as much as I can without, you know, like I said, before, my situation is ongoing and my trial's in April. So and it's, you know, it's not that I have anything to hide at all, but you know, we, we all know, here, how the State works and how they love us everything and anything against us. So yeah, as I mentioned earlier, the event that I was documenting and reporting on was a counter to the Proud Boys. And this was in September of 2021. So, it was during a time when things were really, really tense in the pacific northwest. This is after, you know, a lot of growing tension, a lot of escalated escalation from the fascists, you know, after being used to night after night at protests of them doing drive bys and throwing, you know, IEDs and pipe bombs at us and just, you know, just a bunch of shit that had been going on and in Portland and surrounding areas. So yeah, we were we were at a park. And also, I just want to disclaimer, my memory is like, pretty fucking shitty, especially since then. That day, I actually got punched in the head by A Proud Boy who's an MMA fighter and like four times my size, and I got a major concussion that I'm like still dealing with. And then also, trauma hasn't really been great for my memory. But yeah, we were all in a park. And the group of leftists who were there was not very large. I can't remember off the top of my head, how many people were there. But, compared to other events, it was a relatively small crowd. And up until the point that I'm about to get to, there was just a lot of like, back and forth, yelling and whatnot. And eventually, the Proud Boys got closer and closer. And the group of leftist somehow ended up being surrounded. There was basically a circle of Proud Boys just trying to intimidate everyone and up to this point, even when everyone was circled, they were still just standing there in an attempt to intimidate everybody,. Just trying to look tough. And what really kind of sparked things off is I remember I was kind of standing like in the middle of the circle and there was like a group of people in front of me who allegedly...I don't know if it's a flag that they had or if they stole it from the Fasc, but I believe that it was an American flag, and they set it on fire on the ground.
Brooke 21:35 That's what that flags for. [Laughs]
Alissa 21:39 And I was kneeling down filming and then it just like popped off so quick. As soon as they saw that the flag was on fire, they got so triggered. They came in and like pushed the people right in front of me and like, just, yeah, that's when kind of shit hit the fan....Like, fuck, where do I go from here? There's just so much that happened.
Alex 22:07 You know, the reason they did that...I mean, I don't mean to interrupt your flow here, but they....
Alissa 22:11 No, go ahead.
Alex 22:12 The reason they did that is because they have their own camera people. They've got all these amatuer, you know, right wing Grifters trying to sell footage, and also the Proud Boys and their ilk, they sell this footage to each other to get each other to join. So, they see Antifa burning a flag. And if no one retaliates, they all look weak.
Alissa 22:38 Yeah, 100%.
Alex 22:39 Yeah, so that's why they rushed y'all right there. You know? I mean, it's not a justification, but that's the deal.
Alissa 22:46 Yeah, they definitely have a game plan for sure. And yeah, I just remember things being really chaotic. There's a lot of people that got injured that day. Yeah, at one point....I mean, before that, like, I was like walking around, filming, taking pictures. And like, I was just getting threats left and right. Like, for what? Like being a photographer?Like what? Like, yeah, this one lady kept being like, "You and me, we're going to tango." And it's so funny, because it's the lady who like, all the Right wingers and Andy Ngo, keep calling like an 'innocent bystander.' And she just kept, like following me, and she's like, "You and me, we're gonna tango." And I'm like, "Girl, I'm not here to fight anybody. Like, just leave me alone. Let me take my fucking picture." Things just. Yeah, things just got pretty crazy. Some of them were like, going after individuals to like, you know, attack them violently. Other people were going towards...It wasn't a gazebo, but there was like this covered area where a bunch of people had stuff at. I had some of my stuff there, too. I remember having like a charger and I think my phone was over there. And like, people were going over there like, some of the Fascists were going over there and like stealing signs and stealing people's shit and stuff. And yeah, it was just really bad. One of the last things I remember, like I said, I got punched in the head. I didn't faint or anything, but like, it was a really bad punch. And I stood up right away. And at that point, the cops had like, come in. And they declared it and unlawful assembly, I believe,
Alex 24:45 After you got assaulted?
Brooke 24:48 Of course, as they do.
Alissa 24:51 Yeah, they declared it an unlawful assembly. It was really weird because the Leftist were trying to leave, like out of the park and go the way that the cops are telling them to go, because it was definitely not a situation where people could like stand their ground. Like, I think that was like the smart thing to do at the time. And I just remember, like, I was being escorted by a medic. And like, I think it was two medics actually holding me. I don't know, I couldn't really see much or like, whatever. But I just remember thinking like, "What the fuck is happening?" because, like, as we're trying to get out of there, and the cops were coming in declaring it an unlawful assembly, it wasn't any longer just the Proud Boys that everyone had had that confrontation with beforehand, like leading up to that moment. All of a sudden, there was this new group of Proud Boys, larger than the group that had already been there, all marching in together with like shields and weapons, like, coming towards us, like walking through the cops, walking with the cops. And it's just like, it was just like, the perfect example of like, "Cops and clan go hand in hand." And it was like they were coming towards the group together, even though they had just declared it unlawful. Like, these guys were still welcome to come in. And mind you, like, you know, most people were just like I said, they're just trying to get out of there. Or you know, there was also quite a few people who were hurt that day. So yeah, it was just it was chaotic in the worst way possible.
Brooke 26:37 Yeah. And so then a few months go by, and I think you said it was a letter that came in the mail that let you know?
Alissa 26:43 Yeah, I got a letter in the mail that said I was indicted.
Alex 26:48 You're a crimer now. [Laughs]
Alissa 26:54 [Starts] Sorry...I'm like, trying to separate my charges from like, my most recent, bullshit arrest.
Alex 27:00 Oh, God, no, I can totally relate to that.
Alissa 27:05 I'm being charged with Relony Riot, Unlawful Use of Tear Gas, and Disorderly Conduct.
Alex 27:15 Tear gas? Like 'you're' deploying tear gas?
Alissa 27:18 And the best part about it is like my uterus is literally beyond fucked up because of the frequent exposure to the State's deployment of tear gas....
Alex 27:29 [Interuptiing] Yeah, that's right. I totally forgot about that. That's like a thing.
Alissa 27:35 Oh, it's definitely a thing. I know multiple people who...[trails off] Yeah, I'm the bad guy here.
Brooke 27:44 Okay, So after you get this letter in the mail, I assume it's telling you have to appear at some point, probably or something like that? Yeah?
Alissa 27:52 Yeah.
Brooke 27:53 And so then you didn't you know, didn't have to go to jail. You didn't have to post bail for that. But they did. You just got picked up by the police, right? They pulled you in and harassed you a time or two. Do you feel like talking about that? Can you talk about that?
Alissa 28:06 Yeah, you're talking about the most recent arrest?
Brooke 28:14 Yes.
Alissa 28:18 So yeah, that. Let's see, I'm like "What is time?" That happened probably like just under a month ago. It was the day after Christmas. And I was pulling in to park in front of my place. And the second I parked, I see this white SUV. it didn't look like a police vehicle. It was just a white SUV. It was coming towards me from the opposite direction. And as soon as I was opening my door, it stopped and parked right next to my car. The sirens go on. And then at that point, there was an additional four to five cop cars that were parked on the side of the street. All undercover vehicles.
Alex 29:14 [Exclaiming in incredulity] Four to five?!
Alissa 29:16 Yeah, yeah. And all of their sirens and their lights turned on. And I was super confused. I have no idea what this could be about. So yeah, they...[trails off] I'm like, how into detail do I go? Again, this is also like an ongoing thing. This is very recent. So...
Brooke 29:16 Yeah, I'm more just looking for like, what the experience of being you know, arrested was like, you know, like, I feel like if I was in that moment, I would be like, "Are they coming from the guy next to me? Is there someone over there?" because it would be hard to believe that that many police had shown up for a little old me
Alex 30:00 [Joking] You warrant that sort of turnout. I mean, come on. Wow.
Alissa 30:04 For sure. It was very bizarre. At the moment, I was kind of like, I would say I was mainly just really fucking confused. Especially because they would not tell me why I was like...First I was like, "Am I being pulled over? Like, what's going on?" And then they had me get out of the car. They wouldn't tell me anything. It felt like I was being kidnapped, which I was kidnapped. And, you know, I went to the precinct. Still did not tell me like what was going on. They said that they wanted to question me. I said, "Lawyer." The questioning never happened. They didn't like that. [laughs] It wasn't until after....so we went to the precinct and then they took me to the Justice Center. It wasn't until after I was booked that I even found out what my charges are, which got changed like a million times. But yeah, it was really scary. Because that was almost a full day. Because when I when they picked me up, it was quite early in the morning. And that whole day, I didn't know, why I was in there. I didn't know anything. I just knew that they had me and they have the power to do whatever the fuck they want. So I was terrified. I, you know, I was like, I have no way to like, contact anyone and tell them what's going on. It was like, you know, my partner is probably trying to reach me, and is like, "What the fuck is happening?" Yeah, again, like, a very mixed bag of emotions and feelings. But yeah, that type of stuff is really scary. Especially when, you know, let's be realistic, when you're in that kind of situation we don't really have any power to do anything. And it fucking sucks, feeling so helpless and hopeless. And you know, they know that. Yeah, yeah. Like where do I start?
Alex 32:10 I gotta tell you that, the story of that arrest there. That's worse than I thought it was going to be. I wasn't anticipating it to be quite so persistently merciless. I mean, they can just detain you and not tell you shit. But, a lot of the time, you know, they don't hang on to you for the whole day and never say anything to you. I mean, because the other thing is that cops cops are cruel. But, also they're like, apathetic, you know, like some, some ass wipe pig is going to say something to you, you know, or someone who's just working a desk that day is just going to be like, "Oh, here," you know, and say whatever. Yeah, and it's wild to me that, um, that they were so dedicated to keeping you in the dark that day, the whole day. Yeah, it's intense. It's worse than I thought it was
Alex 33:06 Yeah, it's bad.
Brooke 33:09 So, again, I'm interested in the in the contrast here, because Alex, if you want to talk about, you know, you were arrested that day, we started talking about that. So you kind of knew why you were being arrested. But, then you also got booked and I actually don't know if you've spent some jail time right then or if you got out sooner or what happened. But if you want to tell yours?
Alex 33:35 Fucking Cops.
Alex 33:35 Yeah, yeah, the story of what happened to me on the on the day. That was the day. They didn't really seem all that interested in me, actually. I mean, they kicked my ass a little bit, of course, like they do. Like the arrest was like six officers and they like stepped on my fingers and tried to tase me and got frustrated when they couldn't and then, you know, knelt on my head and stuff. And I was like, "What am I under arrest for?" And they answered me with one word, and they just went "Assault" and I went, "Who?" because you know, I mean, it had been a busy day. So, they took me in that day, and I was stuck in holding. I never actually made it to jail proper, you know, I just sat. When they took me to the station, they stripped me down completely to my underwear. They put me in a paper jumpsuit. Oh, yeah, they got me. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, they saw they saw at all. I have a bunch of boyfriends down at the police station.
Alex 33:44 No, no, no, no, it didn't go down like that, I promise. But they stuck me in a cell. They left those plastic fucking cuffs on me honestly. Well, you know if I'm starting from the beginning, honestly, the first thing that happened was they they threw me in paddy wagon and let me sit in there for, I don't know, an hour and a half, maybe. And they through a woman in the room next to me, because you know, those are side by sides. It's like two long horse stalls next to each other. And you can't see into the other one. But there are these vents, these corrugated vents, you know. So there's air exchange, and you can hear everything, but you can't see. And there's someone in there who's crying and screaming in pain. I mean.
Alissa 35:31 Oh my God.
Alex 35:32 Oh, yeah. Like somebody was hurt, you know? So, I started talking to her, and I was like, "Hey, hey, what's happened to you?" You know, and she was like, "My shoulder. My shoulder is broken."
Alissa 35:46 Oh, my God
Alex 35:47 I was like, "Are you sure it's broken?" And she was like, "Yes." And I was like, "Did the police do it to you?" And she said, "Yes". And I was like, "Do they have you in cuffs?" And she was like, "Yes." And I was like, "Okay." Um, so I just started talking to her, you know. I told her my name, and I just started to talk to her, you know, and I was like, "Look, they're gonna take us somewhere, and you're, you're probably going to get medical attention. But I mean, they might not give it to you." So I was like, "The thing you got to do is stay calm and just breathe, you know, because the pain is not going to stop, but you can manage it. So you got to breathe." So we sat there, and we breathed. And we drove eventually, I mean, after a long, long time, but she was in a ton of pain. And later I reconnected with her after a long time, nine months or something. And it turned out to be...Well, well, I don't know that I have her permission to talk about her. But she made a name for herself twerking on the streets. She was twerking on the streets that day. And, you know, I doubt I doubt she would mind being brought up here, but I don't have her explicit permission. So, you know. And she said, she'd been looking for me. She was like, "I didn't know that was you that was talking to me." And when we pulled over into the police station, I started yelling at the cost. "I was like, You need to get her out of here and get her help. She's hurt." And they just left her in there. They took me out and they processed me right away. And they just left her in there. And she's in there. Like, I mean, practically screaming still, you know, she was a lot of pain. It was it was terrible. And we'd been sitting in there for over an hour. Yeah, and then I couldn't feel my thumbs for a couple of days after that ride because they didn't take the cuffs off. They didn't take my cuffs off even after they brought me into the building and processed me and stripped me down. They left those fucking cuffs on me. They took them off, they put them back on and then they stuck me in a freezing cold concrete room in a paper jumpsuit. And Detective Clifton came in and asked me for my side of the story, and I said "Lawyer." But actually what I told him that I wanted to wait for my attorney, and then he came in later with some other cop who was really rude to me. And then Clifton came back and spoke to me again and he was really nice. And I was like, "Oh, so you're good cop, right?" They didn't come back to talk to me again after that.
Brooke 35:57 Yeah, of course.
Alex 36:19 Call them out.
Brooke 37:56 So, you were in the holding you said for the whole day...
Alex 38:28 I was. I was there until the night time yet.
Brooke 38:42 Okay, and then did you get out after that? Or did they then move you over into jail or?
Alex 38:51 I walked out on OR, our I walked out on my Own Recognizance that day. They stomped my ass into the street. They put me in a paper jumpsuit. They zip tied me and then they and they immediately lost my shoes. Like when they let me out, they kept my clothes because my clothes were evidence you see. Yeah, I mean, I just think they liked the way I smelled. But they kept my clothes. They lost my shoes and then they turned me loose. My roommate at the time, he came to get me and I was dressed like an extra from Miami Vice. I had these giant like two big pants on, like jeans and this huge like vaporwave Hawaiian shirt, and and these orange prison crocs. You know they give you these like foam sandals to wear when you're in jail. I still have those. Yeah, I use them to I use them when I shovel shit out of the barn. They're perfect.
Brooke 39:56 Well, I have a person close to me who has been arrested many times comes in and pretty much every time there's some piece of something that was on him: clothing, shoes, something that was in a pocket, whatever, goes missing.
Alissa 40:09 So weird. For me it was cash.
Brooke 40:13 Oh. Weird.
Alex 40:14 I got my cash back. I had like 30 bucks or something. I got that back.
Alissa 40:19 You know what's fucked up too is some comments helped host a fundraiser for me like, a few weeks before my arrest for my legal fees for my trial that's coming up in April. And I had around 2k in cash. And i didn't realize this till recently, because I was searching every single space, and every single like drawer, and just wanted to make sure, but yeah, they when they raided my house they took all of that cash.
Brooke 41:00 That is the thing that they will do.
Alissa 41:02 Here's the thing, though. They didn't...It's not listed on the evidence. They stole it.
Alex 41:07 Oh, that's what you call, that's what you call stealing.
Alissa 41:09 They actually actually stole that cash, along with intentionally destroying my camera and equipment.
Alex 41:16 That's the old piggie discount. You know, now that I'm thinking about that day in particular, I'm recalling that, my partner just reminded me, that at first, the cops had said to my roommates that I was being held, and they were like, talking about, like, $3,000 bail or something, like a bunch of money to get me out, but here's the thing, when they were having that conversation with them, I was already out and I was waiting to get picked up. I was just out there waiting for... But I had no phone and no money, you know, so I was just sitting there, but the cops were like, just wrong. Like either they're full of shit, or they're incompetent. Either way. So, it's like.
Alissa 42:02 I mean both are true.
Alex 42:06 I'm standing out there in like, you know, my prison Crocs and my shitty clothes, but I still have those clothes too. Why would I throw them away?
Brooke 42:16 We should auction them off for Alissa's legal fees.
Alex 42:21 God, you know, I mean, if anybody's a size 49 in pants, and a medium in shirts then absolutely.
Alissa 42:31 Wow.
Brooke 42:33 Excellent.
Alex 42:33 Gotta love them.
Brooke 42:35 You know, Alex, do I remember correctly though, that you did have to post bail at some point?
Alex 42:39 See, here's the thing, when they released me on OR, the day of, they let me out that night, right. And it was like my charges were bullshit. I had like Attempted Assault II and Disorderly Conduct, or something like that. They were buccus , charges, nonsense charges, right. And I don't have a criminal record. So, they were just like, "Okay, bye." And I walked out. And then later, just before I was going to be arraigned. I got, like right before my arraignment, and this is a bit of a jump forward in this story, because a couple other weird things happened with the police like just coming to my house and unmarked cars and stuff like that.
Alissa 43:25 Yeah
Alex 43:26 Yeah, it was real weird. You know, Alissa, the story you told me it kind of rings a bell. But, I got a call from my public defender at the time, who, this was the night before my arraignment about a month after my first arrest. And he was like, "Hey, your charges have been altered. And some of them have been amplified, and you have new charges." And I was like, "Okay, what does that mean?" And he was like, "Well, here's the charges." And he lays them out for me. And it's like Assault II, Riot x2, like it's a it's a litany of felonies and a Measure 11 charge. And I'm like, "Okay, what does this mean?" He goes, "You're going to jail tomorrow." Yeah, and so they didn't tell him about this until like, 4:45pm just before the whole Justice Center closed the night before my arraignment the next day at like 9:15am. So I have like 16 hours to get my entire life in order to get ready for going away and having a bail of like, $25,000. And I was like, Okay, I guess this is like the story of what happens to me. Yeah, and then I was in jail. And while I was in jail, I was I was subjected to what's called a 'Secret Indictment," wherein they were bring you into a room without your attorney and hit you with new charges. And anything you say during that process can be used against you in court if you go to trial, but you don't have representation, but that's okay for some reason. And also, you're not in a courtroom, you're in a tiny room with a phone looking at a TV screen at a courtroom somewhere else in the city. And that doesn't violate Habeas Corpus, I guess? [sarcastically] And I got several new charges, two of which were also felonies. And my bail overnight became over $500,000.
Alissa 45:36 [Sarcastically] This country is so cool.
Alex 45:41 It was great. It was great. And I was like, "I love being an Oregonian." Yeah, I think when you when you're in jail, they don't tell you anything, you know, like, so that morning, like 4:30am some guard is like shoving me in the side with a flashlight. And I wake up like, "Ah!" you know, because I'm in jail, and I don't know anybody. And they go, "You got a meeting," I was like, "What the fuck? like, I have a meeting," you know, so they get you up, and then they strip you down and look in your butt. And then they send you out into the hall with a bunch of other dudes, and presumably, who all just had their butts locked in. So, you have at least that much in common. You're butt buddies. And then you go down the hall to this big room, and you sit in there with there was like, I think 20 men in this room, and it's just a big naked concrete room with a bench and these blistering fluorescent lights and a toilet. There's nothing between the toilet and the rest of the room. Like if you need to go, you got an audience. You know, yeah. It's your recital. And, I sat there. We all sat there for nearly two hours before anything happened. Just sit there. And you know, these dudes in there who like met and knew each other. They were like, "Yo, man, what's up?" and they're telling these hilarious stories about knife fights. And yeah, I actually, it was kind of a funny story, but it was about knives, so I don't know how funny it was. And then eventually, this guard comes in, he opens the door and I swear this is true. He says this. He goes, so he must do this every time. I'm sure of it. Right. He loves his job. He goes, "Gentlemen, welcome to the busiest courtroom in Multnomah County." And I'm like, "Courtroom? We're in a giant urinal? We're gonna latrine, dude?" So he starts...He grabs dudes two at a time. And it takes another several hours. So, we're all just sitting in this room for...we've been awake all of us since like, 4:30. By the time I go into this tiny hallway and enter a carpeted room with a TV screen and a phone in it, it's like 8. You know, I sit down, I pick up the phone, there's some attorney there and a judge. The attorney does not represent me. He is in fact a fucking prosecutor. And there's a judge who, I don't even remember the judges name, it's all my paperwork somewhere, Silver, maybe? And I got slapped with the several new charges, a couple of them felonies, one of them another Measure 11 charge. And then they gave me some paperwork. And they sent me the fuck out. And then my public defender contacted me eight hours later that night to say he just heard that that happened.
Brooke 48:30 Wow.
Alex 48:31 It's a good time.
Brooke 48:33 Man. Some wild as shit.
Alex 48:37 Yeah, right. Especially when you look at the severity of these crimes, right? It's like, I mean, I still have all the paperwork. It says right at the top, 'Secret indictment.' And I'm like, "What the blue fuck is a secret indictment?" and all it really means is they don't have to disclose it to defense before they indict you. They don't tell your lawyer. They just do it. And then your lawyer finds out at their convenience essentially.
Brooke 49:01 Good. That's got to be at least a chapter title in your autobiography.
Alex 49:04 Yeah, "Welcome to the Busiest Courtroom in Multnomah County." Yeah. Yeah, and my bail that that morning went from around $227,000 to over $540,000. And I was like, Well, I thought I was fucked last night.
Brooke 49:28 [Joking] Now, you're the secret son of a billionaire. So you made bail just fine, right? The illegitimate boy of an heiress or something?
Alex 49:41 [Laughing] All those things are true. Yeah, I may be the most interesting Antifa member there ever was.
Brooke 49:49 So you laughed at that half million dollars and lit it on fire and walked out?
Alex 49:54 I did. When I laughed, I didn't make a sound, just an emoji floated out over my. Everybody got it. That's how it went down.
Brooke 50:06 Oh, okay, so but more seriously, you did have to post bail? And you did post bail?
Alex 50:11 I did. Yes. I had to borrow a great deal of that money. And the rest of it was money that I had saved. It was my savings. So I became poor. I mean, I was already pretty poor, but I came like poor.
Brooke 50:27 Okay, did you have people in your life who loaned it to you? Or, you know, how did you...How were you able to?
Alex 50:33 I was able to borrow some of it from...an old friend of mine loaned me a great deal of it, actually, at no interest. So I mean, it really is who you know, I gotta tell you. And I mean, looking back, I don't know where I'd be without her, because my hearing, my sentencing hearing was three years later. I'd have been just locked up until whenever.
Brooke 51:04 Yeah, if you hadn't been able to come up with bail, you would just be sitting there that whole time?
Alex 51:09 [Sarcastically] I mean, you know, that's justice.
Brooke 51:15 Yeah, that's how that works.
Alex 51:18 It is, though, it is how that works. You know, when I was in there, I met a guy, I met...Well, I met a lot of dudes in there. But I met this one guy who had been in, just in County there, just right there, you know, in Inverness for 17 months for a DUI.
Brooke 51:37 Holy cow.
Alex 51:39 He was just in jail.
Brooke 51:41 [Sarcastically] I mean, people who drive drunk should be in jail forever. That's my personal opinion. So that's, that's totally fine. Nothing wrong with our Justice system. That's the proper way to deal with problems.
Alex 51:51 [Sarcastically] I suppose. Yeah, we can infer that from that. That sounds reasonable.
Brooke 51:57 No counseling, whatsoever. Don't try and help them.
Alex 52:01 No, no, helping people is not what we do.
Brooke 52:03 No, not at all. Okay, moving on from that fun. So, you have both talked about having lawyers and I'm gonna flip back to Alissa here. Is your representation court appointed? Or have you been able to find a different private attorney? or what have you, to represent you?
Alissa 52:25 Yeah. So, for my upcoming trial in April, I was, I was able to, you know, get, get a private attorney, and, you know, pay for retainer, and I'm super grateful for that, especially now, because for, uh, for my new bullshit that's going on, I have a public defender. And I'm very aware of, you know, the shortage right now and how spread thin that they are. And it's really unfortunate, but also, you know, from, from my perspective of like, needing help, it fucking sucks. So, I am so grateful that I was able to get those attorneys on retainer. And honestly, if it wasn't for this community, that's not something that I would have been able to do.
Brooke 53:13 What do you mean by that? I asked as though I don't know the answer.
Alissa 53:22 So, Antifa International was able to help me with a good portion of my retainer, and the rest of it came from fundraising from the community. And, you know, just different people in a Leftist space, different mutual aid groups, you know, boosting that fundraiser and all that, you know, that that was a huge help, you know, and it's still something that I'm raising funds for. I owe my lawyer, fuck, over $22,000 as of right now, that's a lot of fucking money that yeah...I've never seen that much money in my life. And so yeah, if it wasn't for, you know, fundraising efforts and stuff....It's, yeah, I would be fucked.
Alex 54:16 Huge. Same. You know, my private representation was secured entirely by community donations. All of it.
Alissa 54:24 Really incredible.
Alex 54:26 Yeah, I had a public defender until we set up the GoFundMe and raised the money to get the representation who ultimately got me the deal that I did. It was just 100% Community funded.
Brooke 54:43 Now, did you guys have to both put in a lot of time and work for yourselves to do the GoFundMes or have other people been a part of creating those and getting the word out there and such?
Alex 54:56 I was in jail for most of that. My partner and my close friends spearheaded the handling of all that stuff. I was like, completely incapacitated. You can't do shit in jail. Everything that you need done in the outside world has to be handled by someone else. All of it. So, it was mostly my partner. And, you know...but I mean, word had sort of spread about what it happened to me. And of course, there was there was the footage and the picture. So, in a way, it was kind of a double edged sword that things had been so publicized about what had happened to me, for whatever it was I was involved in. Because people were like, "Well, fuck that." And they sent the money. And ultimately rescued me. Really, when you get right down to it. That's what, that's what happened.
Alissa 55:49 That's awesome. Yeah, even though, you know, I've been out. It's been primarily other people. And for that, I could not be more grateful because just, I think people really don't realize the emotional and mental strain that this kind of thing has on people. And it's, I know, it sounds really simple and like such a minut thing, but like I, physically, mentally, emotionally just would, not am not capable of doing that on my own right now. You know, I'm able to boost stuff and make posts. But yeah, I'm definitely really grateful for the help that I've had.
Alex 56:35 Yeah, I hear that, you know, It's intentional that the system is designed to crush your spirit to keep you from advocating for yourself. It's part of why they they levy these immense fines. I mean, you know, $540,000, you know, they're just like, "This guy. This is the guy," you know. Yeah. Okay. I didn't realize I was quite that dangerous to the community. But apparently, Mike Schmidt feels that way. He's my hero.
Brooke 57:16 Yeah, Mike Schmidt. He's your boy. So just like we do with health care in this country., if you need to get a decent lawyer to fight bogus charges, GoFundMe.
Alex 57:26 [Joking] Well like here, like don't get sick, cucks. I guess you don't deserve to be genes.
Brooke 57:43 Good times, fun times. Okay, we're gonna end up running over our usual length of episode, but I'm totally okay with that. Because I feel like this conversation we're having is really interesting and important. And we're just starting to dig into some of the bigger community support aspects of it, which is, of course, what Live Like the World is Dying is all about is how we prepare as a community and live together in the end times. So Alex, you ultimately took a plea on your charges? Why? What if you hadn't?
Alex 58:18 Well, so the short version of why I took the plea was my attorney said to me, "Your cases were," because I had two cases open. That's the thing. It wasn't just the bus incident. There was this other thing with some dumb ass and he's fine, right? I mean, I barely touched him. That ended up being another Measure 11 case, and the State....that was a stretch, even even by the state's own standards of like, over prosecuting. It was a bullshit case. But, had we gone to trial, having two separate Measure 11 cases open would have made me a very vulnerable defendant, and would have closed the door for me to use a certain legal avenue to avoid the mandatory minimum sentence. And Wedge felt that the prudent thing to do, would be to take a deal and he felt he could give me a pretty good deal. Partially because he felt the state's cases were actually pretty weak. And he didn't believe that the prosecution knew what they were talking about. And that ended up being true as we all saw at my sentencing hearing with my daughtering, staggering, stuttering, fool of a prosecutor tripping all over herself, and then waddling out. Disgrace. That's Nicole Herman. Shout out to you, Nicole. Loser.
Brooke 1:00:02 If you hadn't taken a plea, you were facing some pretty substantial time, right?
Alex 1:00:08 Potentially, yes. The fear was that if I was facing anytime, I was facing a minimum of 70 months, hard time, no access to programs, no time off, regardless of any other circumstance, stuck in prison for all that time, and that would be the minimum. I would be like 46 years old by the time I got out, all for a pair of cases with no injured parties.
Brooke 1:00:43 Yike, So Alissa, on your charges that are, the trials coming up here in April, is there any chance they might offer you a plea deal on that?
Alissa 1:00:59 I was actually already offered a plea deal.
Brooke 1:01:01 Okay.
Alissa 1:01:02 That we turned down, because it was a really shitty plea deal. They wanted me to plead guilty to everything. And do three years in jail. [Sarcastically] You're so generous, thank you!
Alex 1:01:25 Oh, my God,
Brooke 1:01:26 Three years because someone gave you a concussion? Great. Yeah. That's a gift with purchase. Except you didn't even purchase the thing. So, it's just bad. Do you think there's any chance? Or does your lawyer think there's a chance they'll offer you another plea deal before this thing goes to trial? Or maybe there's just no way to know?
Alissa 1:01:51 Yeah, I'm really not sure now.
Alex 1:01:55 It's tough to say, you know. We were certain, before the first hearing, back when I had a bunch of codefendants in one of the riot cases, which that hearing took all fucking day, by the way, because that was COVID times. We all did it through video. It was a nightmare, but also very funny. We were certain that the State was going to offer us something, anything and they were like, "No." We spent six hours on a video call and nothing happened. And I was still looking at all these charges exactly as laid out before despite the incredibly weak evidence for most of them. It's wild, you know, like, even Wedge, at the time, my attorney, he was surprised. He was like, "Nothing happened, I guess."
Brooke 1:02:47 Well, yeah, civil servants, they get paid for showing up for the day. So, they don't give a fuck how much of your time it wastes.
Alex 1:02:54 Yeah, well, that prosecutor, he quit his job halfway through my case. He isn't a prosecutor anymore. And he you know, I gotta be honest.
Brooke 1:03:04 I'm sure that was because of you.
Alex 1:03:06 Well, I like to take the credit, but he just he really had the air of a dude who was quitting his job. He didn't care at all. It's just to say, though, you never know how the State's going to behave.
Brooke 1:03:22 Yeah. So, Alissa, I hate to ask this question, but what kind of time are you facing? If they don't get a they don't give you a plea deal and and they find you guilty?
Alissa 1:03:36 I mean, I don't know off the top of my head.
Brooke 1:03:40 I don't know if you had Measure 11 stuff in in yours or any of that?
Alissa 1:03:45 I do in my most recent arrest. I'm facing six extremely bullshit felony, but all felony charges, including one Measure 11 Charge. Yeah. But yeah, I'm trying to remember off the top of my head what the minimum is just for Felony Riot alone
Brooke 1:04:08 It must be more than three years.
Alex 1:04:10 Felony riot, I believe it is like three to five years. But, there's different degrees of riot. Felony riot is you know, it's bad one. I had two of them.
Brooke 1:04:24 There's a lot that can happen of course in between now and then. I'm just okay. Let's just back away from the worst case scenario, because that's too depressing and awful to think of it, it's not going to happen because you're too awesome for that. So, you have the trial coming up in April. What kinds of things are you doing to get ready and how are people...You know, we already talked about the fundraising component but like, you know, I don't know, other things psychological or getting life in order in certain ways. Or you know, I don't know. You tell me.
Alissa 1:05:01 Honestly, for the good amount of like, this past year, my mental health was like, complete shit. Like, I was probably in, like, the worst spot that I've been in and like a really long time. And, you know, that's for, you know, a few various reasons, you know, also a bunch of like, undealt with trauma that I hadn't confronted beforehand. But, it was really, really bad. You know, I took a pretty long break from social media. And I spent a lot of time unfortunately stressing out about, you know, impending doom. But you know, the past few months, I don't know if this is the best way to go about it or not, but I've kind of just been trying to not think about it and just kind of take things day by day and just, you know, enjoy the time that I do have. I don't I, you know, I'm not saying anything's gonna happen, but something very well might, you know, there's definitely a chance that I do go to jail. So yeah, honestly, lately, I've just been trying my best to not think about it, and just kind of enjoy the time that I do have, trying to get better at reaching out for help and asking for help when I want and need it, because that's something I've struggled with my whole life. But, you know, there's, you know, there's a community and a lot of people who have been offering their help. And, you know, it took me some time to, like, get it in my head that like, 'No, these are people that genuinely care and do want to help and be there for you. So you don't have to go through this alone'.
Alex 1:06:52 Absolutely, yeah.
Alissa 1:06:54 Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's made a huge difference too, you know, having that mindset and taking people up on, you know, different offers and things and letting people in and letting people be there for me. Yeah, it's made a huge difference in a lot of ways, but predominantly, my mental health. Also, Lexapro.
Brooke 1:07:20 Shout out SSRIs
Alissa 1:07:22 I'm a huge fucking stoner too, which was like, my favorite way to decompress, but now like my pretrial conditions for this shit, I can't do any drugs or a drink alcohol, including weed, even though it's legal here, so I'm confused specifically for that one?
Alex 1:07:40 Yeah. Oh, yeah. I lived that life for three years. I was forbidden from entering bars.
Alissa 1:07:48 That's fucked.
Alex 1:07:51 I couldn't leave the house at night. It was wild. I was like, "What was I doing? Did they bust me do a night crimes?" I don't remember that.
Alissa 1:07:58 They could take the alcohol away from me. I'm not I'm not really a huge drinker. But, I need my weed. I need to taste Mary again.
Alex 1:08:06 Well, I mean, how dangerous are the stoners really?
Alissa 1:08:10 Apparently, very.
Alex 1:08:14 You know, driving at a at a vicious 20 miles an hour...in a school zone.
Brooke 1:08:23 Yeah, you know, if they just freely passed out that shit in jails, I think you'd have a much calmer chiller population that would, it would be much easier to manage
Alex 1:08:34 It'd be better than the toilet wine that they were drinking where I was. I didn't try it, but I could smell it.
Brooke 1:08:43 There's so much more I want to get into, that I wish we had all the time for. Yeah, the mental health component seems really important. We hear Live Like the World is Dying recently did a whole episode that was on mental health first aid. And one of the big things that got talked about on that episode was the importance of community for mental health. Which, you know, not to be all nerdy and sciency, but from a biological perspective, it makes a lot of sense, too, because we're mammals wired for community. So, I'm glad that you're able to engage with community and that people are giving you that kind of love and support and helping with your mental health in that way. Alex, if you don't mind, can I ask if....Well, I'll ask. You don't have to tell me. If you struggled with any kind of mental health, mental illness or anything around the stress of this?
Alex 1:09:48 Oh, absolutely. Yeah, without a doubt. IYeah, it was very difficult. You know, the circumstances around my situation were...I mean, my pretrial conditions were pretty...They put an ankle bracelet on me. You know, it was bad. I was really suffering for a while there, you know, it was not easy. And I leaned really heavily on the people closest to me, and you know, it's taxing for everybody. And that's it. That's also by design. I mean, the State is doing it to you to, like I said before, to break your your heart, you know, that's what they want, because you'll acquiesce and you can be made an example of. And that's....it's really that simple. It's just a brutal system. And it's never clearer than when the Eye of Sauron is upon you, you know, because that's what it's like, it's like, they could do this to pretty much anybody. But, when they're doing it to you, you really get a taste of the unholy power that they wield over your life. Your whole life. Rvery aspect of it. You know, it is really wild, to just be told what's happening to you, and what might happen to you. Regardless of actual circumstance, you know, I mean, really just have to look at cases like Alissa's. If you've been following what's been going on with her. What happened to me. What I what I actually did, and how the State retaliated. It was very difficult. I did not handle it very well at times. I gotta say. And I was it was hard for me. It was hard on people close to me. For a while. Yeah, for sure. I definitely had some maladaptive problems for a little while.
Alissa 1:11:54 Yeah, going off of what you said, too, about how it's done intentionally. That's something that I personally struggled with was like, on top of everything that was putting me down in regards to everything that's going on, there's like this other really weird aspect to it, where the State is actively inflicting psychological warfare, and it's like, I'm aware of these tactics. I know what they're doing. I know why they're doing it. And, I kept going through this cycle where I was like... I just felt so stupid, and I kept getting so down on myself. I'm actively aware of this. So why, why is it still affecting me? Why am I still letting it affect me? Yeah. But yeah, it's all intentional. It's all by design.
Alex 1:12:55 Well, it's a science. They have it down. So, you're still going through this, and up until literally today, so was I. So I gotta tell you, I mean, just not to....
Alissa 1:13:10 No, what happened today? I want to know.
Alex 1:13:13 Well, I want to get to that in a second, but first I want to say to you, when you're feeling down on yourself, when you're feeling like, "Why is this affecting me? Why is this working? I know what they're doing," it's because this is what they do. And it is a system designed around doing this and they've been doing it a long time. And you're just another victim, you know? Knowing you're being victimized doesn't remove you from victim hood, you know? And I know that's little comfort when you're really going through the thick of it. I know, I've been there. But, just remember to give yourself the space for that suffering, because if you don't, it will find other ways to come out of you when you're not ready for it, you know. You'll pay for it elsewise. Just try to make some space, you know?
Alissa 1:14:12 No, no, that's that's good advice. Especially because I'm really really....sorry not to like toot my own horn or be too conceited or anything. But, I'm really good at repression. Like I'm really good.
Brooke 1:14:32 Yeah, I think I hear Alex saying you can call him and talk to him, and hear all soothing his voice as he's nice to talk to. Alex, what's your good news?
Alex 1:15:04 Oh right, the good news! My attorney contacted me yesterday, and told me that we have movement on the case and I have....essentially what it boils down to is my probation is being terminated two years early and I'm receiving misdemeanor treatment for the terms of the deal we made, so I will very soon here, basically as soon as we get paperwork, I will no longer be on probation and I will no longer be a felon.
Alissa 1:15:35 Fuck yeah!
Alex 1:15:36 Yeah, yeah. So Andy Ngo is gonna cry himself to sleep tonight on his huge me-shaped anatomically correct pillow. I'm buying guns, Andy, guns.
Brooke 1:15:51 Yeah, baby. And I can bring mine to your house again. Because that's something I used to do with you.
Alex 1:15:57 Yeah, totally, bring your pews-pews. [guns]
Brooke 1:16:03 Oh, man. All right. So, I think I'm gonna move towards wrapping us up here. But, I do want to come back to you, Alissa, one more time. Yeah, we've talked about the the mental health support you need and the, you know, ongoing fundraisers to help pay for attorney fees. And I wondered if you would just be willing to talk one last time about any specific fundraisers you have open or if there are things coming up and certainly to tell people how they can get a hold of you, you know, find you on social medias and whatnot to you know, learn more about what's going on and to show their love and support for you, because everyone on Twitter is loving and supportive and will most certainly say nice things.
Alissa 1:16:52 No, Twitter's so good, especially for mental health, for sure.
Alex 1:16:56 Never been better than it is now.
Alissa 1:17:02 So on Twitter, people can find me under my full name just Alissa Azar, and I'm more active on Instagram. And my handle on there is r3volutiondaddy, but the 'E' in revolution is a '3'. So, it's "r3," and then just spell out revolution Daddy. I'm also on Mastodon, but you know, if you go on to any one of those, I have the link tree in my bio, and all of my socials are posted there. I also have an active fundraiser now that's also in my bio. So you can find my fundraiser on my Twitter or my Instagram. I'm also going to be planning another fundraiser soon where some stuff will be up for sale and whatnot, but I don't have a date for any of that yet, so I'll post that on my socials once I have all that information.
Alex 1:18:04 Hey, I want to sell the beta cuck armor for you. I'm gonna sell the armor.
Alissa 1:18:09 There are many many interested buyers.
Alex 1:18:13 It still smells like...
Alissa 1:18:16 Please don't finish that sentence.
Alex 1:18:19 it did it, though. No. For real, though. For real though. If you're listening and you want to look like a felon for a good cause.
Brooke 1:18:34 Thanks, Alex. Appreciate you throwing some some swag in the mix there. So how can folks find you on social meds? Or do you want them to, Alex?
Alex 1:18:44 No, I'm a ghost. You need a seance to reach me, these days. No, I got kicked off of Twitter when Elon Musk took over. So I'm not on Twitter anymore. I was in the first wave. It's a point of pride. I got a tattoo. So, I'm on mastodon. You can find me at betacuck4life life as usual. You know, Mastodon users, they're a lot more woke. So, people regularly tell me that my handle is problematic. And I'm like "It's a thing." You know, they don't understand what I've been through.
Brooke 1:19:22 It is a very confusing handle to be to be fair.
Alex 1:19:26 Well, you know, I do love explaining things. Everybody wins.
Brooke 1:19:32 And y'all can find me personally on Twitter or Mastodon if you want to. OgemakweBrooke. No, I'm not going to spell my indigenous name for you, sorry. And you can find the Stranger's Collective. We are the group that publishes this wonderful podcast. We are on Instagram and Twitter @ Tangledwild. We also have a pretty dope website. Have you seen our website, Alex?
Alex 1:20:04 Oh yeah, I check y'all out. Shit. We did business.
Brooke 1:20:08 Aw, thanks.
Brooke 1:20:25 All right. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a like, drop a comment, or review, and subscribe to us if you haven't already. These things make the algorithms that rule our world offer the show to more people. This podcast is produced by the anarchist publishing collective Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. Like I said, you can connect with us on Twitter and on Instagram @TangledWild. And if you check out our website, you'll discover we have a new book available for order. It's called "Escape from Incel Island" written by the one and only Margaret Killjoy. The work of Strangers is made possible by our Patreon supporters. Honestly, we couldn't do any of the work without them, without the support of Patreons. If you want to become a supporter, check out patreon.com/strangersInatangledwilderness there are cool benefits at various support to tiers. For instance, if you support the collective at $10 a month, one of your benefits is getting 40% off of everything on our website, which includes Margaret's new book. We'd like to give a specific shout out to some of our most supportive Patreon supporters. So thanks to Micaiah, Hoss the Dog, Cat J, Staro, Chris, Sam, Kirk, Eleanor, Jenipher and Chelsea. Dana and David. Nicole, Mikki, Paige and SJ, Shawn, Hunter, Theo, Boise Mutual Aid, Milica, Paparona, and Aly. Thanks for listening
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Brooke, Casandra, and Margaret talk about the war in Ukraine and how Russia is not doing great, the train derailment in East Palestine, anti trans bills, Adderall shortages and meth, the return of Big Chicken, long covid as potential auto immune disease, further bans on abortion drugs, drought, floods, earthquakes and the US's top priority: shooting million dollar missiles at balloons.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Casandra is just great and can be found at Strangers doing awesome layouts, and Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
A special episode will come out next week on March 17th on Surviving the Justice System.
This Month in the Apocalypse: Feb. 2023
Brooke 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. This is the February-March installment of our segment, This Month in the Apocalypse and I'm calling it the February-March episode because we're recording in February and we're talking about February but you're going to be listening to it in March, most likely. I'm Brooke Jackson, and with me today, as usual are the quick thinking Casandra and the fast acting Margaret Killjoy.
Casandra 00:38 I don't know if that's accurate.
Margaret 00:42 Or at least fast talking sometimes, especially when I'm hyper. And today I'm hyper
Casandra 00:46 half of what I'm going to talk about today is brain fog and how it impacts me.
Brooke 00:51 Nice. Well, before we get into today's episode, we'd like to share a little something something from another one of the swiftly streaming podcasts on the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts.
Casandra 01:17 And we're back. Cas, Margaret, how are you feeling today?
Casandra 01:51 I just had my first sip of tea.
Margaret 01:55 I have been doom scrolling so hard that I didn't sleep last night because of all the anti trans legislation. So I didn't sleep enough and then I ate a protein cookie and pretended like it was food. So I'm great.
Casandra 02:07 And you don't do caffeine at all. Not even tea.
Margaret 02:09 No, yeah, a bunch of sugar and protein in a cookie form is my equivalent of like making me immediately hyper.
Casandra 02:18 Alright.
Margaret 02:19 Because I don't fuck with caffeine. I'm straight edge, except for alcohol.
Brooke 02:24 Well good, you should take all that energy and tell us some things.
Margaret 02:29 Oh, okay, right. I'm first. Okay, February has been a big month for the apocalypse. The Apocalypse is coming in hard with a bunch of mostly really bad shit. I think that the biggest story, or whatever, the earthquake that happened in Turkey and Syria was really fucking bad. Everyone probably already knows this. As of when I'm recording it, the death toll stands at about 50,000 people in Turkey and Syria. Those numbers are still expected to go up. And a lot of it has to do with poverty and with buildings that are not built to withstand earthquakes. This is happening in a poor region. And that is absolutely affecting everything. I don't have as much information about that to relay, but I just feel like it's like the single most...like now I'm going to talk about the fucking balloons and I hate the fucking balloons. And I want people to know that like the earthquake is more important. But on February 14th, I think, I don't remember, I wrote on February 14, but you think I'd remember that was Valentine's Day. A surveillance balloon, there's a Chinese balloon and the US shot it down. It was a really actually big balloon and it probably included some surveillance equipment. China was like, "It's civilian." The US is like, "No, it was military." I'm not stressed about it because I expect the US government is surveilling me and I don't really give a shit if some other country...whatever, I don't fucking care. It may have been capturing cell transmissions and shit over the US. But then, of course, this sets off this like massive paranoia, where everyone's like, "Balloons are trying to get us. Those Chinese balloons." And the US like scrambled....
Brooke 04:20 I always knew it was going to be balloons. I've always said it, the balloons are coming for us.
Casandra 04:22 Doomsday mechanism.
Margaret 04:26 I mean...
Brooke 04:27 it's the balloons. Clearly.
Margaret 04:30 They are creepy. Actually. This is funny, my my dad is phobic of hot air balloons. I'm sorry to reveal this about you, dad. And because he was always like, "No, they're just there. They're on the horizon. They're creepy." Like he's not afraid of being in that. He's afraid of them like on the horizon.
Casandra 04:46 One of my most traumatizing childhood moments was this hot air balloon show was like going over the neighborhood and I was spinning in circles staring upward watching them as one does and forgot that my mom had a whole like row of rose bushes. And then spent the whole afternoon having like rose thorns picked out of my ass. So, that's all to say that I don't think your dad's insane.
Margaret 05:10 Yeah, so the US government scrambled a bunch of fighter jets to shoot down a whole bunch of other balloons, all of which, like the government is like, "We do not believe that they are surveillance balloons, but we don't know." And the reason that they're saying we don't know is because, well one they obliterated tiny balloons with missiles. So there's like, not a lot left. There's like like half a million dollar missiles being shot at these fucking things, one of which missed. They missed a fucking balloon over Lake Huron, and then it like, fell into the lake. And they're like, "No one was harmed." And I'm like, great, I feel so fucking good that the government is shooting missiles at the US. That makes sense. And so probably those balloons are like amateur weather balloons, like people like do this, where you're like, I'm gonna get a balloon and like, put a bunch of equipment on it and send it up into the sky. And it's cool, right? And because you can like see the stuff. And so fortunately, the US government is there to protect us against amateur weather and radio fans.
Brooke 06:11 You know, you know, our friends over that other podcast have been saying we should nuke the Great Lakes. So I think this was just a trial run to...
Margaret 06:20 Fuck, Robert Evans is like actually the one that got them to shoot missiles.
Casandra 06:24 Cancel Robert Evans.
Margaret 06:25 Yep. All right. Yeah. Or he's a prophet.
Brooke 06:32 That's what I was gonna say,
Margaret 06:34 Speaking of Prophets, but actually, in both mench versions of that word, there was a massive disaster on February 3, in East Palestine [rhymes with Springsteen], Ohio, because it's not pronounced Palestine [rhymes with Stein], in which a train carrying a bunch of toxic shit had overheated wheel bearings, and derailed. It passed like a bunch of sensors that were like, detect overheated stuff. And then like on the last one, it was like, "Hey, you're overheating," and then it crashed. This overturned 11 Toxic cars at a...a bunch of more cars overturned, but 11 of them were full of toxic chemicals, including vinyl chloride, but also a bunch of other shit. 115,000 gallons of vinyl chloride, were let loose. And then they were like, "Slright, well, we better set the shutter on fire," I'm not actually even going to like talk shit on the fact that they set on fire. It might have been the best thing that they could do in that circumstances. There is a lot of stuff that is implying that the government and you know, Norfolk Southern and all that are like downplaying the degree to this disaster. It is a massive disaster, it is a big fucking deal. And the people involved should be held accountable. And there's like, all kinds of stuff about how a lot of the deregulation and of course, you know, the fact doesn't help that Biden like stopped a railroad strike for better safety conditions, because that's mostly huge part of what people are striking for. And they absolutely are like, the numbers are trending upwards. They're like, "It's not a big deal." And they were like, "Hey, there's a bunch of dead fish." And people were like, "There are 4000 dead fish." And they had a very specific number. It might not have been that number was like 300, 800, 3,850, or something. As of this morning, when I double checked, they're up to 43,000 dead aquatic animals. That's 10 times the previous claim. I understand why people are skeptical of these claims. They're probably not forever chemicals. These are the sorts of chemicals that will break down. However, no one knows the long term effects of the exposure that people have already had to these chemicals. And it's fucked up. Norfolk Southern stock has dropped, but not as precipitously as you would might like. It's not even as low as it was last October, just like took a dip. So buy the dip, everyone go out and buy....don't do this. Don't go out and buy stock. Okay, that's what I know about that. Other people might know more about it.
Casandra 08:56 Oh, I was just gonna say that....
Margaret 08:57 Next. Okay go ahead.
Casandra 08:58 I was just gonan say that the EPA seemed pretty like, firm with them, which I appreciated. It wasn't the response I expected. Oh, were you wagging your finger at me? Or like...they were like.
Brooke 09:12 I was being the EPA. Yeah. Because we're in a point of visual medium here, right with a podcast. So, everyone can see me doing that.
Casandra 09:19 I watched the recording and the guy was like, "If y'all don't do this up to our standards, we will do it and then bill you and not just like, you'll get the bill, but we'll bill you a certain number of times the amount that it actually cost us as a penalty." Yeah, it's something I don't know.
Margaret 09:37 I mean, that's good. Yeah. Oh and then the other thing, when I when I lead with the transition of Prophets in both sense of the word. About a week before this disaster, I watched the Netflix movie "White Noise" based on the 1980s novel called "White Noise," in which a toxic chemical train spill it In East Palestine, Ohio happens and fucks everything up. And it fucks with my head, just straight up. It fucks with my head that I watched a movie about a natural disaster and then... not a natural disaster, a manmade disaster. And then a week later, it happened in the same town of 5000 Fucking people. Or 4000 people.
Casandra 10:20 Maybe, you're not a prophet, maybe actually. Your brain just determines all of reality.
Margaret 10:29 Oh, no, I'm not a prophet. No, no, no, no, I don't think this is me.
Casandra 10:31 I think that what happens in your head is then what happens in the outside world. That's more plausible.
Brooke 10:39 Yeah, that seems right.
Casandra 10:40 So, don't think anything....
Margaret 10:42 This is a really good thing to tell someone who lives alone.
Brooke 10:46 I mean, it clearly anyone who reaches a certain level of podcasting, fame then develops a power to cause things to happen. Yeah, that's what we're saying here.
Margaret 10:57 Good to know. And then everyone lived in a happy anarchist society for all times in which everyone was equal, except Margaret was a little bit more equal and got like twice as much tea in the morning.
Casandra 11:06 You don't like tea. We just went over this.
Margaret 11:10 Yeah, well, I shouldn't have more of something I want. That would be fucked up.
Casandra 11:14 This is the like weirdest Catholic version of anarchist Utopia I've ever heard of.
Margaret 11:23 Hi, I'm Margaret Killjoy. Alright, so it's speaking of other bad shit that happened this year, or actually, well, okay. The thing that happened in February is is the one year anniversary of the Ukraine war. As currently stands, it's fallen out of the news, which means that no one is dying anymore, and everything is fine. Except that...
Brooke 11:47 PBS still does it. So to just throw a tiny amount of credit over there. But yeah...
Margaret 11:54 Yeah, well actually it's funny because people will talk mad shit about mainstream news and for good reason. But like, overall, I think mainstream news is a little bit better of a job than like Twitter at like, staying attached to stories over time, rather than just like chasing the clicks, which is fucking saying something because that is what mainstream news was notoriously bad at. I just think social media is even worse at it. On the other hand, it's not the job of the random Twitter person to....Okay, so, the Ukraine war is largely out of stalemate. As stands Russia holds 17% of Ukraine, an area twice the size of Italy. It's less than they controlled at the beginning of the war by a decent amount, and specifically, almost all their holdings are in the east. And it's been like slowly being chipped away at overall is kind of the general thing. Most foreign fighters left after a few months, it went down, there's 20,000 foreign fighters, mostly like vets of various other countries who are like, "Well fuck an invasion." And a lot of people were like, I think actually a lot of people were like, "Well, I fought in all of these like evil US wars, because they have like worked for the US government. Here's a just war," and people went like chasing a just war, right. It's down from about 20,000 foreign fighters to 2000 foreign fighters as the war drags on. China is calling for peace talks right now. And more might have happened by the time you hear this, like this is like news from yesterday and today, and their position is...like I mean overall they're trying to present themselves as neutral, but like overall they're like, "This is a war of Western aggression." You know? "This is a war of you know a Ukraine shouldn't dress like that if it didn't want to get attacked." They've four times abstained....Thank you for laughing at my off color joke. And yeah, I mean, because that is what it comes down to this idea of like, we had to invade you because you are getting too close to our borders with your power or whatever. Like, you can't fucking justify invading another country for that reason.
Casandra 14:03 They're opposing US imperialism, Margaret.
Margaret 14:06 Yeah, they do.
Casandra 14:07 NATO!
Margaret 14:10 Yeah. Yeah. And that's China's position. They're with the US tankies. Or rather US tankies are with them. They have four times abstained from voting in the UN votes to ask Russia to withdraw its troops it's possible also that China's like trying to get in....and this is like everyone. This is the actual imperialism from my point of view about all this is everyone calling for these peace talks a lot of it is that they're like they want in on the economic reconstruction aka they want like their economic interest in the capitalism to to do their thing just to China it's slightly more state capitalism in the US it's slightly more..
Casandra 14:46 China's not capitalist Margaret What are you talking about?
Margaret 14:48 Oh, right. Sorry. I Forgot. They want to bring their peoples army... and I Love that It's like the tankies pretending that Russia is fucking commie...anyway. The number of Russian soldiers Ukraine is killing is going up, which, you know, whatever, fuck them. 824 Such Russian soldiers a day are dying in Ukraine in February, which is the highest rate since the invasion started. Between 180,000 and 270,000 Russians have died in the war in the past year. And for comparison, Russia is this huge place. And we think about like how Russia just like, bled people during World War II, you know. Russia is only half the population of the United States. And so this is...so when you think about percentage wise, if you think about, it's like, you know, the equivalent of half a million people dying in one year in a dumb fucking war. About 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died. They claim that 13,000 of their soldiers have died. Vaguely neutral observers from the outside of claims that 100,000 have died, which is like, their, their like, kill rate, oh, God, I'm not even going to pretend to put this in video game terms. That's fucked up. And also another 30,000 or so civilians, Ukrainian civilians have died. Like directly, tons more displace. Everything's fucked up. It's war. I haven't been able to get a recent number for the total number of arrests in Russia. But, it's like worth really understanding how much a lot of Russians do fucking not want this to happen. There were 15,000 people arrested protesting against the war and like the first month of the war alone, and there's thousands more at various other times, but I wasn't able to find a total count. And, you know, in case anyone needs any reminding that nationalism is garbage. between half a million and a million Russians have fled, rather than be conscripted and fight in this stupid fucking bullshit. And 200 or so Russians are actively fighting for Ukraine. There is no out good outside guests. That is a guess from one of these Russian fighters. And they all have different reasons. I am aware of their being Russian anarchists. I was not able to find more information about that. Most of the anarchists that I know from other countries I think are more involved in directing solidarity goods, except for Belarus.. A lot of anarchists fighters in Ukraine. Anyway, of the 200 or so fighters, the the one I was able to find the specific motive for he's is doing as his Christian duty to stop invasions. And let's see, okay, almost done with the Russian war thing. Dutch intelligence reports that Russia is mapping power and gas infrastructure in the North Sea for potential attack. This came out like yesterday. So who knows what will happen with that. And then it's also kind of worth knowing there's like all of these, like anti war rallies happening around the war around the world. And most of them are like about trying to stop the Russian invasion of Ukraine, right? They're like, "Hey, this war is fucked up, aka Russia is fucked up." But in the US, we get a different kind of anti war movement, we get an anti war movement that's a weird collection of tankies and Nazis...
Casandra 18:20 Margaret, that never happened!
Margaret 18:21 ...coming together like a Molotov-Ribbontrop Pact to say stop the war machine.
Casandra 18:28 Stalin is the whole reason.....
Margaret 18:34 Yeah, no, I know.
Casandra 18:38 The reason the Nazis were defeated soley was because of Stalin, therefore, you know, the Soviet Union never never ever could have allied with the Nazis, even though we have historical records that it did blah, blah.
Margaret 18:53 Yeah, like at the beginning, Russia was like, "Hey, allies, can we hang out with you, Germany's looking real weird." And the allies were like, "I'm not sure." And so then Russia was like or USSR was like, "Hey, Nazis, can we hang out with you? We know bad shits about to happen," and they were like, "Yeah, but totally," and the USSR sent them tons of aid, just literal material, tons of aid. And collectively, they mapped out which countries they were going to invade together and they invaded Poland together...It's Poland. Am I getting that right? And then, Germany was like "JK, surprise attack." And then the USSR was like, "Okay, we're against you." And then fucking millions of Russians died to defeat the Nazis and that needs to be understood and respected. But like Stalin was like making them...there's like, reports from survivors...This is totally what this episode is about. There's like reports from survivors who were like forced to charge Nazi tanks bare handed. And so like, the high numbers of Russian dead wasn't because Stalin ruled. The high numbers is because Stalin fucking sucks. Anyway.
Casandra 20:08 And there's also the whole like, the line that like the USSR saved with the Jews or whatever, when, which was just like totally. Anyway, we won't talk about how Jews were treated in the USSR.
Margaret 20:23 When they signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact....Yeah. Anyway, USSR is not modern Russia, but there's an anti war movement. So that's okay. That's Ukraine. Now, the trans laws, the thing that has me up all night. Yesterday, I believe the Tennessee House passed a bill. And now this was misrepresented. And I accidentally misrepresented this too, because I trusted a Twitterer who trusted a news article from a mainstream source that, okay, a Tennessee House did pass this bill. And by the time you're listening to this, probably their fucking Senate and Governor have signed off on it. But the article was like, "And now it goes up to the governor." It doesn't it goes to the Senate first. And a lot of really shitty laws passed the House, but not the Senate in like, any given place. So there's like, still hope. But I'm not full of fucking hope because a lot of these types of laws are passing right now. The type of law I'm talking about, this is an anti drag law. And these anti drag laws are similar ones proposed around the country and all the details are a little bit different. But the overall idea is that if anyone who is a male or female impersonator, AKA a crossdresser, aka, me living my fucking life, or a drag performer, if they perform, and if it's like, in any way, like...some places it's just like literally if they perform, or exist in public, and another one's the Tennessee laws a little bit like, and they perform in a way that has any kind of like, sexual titillation, or whatever then that has to be the venue that is now a strip club legally, or like, needs to be a like 18+ adult entertainment, cabaret or whatever the fuck
Casandra 22:15 Like who's deciding if something's sexual?
Margaret 22:19 Uh huh. And it is. First cops, then judges, Two groups I trust to the bottom of my....nothing.
Margaret 22:35 Or the parents who call the cops.
Brooke 22:41 Don't forget about he mob.
Margaret 22:42 Yeah, no, totally. They're the first step in it. So that is the literal criminal criminalization of being trans in public.
Casandra 22:45 Yeah, there are nine anti trans laws on the books right now in Oregon. Yeah.
Margaret 22:52 Yeah. There's 14 other states with similar anti drag laws in the works, including Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, and Idaho. And I just didn't find the full list, I found people like a couple different places giving like short versions of the list. South Dakota did just pass a law like not just the house or whatever, but like it's fucking signed, that forces trans youth to detransition. And Utah passed a law against trans youth also, very recently, or against allowing trans youth to transition. But, I don't believe it forcibly detransitioned. I believe that this one in South Dakota is the first one to force detransition, which from my point of view, pretty much means that trans...families with trans children who can't afford to move are going to have their trans kids run away or kill themselves. Just like, frankly, I am not recommending. I am recommending if you're a trans youth to in a place that is affected by this to get in touch with community to try and help you and your family get out of that situation. That is what I'm directly recommending. But, the the reason that doctors believe in gender affirming care for trans youth is that it lowers the rates of death substantially. Oklahoma is currently considering a bill to ban gender affirming care to adults, anyone under the age of 26.
Brooke 24:22 Fucking Oklahoma.
Casandra 24:22 I can't remember which bill i was reading, but I was reading about one that was worded in such a way where gender affirming care also ended up including things like hormones for ciswomen dealing with menopause, like it was so broad sweeping that like, I just don't think people consider the broader implications. You know what I mean?
Margaret 24:41 I don't know whether this one was that one, but I...it wouldn't surprise me and I feel like people pass laws like that all the time. And then just like, no one's going to actually stop cis women from accessing hormones from menopause, you know, or like, you know, people dealing with prostate cancer often take hormones and you know, testosterone blockers and things like that, and like...All the shit is overbroad, like crazy, but not in a way where I feel like oh, it's overbroad, and it gets struck down like no, it's gonna get targetedly used against trans people against, the Left. And 5% of US people in the US who are under the age of 25 identify as trans or like nonbinary in some way, compared to point .5% of the rest of the population as a whole. And I would like to...don't make me tap of the sign of the that graph of chart of left handedness as a chart of left handedness. Like once they stopeed. Once they started letting people be left handed, it goes up and caps itself, you know. And every major medical association in America recognizes that gender affirming care for youth saves lives. That is not a...I assume everyone listening to this already knows the shit, but it's like worth fucking knowing. This is not a like, medically contested issue. You know, this is like, and I'm not like, "Man, you know, who I trust immediately, the medical institution, they always have our backs." But, they do in this case, because they're not fucking... Oh, God. That's what I've got to talk about this week.
Brooke 26:20 Jon Stewart did a good piece that was on gender affirming care that maybe everyone's already seen, because it was a little while ago, but was, you know, citing those...Just what you're exactly what you're saying, Margaret about every every major medical organization in the US.
Margaret 26:38 And honestly has been one of the only cispeople I've seen talking about it in public. The silence from cispeople has been deafening. And if your cis and listening to this, I'm hoping that if you've been silent about it, I'm hoping that the reason you've been silent about it, is because you're afraid of taking up too much of the conversation. Because we do have this way of talking about social issues right now, where people are afraid to talk about issues that don't directly affect them. And I think that that is a misstep. And that it will take cis people talking about this angrily, before anything will change. Because, when it's just trans people, and sometimes their immediate families who are showing up to protest, everyone's going to be like, "Well, fuck those pedo whatever," fuck, whatever. Fucking bullshit, you know. So from my point of view, part of the reason this keeps me up at night is not because the Nazis want to kill me, they've wanted to kill me for a long time, they've sent me letters to this effect, with like, my parents address in it, you know, it's that when I don't feel supported, is when I feel the most lost about all of this stuff, just frankly. And so sometimes like that support is like, like, "Margaret's guide to being supportive to your trans friends," is like, like, sometimes, like random people messaging me to be like, "I see you, you're valid." I'm like, that's great. I don't I don't need that from strangers. What I need from strangers is for people to talk to the people, they're around and say shit about this, you know, I have a, I know I'm valid. I have a supportive family. And I have a supportive network of friends and all of that, you know? Yeah, sorry, this is...I mean, all of these things that we're going to talk about are big deals. But you know, this one affects me very directly.
Brooke 28:45 Oh, no, I appreciate you saying more about it, because I was gonna ask follow up questions about like, you know, showing support and good ways to do that. So thanks for talking about that.
Margaret 28:55 Be fucking angry. Like, you know, and it's like, and this stuff like, it's also all part of misogyny. Like, because people want to control people's bodies. And so transmen are affected by this because they're, like, leaving womanhood behind and that's bad or whatever. And then of course, transwomen are like, the reason that people don't want us to exist is a weird protect the women thing, right? And so like, when cis women are loudly like, "No, I would rather have this transwoman in the bathroom with me then like I don't know someone who's like peeking under stalls to make sure no one has a penis." Like people being loud about that kind of support. There's this brilliant video of thus person who I believe is a cis woman who's like getting gender policed by a Karen in a bathroom.
Casandra 29:47 I saw that
Margaret 29:48 And refuses to answer whether or not she has a dick. Yeah, it fucking...that gives me hope. So, I like.
Casandra 30:00 That's like reverse Karen.
Brooke 30:02 I just bookmarked that so I can watch it after
Casandra 30:05 We should start a Nazis know our parents' address club.
Margaret 30:17 And then like...it's funny I try not to talk too much about my family on this podcast, I guess, but then again the Nazis already know where they live. Like my dad's fucking ex marine with anger management issue who loves this trans daughter? How's do they think this is gonnna go?
Casandra 30:35 I mean, my situation, my parent's would've been like "Whatever."
Margaret 30:41 Yeah, okay, fair. I'm sorry.
Casandra 30:43 Okay, who's next?
Brooke 30:48 Okay. Can we talk about happier things?
Margaret 30:54 What podcast are on?
Casandra 30:57 I genuinely can't remember who's next. Is it you, Brooke?
Brooke 31:03 Allegedly. Although, if it's something you have segues better for, I'm all for it. I had a good segue from the war thing. But then we then we start talking about the trans issue and I don't know where to go from there.
Casandra 31:13 I think the world is shit. There are lots of them. They're diverse, shitty things to talk about, you know?
Margaret 31:18 Well, and even the war thing, it's like, you know, what, Ukraine is fucking holding on a year later. That is a fucking positive story. It is a terrible, horrible story. But they're still fucking there. You know, like people thought Ukraine wasn't going to be a country by last summer.
Brooke 31:36 That's a really good point. Well, speaking of war, wars, the war on drugs. Drugs. Adderall. I did it you're welcome. We did a, I think our August episode or something like that we did a roundup on like shortages, things that were in shortages. And I know we talked about Adderall at one point and being in shortage and why. And that started like last summer sometime I think August or so it was when people started talking about it. The FDA or DEA, I can't remember which one it was that came out with the announcement. I think the the FDA came out like late October and said, "Hey, we have an Adderall shortage." And everyone said, "We fucking know we've been dealing with with this for two or three months now." And it's gotten worse than it's been in the news again, recently, because of just how much worse it has gotten. We talked about it previously, we talked about some of the reasons why the shortage was happening. And part of it is a production issue. It's a very controlled substance. So, it's not like manufacturers can just start pumping out a whole bunch more. And not just like the creation of the Adderall. But the ingredients that go into it are controlled substances as well, so they can only make so much of that. Allegedly, there's enough supply of the base ingredients that we shouldn't have this shortage. So....
Casandra 33:10 Sorry, I'm stupid about Adderall, is it it because meth. Is that the....? Okay, sorry.
Brooke 33:18 That's where I'm going with this, but yeah, that's that is that. That is part of the reason it's such a controlled substance, because Amphetamine is, you know, main ingredient, it's it's people often refer to Adderall as being, you know, legal meth, or prescribed meth.
Casandra 33:33 I know nothing. Wow. That's wild.
Brooke 33:42 So, there have been some reports of folks that haven't been able to get their Adderall and have, in fact, turned to meth in order to get the substance they need, and there's not a good sense of how like widespread this is, versus, you know, a couple of instances that hit the news, you know, there's at least one story of somebody who died in an ER, because of meth. And they said they were taking the math because they couldn't get their Adderall prescription. And, you know, meth, you know, historically causes no problems to the brain and doesn't make people say things that are wacky and untrue. So we can trust that story. But, that's what's happening. But, the fun conspiracy theorh where I'm going with this that's floating around is that the government is purposely restricting the manufacture of Adderall to force people to turn to meth to perpetuate the war on drugs. So there you go. Conspiracy theories are fun.
Margaret 34:43 Wait, So this is a new conspiracy. Okay. How the balloons tie in?
Casandra 34:48 Yeah.
Margaret 34:49 Is that where moving it? They're getting the Adderall out of the country?
Casandra 34:52 They're delivering it. If we would have let them come in farther, they would have just released it because everyone wants Adderall.
Margaret 34:58 Oh, yeah. That's sort of true...the part where everyone wants Adderal.
Casandra 35:03 I do not.
Margaret 35:06 Yeah. No, I don't want Adderall. I'm hyper off a cookie.
Brooke 35:12 That's part of the issue is that the prescriptions for Adderall increased 27%. From 2019 to 2022. There were like 35 million prescriptions in the US, which is a fuck ton, in 2019. And then it went up to like 45 million by 2021 or 22. And I mean, shocker. Everybody's stuck inside with a pandemic. Like we overprescribed, that are all for sure. And I and that is not to say there's not people who genuinely need it out there. And I don't mean to bash anybody's use of of that prescription. But you know, one of the articles that I was reading they, you know how news reports like to pick a human interest story to tell their story, they were talking about this 16 year old female in Utah, who's like in all of the AP classes, honors classes is getting ready for college and how stressed out she was and obsessed with perfection, and she couldn't get all her stuff done. And then she got an Adderall prescription. And, and now she's able to get all her homework done, and she's acing all their classes, and it's ready for college and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, well, yeah, I mean, you just gave her gave her amphetamines.
Casandra 36:36 I feel like there's a misuse potential. Like, the people I know, who have ADHD and take Adderall, it doesn't impact their system that way, you know. And I also think there's a certain, I see this with autism as well, there's a certain amount of like, like the left handed thing that Margaret brought up, you know? Like, it might seem like, it might seem like an undue spike, but I'm sure a large percentage of that is people who are finally getting care they need.
Margaret 37:12 And then also, like, I think about it because I came closer to seeking medication for ADHD than I ever have. And what it was for me is that I built my entire life around the fact that I have ADHD, there's a reason that I'm a freelancer, there's a reason that I, you know, I travel, there's a reason I work for myself. Like, there's all these things that I've done, that have made ADHD not a problem in my life, right. But actually, the beginning of the pandemic, it made it more of a problem. It made it harder for me because like, I had to sit in my cabin and work on a computer in order to eat food, and stuff, you know, and so like, and I don't thrive in certain environments, and so I was like, "Man, if I had something that helped me thrive in this environment." So.
Casandra 37:56 Which then makes me wonder, like, how much of that need is attached to Capitalism, you know, lthe ike productivity. So? Yeah.
Margaret 38:04 Oh, yeah. No, totally. I mean. Totally. I had a day job for a minute.
Casandra 38:10 Sitting in a cabin alone with....That sounds like my dream.
Margaret 38:16 I know. Well, I was fine until the day job. Awesome.
Margaret 38:24 Okay, so,
Brooke 38:25 Again, I don't want to like bash anybody that's taking it. I don't know. I don't want to say that there aren't legitimate reasons that some of those people didn't need it. But, we we do know that it's overprescribed, that you take you know, young people who are high achieving, and we've got them overscheduled and fucking Capitalism.
Casandra 38:41 Oh, everyone, I knew in college was....Adderall all the time.
Brooke 38:46 Yeah, just give them drugs. So, that's part of the problem. Anyway, the DEA is trying to get you addicted to meth. x
Casandra 38:59 I thought it was the FDA.
Margaret 39:02 And that's why they're shooting down balloons.
Brooke 39:06 No, it's the DEA because that's the Drug Enforcement Agency. They're the ones trying to perpetuate the war on drugs and they have something to do.
Casandra 39:14 I hope people know when we are and aren't being sarcastic.
Margaret 39:22 I hope so too. But I'm not optimistic.
Brooke 39:27 Never take me seriously. That's my answer. I have one other fun conspiracy theory thing. Okay, it actually came up right after the end of our last recording and it was kind of a bummer. We didn't get it in there. But, it's about chicken feed.
Casandra 39:46 Big Chicken!
Brooke 39:47 And chicken feed conspiracy, that something is....Yep, Big Chicken. Not and not Tyson. Not that evil chicken, but it's actually a big big fooder you may have heard of this brand called Purina?
Casandra 40:01 Dog food.
Brooke 40:02 Are pretty well known for creating pet food. Yeah.
Margaret 40:05 They feed cats.
Brooke 40:06 But they also make more industrial feeds like chicken feed and guinea pigs and goats and I don't even know the full extent of their thing, but they make feed for a lot of different kinds of animals. And people started reporting in July last year that their chickens and this is industrial level and you know, household people chicken in the backyard kind of people, crazies like me that their their egg laying productions seem to be going down. And then going through the winter, a lot of a lot of people have talked about their eggs production from their chickens being at or very near zero, which I also have been in this boat for a while my my four girls were not laying any eggs. And it wasn't an old chicken issue, like they're, they're young, and they just started laying this last summer. And yes, production goes down in the winter, that's normal, but doesn't usually just completely drop off. So, people were posting about it on social medias and talking about it and started forming this conspiracy that there's something wrong with chicken feed, Purina mainly because they're one of the biggest suppliers not just under their name brand, but their sub brands as well. And that something is missing in the chicken feed that's causing them not to lay as well. And then lots people saying "I switched to another brand, I started mixing my own," blah, blah, blah. "And suddenly my my chickens are laying again." And as much as I hate conspiracy theories and don't want to feed into it, I have to say that I also was having the same issue of zero egg production. And then I grabbed a protein blend from a different brand and started mixing that into their feed and getting eggs.
Margaret 41:49 That doesn't have to be a conspiracy. They could have just fucked up.
Casandra 41:51 Honestly, people have reported that they've had their feet tested. They've had their Purina tested and it contains the appropriate amount of protein. So there's like, at this point a month later....I'm sorry, I was the one who brought this up because I was I raise quail. And so I'm on, I don't know, poultry, social media. Yeah. Anyway. But yeah, so apparently people have gotten their feed tested, and it has the appropriate components, so now they're like, "Is there something added to it?" That's the new conspiracy.
Margaret 42:27 Well, I know what, I know what the problem is.
Brooke 42:29 Morgaret has the answer.
Casandra 42:32 Okay, good.
Margaret 42:32 Yeah, I watched this....No, it's not gonna be the answer. No, I watched this documentary called All Quiet on the Western Front on Netflix last night. And in it, the Imperial German soldiers, while they're occupied France during World War One, there's they're breaking into farmers yards and stealing the eggs. And so it's actually. It's actually Imperial German soldiers are breaking into everyone's yards and stealing quail eggs and chicken eggs.
Brooke 43:10 Oh, okay.
Casandra 43:12 Obvious.
Brooke 43:12 There are a lot of other factors that genuinely influence chicken, like production, like the amount of light and the temperature. And, you know, our light levels are not particularly off. They're low this time of year, like always, but it definitely has been a little bit colder on average this winter here for us, though. My mother...Hi, Mom, I love you was like you need to put a heating light on your chickens and they'll lay more which I did for a month and it didn't affect anything. Although that was also after one of those snows that we had too.
Casandra 43:44 Can I telll you one of the more wingnut versions of this I've heard?
Brooke 43:47 Yes, please.
Casandra 43:48 And who knows. But, the most like, you know, puppet master version of all of this I've heard is that Purina partnered with some giant egg company that I can't remember the name of right now, who just opened a whole bunch of, starting last fall open several massive like egg production facilities. So, it's in Purina's best interest to add something to the feed so that our chickens can't lay eggs. And that's why egg prices are through the roof. And now you have to buy the eggs and it's just ohhhh. Yeah.
Brooke 44:26 Yeah, that's the other thing that's feeding into the conspiracy theories I was gonna wrap this up with.
Brooke 44:29 Sorry. I'm taking...
Brooke 44:30 No, you're fine. It's perfect. Perfect segue. Excellent. Yeah. Is the prices going up on eggs is all feeding into conspiracy and you know, people not thinking about food prices in general have gone up and we feed chickens food things. And yeah, anyway, what Margaret?
Margaret 44:48 Oh, just there's some, I was reading today, that there's some guesses that we might have hit peak food inflation, specifically around eggs and meat. Because basically, no one can get enough money...because you can't sell eggs at a certain...the way cap, the market works, you know, you can't sell it at a certain amount, so fewer sell or whatever. And so wholesale egg prices have started dropping. And as of when the article I read came out this had not yet hit retail egg prices. Because people probably are like, Well, alright, I can buy them for cheap and sell them for just as much Fuck yeah. But wholesale egg prices are starting to drop and meat prices are also starting to drop on a wholesale level, because inflation reduced the profit.
Brooke 45:39 Okay. Well, the one upside, so that's sorry.....
Casandra 45:48 I think there's something about Purina feed, and we don't know what and that's fine. And that people seem to be switching feeds or making their own and it's fine. I mean, there might be but like, I don't really care personally, I'm like, I just want my quails to lay eggs.
Margaret 46:07 And it's just not a conspiracy. They're just fucked up their food.
Brooke 46:09 Right. Yeah, there's other complicating factors. It's not maybe not just this one thing. Like, yeah, you know, we hear where Cas and I live have had a colder little bit colder winter than average and that'll slow down production. I don't know for the US as an entirety but you know, just an example.
Margaret 46:25 Well, there's there's that saying "Never never attribute to incompetence. What can be understood..." No, wait. I know something isn't...It's Goddamnit "It's not malice. It's incompetence." It's more likely that it is incompetence than malice at any given thing that's happening.
Casandra 46:49 I mean, yeah, it's like very experienced people who are having this issue, like there's something, there's something wrong, right?
Margaret 47:05 Oh, that's what I mean about...sorry, I don't mean incompetence of the chicken keepers. The chicken lords.
Brooke 47:10 That is what we call ourselves, Margaret, chicken lords.
Margaret 47:12 I mean, the incompetence of Purina. The...like Purina fucking up the feed is probably because they fucked up the feed, not cause they're like, "hahaha."
Brooke 47:25 I mean, it's entirely possible Purina switched to cheaper, lower quality components to create their feeds because of inflation.
Casandra 47:31 It's not incompetence if it's a giant company. Yeah.
Brooke 47:35 There's something in that. The one upside of....
Casandra 47:40 Root cause. Okay. Yeah.
Brooke 47:42 There you go. Nice.
Margaret 47:44 Yeah, it might be greed instead of malice.
Brooke 47:45 Let me just say the happy thing.
Margaret 47:46 What's the happy thing? What's the happy thing?
Brooke 47:50 Is that people have turned to other feed sources. So, instead of supporting the big giant mega Corp, they're supporting smaller ones, like I reached out to a local person who's making their own blends. And I'm going to start using some of that. People have learned how to create their own blends and feed their things, which I think it's always great to get away from the industrial manufacturers. So...
Casandra 48:11 I don't know how to jump from chickens to this....
Brooke 48:17 Chickens. Avian Flu. Flu. Sickness. Bad. Long COVID.
Casandra 48:24 I raised quail because I'm allergic to chicken eggs, cause autoimmune disease. Did you know long COVID is kind of like an autoimmune disease?
Brooke 48:32 Nice.
Casandra 48:35 Do either of you know anyone with long covid?
Brooke 48:37 Yes.
Margaret 48:39 Yeah, part of the reason I don't leave the house, not because I have it, but because I'm terrified. I mean, I'm making rational decisions around safety.
Brooke 48:48 I'm worried I'm having it.
Casandra 48:52 Oh, well, maybe maybe this will be easier. When I when I first heard about it. So, some of the symptoms I've heard include fatigue, brain fog, difficulty breathing, joint pain, chest pain, general like lower quality of life, gut issues. When I hear that list, I'm like, oh, that's, that sounds like my autoimmune disease. And sure enough, they're realizing that long COVID does have a lot in common with an autoimmune disease. I don't think they're classifying it that way. At this point, like the research is ongoing, but it's just really interesting to me. So apparently, something like 11% of people who get COVID-19 will have long COVID, which lets you one study in "Nature," I read said up to 65 million people are suffering from on COVID, which is apparently a 10th of the number of people worldwide who have had COVID. So , 1 in 10 people is kind of a lot. Yeah. And suddenly, you know, folks at the beginning of COVID, who were calling it, a mass disabling event make a lot more sense.
Brooke 50:01 Yeah.
Casandra 50:05 This is terrible and funny. I read a tweet where someone said "People went on about herd immunity. But now we have heard autoimmunity."
Brooke 50:12 Oh, it's funny and awful
Casandra 50:17 It is. Sorry, I'm laughing at that because I have an autoimmune disease. I think I should offer that context. So, populations impacted: Apparently 4% of folks with long COVID are under 12. Aside from that about a third are people under 50. Another third are 50 to 60. And then another third are people above 65. So it is impacting people who are our age.
Brooke 50:44 You can't have three thirds and four percent.
Casandra 50:47 I said, in addition to that. Or after that.
Brooke 50:51 Okay, sorry. Math. Just slap me.
Casandra 50:53 I read so many studies to cobble this all together. Don't judge my numbers. It's more...I say that to bookkeeper. It's more predominant in transgender folks and women, which is also true of autoimmune diseases. 75% of people with long COVID where never hospitalized. 75% of those people have not sought medical help for long COVID. And there's also an assumption that a lot of these numbers are actually higher, because we all know how reporting has gone down in and how healthcare is expensive. And if people don't have to go to a hospital or a doctor, they won't, you know.
Brooke 51:35 Is there anyone out there that still saying long COVID doesn't exist? Not like the you know, extremists but like, mainstream for a while was like long COVID is made up? It's not actually happening. Is that still a common thought? Or is that finally going away?
Casandra 51:50 I don't know how common it...so this is all really curious to me because I have an autoimmune disease and because last month, January 2023, two different studies came out about Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which I also have, and how it increases the likelihood of long COVID. And when that study came out, I started to see a bunch of people talking about long COVID and low dose Naltrexone being a useful approach, which is a medication I take, which I cannot get prescribed by a regular doctor. Because they deny that it's a useful immunomodulator. Like remedy. And that's all to say that like, I think I'm hypersensitive to the disbelief around these things. And one of the reasons this if fascinating to me. Yeah, one of the reasons this is fascinating to me, is because it's opening up these conversations about these diseases that patients have been talking about for years, and have not historically been believed.
Margaret 52:56 Often as a symptom of misogyny, right?
Casandra 53:01 Yeah, Totally. I don't know anyone who has, you know, something in the spectrum of chronic illness who hasn't gone through, like literally years of doctor saying it "Doesn't exist," or "You don't have it." Or "It's not that bad." Like, I had to call my doctor and inform her of what I had, like, based on my labs, because she didn't tell me. And so now there's this like, sped up process around long COVID, right, where like, so many people are getting sick all at once that like, there was the disbelief and other people downplaying it. But like, research is catching up at a faster rate, it seems like, which has implications for the broader community, which could be positive. Even though it sucks that how many, how many millions. 65 million people....
Margaret 53:52 Well, it's like mRNA caccines, like, it's fucking cool, that we're suddenly able to get vaccinated for so many more things than we used to. And it is absolutely fucked that it took this...It took so many people getting this before people were like, "Oh, maybe it's just not like the modern version of hysteria," the whiny woman disease or whatever, you know.
Casandra 54:20 Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think there's....up until very recently, if you walked into a doctor and were like, even if you had a what's the word I'm looking for, not a prescription when they tell you what your... a diagnosis, from a previous doctor saying "I have chronic fatigue," or whatever. It's highly likely that your new doctor will say that doesn't exist. But now, suddenly, the only word...it's like the only words that they have to describe long COVID are these words like chronic fatigue and autoimmune disease? So, suddenly they have to like view them as legitimate. But studies are coming out in these like, major scientific journals like "Nature." "JANA," what's the other one? I was reading? Whatever, science. So people are taking it seriously. And that's, not exciting because I wish it didn't exist at all, but is good.
Brooke 55:27 Yeah, the friend that I have.
Casandra 55:28 I have a whole. Oh, go ahead.
Brooke 55:30 Oh, just the friend that I have that has long COVID he has faced a lot of that struggle with this belief. I think he got COVID earlier on, or at least not recently. And yeah, definitely has faced a lot of like disbelief and extra hurdles and trying to advocate for himself and get the kind of care that he needs.
Casandra 55:54 Yeah. And it's, it's I think maybe people need to understand how severe it can be. Because the umbrella of long COVID, my understanding, like, you know, they're still actively defining this term, but my understanding is that it's people who have at least two symptoms, at least, I think it's two months after the acute infection goes away. But for some people that can be so debilitating that like, they need walkers, or they need you know, it's life altering. Yeah. And I read one study that said that, as many as 4 million people are unemployed, because of long covid, which is a whole other conversation around, like, what counts as a disability in this country? And what doesn't? Like I remember when I was first diagnosed with my autoimmune disease, and was way less functional than I am now. I was like, "Why? Why would I not qualify for disability?" And the answer is that there are a lot of bureaucratic reasons, apparently. But yeah, who knows, maybe that will change too.
Brooke 57:04 Part of it's because...part of the bureaucracy is that they can't take away the designation once they've given it. So, they don't want to make it too easy to label you disabled, because then you don't, you don't get to go back from being disabled.
Margaret 57:22 Or we could just not means test care. And anyone who needs care, could just have care.
Casandra 57:31 We don't think you're sick enough. Do you want to hear some more interesting statistics?
Brooke 57:39 Always. Give me numbers.
Casandra 57:42 Yeah, I know Brooks excited. So, a study in Germany recently found that people who get COVID have a 30% or had a 30% increase in risk of autoimmune diseases up to a year after their acute infection. So, there's active comorbidity there. And the people who go into COVID having an autoimmune disease, have a 25% increase in their chance of contracting additional autoimmune diseases. But that's all significantly lowered if patients are vaccinated. There's a like crunchy version of autoimmune communities where people are antivax.
Margaret 58:26 Oh, that's why you're making angry eyes as soon as you....
Casandra 58:30 Well, so these statistics are particularly important, right?
Margaret 58:35 I'm mad that there's been a Lyme vaccine that they just didn't finish studying. I could be wrong about this. I don't remember all the details. I read a pop science article about it. But there's like a...there's been a Lyme disease [vaccine] that they can give to dogs, but they just didn't finish studying it and people. And it's been around for like 20 years.
Brooke 58:54 That's infuriating.
Casandra 58:55 I don't live in Lyme country. So it's not like as big an issue here. But that's wild.
Margaret 59:00 I got Lyme in Oregon. Like, where you live. But, and I and I live in fucking Lyme country and I've never gotten Lyme over here.
Brooke 59:11 Wow. Yeah. Got some anyway, family in Idaho that, about 15 years ago, were battling Lyme and one of them had it since he was a teenager.
Margaret 59:23 I want to fucking Lyme vaccine. It's like, I think people who play D&D are going to be smarter around risk analysis, because anyone who's played D&D knows that 5% chance of something happens means it's gonna happen. Like...
Casandra 59:37 Yeah, eventually.
Margaret 59:39 Yeah, exactly. And because you've had that happen over and over again, when you play this, and you also realize that anything that you get, that's like, a plus 5% safer, you always take it, right, like, and the vaccine is like a 90% safer, and people are like, "Ah, people still get sick, so therefore it's bullshit," but Like, if the vaccine made you 5% safer, and you play Dungeons and Dragons, you'll take it.
Casandra 1:00:05 It's actually, it's 10%. It's 10% safer.
Margaret 1:00:09 Wait, what is?
Casandra 1:00:11 If you're vaccinated....
Margaret 1:00:13 Oh, about the autoimmune stuff. Okay.
Casandra 1:00:15 Yeah.
Margaret 1:00:15 I was thinking about like COVID itself, but yeah. Yeah.
Casandra 1:00:21 I just like kind of fantasy of my high school stats class actually being taught through D&D and like, maybe I would have understood math.
Margaret 1:00:27 Yeah, it like, it's, yeah, you understand probability a lot better if you like, regularly....
Casandra 1:00:33 You're actively practicing. Yeah. Yeah. Um, what else do you want to know?
Margaret 1:00:43 About long COVID?
Casandra 1:00:45 Yeah.
Margaret 1:00:46 I was hearing that....It...For most people does taper off. Is that being understood? Or is that like, like not to be like, therefore it's fine, but just like, less of a like, "Oh, God, my life is over. This thing has happened," or whatever. Like, I was under the impression that people....not that it should...people should feel like their life is over, even if they get it bad. But like, not that it's...
Casandra 1:01:17 It's not debilitating?
Brooke 1:01:18 It's not permanent.
Margaret 1:01:19 It's not necessarily...it's not necessarily permanently debilitating to everyone who gets it and that it like a lot of people it's about a way slower getting better, but not everyone some people it's about a permanent effect. But that other people are like recovering just very slowly. Is that? Am I completely off? I've no idea.
Casandra 1:01:40 I've heard that empirically. But I didn't find a study that like....I found studies acknowledging that for some people after a few months, they get better. Like even if they started out with long COVID, symptoms will get better, but I didn't actually see numbers about...and I think part of that is that it hasn't been long enough.
Margaret 1:01:57 Yeah, totally.
Casandra 1:01:58 And even if...so, so I keep comparing this to an autoimmune disease, but they haven't actually said like "This is in fact an autoimmune disease," you know, there are people who say it's because of mast cell activation there are people who say it's actually a neurological issue, like they're still figuring it out. But if in fact it it does function like an autoimmune disease you would need years to see how it actually impacts people because people might have a slower recovery and feel better and then you know, their immune system could be triggered by something and they'll get sick again. So yeah, we just don't know.
Casandra 1:02:33 That makes sense.
Brooke 1:02:36 So I might not be fatigued and coughing forever is what you're saying? Maybe.
Casandra 1:02:42 Yeah.
Brooke 1:02:45 Okay, that's good.
Casandra 1:02:46 But if you are people are researching the efficacy of low dose Naltrexone
Brooke 1:02:51 And I'll get my brain back. Maybe.
Casandra 1:02:54 I'd say some percentage of it.
Margaret 1:02:57 Have you tried yoga?
Casandra 1:03:02 You're actually not supposed to do stretching flexibility things with Ehlers Danlos, that's the antithesis of what you're supposed to do. So, no.
Margaret 1:03:14 I hope that as we talked about, people not being able to tell when people are being sarcastic, I hope that I manage that tone.
Brooke 1:03:22 Okay, but I need yoga for my PTSD. Now I'm lost.
Casandra 1:03:27 You could just try the breathing exercises.
Brooke 1:03:30 Okay. Meditation that's the one universal good.
Casandra 1:03:32 Yeah.
Brooke 1:03:33 Maybe. We'll see the sleep disorder.
Casandra 1:03:38 I feel I feel like what we're doing right now is like a small encapsulated version of what these like, chronic illness communities do on a larger scale. And at a certain point, I just, like, have to detach myself because I'm like, everything will harm you.
Casandra 1:03:52 How about we talk about other headlines.
Casandra 1:03:58 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, I found some fun ones. So, I don't remember exactly what she said. I'm sure anyone on Twitter saw, but Marjorie Taylor Greene was basically like "The country should get a divorce." Like, in my mind is civil war. That's a fun one.
Margaret 1:04:19 Yeah, and I, I like that one also, because it's like people talk about like, red states, blue states, and people are like, "Oh, well, you know, Oklahoma is banning trans people. Fortunately, no trans people live there." Like, that's not fucking true. And like, and even from a like, Democrat--Republican binary, the difference between a red state and a blue state is usually about 60/40 one way or the other. Yeah, you know, and like, and that's what people aren't acknowledging. Well, there's a million things people aren't acknowledging.
Casandra 1:04:50 Sort of what she wanted, she wanted to...part of that comment she made was about proposing that if people move to a red state from a blue state, they should have a period where they can't vote. which would in fact make it so that they were purely red states.
Margaret 1:05:05 That's true. As a....I am not a Democrat, but I live in a red state and I am far worse than what they're afraid of with the Democrats. Yeah. Okay, my fun headline. Are we just doing like one headline back and forth for a moment?
Casandra 1:05:23 Yeah.
Margaret 1:05:25 Massive floods and mudslides in Brazil killed 36 people leaving 800 people homeless, displacing thousands of people, hitting multiple cities. Just massive fuck off disaster that didn't even make it to my social media headlines.
Casandra 1:05:41 That makes me want to message Mena.
Margaret 1:05:43 Yeah, not a bad idea to check in with her. Friends. I mean, sometimes it's like, Brazil is a very large country, right, and so like, you know, like, if someone something happens in the Pacific Northwest, and someone, my friend from another country is like, "Are you okay?" Then again, I wouldn't actually be sad at someone for checking in, even if something...whatever, anyway.
Casandra 1:06:09 Federal Emergency SNAP benefits are ending March 1. Thanks, Biden. Yeah, for some people, that means the difference between like, $270 a month and $20 a month. It's like, a huge amount of money.
Brooke 1:06:24 Yeah, for me, it's the difference between like, being able to just buy the foods I need and knowing there's gonna be enough versus like, having to really pay attention and budget of things to make sure I don't run out by the end of the month. Like it's not it's not even a huge amount of difference for me, but it's enough of like the difference between having to pay close attention and just being able to just buy food like normal.
Casandra 1:06:49 Yeah. I've seen a few different posts by food pantry volunteers who are like, "It's already like wild in food pantries. And it's not even March 1 yet."
Margaret 1:07:01 Floods in New Zealand killed for at least four people and displace 9000 people. All these headlines, it's like things show up in the head in the news when it happens. And then like this one in New Zealand, it's like, killed at least four people and there's 1300 people unaccounted for. And that article is from a while ago and so I didn't find an updated article. The fact that I didn't find it updated article probably means that 1000 More people didn't die, but was really fucking bad.
Brooke 1:07:32 And then there's 9000 people that got displaced and you probably don't know what happened to them and where they went.
Margaret 1:07:41 Are we still ping-ponging or should I just go with the rest of mine.
Casandra 1:07:45 Oh no, I'll go Walgreens recently caved to Conservative pressure and agreed to stop selling Mifo...I get the full names of miso and mife confused but it's one of them.
Margaret 1:07:59 One of the main abortion drugs.
Casandra 1:08:01 Yeah, in a pro choice state.
Margaret 1:08:06 Wow, in a pro choice? I didn't.
Casandra 1:08:08 Oh, yes, it's Kansas, which is a pro choice state, and the you know, in case you needed the added kicker, Mifo is also used for completing miscarriages, so people will not be able to access that drug if they have a miscarriage. At least not in Walgreens. So, you know, change pharmacies if you want.
Margaret 1:08:31 Legally Walgreens.
Brooke 1:08:34 In Minecraft.
Margaret 1:08:35 Ah, in Czarist Russia, that's what I'm pushing for is the new 'In Minecraft'. They cracked Minecraft. Now it's all about Czarist Russia. Warming oceans are cutting into the world's widest glacier. They're cutting like big trenches from the bottom into the world's widest glacier, the Thwaites, ultimately these melting glaciers over the next couple 100 years will likely raise global sea level by 10 feet.
Brooke 1:09:04 Is that an Antarctic glacier?
Margaret 1:09:07 I don't know.
Casandra 1:09:12 I'm assured by a friend who's like a right wing researcher, who isn't right wing but does research into right wing hate groups, that this is probably going to be a non issue, but apparently and Idaho hate group on Telegram has been calling for an 'Antisemitic Day of Hate,' this Shabbat and I have friends in the areas where this is happening who have said that their synagogues are canceling services.
Margaret 1:09:37 That fucking bums me out. Economic Research firm Moody's looked at US cities most at risk for combined heat, drought and sea level rise over the next 30 years,, basically like what US cities are going to be most impacted by climate change over the next couple of decades. And the losers are the Bay Area, a whole bunch of Florida, New York City, Tucson and Phoenix, Arizona, and Wilmington, Delaware.
Casandra 1:10:13 Wilmington, Delaware?
Margaret 1:10:16 I think a lot of Delaware isn't very high isn't very high above sea level.
Casandra 1:10:21 I see.
Brooke 1:10:22 I feel like New Orleans....
Margaret 1:10:23 There's no...there's no cities that anyone knows the name of in Delaware besides Wilmington. And I'm guessing neither of y'all I've heard of Wilmington, Delaware. Delaware is mostly known as...Like literally when I would go to Delaware as a kid, there was a magnet on the fridge that was "Delawhere?" with a little question mark. Oh, but then the safest. Okay, I've got like one more, two more. The safest places are pretty much the Midwest, like the Dakotas and shit, unless you're trans. Anyway, but, but basically like a lot of actually Appalachia and the Midwest are safest from like, drought because of large reservoirs. And some other climate change and sea level rise because they're away from the ocean. Indian scientists are sounding the alarm of the first heatwave of the year. It's February. And last year, they kind of didn't have a Spring. And it fucked up their wheat production. Wheat production was down 10% For that reason, or 11 million metric tons less than they normally produce, which caused them to ban export of wheat in order to not starve. But, this was bad timing, of course, because the Russia invading Ukraine, I mean, Russia stopping imperialism by invading another country.
Brooke 1:11:56 Shut up, you Tankie.
Margaret 1:11:58 Yeah, and so this is the second year in a row and the fact that extreme weather events, whatever we all know is climate change, but like, extreme weather events back to back are another major indicator of something. And it's they're expecting really bad heat waves this year.
Casandra 1:12:18 How long has it been since we weren't actively having an extreme weather event somewhere? You know?
Margaret 1:12:23 I don't fucking know. And then the only other headline I got is that a Nazi couple in Baltimore was arrested for plotting to attack power stations. They didn't get very far along in their plans I think before they got caught by the Feds.
Casandra 1:12:40 Nazis really hate electricity.
Brooke 1:12:42 Yeah.
Casandra 1:12:45 I know that's not the...
Margaret 1:12:47 Shocking.
Brooke 1:12:48 Just like....
Brooke 1:12:51 Oh.....
Casandra 1:12:56 Like, do they have...
Margaret 1:12:57 I turned 40, I'm allowed to now.
Brooke 1:13:00 That's a real mom joke.
Casandra 1:13:01 Do they have their own like generators? Is that way they like, "Fuck the power station."
Brooke 1:13:05 Probably.
Casandra 1:13:06 I mean, I assume it's an accelerationist thing but like, they probably need electricity too.
Margaret 1:13:12 Yeah, overall the vague idea is that they think that general...I don't know about this couple. But the general idea behind Nazis attacking power stations is to cause enough instability to cause societal collapse, which they believe will trigger a race war because white people will all band together and kill all the nonwhite people, which no they're not. I think people will band together and kill the Nazis when there's no longer laws about murdering Nazis. Yeah, people get together with people that they....I mean okay like you you can see times like in New Orleans, some hate groups went around and shot black people in the wake of Katrina but....
Casandra 1:14:02 But then didn't respond to that by being like, "Fuck you, hate group."
Margaret 1:14:07 Yeah yeah a bunch of people with of all races with guns then shot at the people and scared them off. That is what will happen in the like weird...like even the fucking general center Right and even like the non Nazi Right...I don't know maybe I'm being too optimistic, but like I don't think they're gonna get very far with this attack power stations to bring about the race war..I think it's about as nonsensical as fucking Charles Manson and it's like fucking helter skelter race war bullshit.
Casandra 1:14:38 I'm gonna bring it up, fuck it. I like how The Last of Us in the bill episode portrays this like, who I immediately thought was going to be this like Right wing asshole, you know, individualists like altering his ways. And whatever, Margaret and I have talked about this, how like, it could have been...it could have been cooler he could have like brought in a whole bunch of community and stuff but maybe he just brought in the people he had access to because he realized his way of doing things was not sustainable.
Margaret 1:15:21 We should have talked about this episode. Is prepper representation and culture had a really positive really positive if you watch The Last of Us if you haven't watched The Last of Us Episode Three, could kind of stand alone as a mini movie if you skip the first like 5-10 minutes, and really positive representation of a classic prepper. And it is a classic prepper, a guy has a fucking Gadsden flag on his wall and lives in a bunker and like rules, and I fucking am so here for it. It's not the way I would have prepped and it's not the way I would have handled it because I would have built community, but I don't know I mean, I would have built community and then still had my separate house where I hide from everyone
Casandra 1:16:09 To your previous point though, like even people who are maybe, let's say he was a libertarian that's what I think when I see Gadsen flag, people who maybe were more on the individualist spectrum when shit actually hits the fan, they tend to still act communally.
Margaret 1:16:26 Yeah. And that's probably a good note to end on. Take care of each other. We can do this. All these Nazis bound to lose. I don't know, Ukraine held on for a year and then like, even like, okay, like the trans shit, right? It's like, they're all like fucking coming really hard for us right now because we're no longer closeted to the same degree, because we are like, actually, in so many ways better off than we were 10-15 years ago, So many more people have access to care. So many more people have access to like communities that respect their gender. We've made huge strides and it has scared the shit out of them. And that's why they're lashing out and it sucks. I don't like being lashed out at. But yeah, how's that for rousing that?
Casandra 1:17:18 That's good.
Margaret 1:17:20 People roused? Not arroused. Regular roused.
Casandra 1:17:27 Who's doing the outro?
Brooke 1:17:28 Me, which I was just trying to do with my song, but...
Casandra 1:17:31 Oh, good, good. Sorry.
Brooke 1:17:44 Thanks so much for listening to our speedy installment of This Month in the Apocalypse. We come at you as members of the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness publishing collective, which produces two, soon to be three, other podcasts, create zines and publishes books. You can check out the great stuff on our website, Tangledwilderness.org. We're also on some social media platforms somewhere where you can connect with us. And we are able to do all of these rad things because we are supported by an incredible variety of people on Patreon, which you can find at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Our lovely patreon supporters at the $20 a month level get a special shout out at the end of every podcast because you are so very near and dear to us. We thank you. Jans, Hoss the dog, Mikayla, Chris, Sam, Kirk, Eleanor, Jenipher, Staro, Cat J and Chelsea. Dana, David, Nicole, Mikki, Paige, SJ, Shawn Hunter, Theo, Boise Mutual Aid, Milica, Paparouna and Aly. Thanks so much for listening.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Brooke and Carla talk about parenting as radicals and youth autonomy, but more importantly, they talk about adult supremacy, the history of it, the ways it influences all of our lives and strategies for confronting it as parents and non parents. They breakdown childism, and talk about how the most important thing you can do is listen to the youth and how community is once again the answer to many societal woes.
Carla Joy Bergman (She/they) is a writer, producer, podcaster, schemer and causer of trouble. Their book Trust Kids! is out from AK Press and can be ordered here. You can find Grounded Futures at GroundedFutures.com or @GroundedFutures on Twitter and Instagram. You can find Listening House Media here. She also cohosts the Grounded Futures podcast with their son Uilliam.
Brooke can be found at Strangers helping up keep our finances intact and on Twitter and Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Carla on Adult Supremacy
Brooke 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm Brooke Jackson, your host for this episode. Today we have the honor of talking with author Carla Bergman. We're going to discuss parenting here in the end times. But first, we'd like to honor our membership and the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts by playing a little jingle from one of the other podcasts on the network. Jingle jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle jingle here. And we're back. Carla, thank you for joining us today to talk about parenting. Would you please introduce yourself? Let us know what you do, your pronouns, share where you're from if you're comfortable disclosing that.
Carla 01:58 Great. Hi, Brooke. Thanks for having me here. I love this podcast. It's a real honor. Yeah, I'm Carla Joy Bergman. I use she/her, they/them pronouns. I'm calling in from Musqueam. Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh lands, also known as Vancouver and the Pacific Northwest, across the border in Canada. Yeah, I, well, I do a lot of things. I'm a bit of a autonomous scholar, writer, producer, a podcaster or schemer, causer of trouble. I don't know, that's always hard to put yourself on there. Like what do you do? Yeah, I'm a mom, friend. I'm a white settler with Irish and Welsh ancestry. Yeah.
Brooke 03:03 Yeah, well, we're really glad that you are here and taking the time to talk about this topic with us today. I know that you just released a book back in November called "Trust Kids", which looks like you can get from AK Press. And they have print ebook and audiobook available. There's probably other sources to get it as well. So I'd love to talk about your book a little bit. And then you know, if that leads into some broader conversations about parenting in general, and especially, you know, parenting here in the end times and how we support each other as leftists, you know, I think that would be great to talk about too. But let's, let's start with your book. I'm curious why you wanted to write the book, like what inspired you to write it?
Carla 03:50 It's like, intergenerational? It's a project that comes across many, many timelines. Yeah, so it's called "Trust Kids Confronting Adult Supremacy" and while stories on youth autonomy and confronting adult supremacy, oh, boy, it's really hard to pinpoint a moment. It's so it's so cool to have the privilege to reflect back in your past and you get to evoke where you are today on the past.
Brooke 04:20 Yeah, feel free to talk about all of the things that inspired you in the process.
Carla 04:24 Thanks. Yeah, I mean, I've always had a problem with hierarchy and with authority, which goes way back to when I was a little kid. I was definitely the kid who stood up to teachers who bullied kids and other parents or other adults who bullied kids, including my own, and obviously, it was meant with not always a lot of kindness, and often a lot of violence. So it's something that's always been kind of in me to be aware of adult supremacy. But really, it wasn't until I had my own child, that I had to really put the practice of youth autonomy and thinking through adult supremacy in the everyday and every night.
Brooke 05:11 I'm curious if you feel comfortable sharing the age of your child or children?
Carla 05:16 Yeah. So my oldest is 28. And my youngest is 18, the oldest is Zach, and the youngest is Uilliam, and Uilliam and I do a podcast, that's part of the Channels Zero network as well called Grounded Futures. And yeah, and Zach. Both of them wrote for the book, Uilliam did it their own chapter, their own section, and then Zach and I co wrote a piece together. Yeah, so..
Brooke 05:43 Man, that's great.
Carla 05:45 Yeah. So, you know, Zack, and I got....and my partner, we got involved in alternative education and youth liberation kind of worlds. We were like, really fortunate because we were working class family and, and I got diagnosed with lupus, like there was all these things that were making it like, well, how am I going to not send my kid to regular school. But I was fortunate to live in a city where there's a dem... that was...it was like, almost 48 years, it ran...ademocratic preschool that was publicly funded. So that meant it was free to attend, as well as a free school, and there was parent participatory, and it was, you know, it went through all different kinds of renditions, and tried all different kinds of models, and but really, at the center was and at the center was this idea of youth liberation and children, self directed sort of education styles, I, you know, through that, at the core of all my work is this notion of solidarity, like how to think about this conversation of youth autonomy and undoing adult supremacy, amidst and alongside all the other horrors of, of empire, whether it be ableism, racism, classism, and whatnot. And I really noticed that a lot of kids, you know, they don't a lot of families can opt out of school, and they can't actually do this. So, I really wanted to move the conversation away from 'school or not school,' because it just marginalizes the, the work and because it becomes siloed. And really, adult supremacy is in it's always in the room. It's, it's it is like at the core, it's at the center of all other oppressions. You know, we just keep replicating this horrible system by raising kids with internalized adults supremacy. And so yeah.
Brooke 07:41 That part of the subtitle really stuck out to me, the adult supremacy part, which, you know, sorry to interrupt you, please keep going. But I definitely want to dive more into adult supremacy discussion. But...
Carla 07:54 I mean, I think that this conversation, so I'm just gonna really get really to the heart of it. So about 12=13 years ago, I was co director of a youth run arts and activism space in Vancouver that was at the center was youth autonomy and radical politics and this intersectional praxis of working alongside other struggles and being in solidarity with them. And I was really noticing from other radicals that you know, youth liberation, youth autonomy, children's rights, all that stuff was almost always left off of the the oppression chart or pie. And so I would bring it up, and it would be like an afterthought. And they'd be like, oh, yeah, right, of course. And slowly, you know, we've seen that grow. However, what I noticed was I faced a lot of vitriol from a lot of radicals that I was privileged, that I was privileging kids and like that, all this stuff, and I was like, "Wait a minute, like, you know who's privileged is like the middle class family who moves across town to the rich neighborhood to put their kid in the better school like," no, no, no, like that's nuanced this a little bit like. So I came up with the phrase "Solidarity begins at home," which was really the orientation of this book to begin with. And if you follow it on AK Press, they often post about it calling it, "Solidarity Begins at Home," because I was really noticing that anti authority, anti authority folks particularly were like, "Except for with my children, I'm an authority." Or, you know, "Oh, Carla and her weirdness being friends with our kids," or whatever, like it just was just marginalizing the conversation, when really the issue is adult supremacy and, and, you know, I'm just a curious person. So I'm like, "Why doesn't that resonate?" Like it's something we've all experienced at different degrees. Absolutely. This is a really uneven white supremacist, colonial, racist, ableist world. But we've all experiencedi it. It's actually a place where we could connect and have a more generative conversation. And yet it just keeps getting marginalized. And so I just really had to think about how to center it more. And so, on the one hand, I'm saying "Solidarity Begins at Home." But I'm also decentering parenting in the conversation, because I think like this is just so much bigger and beyond like, parenting. It's everywhere that a young person encounters an adult, the adult supremacy world, and it's everywhere, like Malika Radway, who wrote for the book, like, and she does, "Raising Rebels" podcasts with our kids. Like they said, you know, "Adult supremacy is in every single room you're in," you can't...it's just like whiteness, you can't, right? So yeah, so I didn't feel ready to write it. I always had a kind of what's the word like, I guess it's about consent, like, I really needed it to have my kids full consent to talk about our life. And to talk about this in a way that I wanted to, especially that framing of 'solidarity begins at home.' So that's, that's the reason why I held off until I had their, you know, really, they're full consent. And, you know, different people, different adults, different parents, different radical parents write about their kids in different ways. This isn't a judgment, this was just my own ethos with my kids, right? So that's why it took 12 years. I just actually found a new Google Doc from 2012. That said, new book "Solidarity begins at home. "Listen, Adults," or something I was going to call it.
Brooke 11:41 Yeah, it sounds like you not only have their consent, but kind of their enthusiastic consent. And they both, you know, wrote for it and participated in that which, you know, what a joy to be able to do that with them.
Carla 11:54 Yeah. And my son, the oldest one did the audio book, which is really special
Brooke 11:59 Oh, wow, that's really cool. I, my daughter is 11. And we're firmly in that tween phase right now where there's both the child and the budding teenager that, that show up in her and it's a interesting age, for sure. And I just have the one. But I want to rewind slightly back to adult supremacy, to get us on the same page here. And we, you know, what does that phrase mean to you? How do you define that? How do you see that in the world?
Carla 12:35 Right? I mean, it's really, it's always evolving and changing, the more I like, learn, and like, explore and research and talk to people who are real nerds and researchers. Two of the folks who wrote for the book, Toby Rollo and Stacy Patton, really do a deep, deep look at the history, the roots of adult supremacy. And so it's, it's hard for me not to start there, because it's like, my mind is just kind of blown. You know, it really goes back to early colonization in the....in Europe. You know, we hear this from indigenous folks on, you know, on the lands we’re both on that, you know, this is not how people do kinship. This is not like the...kind of like patriarchal, heteronormative hierarchical family. It's not, you know, and that, that that's not how it is. And so, way, like it goes way back, this kind of I don't even, I can't even pinpoint it, but it definitely predates capitalism, although like it, you know, it got more entrenched during capitalism to have the house set up the way that the patriarchal family, the way it was set up, like kids had to be subjugated from their parents and the patriarchal parent was being subjugated by, you know, the whole system of capitalism, right, yeah. But it actually predates all that in it. And it goes back to early colonization. And it was by design. It was to sow seeds of control, distrust, and this idea that, I think Toby calls it protocitizenship, that children aren't fully human. They don't have any rights. You know, there's 13 states that still have paddles that can, people can still paddle in schools in the US, I don't know if you know, that and spent, you know, like, you, you will you get fined and go to jail if you beat your dog, but you won't if you beat your kid, as long as they can't see any bruises. You know, so this is like, it's ongoing, this idea that childhood is just a phase, you know, this kind of just creation of this thing that's like less than, was by design. And it's become, you know, it got more entrenched through psychology, the whole, you know, we don't even need to go into that. But even eugenics, like early eugenics was practiced on children...kind of way where children who were street involved and didn't have parents or were, you know, out of care kind of kids. They were sterilized first. Stacy Patton is a doing a book right now on the history of lynching children in the south. she had to actually go to Europe to get to the root of it. And it was practiced first on children there. So...
Brooke 15:31 Emotionally, I don't think I could handle that kind of research.
Carla 15:34 Yeah, me neither. I just want to get...this is what I said, like, I didn't have all this information like a couple of years ago. And so this isn't where I would have started the conversation. However, I used to say like that this is a Western...Euro Western colonial way of being in the world, and like the hatred of children, they have childhood and, and the violence against children is a construct within colonization. I did know that, but I didn't realize how severe it was. And so alongside the other horrific systems within colonization, I like to call it Empire because it's like a hydra, all of it, capitalism, ableism, ageism. We're still we're fighting all those battles still in use. The problem with adult supremacy is that it just keeps reenscribing itself because, yes, yeah, yes, you can see how it just, it's not that's why I'm not really I'm not a proponent of youth liberation as such. And why I talk about autonomy instead is because it's it needs to be intersectional, it needs to be intergenerational, it needs to be...we have to undo adult supremacy, we can't just focus on doing youth liberation siloed over here, because they grow into adults, and then they become adults supremacists. Right. And like, do you know what I mean? it's kind of like...it is one of...it has mobility, in terms of getting out of being the oppressed to becoming the oppressor. Not unlike class...
Brooke 17:13 So if I'm understanding it, then adult supremacy....
Carla 17:20 I could give you a definition.
Brooke 17:24 Well, let's see if, well let's see if I picked it up from that. It's the idea that adults are all and always supreme to children, who are just going through a phase and to some degree, it's acceptable to enforce that adult supremacy through violence? That's kind of from all those things.
Brooke 17:54 Yeah. And so, if I get it correctly, parental supremacy is like within the bigger circle of adult supremacy, right? Like...
Carla 17:54 Yeah, and psychological violence, physical...like all kinds of...it is a violent act. It's a colonizing of the mind and soul and body. And yeah, like, you know, the whole, the whole idea is to prepare your kid for adulthood, which is just ridiculous. Like, they are a full human already, that things need to be discovered. And they, you know, like, all of us, guidance is important. mentorships are important skill sharing is important. Presence is important. Love is important, and ultimately care, right? Yeah, but they....and they are fully human already. They are no less, no more, you know, some maybe, you know, whatever, it's, you know, it's relational. But, the idea adult supremacy is children are under developed, they're not fully human, they need to prepare for ultimate adulthood. And that is the supreme holding of what it means to be fully human, is to be an adult.
Carla 18:46 Yeah, I mean, I've always liked Bell Hooks' thing she called, she called it the patriarchal family, like, it didn't matter what gender you were, or how you configurated your family, where if there's adults, taking care of children it was a patriarchal family. And I really liked that phrasing, because I think that's a way to maybe push back against some of the what happens with some of the feminists ideas around parenting that, you know, like a woman, you know, like, I'm talking more like, I'm probably aging myself, but I'm doing more like this second, third wave of feminism where it was, you know more about their rights than it was their children's because they were so oppressed under the patriarch of the family or whatever. And yes, and you know, Bell Hooks came along and was like, you're a patriarch too within that adult supremacy. Yeah, yeah.
Brooke 20:02 So, um, we talked about the, you know, physical psychological abuse factor of that adult supremacy. I'm curious what other ways you would point out that it manifests itself in society...families and, you know, adults in general, and maybe there's some, you know, insidious ways that we don't even think of, you know, that wouldn't immediately come to mind that you could teach us about here.
Carla 20:28 I mean, it's everywhere. You know, I, I'm not on the socials at all. I left fully back in the spring, but when I was, I was constantly asking my fellow podcasters, and journalists and thinkers and opinionerrs, to please stop calling the most vile human beings on this earth childish, and children and toddlers. It's right there. You know, that is where it's at. Can you... and people would be like, "What do you mean?" And I would be like "Change 'child' to any other group. Woman..." and then their eyes, they're like, "Oh, my God, I'd be canceled. If I called Trump a whiny woman," or whatever. Put any group in there. Right. I don't really want to go down that road. But, you see what I mean. So that's a one that I have to...We just actually, Grounded Futures, just re-released it because it's not stopping. Right? Because so, that's a really, really huge way. It's all those biases, right, those social biases. So, like I mentioned earlier, I was the co director of a youth run arts and activism space, that was free to use, it had a lot of anarchist kind of ethos running around it. It was co founded. It was founded by six youth and Matt Hearn, back in 2001. And my son was on the collective and we did a whole lot of cool stuff. But it was incredible how many adult organizers would email me and ask if they could come in and give a workshop on how to run a space. Or how to run a collective. I'd be like, I think you all could come down and learn something from this youth collective, but that's pretty like a bias, right? Like, I was like, this is the most functional club I've ever worked with, like I've, you know, been in a lot of collectives like, I don't think age has anything to do with it. It's about like some other things going on around power. You know, like, I...Yeah, so there's this idea that they were...it was flaky, and that they didn't know what they were doing. And so that was just another bias, an ageist....it's, it's just terrible. Yeah, I watched it just go down all the time. Another storieas an anecdote...I'm sure you have many....My kid when they were really, my youngest, when they were really little, and we'd go grocery shopping. And they were really good at picking out avocados and fruit. And one of the people working in the store, like slapped their hand and said, "No, you're not allowed to touch fruit." I was like, first of all, don't ever touch my kid. Second of all, they're better at it than me. You know, like I just, you know, like, it's that kind of that kind of like, they just....the person couldn't even...it was just so reflexive. Like, they couldn't even imagine that this five year old knew what they were doing. Stuff like that. It's just constant. It's just everywhere. And I'm sure you you can, you know....and I do it myself. And I want to say, because I know I when I talk about this, it can come off like I have it figured out. I confront my adult supremacy and particularly my power every single day in my relationship with my youngest, like, every single day it comes up in subtle and overt ways because of maybe I'm tired or and the more we get, the more we uncover it, the more we see. The more we get into the like, the nuance of power, like the nuance of like persuasion that you know, like that I hold, the more I'm like, "Dang it!" Yeah, yeah.
Brooke 24:19 There's another example I just thought of, too, that I think often crops up around this time of year with people visiting family so often. The hugging example. You know, not making your kid go hug somebody because he's "Oh, you know, hug me." Even if it's you, the parent, like "Hug me goodbye." You know, don't make don't make your kids have that physical interaction with another human being.
Carla 24:46 Thanks for bringing that up. It's like it's so true. Like kids live...like especially little kids...live a extremely nonconsensual life. From bedtime, to food, to like touch right, and every thing in between. And parents, you know, there's a lot of nuance in that conversation around parents and parenting, and but it's real. All right. And, you know, people are always trying to do workshops on teaching consent, and I'm always like, just gonna fail if you're not living with your kids.
Brooke 25:18 Yeah.
Carla 25:19 It's just gonna fail. Like it's so embodied, like, children just live such a nonconsensual life in lots and lots of ways because of this, because of adult supremacy. So yeah, thanks for bringing up...getting right to the right to the point. And, you know, it's interesting because thinking of parenting like my...sorry, my, my youngest is Uilliam, but we often call him Liam, that I do the podcast with, so he does a lot of the social media for Grounded Futures. And he often feels a bit gaslit by like, kind of the algorithm that comes through that one around like radical parenting and anarchists and stuff around, like on so called holidays on how cool it's going with their kids in that and because then they go on theirs where it's very much mostly trans and LGBTQ+ youth, ranging from 16 to like 25. And all his friends and all his mutual's are in trauma on that day because of nonconsensual hugs, from having to mask, from having from being misgendered, from not being believed that they're trans or I can even be, are non binary, or whatever, the whole gamut, right? And, and I hadn't even really thought about, like how algorithms work. And I was like, well, that's really hard. And he's saying, "I'm not saying that those radical things aren't happening that I'm seeing on Grounded Futures. It's just like, you can get in your bubble and think everything's better. And then you go to this other thing, and you're like, "Ah, the youth are actually not doing well, right now. Overall." Yeah.
Brooke 27:02 Yeah, I've often been told as a parent that I have raised a very rude child, because, and I'm not going to try and pretend that I've been some sort of perfect, you know, no supremacy, children autonomy kind of thing. I'm human. I'm not, I'm still working on it. But, that was something that I noticed and chose to do differently early on in her life about not making her hug people or touch people kissing people goodbye. And even, you know, not necessarily forcing her to say goodbye to somebody. You know, I did a lot of giving her the option, you know, "We're going to leave now, would you like to say goodbye to Grandma?" or what have you. And so as she's gotten older, you know, some of those things that I didn't force her to do, she kind of didn't learn, and now she's old enough to where she understands politeness. You know, and I can suggest, you know, it's more polite in this situation, to say goodbye to this person, you know, and she can still choose then how she wants to do it. She can understand the social dynamic of why she's making that choice.
Carla 28:11 That's beautiful.
Brooke 28:12 You get accused of being a bad parent, or a rude parent or, or whatever it is, because you don't force your kids do these social things.
Carla 28:20 I can't believe how many adults came through the Thistle that would say, "Oh, the Thistle youth are rude. And I was like, "You really have a hard time with like sharing your power, hey?" Like, I just would call it what I saw. Like, actually, what I saw was like, you actually want to come in and have kids, like, passively listen to you. And be polite, so called, you know, nice. But, they're like, they're not buying what you're selling. And they're like, "I don't want to do this." And you're thinking they're rude and entitled. I was like, This is what youth autonomy looks like. This is what sharing power looks like. This is what getting out of young people's way looks like. Yeah, I have a really similar thing with my kids. And I, my youngest, like really cared about relationships to the point where like, we've been unpacking this, where it was all overt, but they they took the social niceties on really young, but they had it all figured out. They're like, "At so and so's house, I have to like say 'please,' and 'thank you.' At so and so's house, I get to eat whatever I want, but I'm not allowed to swear. And I just listen because I want to have these friendships." I was like, wow, that's really cool. And also please don't mask. [emotions]
Brooke 29:33 Isn't that so challenging?
Carla 29:35 Yeah, it's a hard one.
Brooke 29:37 Yeah, and mine lives in two households that are you know, very extreme opposites.
Carla 29:42 Right.
Brooke 29:42 So, the things she's allowed to say and do in this household are much more, you know, open and she's got a lot more autonomy and authority to do things and then she has to, you know, in that house, in order to fit in and not you know, not make waves, she feels like she has to you know, dial it back and behave in certain ways. And that's hard to see.
Carla 30:05 It's also practice for life. I mean, you know, until we deal with this, I mean, you know? It's a hard one.
Brooke 30:12 Yeah. Yeah. At Least for the world that we currently live in.
Carla 30:15 Yeah. Yeah.
Brooke 30:17 But yeah, while we're talking about like the liberation of children, I am curious if you would like vision with me, what would relationships look like between parents and children, or society and children if we were treating them in ways that were autonomous, and, you know, honoring them as the human beings that they are?
Carla 30:38 Oh, I'd be dreaming. And here's why. Because everything would slow the F down, like so much, like, first and foremost, because there'd have to be a lot more or listening, a lot of questions. And that...I used to, I used to call it the friendship bar, how I trained myself, like, supported myself in my learning and making mistakes with my youngest was like, and I think, John Holt, this a John Holt quote, like never, you know, "Never say to a young person, what you wouldn't say to the person you hold in highest regard." It's a really good bar, it really, it really is. I can't...you know, it seems, you know, a lot of people throw quotes and people go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah," but I can't express it enough how much it has helped a lot of other fellow co conspirators who want to undo adult supremacy when I share this with them, and they're like, "Right!" You know, and I think we can do this with some of our closest friends too. Or some of our, you know, maybe if we have some hard times with a partner, like we can be a little bit more snarky with them than we would with somebody we hold in high regard. So like, I mean, I think it's just a good practice across the board to like, figure out what is the most generative, you know, responsible, trusting way to come into relationship with anybody? And yeah, and one of the things we really strive for in our house is this notion of solidarity. My oldest said this on a talk about the book the other night, I hadn't really...it was really nice to hear the feedback, but he's like, you know, "it was always really transparent, that this was the goal at our house, that we were in solidarity with each other." And this is why I use the term solidarity because and, you know, this changes based on their age because they can, you know, they're littler bodies, they have littler nervous systems and stuff, right? But like, it's not...I'm not a child centered home, either. I think that's when we can get into some weird reinscribing individualism. We're very much a relationship centered home no matter what the configuration is, even when we've had roommates and whatnot. And like, it's like, just everything's transparent and slows down. Like, you know, like, food, all the conversations, bedtime, sleeping, care. I had, I had a chronic illness for the big chunk of my children's lives, that's pretty much healed, but that that involved a lot of solidarity and a lot of care going in all directions, right. Like I I used to joke that I parented from bed. Ha ha ha But it was true, right? So yeah, I would like to hear some of your dreams, but like, I just right away, there'd be a lot of listening, a lot of curiosity, a lot of play, a lot of tantrums. But we'd got to have them too. You know?
Brooke 33:28 Yeah. Yeah, the thing that stands out to me the most, there is the thing about slowing down, because that is definitely such a huge difference I notice, you know, between the way I would sometimes do things, and my friends with children of the same age, or what I see, you know, now when I'm looking around at different parents and what they're doing that, yeah,you have to engage more with the child. It's not....there's the the jacket debate, right, That you have with little kids, because they never want to put on a frickin jacket. And you have some parents that are like, "Well, they need this jacket, and I'm just going to shove their little bodies into it." And, you know, they have the debate once and they're like, "I'm not gonna fight with a three year old about this jacket." And then they just force it onto their kid every time. Whereas, I mean, you can sit down and talk about that more, you know, "I think you should put on the jacket because this" or you know, "Let's step outside and feel the cold outside and see if you change your mind," and, and then ultimately, also having to honor what they land on, you know? The kid says, "No, I'm not gonna put on a jacket." That's, you know, it's a slower process and then at the end, letting go of that final bit of, you know, authority or autonomy. Like maybe you still take the jacket to school with them, you know, they have to carry it perhaps, but you don't force them to put it on, but it is slower. So your life has to allow for time for that. And you know, of course under capitalism, the the empires you say that we are in, it makes it so hard to do that and then especially if you have multiple children that are maybe all small at the same time, you know, you've got three of them arguing with you about maybe three different things all at once. It's tough.
Carla 35:11 Yeah. I mean, and this is why like "Trust Kids", I just want to go on the record isn't a parenting handbook at all. Like if...the essays are stories on youth autonomy, people...youths have written for it. Adults have written about their experience growing up in youth liberation environment, to more theoretical pieces, but and then a lot about confronting adult supremacy. So, it's a book for adults, for sure, and about us doing this work together. But it's not a parenting handbook, because at the core for me, Liam always says this on the podcast, like he's like, you know, "People often ask my mom for advice. And she's always like, "I can't give you advice, because I don't know your child, and they don't know what they need. Like, if you asked them? Like, it's just like, you know, that's my advice. Ask your kid."" I love the coat example. Because it's so you know, like, you're late, you have to pick up your, you know, you have to do the thing, you got to do all the things. And my kids are like the opposite. My oldest, always over dresses, and I used to always have to carry his coat halfway, and then the other ones the other way. So, I just, you know, it's back to like, I think what my Zack said the other night on that call, or that show, the episode, or whatever we did, the public, the book launch at Firestorm was that it was always just really transparent. Like, he never felt like, confused, but what was happening, so I was just always really real, I'd be like, "Dude, you always are hot within 10 minutes, like, can you not wear like 50 coats, oh my God, and because I don't...physically can't carry it, like, I don't have enough strength. So we need to like figure," but that took time, like that kind of negotiating conversation and being in solidarity with my physical body and not being able to carry the coat in 10 minutes in the walk. And him like wanting to like pile on the three sweaters and the coat. He's still like that. You know, like, it was like, yeah...
Brooke 37:04 Yeah, as you just pointed out, there are times when, like, you're running late, so you don't necessarily have the time to take to do that. And then, you know, you need to know for yourself as a parent, you know, what, what you want to do in that situation. How you want to handle that. Do you want to be later and take the time to do it? You know, if you want to honor your principles to never shove this child into the jacket, you know, it's it's again, it's not it's not easy. It takes some practice and some forethought.
Carla 37:33 Or let them go without a jacket, you know, let them experience it.
Brooke 37:36 Right. That's what I did.
Carla 37:39 Yeah, exactly.
Brooke 37:40 She got cold sometimes.
Carla 37:41 I mean, yeah. And even me as a kid like, my you know, so called autonomy was also known as that word 'neglect,' you know, so like, no one around ever, so I was like, I often in the winter would have like no socks on and I'd be running around and like a tank top and..because I early years and northern Alberta, and then down here in the Pacific Northwest, I had like thought it was like balmy, warm you know, and so when my youngest was like, "I don't like wearing like, big coats, and like, as a kid, he would run into the ocean at five in December. And I was like, right, I was like that, you know, also, it's back to that, believing that when they tell you, you know. That's what trust really is, is believing people's experience and perspective. And when they say "I don't...I get hot, I get really hot." And you're like looking at the temperature like, I feel like you're gonna get cold, but you just gotta let go.
Brooke 38:39 Yeah, that's a really difficult component. I'm curious, you know, how you would respond to somebody who, you know, maybe wants to point out that, well, you know, kids, they aren't good at looking that far ahead, right? Because their prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed. They are going to be good at seeing that they are going to need this jacket down the line or, you know, whatever the the thing is, that they, you know, maybe haven't developed the capacity to comprehend. And that would mean maybe their argument for why you 'have to' have to in air quotes force them into the jacket.
Carla 39:13 I mean, again, just Yeah, I mean, again, just being I mean, it's, I like this, I like this example, because it's not life and death. But, you know, like, you know, the compromises is that I need you to like, throw an extra coat in your backpack, or I'm going to carry one. Well, I you know, this is what care looks like. I'm going you know, we're going to be together so I'm going to throw an extra coat in the in the car. You don't have to wear it, or whatever. Like I just think just being real like. Back to what I said earlier about, like, how would I...How would I talk to my partner about this? Who was, who's being ridiculous, in my opinion, and like, it'd be like, "What are you doing? Like it's like snowing and super cold and you are wearing just like a hoodie," um, Yeah, we would just have a real conversation about maybe some...infuse it with some humor. But yeah, when they're really, really little like, I mean, you know, I definitely when you have like two kids, like, I would have to pick up my oldest from wherever he was, you know, at 11 years old across town and then the youngest at 2 doesn't want to like, leave where...they didn't like transitions, so didn't want to leave the park and whatever. It's like this....Yeah, there's a there's a, there's a lot of tears. And it's just like, what I got good at was realizing that, oh, he needs like, really clear messaging, like 10 minutes before, eight minutes before, five minutes before, and then they stopped like the the tears he...like he just...I had to like, cipher, it decipher it, you know, it could be like, "Oh, okay. Right." Because, you know, he was just so in the moment, so present, which is also what I think the world would be like if we had less adult supremacy, or none. Would be, we'd all be way more present with each other. And maybe wouldn't worry so much about wearing an extra coat because life wouldn't be so serious.
Brooke 39:15 Yeah, that makes sense. Another thing I was curious about is, you know, we're in the end times now, sort of, you know, we're seeing the the collapse of capitalism, a rerise of fascism, you know, societal crumbles, there's kind of a lot going on. And, do you feel like, I mean, this topic of adult supremacy is, is probably always important. But is it more important now that we're in these, you know, sort of end times? Does it? Do we need that even more as society collapses? Or? I'm just curious what you... you see them saying?
Carla 42:05 Yeah, no, no, I think like, I think I would pivot just a little slight pivot. Because what I'm...I mean the book, people who have read the book, really do notice that the book has an intergenerational scope throughout it, is that yeah, we need like, we need to recover, reimagine, and grow what it means to be in family and kinship together, like we need larger family, like, we wouldn't be...even like the story about the coat and that would be so much more manageable if we lived in a more multi generational, larger community, right, in the way we're meant to live, so and that is connected to adult supremacy because the nuclear family, it's all connected around, like controlling, subjugating majority of the population so that people could profit more, right, that or have more land whether, you know, predates really does predate capitalism. So, yes, I think that, you know, to quote Donna Haraway, "Making kin is the single most important thing we need to be doing right now." But we need to think about that cross species, across bloodline, beyond bloodlines, and way beyond borders. And for it's like it, we need it for our survival, and ultimately, to thrive more. I thrive way more when there's way more other humans around all ages sharing the load of whatever it is, like nerding out together, doing a puzzle playing, cooking, cleaning, doing work, making income, you know, sharing, sharing the load sharing the joys, I think it's really connected to the end times that it's more urgent than ever, but it's a reclaiming, you know, it's a recovery. It's not a...we don't have to imagine it, we know how to do it. You know, it's connected to mutual aid and webs of care and all that good stuff. But it's, you know, like, I live in a city so I don't have to prep prep, you know, I don't have...I don't live off in the boonies, you know, I don't have to worry about having a generator and stuff and I think like it was, you know, I'd like to think of myself more like mycelium like if a disaster strikes, I'm going to be like mycelium, I'm just gonna go and offer support and care and there's going to be plenty and people are going to show up because we know that in disasters, right? But if we had more, just more multi generational, multi species kin and families, that would even be better. I don't know If that answered your question, but, yes, you know, I want I want to abolish adults supremacy. From day one, I think it's always been a terrible thing. It's definitely had times when it was worse for some kids more than others still is worse for some kids more than others. But yes, it's connected to webs...
Brooke 42:13 Yeah, how that ties into what we need with the collapse of society here, the collectivism in the broader webs of kinship are unimportant. And eliminating muddled supremacy is going to be happy to be part of that. I really liked the way you frame that there that it's, we're not building this new thing, we're going back to, you know, what we used to do. And really, I think, fundamentally, how we're wired as well, you know, the research indicates we are very wired for community and kinship and connection and all of that. So it's getting back to our truer selves to be to be together in those ways. And then that does lead me into kind of the last broad topic that I wanted to consider with you, which is, you know, you and I are both parents, so we can talk about our experiences and what we need and so forth. But for people who aren't parents, don't have kids of their own that want to support their friends who are parents and, you know, help, you know, revolutionize parenting here in this adult supremacy and build the kinship, what, you know, what kind of things would you say to them? That would be? What can they do to help? What can they do to to learn more? And to help build that as the non parent?
Carla 46:31 Yeah, I think if you feel...well, first of all, do your own work on undoing your adult supremacy and like really go deep into like, all the places like you're probably really...every adult out there has dealt with it. And so you will probably have some internalized adult supremacy and some trauma and hurt around it and different degrees varying degrees. So first and foremost, like, just look at it, look at it. Notice how you show up for young people if if you are in young people's lives. And you know, listen more, just listen more, listen way, way more to young people. I think like, you know, when parents write about this topic, there's this like paradox of centering ourselves. It's like, you know, but this is, this is one of the reasons why I didn't want to do the book for a long time. But I was up for it. I was up for it, because it's important. And I intentionally invited in a lot of lot of people who aren't parents to write for the book, because I think it's really crucial. We cannot do this alone as the parents, like we just can't, like we need everybody, we need everybody on this, to undo this like massive, massive like bias. It is still one of the largest ones that's ignored. I am really rare. We are really rare. I'm not talking about radical parenting. I'm talking about people who notice adult supremacy, and like point it out. Like, it's a small, isolating community. I often feel really alone, I feel really gaslit. I have a crew of people we talk, live globally think, unfortunately. But it's just how it is. Like I'm talking about this nuance of like noticing adult supremacy. I have a lot of people who do radical parenting. I know a lot of people who are into revolutionary mothering. I know a lot of people who are into like school abolition and radical education and pedagogy stuff and use liberation, but not all of them connect to this larger systemic piece.
Brooke 48:27 Yeah, it's kind of a Venn diagram that some of those overlap into it, but they're not fully...
Carla 48:33 Yeah. And so, I just ask more people to really tune into it. Notice it. Call it out when you see it. It's all the frickin time. Like, you know, the other you know, disability justice activists and organizers and their allies have done a such a great job of changing the use of those words in media to describe the horrors and the vile people. But, there's two that still really are used constantly and one is saneism. Like so calling someone like Trump insane is just an insult to anybody who has madness.
Brooke 49:16 Yeah.
Carla 49:17 And because like, I don't know about you, but the mad folks in my life are nothing like Trump. And the like, yeah, some pathos going on for sure. But, like, you know. And then the other one is, you know, the childish toddler and just call it you know, just call up ask people to stop, to not do it. And comedians are the worst and you know, the other one is, I guess, you know, I mean, it's still okay for comedians to make...to not be so great about body politics, especially fat politics, like fat body stuff shaming, like that one still can pass a little bit, but it's it's also getting more people are you know, due to organizers and activists and those of us who push back against that, but the children one is the big one. Sanism and childism and are the two. So, if you're a fellow adult out there, a person who is not a young person and you're on the socials and you have a platform, join, join, join, join us in inviting folks to stop doing that. Because, you know, my kid, like, he was like, four...I don't know what it was, like 15 or something when Trump was first on the presidency stuff, and he was noticing it all the time. He's like those...every adult who calls him a child in front of their kids, their kids must like internalize some hatred. Like they must look at Trump. Look at their parent. Look at Trump. Look at the parent and go "Wow, my parents claim this really awful evil person that they clearly hate a child. They must hate me too." Yeah, I was like, Thank you for saying that. Like, my, my brain went, "Right?" Like that is like, oh, like I cried. It was so hard to hear that, like, you know, he was 14 at the time. And he that's what he saw, or 12 or something. And I was like, "Right. You're right." Yeah. I don't think it's intentional. I don't think the parent doing that is thinking they're doing that.
Brooke 51:25 Oh, of course. Of course. Yeah. If someone were to replace it with a word like immature, do you think that still has the same connotation and problem?
Carla 51:35 Yeah, I have a list. I have, I can share I we we put it up. I was telling you, we put it up. I used to....I have it's called "Trying to find a way to describe a billionaire, a politician, a fascist: Here's a list of words to use instead of calling them a child toddler or childish." And because we really worked on not using sanist language as well. So, careless, mean, rash, hot headed, imput. I have a speech impediment. So sometimes I can't say words. Manipulative. I have speech apraxia. Manipulative, entitled, jerk, foolish, impulsive, irresponsible, imprudent, ill advised, greedy, violent, liar, asshole, shitbag, racist, fascist, reckless, ridiculous. And there's so many more. You know, like, Just say what you mean? What do you know, I had friends go, "But you know, I don't know what to say." I'm like, "Well, what are you trying to get at?" "Like, oh, I'm trying to say that they're like a jerk." I'm like, "Just call them a jerk."
Brooke 52:36 Yeah, that's a good one. Shitbag is a pretty good one.
Carla 52:39 Yeah, it's my favorite. Yeah, it's like, it's a good one. Let's try that.
Brooke 52:45 You know, there's an activist here in town where I live that is very conscious of ableist language, and including, like mental health things. So like the word 'sane' or 'insane,' for instance, but also, some of the ones that go along with that, like 'crazy,' I think maybe 'foolish' might be in there. And I was in a, I think, a Facebook group with them. And if someone would use one of those words, they would, they had kind of a little template that they would say is, you know, you know, "Here's this word that you chose to use. Here's a little bit of like, where it comes from, or like, what, you know, the, the sort of negative history of it. And then here's a list of like, antonyms that are not, you know, ableist or sexist, or, you know, body shaming, or et cetera, et cetera, that you could use instead of that word." Yeah.
Carla 53:32 Did they also point out childism?
Brooke 53:36 Yeah, and I don't I don't remember that one. But this, what you were just saying that, like, I hadn't thought about childish as being one of those words. I don't think I use it a lot in general. But, you know, I'm gonna add that to my vocabulary.
Carla 53:50 Yeah, like so or they're like, "the sniffling little baby?" Like they do that a lot, right? Like, comedians and sort of YouTubers and stuff that are talking about, you know, the ruling class. So they, you know...
Brooke 54:06 You can call them whiny without having to say, 'whiny baby,' you can just like so they're like whiny.
Carla 54:10 They're punching up and punching down at the exact same time with that, you know, definitely go after those who are horrible, fascist and racist, you know, but stop calling them 'children' and 'toddlers' and yeah, yeah.
Brooke 54:29 No, I really like that, you know. The fellow that, you know, did all the work. Does all the work to point out the ableist language, you know, definitely had got me thinking in the last couple of years about other words that you know, maybe tie back to something like that and so I'm glad that you shared you know, this additional language that then I can work on and be aware of and improve.
Carla 54:53 Yeah, it's, it's always we're always working on it and learning and you know, like I the ableist language off, you know, I remember, it really came into the fore around 2009--2010. Like it really, you know, in radical communities like we were really aware of first, the more physical ableist the stuff and then it moved into body mind, but I still saw the sanism stuff like, you know, it still was okay to call someone like Trump insane. Like, maybe not 'crazy,' but you could call him insane. So I've been also being loud about that one as well.
Brooke 55:31 Interesting. Yeah, yeah. And that's kind of where my question came from about, you know, well could I just call them immature instead? I figured that was going to be a 'no,' but I'm really glad you have that list to share. And I might see, maybe, could email that list and I can see if we can get that posted up.
Carla 55:46 Sure and it's at on Grounded Futures. We're on both Twitter and Instagram, just at Grounded Futures. It's a platform, multi art platform created by youth and women and gender nonconforming folks.
Brooke 56:03 Cool. Well, while you're plugging things, are there other things that you want to plug, obviously your book, you got to replug that for us.
Carla 56:11 Yeah, you can get "Trust Kids" over at AK Press or wherever you buy books. There's an audio book and a Kindle or whatever it is. And I also have a project called Listening House Media, where we do we do mostly audiobooks, but we also publish political pamphlets called Lowercase. You can check that out listeninghousemedia.com. I'm doing the audio book for my other book called "Joyful Militancy" right now, which is really exciting. I just want to put that out there. Because I know people wanted it to be an audio book, since it came out five years ago. And so that's really exciting.
Brooke 56:49 Is that also available from AK?
Carla 56:51 Yeah, it won't probably be out until like, January or February. But yeah, and then GoundedFutures.com is where you can find a lot of my other works. Yeah.
Brooke 57:02 Great, well, Carla, I really appreciate you being on the pod today and talking with us about parenting and ending adult supremacy. To our listeners, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoy our podcast, please give it a like, drop a comment or a review. Subscribe to us if you haven't already. These things make the algorithms that rule our world offer our show to more people. This podcast is produced by the anarchist publishing collective Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. You can connect with us on Twitter @TangledWild and also on Instagram. If you check out our website tangledwilderness.org you'll discover we have a new book available for preorder. It's called "Escape from Incel Island" written by the one and only Margaret Killjoy. If you preorder it nowj, you get a color poster with your copy when they ship in February. The work of Strangers is made entirely possible by our Patreon supporters. Honestly, we couldn't do any of it without your help. So if you want to become a supporter, check out patreon.com/strangersInatangledwilderness. Yes, it's a long one that's patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. There are cool benefits at various support tiers. For instance, if you support the collective at $10 a month, one of your benefits is getting 40% off of everything on our website, including if you want to preorder Margaret's new book, and we'd like to give a specific shout out to some of our most supportive Patreon supporters, including Hoss dog, Michaiah, Chris, Sam, Kirk, Eleanor, Jenipher, Staro, Kat J., Chelsea, Dana, David, Nicole, Mikki, Paige, SJ, Shawn, Hunter, Theo, Boise Mutual Aid, Melissia, Paparouna, and Aly, thanks so much for listening
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Brooke, Casandra, and Margaret talk about some laws that the ATF just imposed and how you might soon be a felon, some bizarre tax proposals that have been in the works for the last quarter of a century, and check in our old friend, the Colorado River in This Month in the Apocalypse.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Casandra is just great and can be found at Strangers doing awesome layouts, and Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Hopefully will come out Friday, Feb. 24th
This Month in the Apocalypse: Jan. 2023
Margaret 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live like the world is dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm one of your today's hosts, Margaret killjoy, and with me are also Brooke and Casandra. How are you too?
Brooke 00:25 Hello.
Casandra 00:26 Good.
Margaret 00:28 Joining me in the background, hopefully that we can't hear, is my dog, Rintrah, scratching at the carpet. So, this is one of the This Month in the Apocalypse episodes, as you probably noticed based on the title of it, which was This Month in the Apocalypse, and it is for January 2020-- whatever year it is now. Three? Are we at three. It's 2020; It's part three. And this show is a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the podcast brought up about
Jingle 01:03 what's up y'all I'm Pearson host of coffee with comrades. Coffee with comrades is rooted in militant joy. Our hope is to cultivate a warm and inviting atmosphere like walking into your favorite coffee shop to sit down with some of your close friends and share a heart to heart conversation. New episodes premiere every Tuesday, so be sure to smash that subscribe button wherever you get your podcast so that you never miss an episode. We are proud to be a part of the Channel Zero network.
Margaret 01:56 And this show is a proud member of the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, sort of network, publisher thing. Here's a jingle for another show on this network or publisher. Boop boop boop boop, boop.
Casandra 02:13 Since I don't have this yet, are you just gonna make one up right now?
Margaret 02:19 You know, I think we might have jingles, but I'll make one up anyway. Do you like nerd shit? Are you a fucking loser? Do you spend more of your time thinking about the way that character classes in Dungeons and Dragons relate to the current meta of whatever game system you play? Do you know more about what I'm talking about than me right now? Then, you might like an Anarcho Geek Power Hour, which is a new show from Strangers in the Tangled Wilderness where we talk about nerd shit. The first episode is up already and there might be more, I don't know how, I'm not the one making them. First episodes is talking about all about that show Andor and there's gonna be a bunch of other shows that talk about other shows. If you're a fucking nerd and know what the word THACO means.
Casandra 03:11 Wait, I'm a nerd and I don't know what that means.
Margaret 03:13 I know it's a second edition Dungeon & Dragons thing. It's actually an are you an older millennial or Gen Xer, I think is the actual gatekeeping I just did there by accident. Really just ruining everything. It means "To hit armor class zero." What I
Casandra 03:28 I started playing with third edition.
Brooke 03:33 I have another new podcast idea to pitch to y'all. But we don't have to do it during This Month.
Margaret 03:38 Okay, well, now this is an actual jingle. This...it actually exists. Okay. And that's the end of the jingle ba bop, bop, bop bop.
Margaret 03:53 And we're back. Thanks, to the regular show called Live Like the World is Dying. I do too many podcasts. I'm gonna fuck this up at some point. Welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. Today, the cool person we're talking about is at the end of the world.
Brooke 04:14 This is what I get for declining to do the intro, isn't it? This is my reward?
Margaret 04:19 Yeah. Brooke was like, "I'm tired." And I was like, I'm not. I'm wired on fake energy. Which, isn't even caffeine. I don't even drink caffeine. So what we're going to talk about today is we're talking about a bunch of different stuff. The main topic that I have to talk about today. Have y'all ever heard of this agency that thinks is in charge of us? It's called the government.
Brooke 04:44 Vaguely vaguely familar with it. Yeah.
Margaret 04:47 I think different geographical locations have different gangs that have gotten together and declared themselves in charge. And they all use the word government once they get bigger than the word gang. The United States federal government, which is the name of the largest gang operating in the territory of central North America has a has a subgroup and they are committed to, you'd think that they'd be really cool, because their name is Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. So, it sounds like fun, right? I mean, actually, these things don't go well together and the middle one mostly just murders you. Actually, all three of them are...Okay, I see why there's a regulating body that people set up. But the ATF are notorious for being kind of...I don't know a government body that comes after you, if you like, do things that they decide that they don't like. And they like to be very mercurial about that. And on January 13th, they announced a new rule that will turn millions of Americans into felons in 120 days, so. Rintrah is really concerned about everyone's gun rights. So, I have a very complicated relationship with guns. I, you know, as people know, I use them sometimes, and I carry them and have ever since I got doxxed, by the far right. And I believe that community defense is very important. I'm also however, very critical of a lot of things about guns. So, I just want to like preface. Before I talk about guns for a whole fucking chunk of this episode, I want to say that I believe very strongly that if your firearm is not on you, at any given moment, it needs to be locked up. And this is something that used to be more abstract for me and is not abstract anymore. And and I'm going to be on about this for a long ass time. That is the safe way, if you are carrying a firearm, you're probably doing so because you want you or your community to be safer and or better fed. And if you don't lock your guns up, when you're not holding on to them, you are not making your community safer, you're making your community less safe. And that is the kind of balance that everyone needs to have at all times if they choose to carry firearms, and if it fucking matters. So, that has nothing to do with the ATF. Because....
Casandra 07:25 I was preparing myself for it to be a rule about keeping guns locked up.
Margaret 07:28 No, it has nothing to do with guns locked up. So y'all ever heard of the NFA? Or tax stamps? This is like, gun law bullshit?
Brooke 07:41 Well, nope.
Margaret 07:42 The National Firearms Act was passed in....And I'll cut to the chase, and then I'll go back and tell you the history. So there's this thing, where you can take a firearm, an AR style firearm is the most common gun by a substantial margin in the United States, as far as I understand at least rifle, and you can, if you have a shorter barrel on it, there's two different classifications, there's a short barreled rifle, which is illegal without specific and ATF approval, which I'll get to why that's actually bullshit shortly. And second, or you can have it be a pistol. And instead of putting a stock on it, you can put something called a pistol brace, which is originally designed so that people who have like, less mobility or missing a limb or things like that can successfully use this style of firearm. And these are fairly new objects, you have something called AR pistols, and they're very common. They're very popular. The ATF estimates that three to 7 million pistol braces have sold in the past 10 years since pistol braces came on the market in 2013. And when they first came on the market, it's okay, it's some loophole bullshit. Mostly, I mean, you can use it as is intended. Well, you could use it as is marketed, which is for being able to fire with one hand in a more stabilized way. Or you can use it as people tend to use it, which is to be able to shoulder a pistol, and so fire more accurately with something that is classified legally differently.
Brooke 09:19 Makes sense.
Margaret 09:20 Yeah. But before they like went ahead and like marketed this thing, they went and checked in 2013. They were like, "Hey, is this chill, ATF? Can we make this thing and sell it?" And the ATF was like, "Yeah," and then they went back and forth a couple times. By 2017, not only could you sell it, but it was also legal for people to shoulder a pistol in this way. And that that would not make you a felon by shooting this gun that you own legally.
Casandra 09:48 What are the concerns like why? Why wouldn't it be a good idea or legal?
Margaret 09:54 There's literally...there's fundamentally none, but we'll get...Okay. So I'll get to the where short barreled rifles come from as a classification. Okay, so and then on January 13, the ATF ruled that this is not true that this is not a pistol. If you have a pistol brace on an AR pistol, it is now a short barreled rifle. And this is on some level a reasonable thing, right? Because they are short barreled rifles, that's what they are. You, you shoulder them, you shoot them. Whatever, I don't, someone's gonna get really mad at me about this. But, we were all like, wink, wink, nudge nudge, I never fucking came anywhere near one of these things, because I was like this is gonna get...this is gonna go badly. So I never got one, right? Because it was perfectly legal. But now everyone has 120 days to either register the item with the government, destroy it, or turn it into the ATF, or put a longer barrel on the gun. And the thing that's really messy about this, is that they told people that this was fine. This was good. And everyone tried to cross their t's and dot their i's, which isn't what you're supposed to do. But that's what they tried to do. And and now basically, they like, you have to turn them in or you're in a lot of trouble. It's a 10 year. If you break the NFA it's a ten year felony. It's a 10 year felony. And if you're a felon, you can never use firearms, again legally in the United States. Which if you're the kind of person to collect firearms is a fairly major impact, besides of course, the 10 years that you might lose off your life.
Casandra 11:28 Wait, so sorry. I'm not familiar with any of this. So short barreled rifles are disallowed?
Margaret 11:36 Correct.
Casandra 11:36 And they reclassified this other thing as a short barrelled rifle?
Margaret 11:41 Yeah. And it's just this incredibly popular thing. And it's mostly....
Casandra 11:47 I didn't catch that short barraled rifles were disallowed, and was like it's just a classification, what matters?
Brooke 11:51 Yeah, no, it's confusing.
Margaret 11:55 So, the reason that short barreled rifles are disallowed is leftover nonsense. In 1934, the federal government was like, we want people to not really have guns in the US anymore, if at all possible. There's an amendment in the Constitution that prevents that from happening. So they were like, alright, well, we'll make it really hard. So, they passed this thing were called the the NFA, the National Firearms Act, where you have, you have to pay a $200 tax, you have to get buy a tax stamp. it's just a thing that says I paid $200, which was about $4,000 at the time. Equivalently. They didn't actually write into the law that this would escalate with inflation. So it's still $200 if you want an NFA iteam. And they specifically they were like, we want all the stuff that's used for crime by evil gangsters. So, they wanted to get rid of machine guns, which is honestly,reasonable. They wanted to get rid of pistols. And like all handguns, were going to be illegal. And then they were like, well, if we make our handguns illegal, then people are just going to chop chop down their their little rifle or shotgun, and they're going to suddenly have a pistol, right? So, we'll make short barreled rifles and short barreled shotguns also illegal, or things that you have to register with the government and pay a hefty tax stamp for. Then some people were like, but we have this thing called the Second Amendment. You can't outlaw these guns. So pistols got knocked off of it, but they didn't knock off short barreled rifles.
Casandra 13:33 Why?
Margaret 13:34 Because they didn't bother.
Casandra 13:37 Interesting.
Margaret 13:38 So a short barreled rifle is a like contraband item unless you go and you register it and you jump through all these hoops. The other thing is you have to fill out all this paperwork, and then wait like sometimes years in order to get this and the other thing they made illegal at this time was suppressors and suppressors, I will go to my grave believing should never have been. They are an element of gun safety. The ability to suppress the sound of a firearm makes it safer for everyone. It is a better object. It does not make the gun more dangerous. It also doesn't make it quiet. Everyone's like oh yeah, you can like run around James Bond style. It's just like not true if you shoot a suppressed gun. I mean, there's like a few tiny exceptions where if you like really work with subsonic, ammo and .22 And all this shit you can like, make it quiet. But like a suppressed gun just sounds like a gun. It's loud. It goes bang, you can hear from a long ways off. It just doesn't permanently destroy your hearing and give you tinnitus as much. Most of them you still have to wear ear protection for. It's just a fucking...anyway, whatever. That's not what we're talking about today. So, yeah, so that's why they made it....short barreled rifles illegal or much harder to come by. And it makes no sense. It never made any sense. Go ahead.
Casandra 14:57 What is it? I know it doesn't make sense. Like it sounds I was like, someone who does paperwork was like let's reclassify this thing. But like, what is their justification? Like, why are they saying it makes sense?
Margaret 15:10 Why are they reclassifying AR pistol to a short barreled rifle? Or why do they defend that short barreled rifles are illegal?
Casandra 15:17 I think I understand the former. Maybe the latter.
Margaret 15:21 So at the time, it literally was just it's closer to a pistol. That was the justification, they wanted to get rid of pistols, so that therefore they got rid of short barrel rifles. The argument being concealability.
Casandra 15:36 But at this point in history, there isn't really a justification?
Margaret 15:39 There's no justification. It's you can have a full length rifle and you can have a small handgun and you can't have in between. It is. Well, that's. So that's what I think that...there are a lot of cases to be made against guns and gun ownership. And I am like not trying to eventually become some like a gun nut talking head. But like, this is something that people whose primary concern or like one of their concerns is as firearms and firearm law. This is something that I think they wish people understood. The law is incredibly Kafka esque, and nonsensical, and labyrinth and like, just bizarre. And so whenever they're like, "Oh, we're gonna pass this new gun control law," everyone's sitting there being like, "Oh, God, it's going to be some other weird, crazy loophole, where if you don't do all of the following things, you're a felon." And what they've done now is they've gone back and made everyone felons in reverse. And I think it's fucked up.
Casandra 16:43 That's wild that that's possible to retroactively make that many people felons.
Brooke 16:50 It just it sounds like these these ATF peoples aren't very good at the F part of their ATF.
Margaret 17:03 Like they're drinking and smoking, but they forgot to go shoot guns?
Brooke 17:07 Yeah, like, I don't know about the A and the T shit that they do. But they sound like they're really fucking up the F part.
Margaret 17:12 I mean, like, and this is like, the ATF is like all of the gun people's like boogeyman, right? Like, because they like, they keep track of people for potentially breaking specific laws, like, right, for example, like straw sales are illegal, I can't go to the store and buy a gun with the intention of turning around and selling it. Even though, in many states, and I think this is reasonable, that's fine. It's a way to skirt the law. In most, in many states, you can privately sell a firearm from one person to another. But if you go to a store in order to buy a gun in order to turn around and sell it, at this point, you're an arms dealer, and you like should have and so the people buying it from you should have to go through background checks and shit like that, right? At least from a legal point of view. So what the ATF sometimes does is they keep track of anyone who buys a whole bunch of guns at once, or a whole bunch of guns over some period of time. And they just like show up on that at your house and be like, "Hey, Where's all your guns? We wanna see them. And we want to prove you didn't sell any of them." Even though, if you buy a bunch of guns, for your own sake, and then turn around and sell some of them because you don't want them anymore, that is usually legal. And so there's kind of some like thought police stuff that has to go in because they have to prove intent and all this like weird shit. So the ATF is this like boogeyman that everyone's like weird about anyway. And then the other new thing that I'm a little bit less confident about, I've seen some stuff about this, that also has people up in arms is that with these NFA items, previously, NFA items being the short barreled rifle or a fully automatic weapon, right? It is legal as a as a citizen to own fully automatic weapons in certain contexts, right, if you fill out certain paperwork, you know, use them in certain environments, things like that. It's usually basically rich people have them because you have to buy ones that are from like before a ban and they so they there's like only a certain number of them that are available in the civilian market. So they just become more more expensive, which is always what the NFA was, of course was a tax on...so it was like poor people can have guns. Rich people get to have guns. And so there was this thing that the ATF...no go ahead.
Casandra 19:26 I just think about how the justification originally was like, "We don't want mobsters to have access to these things," when when they were probably the only ones who could afford them at that point.
Margaret 19:35 That's so true. Fuck.
Casandra 19:38 We only want monsters to have these things.
Margaret 19:41 Yeah. Yeah, if your shotgun cost $5,000....Yeah, only a certain class of people would have shotguns. No, that's such a good point. Okay, so one of the other things the NFA says that you can use...if I own...I do not On any NFA items, but if a hypothetical person were to own a short barreled rifle, if they are supervising, other people can shoot it. Because they're there. They're present, whatever. It's my short barreled rifle. And so you have this whole market of people who are like, "Yo, you want to go shoot a machine gun, like come to my range, you get to shoot a machine gun," which like sounds like fun. And these are very controlled environments, and it's perfectly fucking...Well, it's the safest shooting guns ever is. And now the NFA has like quietly changed in it's frequently asked questions of sorry, the ATF has changed on its frequently asked questions on its website, to just say, "No, only the only the person who has registered the item can be in possession of it. Can can use it." And so...
Casandra 20:47 Weird.
Margaret 20:48 Yeah. So like, if I have a suppressed rifle, which I don't, but I want one, I want to I want to go through the tax stamp paperwork in order to get one. Not only would it be illegal for me to let someone else use it, it would be illegal for me to store it in a way in which anyone else can access it. Like if I live somewhere and my husband has access to my gun safe, then that would be now a crime. This is more hypothetical. The other thing is very specific. And they released a fucking 300 page document about how they're going to turn everyone into felons. And everyone has 120 days.
Casandra 21:26 They put so much thought into it.
Margaret 21:27 Oh, yeah, they've been working on this for 10 years. And like fairly literally. This other thing is like a weird....And so the reason I want to talk about this is because like, this is a thing that is mostly being talked about in gun spaces, and is therefore mostly being talked about in center, right of center spaces. I don't want to just say right wing spaces, I think there's a lot of center and center right groups that are not like aggressively racist or something like that and are just like rural people who are into guns or whatever. And so people were really upset about it. And sometimes when we see certain types of people get really upset, we're like, "Haha, fuck you." But like, I think it is a completely legitimate thing for people to be upset about. I think this is fucked up. I think this is overreach. I think that this is like...the the sort of hope that people have is that at the very least, they'll just get rid of short barreled rifles off of the NFA list because it's nonsense. They shouldn't be there...in as much as....in as much as there's going to be a society I can imagine that society being like "There's a level of weapon we don't really want around here," right? Like I'm not like nukes for everyone kind of girl. And if I'm not a nukes for everyone kind of girl. Am I a machine guns for one kind of girl? I'm kind of not? I kind of just don't care. You know, like people would come at me, whatever. Like maybe it's hypocritical ofmyself, of me as an anarchist. I don't fucking know. Whatever but like, but I don't know. Whatever. That's my fucking weird gun rant. I've watched like so many like YouTube people rant about it. What's up?
Casandra 23:02 That was a pristine conclusion.
Margaret 23:07 It's so funny, because I'm like more anti gun this month than I am most months
Brooke 23:14 Is it that you're anti gun? Or is it that you're anti ATF?
Margaret 23:17 Yeah, I'm definitely anti ATF. Unless you're listening ATF, in which case I fucking love you. Don't come over, though. God that sounds sketchy than I meant it. I just....whatever. Anyway, that's the main thing I had that I had to talk about about January. This not the most important thing happening, but it is a big thing but you have some other stuff that you want to talk about, right?
Brooke 23:42 I do and I like don't even know where to go to there from here. Oh, man. Well, I guess we can talk about....
Margaret 23:50 Well, speaking of tax stamps and tax....
Brooke 23:54 Yeah, well done. I was gonna go for like, ridiculous government nonsense.
Margaret 23:59 Oh, that's actually better and more accurate.
Casandra 24:01 That's taxes.
Brooke 24:02 Yeah, there you go. Yeah. So there's this act has been proposed in Congress called the Fair Tax Act. And it's ridiculous and far fetched and is not going to go anywhere. But it has come up like three different times in my own life in the last week from from different people asking me about it and asking me what's up with it and I even had to kind of walked my mom through what was going on with this too, cuz she was talking about it. Hi, mom, if you're listening.
Margaret 24:39 Hi, mom. Hi, Brooke's mom.
Brooke 24:44 Nice. So this tax act is a Republican act. And the succinct version of it is that they want to abolish the IRS in its entirety and institute a 30% national Sales Tax.
Margaret 25:01 See, I was with them for the start of that sentence.
Brooke 25:04 First half is great. Stop there. We're good. Yeah, so that would get rid of income tax, and payroll tax, estate tax, gift tax. I mean, the whole stupid, ridiculous tax system that we have would go away.
Casandra 25:16 I thought it was in addition to state taxes?
Brooke 25:20 No.
Casandra 25:21 Oh, interesting.
Brooke 25:21 Well, I guess, I guess I don't know if they can regulate state income taxes and all of that.
Margaret 25:26 Not without a war.
Brooke 25:28 Yeah. So.
Margaret 25:30 Anyway.
Brooke 25:33 Anyway, and if so...so it's a 30% national sales tax on all goods and services purchased, which, interestingly, some of the Republicant's have tried to call it a 23% Tax. Because, they're playing with the way the math is presented. Alright, quick math lesson.
Margaret 25:54 Oh, is it the which direction? Okay, yeah. Give us the math lesson.
Casandra 25:57 Numbers. Numbers are arbitrary. Is that the lesson?
Brooke 26:02 You can use math to lie. That's the lesson.
Margaret 26:05 Yay!
Brooke 26:06 Yeah. Yeah. So if you have to buy something that's $100. Let's say just for a nice round number, and there's a 30% tax on it, you're gonna pay $130 for that item. And most of us look at that and go, that's a 30% tax.
Margaret 26:22 Right.
Casandra 26:22 Cause it is.
Brooke 26:24 Right. But...
Margaret 26:26 If you reversed it.
Brooke 26:27 Yeah, exactly.
Casandra 26:29 What?
Brooke 26:29 $30 is 23% of $130.
Margaret 26:35 Heh, heh heh.
Brooke 26:39 So if you just pretend that the item costs $130 Then you can claim that you're only charging a 23% tax.
Margaret 26:46 Because 23% of that is tax
Brooke 26:50 Of that $130.
Casandra 26:53 I want to know how I missed the like stereotypical autistic person thing of understanding math.
Brooke 27:03 Yeah, the thing that that was that some people were like, "Well, it's only 23%," but they're just lying with...they're just using math to lie.
Casandra 27:13 23%? Was that only?
Margaret 27:15 I know exactly. Like, that's a lot of my money.
Casandra 27:19 Still doesn't make sense. I mean, there's been
Brooke 27:21 130% I guess.
Margaret 27:23 I mean, as a freelancer I pay some fuck off high percentage of my income in taxes. I don't even remember.
Casandra 27:29 As an Oregonian, I don't pay sales tax.
Brooke 27:32 Yeah, so any sale's tax is like "Fuck you you, world."
Margaret 27:40 This is the real tyranny. So why do right wing people want this? Like, is it because it helps the rich because they're not paying a state tax or whatever and it's like...
Casandra 27:49 And why is it repeatedly brought up?
Brooke 27:51 Yeah, so it's...it would be a flat rate tax on like a current system, which is it's called a progressive tax system. And please don't confuse progressive with like the liberal sense of the word progressive, but progressive as in like graduated taxes we have now. Poor people pay less, richer people pay more. You pay tax as you progress in income.
Casandra 28:13 So, this is a fuck poor people?
Brooke 28:20 Well, the flat rate tax would be simpler than the progressive system. And allegedly, under the current proposal, low income individuals could apply once a month for a rebate on some of the tax that they spent.
Margaret 28:34 Oh yeah, with all of that free time that poor people have.
Brooke 28:37 Yeah, exactly.
Casandra 28:38 What if I mean, if it were actually to pass, how much do you want to bet that the rebate would just be on like yachts?
Brooke 28:48 Yeah, yeah. Under the system, everyone ends up paying more in tax except for the wealthiest 5% of Americans who actually end up paying less in taxes overall. But yeah, as you just alluded to Casandra, this is like not the first time this idea has come up. In fact, it has been introduced in Congress every single year since 1999.
Casandra 29:12 Really?
Brooke 29:14 Yep.
Casandra 29:14 Why? Why.
Margaret 29:15 Is it just some guy?
Casandra 29:19 No, why are people making such a big deal out of it this time?
Brooke 29:22 Yeah, solid question.
Casandra 29:24 Because it's so Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
Brooke 29:28 Hypotheses are welcome. It has no more chance of passing right now than it has the last 24 times it has been introduced. But there's a larger contingent of right wing extremists who are behind it like 30ish people this year.
Margaret 29:43 Uuuuhm, 23.....
Brooke 29:52 Okay, so it's, you know, there's enough support for it that it is garnering more attention. It's not just one or two people throwing it out there. And it anytime there's been kind of this larger contingent of more extreme right wing people in Congress it has gotten attention in the news media. So, like when the Tea Party folks came into Congress, it got proposed that year as it has every single year, and it made the news a little bit more than because they were more supportive than usual.
Casandra 30:26 So is it just like Margaret said, is it just some guy is it? Is it the far right just like fucking with our understanding of normalcy, like the Overton window?
Brooke 30:38 Yeah, probably. That's part of it. I mean, it made news in '99, when it was first introduced. And I couldn't tell you exactly how many times it made any kind of major news between then and now, except for when the Tea Party folks came into power.
Casandra 30:54 Do youever look back and think like, we used to just have a Tea Party, you know?
Brooke 30:59 Yes, do. Yeah, okay. So I couldn't...go ahead.
Margaret 31:06 I, it's so hard, because it's like, there is a part of me, like, I hate how complicated our tax system is, right? So I could understand this appealing if you don't think it through, right? Because then you're like, well, it's just based on how much you actually spend, and not what you make at work or whatever, you know. Because like, I fucking hate turning around and giving some percent of my tax that I can never keep track of, to the government. Basically, just every April, I'm like, there goes all my money. And now every quarter there goes all my money. And like, so I get the appeal of it. And it's so frustrating, because I feel like they're tapping into something that's like real, which is people's frustration with the tax system in this country, like you explained to other....I am under the impression I have seen on the internet, that people from other countries are like, What the fuck is wrong with you? What do you mean the government just like? Because it's like, you go to a restaurant and you order food. And then they're like,"Alright, pay me now." And you're like, "How much is the food?" And they're like, "Yeah, I mean, you can figure that out. And if you get it wrong, you go to prison." That sucks. I'm never going to that restaurant again. Like, if the government and I know the government can can give me a bill with a number because sometimes I underpay and they send me a bill with a number. And sometimes I overpay and they send me money back. They know the number. Just fucking tell it to me and I will pay I will. I would begrudge taxes so much less if it wasn't just this weird dance of fucking death with the goddamn government. Anyway.
Brooke 32:42 You're totally fair. I have spent countless hours getting tax stuff done. Now, I spent 10 hours yesterday doing tax stuff for various things. That's just what I'm going to do for the next few months is spend a whole lot of time with taxes.
Margaret 32:58 Can we call it the Illuminati tax because the number 23? Or is that bad because anything related....anyway...conspiracies.
Brooke 33:06 We can call the buddy tax. Because the fella whose turn it was to introduce it this year is Earl Leroy Carter, whose nickname is Buddy from Georgia.
Casandra 33:17 Leroy. Leroy is such a good name.
Margaret 33:21 But, Buddy is the name of someone who's too old to be in government.
Brooke 33:25 Right! Like I had to look at a picture of the dude and he's exactly what you think he looks like.
Margaret 33:30 If your nickname is Dick, you are too old to be in the government. If your nickname is Buddy, you're too old to be in government. Maybe. Okay, wait, wait I want to say older people deserve representation too. The entire government should not be run by people who are all of one generation that is much older. That's how I'm going to walk back from ageism. Yeah, totally anger issues Yeah.
Brooke 34:03 Oh, I just it was Buddy's turn to draw the short straw I guess because he hasn't....It hasn't been him every year. it's been different folks in different years. He's only been in the US Congress for five or six years or something like that. So, I don't know if they just start off the governmenting season with a you know, drawing straws or...
Casandra 34:30 It's some sort of hazing ritual. To be part of the crew you have to like propose this ridiculous thing and everyone will hate you for it.
Margaret 34:43 Like I don't even want this. It's just literally their hazing.
Brooke 34:50 Alright, whose turn is it to bring out the old Unfair Tax Act law and abolish the IRS this year.
Margaret 34:58 Which is funny because it's like I mean, I just went on this rant about how we should abolish the ATF.
Brooke 35:06 Anyway, yeah,
Margaret 35:08 I get so frustrated by the.....
Casandra 35:11 Like you're almost there. You almost reached to the point..
Margaret 35:15 Yeah, and they go on down this wild side path where they're like and and then they wander off into the fucking....
Brooke 35:24 The other part of it is that 30% probably is not quite enough of a tax to replace the income that they currently get from the tax system. So, it would probably actually have to be higher than that to work.
Casandra 35:39 It's just while to be thinking about...whatever...how the fuck much we all pay in taxes and what happens with that money and what doesn't happen with money. And who doesn't pay taxes.
Margaret 35:51 All of you listening who are anti gun, but pay taxes I have. I have bad news for you. You buy so many more guns than any like than anyone who lives in any other country. Because half of your money is just guns.
Brooke 36:07 Fucking US military. Hey, speaking of government brutality. The second topic I have, is that there's some news that's gonna drop tonight. The night of the stay that we are sitting here recording this episode. It hasn't been released yet.
Margaret 36:26 So it'd be like last week or the week before for you all?
Brooke 36:28 Yeah, exactly. And it has the potential to spark some George Floyd esque levels of protests. It's the body cam video footage from early January of the traffic stop and the brutal arrest of Tyre Nichols, a 29 year old Tennessee man who died as a result of the brutality he experienced that day. The descriptions of the videos that have come out from those who have seen it in advance have likened it to the 1991 video of Rodney King being beaten by the Los Angeles Police and Tyre's mother, excuse me, who hasn't seen and is not going to watch the video said that her son was beaten to a pulp by the arresting officers, of whom they were five. He was pepper sprayed, struck by a stun gun, restrained, kicked and more. And the family's attorney described the beating by saying the Tyre was used as a human pinata. So, some caution in watching those videos. Of course, if you're listening to this, it's the week after the they've been released. So either they have sparked intense rounds of protests, or they've quietly flamed out and gone down as just another act of extreme police brutality.
Casandra 37:43 I was reading this morning that they were like closing parts of Memphis.
Margaret 37:47 Yeah, they brought in the National Guard, right?
Brooke 37:50 Yeah, the governor declared a state of emergency in preparation for the protest that will follow the release of the videos. Yeah. Yeah.
Casandra 38:02 I hate that it takes the release of a video, you know?
Brooke 38:07 Yeah, yeah. The five arresting officers have all been fired, and they're facing a barrage of charges, including second degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression, which I didn't know official oppression was the thing that you could get charged with. But I think we can just go ahead and slap that on a whole bunch of government stuff while we're while we're using that one.
Margaret 38:31 Yeah, that's what I say about them usually. It's like the inverse. There's a New York City law Criminal anarchy. Anyway, there you go.
Casandra 38:44 I've already seen some like right wing commentary. Just people pointing out the fact that like, this is different. This isn't race based because the officers were also black. Yeah. Because systemic oppression apparently means nothing.
Brooke 39:03 Yeah, and I've, you know, given in no position to speak to the race relations in this matter, and any of that, but you know, certainly is yet another example of police brutality and the indiscriminant violence that they visit upon us,
Margaret 39:21 And still part of racist policing. I think that it is still fair to say that it's part of racist policing in this country, I feel like that's been laid out. This isn't like my idea. This coming from Black liberation movements for a long time that black police are capable of enacting racist violence or being part of a racist, racistly violence system. But of course, they'll use that to distract and they'll use the fact that they threw the cops under the bus, which I like wonder whether they would have thrown the cops under the bus if the cops were white.
Casandra 39:54 Yep.
Margaret 39:54 Yeah. And, you know, and either way they threw the cops under the bus because of trying to minimize...It's not because they don't feel good about this stuff happening because the police do. But because they like, want people to not riot. And sometimes, they'll, you know, that's how afraid they are. I feel like you can you can see how afraid the system is based on how it handles the cops who enact violence. It's almost they're afraid this time. Which is good. They should be.
Brooke 40:32 Yeah, it sounds like it's going to be some real ugly video, and I am planning to watch it. But, a trigger warning on myself.
Margaret 40:43 Yeah.
Brooke 40:46 Well, I've got one more topic. It's kind of following up on on an old friend of ours, the Colorado River.
Margaret 40:53 Oh, yeah.
Brooke 40:53 Just because it was in the news a bit recently.
Margaret 40:56 How he doing? He doing good?
Brooke 40:58 Yeah, everything's great with with Old Colorado. He's feeding the seven states and, you know, everything's fine. So that's my update.
Margaret 41:11 Great.Tell me the bad news.
Brooke 41:13 Yeah. So, Lake Mead, which we've talked about, in at least a couple of episodes, it provides water to, and electricity to Arizona, Nevada, and just a little old area called Southern California. And currently, right now, it's at its lowest point that it has been since 1935. And it has been at its lowest point since 1935, for about two years now. And it keeps getting lower, which is the decline of the lake is consistent with the overall decline of the water levels in the whole river, which is a significant source of water, also for Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico. And the reason that it's extra in the news at the moment is that these seven states that all depend on the Colorado River, have collectively worked together for, I guess, more than 100 years to kind of manage the water and it's resources and decide how to allocate it. And the federal government has tasked them a couple of times in the last year, to come up with a plan for reducing their water usage and for, you know, kind of this emergency scenario, because it's getting so very low. And for the second time, in the last year, the states have failed to come up with a plan together despite their, you know, century of working together. So the Interior Department of the federal government is probably going to have to step in and impose water usage cuts on the states in order to prevent...well, I mean, it's still gonna be pretty devastating, but in order to, you know, mitigate, who's getting how much of the devastation.
Margaret 42:52 Well I bet that will go smoothly.
Brooke 42:54 Yeah, they're not already having, you know, legal challenges and, you know, threatens of sue, and lots of lawyers and private organizations and stuff involved.
Margaret 43:05 And if there's one thing I mean, what's that saying? Thirsty people don't fight over water.
Casandra 43:12 Exactly how it goes.
Brooke 43:16 It'll be fine.
Margaret 43:17 Yeah.
Casandra 43:17 Meanwhile, in other parts of California there's like massive flooding. And they're already predicting a produce shortages for the rest of the year. Yeah.
Brooke 43:27 Yeah, great. Need. So too much water in the north, too little water in the South? Crops? Fucked.
Margaret 43:37 Yay!
Brooke 43:38 Excellent. Yeah. Now the thing that people like to to raise the the alarm about, especially with Lake Mead is that it feeds the Hoover Dam. And if the water level gets too low in the lake, you're not gonna be able to power the dam. But it's not actually really looking like it's, that's going to happen soon. They're still probably a few years before it would get that low. And this is based on like me pulling all of the data and looking at the worst case scenarios of the water levels. And that's, you know, I'm not a climatologist. So I can't tell you about other things that might happen. But just in terms of the trends of the decline in the water. Now, of course, that means I'll have two years to ignore it, and then still freak out and panic and fuck everything up at the last minute.
Margaret 44:29 No, no, they'll like, get it together. That's why we have governments that are really good at doing stuff in a timely fashion and addressing the big the big issues.
Casandra 44:40 Governments make everything more efficient.
Margaret 44:42 Yeah. Yeah. Without it it'd be total anarchy,
Brooke 44:47 Lies, damn lies from governments. All right, what's happening in the world, Margaret? What's happening outside our little bubble?
Margaret 44:58 It's about California. My first one. Alright, so California....
Casandra 45:04 None of us live in California, for the record.
Margaret 45:09 So okay, what is it? There's a bill, Assembly Bill 92 in California. I have no idea whether this is likely to pass. This the thing. I think that I actually fall into this too. Whenever we see like, "Oh, there's this new bill, and it's fucked up." Everyone's like, "Oh, fuck, they're gonna," you know, there'd be a bill that's like, "Murder every seventh child," and people be like, "Oh, fuck," you know, and like, and then usually those bills don't pass. And so we feel a little bit like wolf cry'ey when we're like....like all the anti trans bills that are happening right now. Right? Like Virginia actually just shut one down. And I wish, I should have. I should focus more on some of the positive news for these things. Virginia, just shut one down. Like it didn't even go to vote. People were like, "Nah, we're good." And but, I don't even think it was a statewide one. I don't know, whatever. It's like, these things do get defeated all the time. But people propose all this wild shit, like, the 23 people tax. Well, I know. But if you start with the 30 people who propose it, and then you say, we'll pass the tax, if we get to execute seven of you. ...You know, I'd be willing to like give it a shot for a little while.
Brooke 46:18 A shot.
Margaret 46:21 Which, they'd be in trouble if they lived in California if this bill passes, because California is trying to pass a bill, or some people in California trying to pass a bill banning civilian possession of armor.
Casandra 46:34 Body armor?
Margaret 46:35 And I think that...
Casandra 46:36 Which i'm just like, wow. Why? I always wonder how....like, they must have to have some sort of justification for proposing bills like this. And I just like, what is it?
Margaret 46:47 So, there's justification for proposing this is that several other mass shooters have worn body armor in the past couple of mass shootings. This, to me is like, the crystal clear distillation of like, doing law wrong, you know, is like being like, well, you can't protect yourself from bullets beecause some people who want to kill people might protect themselves from bullets.
Casandra 47:14 But if we pass a law about it, those people who want to kill people will definitely follow the law.
Margaret 47:18 Yeah. That's the best thing about law is that the only people who follow it are criminals, and everyone else is free. Actually, what's really funny is in a weird way, because of selective enforcement, as it's like, you know, it's like, if you're breaking some other laws it's the only time you get in trouble for certain laws. But, yeah, so they're trying to pass a bill outlawing body armor, and I think it is fucked up. That's....
Casandra 47:44 That's wild. Most of the mass shooters are men. We could just outlaw them.
Margaret 47:50 You know, I see no counter argument that can be made.
Brooke 47:57 Let's put them in cages. Breeding stock only.
Margaret 48:04 The 1960s called they want their science fiction back. But they can't have it because it's funny. So, there's that. There's a diabetes med that's in shortage called ozempic. And it's in shortage because a version of it got popular for weight loss. The same drug is used is produced by the same manufacturer at a higher dosage called wegovy. I don't know, the dumbest names in the world are the names of prescription drugs.
Casandra 48:37 Yeah. That's someone's job
Margaret 48:40 I know, I'm so jealous of whoever's job that is. Like, I write fantasy characters for a living, I could do that job. No, that's not true. Because like, fantasy authors always go for like, Alright, we're gonna take a normal name like John and we're gonna, like spell it weird. Or add an 'e' in the middle or something. And like, this isn't called like, 'insaloon.' You know, it's not just 'insulin' with a different pronunciation. It's fucking orginal. Ozempic? Wegovy? it doesn't even look like it's some other language. It just looks like...you look at that, and you're like, that's a prescription drug.
Casandra 49:19 That means we need to hire a sci fi author to do the job.
Margaret 49:23 Yeah, okay. All right. Well, since I'm out of that job. People at the World Economic Forum in Davos are predicting major cyber attacks in 2023 and or 2024, DDoS attacks, denial of service attacks, like where they flood an IP to shut it down. Those increased 79% last year.
Brooke 49:44 Wow.
Margaret 49:45 And something like 49% of like major economic things that do all the manufacturing etc. are like vulnerable or like, particularly not hardened to cyber attacks. You know, we had the thing couple years ago where like, you couldn't get couldn't get gas in part of the Mid Atlantic because of a cyber attack.
Brooke 50:03 Oh, yeah.
Margaret 50:04 So anyway, so there's that to look forward to. In the most depressing news that no one ever wants to admit or think about, Germany's Minister of Health says that all signs point towards COVID putting people at risk for incurable immune deficiencies. The studies are not final. But there's just more and more mounting evidence coming in from all different corners about how we should be taking COVID Seriously. And again, not to put that impetus on like, as much the individuals, but like, wouldn't it be cool if some of our tax money paid for i dunno, HVAC systems for schools?
Brooke 50:43 Weird.
Margaret 50:44 Wouldn't that be just like...Oh, yes. And the other thing that happened, I didn't write this in my notes. But one of the main things that I saw this fucking month is at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the windows were open, there was HEPA filters in every room, everyone tested at the door. The people in the audience wore masks, because the world leaders know that it's fucking real.
Casandra 51:03 Yep.
Brooke 51:05 But, but, but didn't we just decided it ended it here in the US? Didn't we just declare that?
Margaret 51:10 Oh, no, we extended it till April.
Brooke 51:13 Okay.
Margaret 51:13 It's over in April. Yeah.
Brooke 51:16 Except not the SNAP benefits.
Margaret 51:18 No, the SNAP benefits. That is the next thing I had on my list. That's very good. The SNAP benefits, which I still in my head to call food stamps, but maybe you're not supposed to. But in case you're don't know what SNAP means the extended benefits that people got during the COVID pandemic are going to expire in March. So, February is the last month of the extended benefits. Sorry, sucks to be poor. Hope you don't die of the...this is me and my government voice not me and my voice....Hope you don't just...well, actually, we do want you to just go back to work and die for the economy. Speaking of people willing to die for the economy, Bolsonaro's right wing idiots stormed the Capitol after he lost an election. I don't have nearly as much as Brazil. I don't have nearly as much information about that as I wish I did prepared because...I...because this is the speed round. Speed Round. There should be like a little sound effect. Too too, zoo zoo. On the other hand, I like other people when they storm government institutions, and left wing people in Peru are doing are like also uprising. And I think that's good. Because I hate that we let....the when people are like "The insurrectionists and the seditioutionists," and I'm like "Hey, now. That's some of my best friends." What else? Oh, and Pakistan has been having massive, after their fucking floods that we talked about last year, they've been having massive blackouts. There was like to 220 million people without power for a while. And it's basically old fucked up infrastructure that is fucking them up. And that...either of you have Lightning Rounds?
Brooke 53:05 No, I don't pay attention to the news. I'm doing taxes.
Margaret 53:10 Oh, yeah. Okay, well, that's the end of our lightning round.
Brooke 53:15 Pew pew peeew.
Margaret 53:23 And that is This Month in the Apocalypse. And if there's something we missed, there isn't. And if you think something happened that was bad, it didn't happen. Or we would have covered it.I see no flaw in that logic and I think you all are gonna have to learn to understand that that's just the way it is. So, but if you want to hear us tell you everything that's happening and....whatever, if you want to support this podcast, you should do so by supporting us on Patreon. Our Patreon is patreon.com/.... not Live like the world is dying...shit. We are Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. That's right Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness because this is published by Strangers in Tangled Wilderness. And if you support us on Patreon, we'll mail you a zine every month if you support is a certain level. Otherwise, you'll get like discounts on all our stuff including my new book that's probably out by the time y'all hear this called Escape from Incel Island, which is about people doing what it says on the cover. I tend to be fairly literal with some of my naming conventions, with amazing cover art by Jonas Goonface. And you can go get that from Tangledwilderness.org or wherever you buy books. I mean, eventually you can get from wherever you buy books. Right now you can...well I don't know book distribution's weird? So you should support us at Patreon: patreon.com/Strangersintangledwilderness and also in particular, we would like to thank some of our patrons we would like to thank Aly and Paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, Theo, Hunter, Sean, SJ, Paige, Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Cat J, Staro, Jenipher, Eleanor, Kirk, Sam, Chris, Micaiah, Hoss the dog, and Hans, maybe Jan's, I usually write the pronunciation ahead of time. And I'm very sorry and it's especially embarrassing because you're new to the list and I really appreciate you in particular, Hans Vergennes for supporting us. And that's it. I'm gonna....done and I hope you all are doing great. Bye bye
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Margaret and Nadia talk about harm reduction, what it is, how it relates to community preparedness, strategies for including harm reduction in your preparedness routines, and a little bit of history and legality as relates to different kinds of drug use.
Nadia works with Next Distro and can be found at https://nextdistro.org/
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
LLWD: Nadia on Harm Reduction
Margaret 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today, Margaret killjoy. And today, I am really excited about this episode, I think you'll all get a lot out of it. I guess I say that every time but I wouldn't record these episodes, if I didn't think you would get a lot out of them. Today, we are talking about harm reduction. And we were talking about preparedness that includes drug users. Because, if you think you don't know any drug users, you just don't know anyone who is willing to tell you that they're a drug user. And we will talk about that and a lot more. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network.
Margaret 01:01 Okay, we're back. And if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns. And then kind of a little bit about your background about the kind of stuff that we're gonna be talking about today.
Nadia 01:52 Yeah, sure, hey, Margaret. My name is Nadia, I use they or she pronouns. And I am a harm reductionist, a drug user. And I have both worked at in-person syringe service programs, and currently work for an online meal based program, where we ship safer drinking supplies to folks all over the country.
Margaret 02:16 That's cool. So we talked about having you on, because we wanted to talk about preparedness that includes the drug users in your community, whether the person listening to this as drug user, or whether they care about drug users in their community. And I know it's a big open question, but I kind of wanted to ask you that. How prepare that?
Nadia 02:45 Well, you know, I think that when we talk about prepping, disaster prepping and harm reduction, they're really similar, because it's really boils down to a risk assessment and thinking critically, right? The world isn't black and white, it's not really an easy question to answer, for example, should I evacuate or not in a disaster? Similarly, how do I protect myself as a drug user, in a world that isn't concerned about my health or safety? And you know, for people who historically lack access to resources, and healthcare, I think talking about how to prepare or what readiness looks like, is especially important.
Margaret 03:28 So, I guess I kind of want to start with some of the practical questions. It's like, what are the things that one should do that are different from what one would otherwise do? Like I'm like thinking about like, even for my own sake, right. Like, I'm like, like people say, like, carry Narcan, for example, like, how does one access that? What is the shelf life on that? Is that a thing that if community like mutual aid groups or individuals who have like large stashes of things or whatever? Is it like worth having a bunch of. Is it depend on community access? Is it better to just like, specifically coordinate with existing harm reduction and like needle exchange groups in your area? Like, it seems to me that like, like, one of the prepper mindset things is like, "Oh, there's a thing I need, I should go out and get a bunch of it". Right? And my instinct here is that maybe that rather than run out and get a bunch of say, Narcan, it would be more about like, be aware of how people can access that and which groups do distribute that and then maybe have like enough for me to carry around? I don't know. Yeah, like, I guess let's start with Narcan. What's What's the Narcan?
Nadia 04:40 Sure. Um, so for folks that are listening that don't know, Narcan or naloxone is a medication that will reverse an opioid overdose. And you know, it, it should be kept in a relatively temperature stable area, but there's there's been a lot of studies on it. And they have shown that it maintains its efficacy, much past expiration dates and the kind of temperature parameters. So you don't want to keep it somewhere freezing or super hot, but it is more resilient than you think. And having some naloxone is better than having none. And you mentioned, you know, going out and sort of stocking up. And I think that this is a broader conversation about prepping too, the difference between being ready and hoarding, right, yeah, and sometimes that line definitely gets blurry. Do you really need 100 pounds of rice? Are you going to go through it before it gets bad? Do you have a proper place to store it? I mean, you can talk about naloxone in the same way. And you know, just like you can keep Narcan in your bag. If you're going to a show going to a bar, you can also keep some in your gobag, if you have one, to evacuate, for example.
Margaret 06:06 What's the....you know, I usually present myself as sort of the the person who pretends like she doesn't know what she's asking in these episodes, but I actually don't know as much about this as I would like. Alot of my friends are way more knowledgeable about this stuff. Like what is the difference between Narcan and naloxone? And how would I go about getting some to carry around with me?
Nadia 06:29 Sure. So Narcan is really just a brand name, that's the the nasal spray. Naloxone is the actual medication. You can pick it up from certain service programs in your area. If you don't have a needle exchange in your area, you can go just Google Next Distro. We mail Naloxone to folks, so just check the website, see if you live in a state or an area where we do that. But we do try to encourage people to sort of seek out resources where they live. But yeah, there's there's a lot of different organizations, everything from sort of anarchist collectives, running needle exchanges to health departments that are, you know, offering trainings and providing Narcan.
Margaret 07:19 What's the legality of it?
Nadia 07:21 So, as far as you know, carrying it with you, there is what is called a standing order. It's basically a sort of blanket prescription. You can go to the pharmacy, purchase Naloxone, it can be prohibitively expensive, especially if you don't have insurance, which is why I kind of mentioned, you know, needle exchanges and health departments first. But I think, you know, as far as having it on your person, it's not going to be a situation where it's illegal. However, we know that cops like to fuck with people. So if you do happen to have Naloxone, and you have syringes on you, I'm not going to say you'll be fine. However, the law is on your side in that regard. And another piece of that, too, is different states have different Good Samaritan laws. So if you are with someone that is experiencing an overdose, in many states, not all, you can call 911, without the fear or threat of potentially being arrested for small possession, or things like that. They are very narrow in a lot of places. But that's something that you're going to want to look into for your state.
Margaret 08:37 So it's like, this makes sense, like so probably, if I have some drugs on me and my friend has some drugs on me and my friend overdoses. There's a fear of involving the medical establishment because there's a fear of me or the person who's overdosing getting arrested for what we have on them. Is that what you're saying that this law protects? Like, yeah, in some states protects people about?
Nadia 09:00 So you know, there's, there's a lot of stigma, right? And you know, just the the illegality piece. And at the end of the day there, there is an overdose crisis in the United States, in many places. And so these laws are designed to sort of take some of that fear away. And if you are responding to someone who's experiencing an overdose, you don't have to tell 911 when you call that this person is on drugs or that they are overdosing. You can just merely describe the symptoms and what is happening to them. For example, this person is not breathing, they're turning blue. I can't hear a heartbeat, whatever it might be. And you know, if you do have to leave and you have given them Naloxone, you can just leave the vials or or the package next to the person that way when EMS does arrive, they do know "Okay, this person has been given Narcan, "and they can kind of go from there,
Margaret 09:59 Right. Okay, so like if you have reasons that you don't want to interact with emergency personnel and need to leave the scene, okay.
Nadia 10:07 Yeah, and you have options. And that's kind of the whole thing about harm reduction, right? It's a pragmatic approach to drug use and a realistic one. And so, you know, that's why there, there are no hard and fast rules of do this, or don't do this, but, you know, sort of a continuum of human behavior. And, you know, acknowledging the risks at any point of it.
Margaret 10:30 I want to come back to that in a little bit, because I want to have this whole conversation about what harm reduction...like why the work that y'all do is so like, philosophically important, to like disaster preparedness, and probably life in general. But first, I want to, I want to keep talking about some of this stuff, like with, like, you're talking about the, you know, there's an overdose crisis in the United States, I feel like everyone, on some level knows that. And one of the things that's so interesting to me, I would think I was thinking about before we did this episode is that it's like, you know, this is all about like, disaster preparedness, right? The whole show. And it feels like a lot of communities and certainly including drug communities. I don't know the way phrase that.....
Nadia 11:18 You can say, "people who use drugs."
Margaret 11:20 Okay. But so there is a disaster happening right now. Like, there is a crisis. Like there's a reason we call it crisis, you know, it's like a really fucking bad thing. And I'm wondering if, without necessarily going into it, like, too great, but I'm curious, like, what is happening? Like, what is what's happening right now? Why is everyone OD'ing? ,
Nadia 11:44 Well, you know, there's a lot of different facets to the overdose crisis and a lot of different solutions. Some of them sort of more triage, you know, we were just talking about Naloxone, and, and it's a great medication, it saves lives. But ultimately, what we really need is a safe supply of drugs. If people are aware and knowledgeable of what they're taking, how potent it is, if there are any adulterants in it, you know, that's where we would like to go. Obviously, drugs are illegal. Most drugs are illegal in most places in the United States. And, you know, there there has been pushes for access to safe supply in places like Canada in, you know, I believe Oregon has, has I think, legalized some drugs, right? You can purchase I think mushrooms now. Don't quote me on that. I'm not actually familiar with Oregon law.
Margaret 12:46 Anyone listening this, you can go out and buy mushrooms legally. And if the police stop you, you can say "it''s okay. It's not a crime." Don't do that. Okay. Anyway. Yeah.
Nadia 12:57 I mean, you know, philosophically, it's not a crime. It's not a crime to do drugs. And, you know, the, the idea that some of these drugs are illegal, and some of them aren't, really, is sort of goes back to like this puritanical history of our country. You know, why is alcohol legal when we know that drunk driving rates are through the roof, and you know, it can cause incredible damage to your body over time. But then, you know, smoking marijuana is, is still illegal in a lot of places. where I live, for sure, especially in the south. So, you know, I think that there's there's that moral component
Margaret 13:38 So we should bring back prohibition?
Nadia 13:40 Yeah, exactly. And so I think, you know, as far as having access to drugs that are safe, drugs, that that you know, what you're getting, you know, I think that we don't want to short....when I say 'we,' I mean people who use drugs, I mean, people in the harm reduction community. We don't want to shortchange ourselves. I don't want to say, "Oh, well, the overdose crisis would be so much better if everyone had not Narcan." Yes, that's true. But that's a temporary fix,
Margaret 14:11 Right. It's...no, that's such a good point. Because I feel like that's like the...I know I owe came out the gate with like that as the first thing that was on my mind. And I, and I'm, like, kind of embarrassed about that because it's such the like, it's the band aid we always keep getting presented. And it's like a real good band aid. It's more like the tourniquet we keep getting presented. But, it does seem like yeah, what you're talking about decriminalization, it's almost like when you make things illegal, it doesn't make the problem go away.
Nadia 14:40 Yeah, and you know, I think about it in terms of living under capitalism for so long our entire lives, right. And you get to a point where it's hard to think about solutions outside of the current system. We're so focused on kind of again, that that triage, right, how do we make things better within this oppressive state that we live in? But really, ultimately, the goal should be moving past that and moving beyond it, right?
Margaret 15:11 Yeah. Yeah. So to go back with preparedness, I know that you do a little bit of preparedness yourself. We talked before we started recording about, you know, canned vegetables and things like that. How does it impact your preparedness, both that you are a drug user, and also that you, like, care about and take drug users into consideration in your preparedness?
Nadia 15:40 Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it is planning, right? I'm gonna use the example of of evacuating, I lived in the Gulf South for a very long time. Hurricanes were a yearly occurrence. And so I had to think about it a lot. But, you know, just in terms of what your risk is, and making a decision based on that, for example, if you are evacuating, do you bring drugs with you and sort of chance getting pulled over? Or do you try and score in a new place? And you have to decide what the bigger risk is for you. For example, if I'm driving with five of my friends in an unregistered van with acab stickers all over it, I might not want to be riding dirty, I might not want to have drugs on me. Versus, you know, if I am going somewhere completely unfamiliar to me, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to score when I get there. It might be worth the risk, right? And so thinking of those things in advance is really important. And the longer you wait in an emergency situation, the longer it's going to take you to get out of that cone of impact, right? If you wait to the last minute, there's going to be you know, traffic on the road, it's harder to to get out, it's harder to find a hotel room, for example. So really, that thinking of it in advance, you know, I think can save you a lot of critical time when you need to act.
Margaret 17:10 Yeah. Yeah, like, I don't envy a lot of my friends who live in the Gulf South, are like, "What do I need?" And I'm like, I don't know, a house in the mountains somewhere. And then I'm like, No, that doesn't. That doesn't help. You know, I can't just tell people that.
Nadia 17:26 Well, and I mean, you know, we're talking about preparedness, we're talking about disaster prep. And, you know, a lot of places that haven't had to deal with disasters, like hurricanes or flooding, or wildfires are seeing more and more of that now. And there's a greater impact on bipoc, queer and trans folks, disabled people, you know, marginalized groups whose access to resources is already more limited. And, you know, I think we really need to look towards communities that have been repeatedly harmed, especially by structural and environmental racism, I think they're best informed as to how to survive and how to support each other. And I don't want to say just in the Gulf south, but I'm talking about Flint, Michigan, I'm talking about, you know, Jackson, Mississippi, there's a lot of places where, you know, people are painfully aware that no one is coming to save you. It could be weeks or months for FEMA to arrive. In many places, local governments rely on mutual aid networks and charity groups to provide support. And so that kind of vacuum speaks to the importance of building dual power. Because it leaves the field open, I think for kind of any group that wants to become entrenched or inevitability, to sort of step up, right, whether that's a homophobic church group, right wing militias, especially in rural or remote areas, because, people remember who took care of them. You know, that's one of the reasons why the Black Panthers were such a threat with free breakfast programs and community care, is why Food Not Bombs is illegal in some places. There's just there's a lot of power in community sufficiency.
Margaret 19:23 Yeah. I mean, and so you, you mentioned that there's like lessons that you draw from these specific places, especially bipoc. communities that are under like constant threat. What are some of the lessons that you feel like you draw from that? I mean, besides the one that you just pointed out, maybe that's the answer to the question, what you point out that like, building mutual aid networks and stuff like that, but....
Nadia 19:45 Yeah, absolutely, figuring out who is in your support network. Also in a disaster or crisis situation, how will you communicate with that network is really important. You know, do folks know where you're staying and vice versa? Yeah. Also, you know, we're talking right now and 2022, almost 2023, the COVID pandemic isn't over. So figuring out how you can shelter places safely, you know, do you have masks on hand? That sort of thing. And then going back to prepping for people who use drugs, stocking up on drugs, you know, you might be thinking, "Oh, well, after the fact, I can just XYZ," whatever your plan is, but what if your dealer evacuated? You know? And, you know, the, as far as staying with other people, how do they feel about drug use? Does everyone know where the naloxone is and how to use it, you know, disasters are stressful, you might be dealing with extreme temperatures, hunkering down with people and their different temperaments, and, you know, for most of us to, stress impacts drug use, and it's important to keep that in mind. If you're, you know, for example, trying to cut back or regulate your use. I think all of these things, you know, are useful for people who use drugs, but ultimately, I think they're all skills or at least, you know, aspects of preparing that are beneficial for anyone.
Margaret 21:14 Yeah. Well, so interesting, because it you know, normally we think of like, okay, if you can get more of a medication that you need ahead of time, right? That's great. And, you know, there's this limitation, it's actually very similar limitation, the limitation is legality. In this case of like, you know, it's, it's sometimes very hard for people who even have a prescription to get more than, you know, a month's worth of supply or whatever, at a time of any given prescription. And it's, it's something that people run up against a lot. And then obviously, with, I don't know, whether the way to phrase it as street drugs or not, or like drugs that are not being bought through the pharmaceutical networks or whatever, you know, there's an accessibility that is hit and miss. And then there's also an increased danger of stockpiling, because it seems like the the level of risk that you're carrying for getting busted changes a lot based on how much of any given drug you have on you.
Nadia 22:11 Yeah, definitely. And I do want to kind of speak to one of the pieces you talked about, as far as having medications, you know, if you're on prescription medications, you know, you can check in with your provider, see, if you can get a larger refill than normal say, you know, instead of 30 days, can you get a 60 day supply, especially for people who use drugs, who might be on, you know, medication assisted treatment, they might be taking methadone, naltrexone, and, you know, these are highly effective in terms of either regulating your use, or perhaps, you know, not using it all. But they can be difficult to access. And in some places, it's harder to pick up the prescription for Vivitrol or suboxone because of stigma, because pharmacists, you know, have this idea of, of drug users, or they just might not know the the regulations and laws in their area. And you might not know them either, because you're new. So, I think that checking in, like I said, with providers ahead of time, if that's possible, and you know, doing what you can in terms of stocking up, but this, that whole plan needs the assistance of people in the medical field. And even they have, you know, that kind of stigma, unfortunately,
Margaret 23:33 Yeah, yeah. To self insert this, I got refused a COVID shot because I was wearing a harm reduction shirt once.
Nadia 23:41 Wait, why what was the excuse that they gave you?
Margaret 23:45 I went in, I was like this dirty punk wearing a Steady Collective shirt, which is the harm reduction group in Asheville, North Carolina. And I, it's funny, I feel like it's like Stolen Valor that I wear this shirt. Because people like when I wore in Asheville people were like, I love what you do. And "I'm like, thanks. What I do is I designed the logo." And the reason I wear the shirt is because I designed the logo for it. So I'm very proud of...and it's just crossed hypodermic needles. And
Nadia 24:13 It's a cool logo.
Margaret 24:14 Thanks. Thanks. And I was in like, rural fucking right wing California. And I wanted a COVID booster. And so I went into the pharmacy. I found out ahead of time that this particular pharmacy did walk ins. And I walked in, and the the pharmacist at the counter was talking to a doctor who was in line in front of me. And they were both just complaining about drug users. And they were just both sitting there being like, "Oh, these damned, you know, junkies," or whatever. I don't remember how they phrased it, but it wasn't polite. And then like the person finally leaves and I walk up and I'm like, Yall take walk ins? and she's like, "No." And I'm like, "Can I make an appointment? And she's like, "Not for today."
Nadia 24:59 That is wild. I mean, also you have a lot of people in the medical community that don't really believe that COVID is a thing or that vaccines are effective. I mean, you can have an anti Vaxxer pharmacist, which is, yeah, I mean,
Margaret 25:16 And, like, this is such a, like, I face stigma once....I so it's like, it's really easy for me to imagine after that, that like, of course, people face stigma coming in and picking up their fucking medications, if they're like, the kinds of medications that are, like methadone and stuff like that. That's fucked up. I don't know, that sucks.
Nadia 25:40 Yeah, and I mean, you know, we're talking about COVID. And I think harm reduction is a huge piece of you know, how we can kind of move through the world right now. People are continuing to die and be disabled by COVID. And, you know, we were talking a little bit before, before we started about, you know, kind of the beginning of COVID. And I was really optimistic at first kind of seeing mutual aid networks spring up and more people coming to the realization that the government will kill us for the sake of the economy. But you know, now I think even in radical spaces, that sort of care and community level protection has given way to the more mainstream sentiment or desire to return to normalcy. And that's just something that isn't possible. And it's not desirable to many, many people for whom normalcy was oppressive and a danger. Yeah, you know, I think that, especially as anarchists or folks that consider themselves radical, preppers, as well, we know that we keep us safe, right? That's kind of the tagline. But, that should also apply to immunocompromised people as well, and disabled folks. And, you know, now, I think it's a really great time to take stock of your existing protocols, and safety measures and sort of ask if those things that you're doing or not doing are still in line with what our current risk is. And right now, going into winter, you know, nationally, over 10% of tests are coming back positive. And we know that we're severely under testing, and we know that COVID reinfections, wear down your immunity. That increases your risk for long COVID or kind of lingering COVID symptoms, and, you know, makes people more susceptible to things like the flu, RSV, or Strep A, all three of which we're seeing a surge of in this winter.
Margaret 27:43 Yay. Yeah. I think about it, like the fact that...I don't know how to put this. Like, I wear a mask for the same reason I carry a gun. And it...and not that I want everyone to carry guns, that is a very personal decision based on the legality and the threat models that you're facing. Bu,t I carry a gun, so that it is harder for someone to murder me and it is harder for someone to murder the people I care about who are near me, right? I wear a mask, so that I am less likely to die, and other people around me are less likely to die. This seems like such a, like the idea that there's people who are like preppers or prepper adjacent, who are anti mask, and then anti vaccine is just so nonsensical to me. And I mean, I do think that like protocols do like, they do need to shift, we do need to realize it as we realize that this is endemic, and you know, we can't...like we probably can't just say no more live music in the course of human history. Right?
Nadia 28:58 I would hope not.
Margaret 29:00 But I especially like, when I walk into the grocery store, there is literally no cost to me to wear a mask. There is just, there's only positive effects of me wearing a mask minus social stigma.
Nadia 29:17 You know, I think that we need, if we're going to survive, care, kindness, and a lot of grace. Which requires us to acknowledge that there's a huge cognitive dissonance people are dealing with right now. We're three years into a global pandemic that's killed six and a half million people around the world, the rise of fascism, I mean, there's a lot and people's responses are going to vary wildly. Kind of the metaphor I like to use is, it sort of feels like a house fire. And we've all just gone through this traumatic experience, and we've run out of the house in the middle of the night, and everyone is sort of behaving in a trauma informed way, some people are trying to run back into the house, some people are claiming that there was never a fire. And, you know, it's, it's trying to take care of each other, and hold ourselves accountable to being, you know, I think responsible for our communities, but while also acknowledging, you know, this is a weird fucking time. You know, I think too, this kind of goes back a little bit to our Naloxone conversation. You know, when we talk about masks, when we talk about boosters, these are sort of individual steps we can take, right? But ultimately, that's, that's only a piece of it, right? We need a societal shift. We need proper air filtration in schools, we need access to rapid testing, we need the working class to have the money and ability to take time off of work when they're sick. I mean, all of these things are sort of interconnected to this larger struggle. And one way that capitalism and our sort of overlords here and Imperial core, are able to shift blame is by you know, kind of making everything this individual choice and individual responsibility when it's not at all.
Margaret 31:33 No, that's such a good point. And there's it, it shows that there's even like, some of those things are small scale community, things can be done as well, like, it would be a shame for a small scale community to have to suddenly like come up with the resources to provide rapid testing to everyone constantly or whatever, right. But like, I don't know, like, helping your local venues get real good air filtration systems, you know, or like, expanding outside infrastructure in climates that allow it, and like, there are the steps that we can take that are sort of medium. They're not....And I think that's actually where anarchists and radicals actually do best is not at the individual level. And frankly, if I if I'm being honest, not necessarily at the systemic level, but like this sort of in between level, this community based this community size level of like, how do we? Yeah, I mean, we can't....the punks or the anarchists, or whatever is can't pass a mask mandate, but like, we can create, like, cultures where, when there's no reason not to, we wear masks, and we work on our air filtration. And this is really just me thinking about COVID instead of the whole point of this conversation was drug use stuff, but...
Nadia 32:54 Well I mean, they're, I think they're interrelated. You know, if you are putting on a punk show, is it accessible, right? Does that mean, you know, for folks in wheelchairs, folks with, you know, mobility aids, as well as immunocompromised people, and ensuring that you know, this is a place that they have access to? Or if it's not, saying that. I at least want you to say, "Hey, this is a dangerous place for you. And, making it accessible is not our priority or isn't possible in this situation. Therefore, you can make your own decision about whether or not you want to attend."
Margaret 33:36 I've been in like, an now I can't remember if it was France or Montreal, somewhere where people spoke French. I've been in places where like any anarchist event will put on the fliers the accessibility or lack of accessibility for wheelchair access. And that's such an interesting, good point, right? Because if you have to flag on it, "This is not wheelchair accessible." It means you have to think about it when you do it, right. And like, Which isn't to say you shouldn't...I don't know one way or the other about what I'm about to say, which doesn't mean like you can't put on an event if you can't find it, accessible space, but you should have to own it, and you should have to be working on making the space more accessible. Is that, uh??? I'm really talking about my ass here. I haven't I haven't been part of these conversations. But.
Nadia 34:21 I mean, as someone who is struggling with long COVID still a year in, you know, I am also new to the disability conversation. And I definitely feel grateful for the folks who have been activists and have been organizing around these issues for you know, forever, honestly. And it really was shocking to me, even though I'm fairly realistic about how our society treats folks they deem unworthy or undesirable, but it was really shocking the level to which you become invisible. All. And you know, I think, to sort of shoehorn a little segue back to our orginal conversation, people who use drugs also live in that sort of liminal space, right? There's so much that is invisible about drug use. But also, this kind of caricature of drug users is sort of trotted out anytime people want to talk about society's ills, right? When people are talking about folks without homes, inevitably drug use comes up as if people aren't sitting in their houses doing drugs. They just have walls and you can't see them.
Margaret 35:38 Yeah, well, and then one of the things that I really appreciate about this conversation with you is that you're talking about the implication, or the the inference that I'm picking up on, is that basically saying, It's okay, if people use drugs, that is their choice, it seems to be like, like a lot of the conversation that I've feel like I'm exposed to is this, like, we should have pity for these poor drug users, and everyone is trying to stop using drugs. Whereas, it seems like you're trying to present an alternate case where people can choose whether or not they want to engage with drugs in different ways?
Nadia 36:17 Yeah, I mean, you know, harm reduction is the sort of set of principles or tenants that allows for autonomy and allows for people to make informed decisions about what they do. You know, abstinence doesn't necessarily work or isn't feasible for everyone. And so, you know, giving people the space and acknowledging that there's always going to be some risk in the things that we do, you know, helps us kind of approach it with clear eyes. But the I think the moral question around using drugs really does us a disservice. Doing drugs is fun, and cool. And that is, I think, an important message to have out there because, you know, so often, we're just inundated with all of the terrible things that can happen to you. And again, this is normal human behavior. This is normal behavior in other other species, you've got monkeys eating, you know, fruit that's gone, gone bad and getting drunk, you've got bears eating psychedelic honey. We do this because it's enjoyable. And to deny it that, I think, sort of leaves us on our back foot in terms of "Okay, well, how do we do this safely?"
Margaret 37:41 Yeah, presenting as this is a bad thing that someone shouldn't have done and now we have to deal with the bad parts, as compared to being like, every animal on the planet wants to do this, we should figure out ways that people can have freedom to do it as safely as they want or to not do it, if they don't want.
Nadia 38:07 Right, and you know, both are fine. It's also cool to not do drugs. I do want to put that out there. But as a drug user, you know, this touches on our conversation about safe supply, right? When you're buying and you don't know the quality or if there's cross contamination, obviously, a lot of folks are very concerned about things like fentanyl right now. There's also you know, other sort of fillers or things people can use. Xylazine is something that is sort of making the rounds right now that can have potential, like negative health impacts. So yeah, I think this, this goes back to sort of those bigger picture solutions as opposed to the band aids.
Margaret 38:55 Okay. And then, how useful is it? You know, like, as you pointed out earlier, right....Again, before, we had a long pre conversation. We knew each other back in the day for, now, people can know that about us, I guess. You know, pointing out because like, I mostly don't do drugs, but I do drink sometimes, right, and that is a drug and alcohol is absolutely a drug. It's a very dangerous drug. And it's one that I engage with very rarely, but I do engage with, and it does seem like a fairly useful comparison for talking about other drugs. Like cause there's this drug that is socially acceptable while also being massively destructive, right? And it seems like that actually maps fairly well to most of the other drugs that are like, problems for people. I don't know is that too simplistic?
Nadia 39:51 No, I don't think so. You know, and that's also not to say that people don't struggle with their drug use that people you You know, might be really unhappy with their relationship to drugs. And, you know, the more openly we can talk about it and the more access to different options people have, that sort of allows them to, you know, find the most comfortable place for them. Right, there is this, you know, kind of individual piece to it, even though we're talking a lot about sort of community care,
Margaret 40:24 Right. No, that's what I mean, that, in some ways, is part of why alcohol feels like such a good comparison. It's not even a comparison, it's literally a drug. It's a drug that is somehow held into a different class than the others, is that I think we all know people who....for whom alcohol is a problem. And we all know people for whom alcohol is not a problem. And then we all know, people who completely abstain from alcohol, who are in one of those two camps, if they weren't abstaining, you know? Hmm. I don't know, I'm having this like, epiphany, that should have been obvious a long time ago, I think about this.
Nadia 41:02 Well, and, you know, thinking in terms of alcohol, and using that as an example of how constrained we are in terms of our choices, you know, if if you are someone that struggles with drinking, really the the options that are given to you are abstinence, right? 12 steps, complete sobriety, and the message that that is the only way that you will be able to, you know, become a functioning member of society. And the fact is that that's simply not true.You know, abstinence really doesn't work for many, many people. You know, I think most of us can remember the "Just Say No," campaigns of the 90s, or maybe the 80s, depending on how old you are. And we know those didn't work. It don't work for children, it doesn't work for adults. And, you know, I think I don't want to get too far down the rabbit hole. But I think it would be important for folks to sort of think about, "Well, why is alcohol illegal? And all these other drugs aren't?"And I think it all goes back to capitalism. It goes back to money. It goes back to social control.
Margaret 42:22 Yeah. Well, ironically, one of the reasons that alcohol is legal, is that a bunch of people fought the KKK to the death to make alcohol legal. I only learned as kind of more recently when I did a bunch of....one of my other podcasts is a history podcast. And I didn't realize that the second incarnation of the KKK was like, one of their main things is that they were the foot soldiers of prohibition. They were like the Proud Boys of the prohibition era. And it was this whole thing where it was like Protestants versus everyone else, including reasonable Protestants. It was white Protestants against Irish Catholics, Italians, all of the people who were, you know, bootlegging, and all of that other stuff. And there were these like massive violent street fights. And I mean, mostly, it was massive violence, street fights about fuck you, you're the KKK, we want to...you can't run our town. But, what they wanted to do was run the town on a prohibition model. And there's this like, really interesting tie between white supremacy and prohibition. And it? I don't know, I mean, like, I know, I know how to immediately draw the same thing between the outline of weed and anti blackness. And I'm suspecting that if I dug very hard, I would find similar things with like, drugs, period. I don't know. I just got really excited about people beating up the KKK and that's why we're allowed to drink.
Nadia 43:59 Yeah, that's always a win, both of those things.
Margaret 44:06 But, what anyway, sorry, I got lost in rabbit hole thinking about that. Okay, so you've brought up this topic a couple times: harm reduction. And I suspect most people have at least an idea of what harm reduction is, but I'm wondering if you could kind of introduce it because, one, it feels very relevant to this specific conversation. But it also feels very relevant to conversations around disaster preparedness in general, because it seems to be implying that there is no perfect and that in some ways perfect is the enemy of good. And that we should just like, figure out what can go wrong and do the best we can rather than expect to succeed in everything. Maybe that's a misunderstanding.
Nadia 44:51 That's, that is I think, a really core piece of it, you know, and I don't want to belie the the history behind harm reduction too, you know, this was a movement that was created in platformed by people who use drugs, by sex workers, especially during the HIV AIDS crisis. And again, you know, from groups of marginalized people that realize that they are the only ones looking out for each other. And you know, that many behaviors carry some form of risk. And so talking about that honestly, and figuring out how to mitigate that risk is far more helpful than shaming people and that is connected, you know, directly to the criminalization of HIV and AIDS too, you know, there's the sort of moralizing, right, when folks become sick. There's this idea, I think, that is rooted in very, like old school, Brimstone Christianity, that, you know, it's some form of punishment. And I think that the way our society looks at people who use drugs, and the potential risks are viewed as appropriate punishment for the behavior, which is wrong and fucked up.
Margaret 46:06 Yeah. Okay, so. So what is harm reduction?
Nadia 46:12 So, you know, I think that if we're specifically talking about drug use, that can be, you know, practical tips, anything from making sure that you're using sterile supplies, making sure that you have syringes, and you don't have to share them, to prevent the transmission of diseases, you know, that can be, you know, figuring out different routes of administration. So for example, if you're someone that likes to snort a lot of drugs, maybe you want to give your nostrils a break, and, you know, smoke or boof. There are a lot of things that you can kind of adjust, right? You don't even have to necessarily be adhering to this strict set of rules as far as your drug use, but really being sort of flexible based on your own needs.
Margaret 47:09 Okay. And then, what are some of the ways that harm reduction either applies to other things besides drug use, or like has been successfully applied, or like some of the ways that like harm reduction, as jargon, has been, like, kind of co-opted by other things?
Nadia 47:32 Yeah, I mean, I feel like especially after 2016, the the idea that voting is harm reduction really picked up speed. And I personally disagree.
Margaret 47:47 Okay.
Nadia 47:48 For the most part, because harm reduction is something that you know, you can use for yourself, for your drug use, and so when we say voting is harm reduction, my question is, "Whose harm is being lessened?" You know, we currently have a Democratic president, and there's still concentration camps on our southern border, you still have Democratic mayors and city council's introducing regressive anti homelessness laws, throwing more money at more cops. And so I just think the notion that we can affect the kind of change necessary to liberate us by voting is....it's short sighted. And I think it can be an excuse for people to not have to invest so much in their allyship. Yeah, I think at its very base, most like literal definition, voting potentially reduces harm, but most of that is going to be in the immediate or short term.
Margaret 48:50 Well, so that's really interesting to me, right? Because I think that I had a kind of misunderstanding of harm reduction in some ways, because from my point of view, I mean...voting as harm reduction just seemed to be the rephrasing of vote for the lesser evil. Because in my mind, voting for the lesser evil is acknowledging an evil, right, it is acknowledging like Like, like, Biden is an evil, the Democratic Party is an evil, that does evil things in the world. And so for me, there's a there's a sensibility to the argument of thinking that voting is how we make systemic change is terrible. And I actually thought that the kind of concept of, but they always lose their meaning, right, in the 80s. and 90s It was vote for the lesser evil and people were like, yeah, that's how we make things better. It's like, no, it's clearly not how to make things better. It's how you make things evil. You're just controlling the amount of evil. And then with harm reduction argument, the reason I bought it at first was because it was like, "Oh, yes, because it's, it's saying there is going to be harm, but we want to do less of it." But, with what you're talking about, about how drug use or sex as two of the spaces that we talk about harm reduction a lot, right? Like those things can rule, right? Like sex and drugs, there's a reason that people talk about them positively. They're very dangerous activities sometimes, right. And people should go into them as clear headed as...well, maybe not clear headed depending on their preferences, but you know, people should should be aware of the risks, but then go and have all the sex and drugs and rock and roll or whatever that they want, as compared to... and so this is where the metaphor to the political system seems to fall apart to me is because like, well, the existing political system that we have is just doing bad. And it's really about what tiny little bits of mitigation or picking, something's going to kill. It's the trolley problem, right? You're still killing people. And that's not fun and cool. That's not sex, drugs and rock and roll. I don't know. That's what I got.
Nadia 51:01 Yeah. And, you know, I think that you really laid it out very well there. You know, yes, I can reduce the harm to myself if I am using drugs or having sex, but I can't get these politicians that I voted in to reduce the harm that they are causing. Because, you know, if you're voting for one of the two dominant political parties in the United States, I think you're just asking yourself, if you want to get to fascism, the short way or the long way, because I think, you know, voting in Democrats does make a material difference when it comes to some social services, and some environmental protections. But ultimately, both of these parties work at the behest of the ruling class. And capitalism requires ceaseless consumption and growth. And neither of those are sustainable. And they require the subjugation of working class people. So I think, you know, if, you know, it's, it's a question of capacity, if you and the people in your community that you organize with have the time and resources to engage in electoral politics, while simultaneously building dual power, and fighting encroaching fascism, like, go with God. There's space for a lot of tactics, and you gotta find where your skill set is and where your comfort lies. And I do just want to say this one last piece, too, when we talk about voting as harm reduction in the United States, that often I think tends to overlook the international implications of maintaining the current political system here,
Margaret 52:36 Right, which is, that's where it becomes even more of the same as like, yeah, it's never...the solutions don't lie in the ballot box, and like, Oh, whatever. I'm just like, speaking cliches or whatever. But it's like, even if we can make things like slightly better, like, because like, literally, if someone was like, "Well, do you want fascism tomorrow? Do you want fascism in five years," I'd be like, "Five years, please, that gives me a little bit more time to try to fight it." But of course, the problem, obviously, we're way off topic, but the problem is, of course, then people think that like, oh, that's the solution. The solution is engaging with this political system that has no fucking reason for existing besides driving us closer to Ecocide and fascism.
Nadia 53:21 Right. That's, that's the band aid. That's the triage. You know, there are so many different things that I think harm reduction principles can be applied to whether that's sex work, you know, mental health issues, eating disorders, tobacco use, I think there's a really natural evolution of the harm reduction philosophy to extend it to other health risk behaviors and to a broader audience in that way. I just, I think that, again, using harm reduction to sort of Pantious Pilate wash your hands of a lot of things and just say,"I voted and that's enough," is it's not going to work. It's not.
Margaret 54:00 Okay. No, and now I'm thinking, I'm like, Oh, shit, is my like, I just carry around naloxone. Is that my, like, wash my hands of addressing the larger systemic things and like, well, it doesn't affect me, it clearly affects me because it affects people I care about and it like, I don't know, is the takeaways. Okay, wait, I'm gonna try and some of the takeaways I've gotten from you, is that carry Naloxone, but it's a band aid. And it is a useful one, but the larger systemic problems have to do with criminalization and they have to do with access to safe supply. And so working on the kind of pressure involved to fight for that is good having mutual aid networks....Oh, okay. One of the questions that kind of had actually is, in your experience existing mutual aid networks, how well do they get along with existing harm reduction networks? Does it tend to be the same players and everyone's excited, or do you run across some mutual aid networks do they kind of like to step up their game about actually care about, you know, drug users? Or like, How's that look right now,
Nadia 55:09 In my personal experience, and I can't really speak to, you know, places I haven't lived or, you know, different communities that I'm not a part of. But there is a great deal of overlap. You know, a lot of folks that are working in harm reduction, people who use drugs and sex workers are sort of use to you know, fending for ourselves, we're used to creating these these networks of care that exist outside of the current system. And, you know, that's not to say that, when disaster strikes, it can sort of hit some folks harder than others. If the needle exchange in your town closes down, because there was a disaster. You know, there, there might be some time before they opened back up. And that's not going to stop people from using drugs. It will just create a situation where people have to use drugs more dangerously. And so, you know, yes, I think that there's a lot of overlap. But also, it shouldn't be this sort of jerry rigged, you know, last line of defense, the folks that have just experienced a disaster now having to turn around and all care for each other. Because again, no one is coming to save you.
Margaret 56:28 Yeah. Yay. That's
Nadia 56:32 that's the real point of it. Yes.
Margaret 56:35 But I mean it's really liberating. I think that like, I'm not super into political nihilism, personally, a lot of my friends are and I don't mean to slight it. But, the thing that reminds me of what like my like nihilist friends get out of like hopelessness, not hopeless, whatever, out of nihilism is comparable to the like, I find something joyous and liberating about the realization that no one's coming to save us. Because it's this like concept, one of my favorite cliches from like, when I was a baby anarchist was just like, "We are the ones we've been waiting for." Because it's less about, no one is coming to save us, we're doomed. And it's more about like, it is up to us to build the power and capacity necessary to bring about the changes that we need to see in this world. And there's a lot of us, and there's a lot more of us all the time, and the problems we're facing, seem to be getting bigger and bigger, depending on the position you're coming from, right, the problems facing me have gotten bigger and bigger as all the anti trans stuff comes through, or whatever, you know, but there's also more of us. Even to just continue the trans thing as a metaphor. It's like, the reason there's all this anti trans shit is that we all came out of the fucking closet. Like, there's a ton of us. And like, there always were a ton of us, but we were all fucking scared. And like, and what they want to do is make us afraid and get back in the closet. And so I get a lot out of, 'no one is coming to save us.' Because of the flip side being. We're going to save us.
Nadia 58:16 Yeah, I mean, I think it's really liberatory. That's something that I love about anarchism, too, you know, yes, that means that, you know, the system isn't here for us, because it's never been here for us. But ultimately, we have to take responsibility for our lives, for our communities, and for the future that we want, as opposed to sort of being handed these these goals and expectations, the rules that were supposed to have, the lives were supposed to lead. And you know, it can be scary to not have that safety net, but I think through, you know, both political discourse, but also just, you know, having lived a life, you quickly become aware that that safety net never actually existed in the first place.
Margaret 59:05 Yeah. Well, are there any last words on preparedness that you want to, you want to shout out? Everyone should fill their basement with needles? I don't know.
Nadia 59:22 Well, I mean, don't do that. Or if you do that, make sure that they are, you know, safely kept somwhere that only you have access to, or the folks that need them. You know, I know I've kind of hammered this home a lot. But, it really, when I say 'it,' I mean harm reduction. And I think what we're trying to do for ourselves really comes down to community and it comes down to having these bigger goals and not taking, 'no,' for an answer or taking, you know, half measures for an answer. The overdose crisis is very real. And there are pharmaceutical companies and families that have directly caused a lot of pain and death, and they should be held accountable. And that is slowly happening over time. But, I just want to keep clear, you know, who are the folks in our community who are doing the work? And who are maybe the people that are sort of preventing us from living our best lives?
Margaret 1:00:34 Yeah. All right. Well, is there anything you want to shout out here at the end of like, what people...I don't know it was anything you want to draw attention to any projects? Any of your work?
1:00:47 You know, support your local needle exchange, support your local sex workers. You know, if there is a call to fight back against fascists, or show up at your local library, because people are doing some fuck shit against trans people, you should be there. That's my shout out. Yeah.
Margaret 1:01:05 That's a good shout out. Well, thanks for being on...it's funny as like, every now and then I do these episodes where I'm like, it like challenges my own like weird....I don't want to say puritanical upbringing, I didn't have a puritanical upbringing. I was around a lot of people, you know, all my friends did a lot of drugs when I was in....whatever. And it's just like, interesting to every now and I'd have these episodes like, it's like the first couple times I did firearms episodes. I was like, It's not that I was like, Oh, I'm being so edgy. It was just being like, Oh, right. Information is dangerous because I and then I'm like, that's true about everything. I don't know where I'm going with this. Basically, thanks for coming on to talk about something that I feel like doesn't get talked about because people are afraid to acknowledge it, because we all walk around with this, like, 'drugs are bad,' and then we just secretly all do drugs. And so it's just better to just actually be like, drugs are complicated.
Nadia 1:02:03 Yeah, and people are complicated.
Margaret 1:02:05 What? Not me. I'm a paladin. I adhere to my moral code. That doesn't sound great. Okay. Yep. All right. Well, thank you for coming on this episode.
Nadia 1:02:15 Thanks for having me.
Margaret 1:02:17 All right. Bye.
Margaret 1:02:25 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please tell people about it by whatever means that you prefer to tell people about things, like skywriting, please sky write Live Like the World is Dying above a beach. Ooh, get one of those banners that goes behind the like little plane that flies by the beach and usually advertises auto insurance. And instead it should just say, "Live Like the World is Dying." Don't tell people it's a podcast. Just tell people to live like the world is dying and become a cool, no future punk or a only a future if we imagine it....Okay, I'm off track. So, yeah, you can tell people about it. You can also support us. This podcast is published by pa...not by Patreon, it's supported by Patreon. It's published by Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which is a publishing collective that I'm part of along with a bunch of other people. We put out books we recently put out Cindy, Barukh's Milstein's "Try Anarchism for Life" and soon possibly, actually, I don't know when this episode is gonna be released. February 1st, 2023, we are releasing my book, "Escape from Incel Island." If you're listening to this before February 1st, 2023, you can pre order it at tangledwilderness.org. If you're listening to it after February 1st, 2023, you can buy it wherever books are sold, or go to the library, or steal a copy from Barnes and Noble. I don't care. And but, don't steal it from an info shop. That's just, it's just mean. Why would you do that? Get a library to carry it and then get it, or steal it from a big corporate place. Whatever. You can support us on patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness and your donations, go to pay the transcriptionist and pay the audio editor to keep all of this stuff happening. And in particular, I want to thank Aly, and Paparouna, and Milica, and Boise Mutual Aid, Theo, Hunter, Shawn, SJ, Paige, Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana Chelsea, Kat J, Staro, Jenipher, Eleanor, Kirk, Sam, Michaiah, Chris, and Hoss the dog. I really appreciate all of you and I really appreciate that there's enough of you that I read your names fast and maybe that's like really rude. But, I just like I don't know, I'm kind of like humbled by the support that Strangers gets and I hope that you who are listening well I only hope you support us if you can afford it. If you can't afford it, just continue to get our shit for free. And that's the whole point of supporting, is it helps other people get our shit for free. Anyway I'll talk to you all soon be as well as you can
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Brooke and Margaret recap the passed year of horrifying events, from climate collapse, to inflation economics, to developments with Covid, mass shooting, why the police continue to suck, culture wars, bodily autonomy, why capitalism ruins everything, as well as a glimpse of what could be coming this next year both hopeful and dreadful in This Year in the Apocalypse.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Brooke is just great and can be found at Strangers helping up keep our finances intact and on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Hopefully will come out Friday, Jan. 31st.
This Year in the Apocalypse 2022
Brooke 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm Brooke Jackson, your co-host for this episode, along with the indomitable Margaret killjoy.
Margaret 00:27 Hiiii
Brooke 00:28 We have something extra special for you. Hi, Margaret. You might be familiar with the monthly segment we started in 2022: This Month in the Apocalypse, and today we will take that into a sub segment: This Year in the Apocalypse. But, first we have to shout out to another member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts, but playing a little jingle from one of our comrades, Boo doo doo doo, doo doo.
Brooke 01:18 And we're back. So, before I tell people about this extra special episode, I want to officially say "Hello," to my co host, Margaret. Hi, Margaret.
Margaret 01:36 Hello, how are you?
Brooke 01:38 I'm doing okay. How are you doing?
Margaret 01:42 I'm doing terrible, and I'm not going to talk about it.
Brooke 01:45 Okay, that's fair. That sounds like me most of the time. Okay, well, speaking of terrible, how did the last year treat you now that we've flipped the calendar? Is there anything you would like to say to the year 2022?
Margaret 01:59 You know, it's fine. It's just the year 2020 part three. As far as the other parts of the year 2020, it's been...it was chiller, then parts one and two. Not from a climate point of view, but from a fascism point of view.
Brooke 02:21 Oh, okay. That's a good point. Well, I feel like 2022 as with most years....Sorry. What, Margaret?
Margaret 02:30 Everything's fine. Nothing bad happened. That's the end of the episode.
Brooke 02:33 Always.
Margaret 02:34 Everything's good.
Brooke 02:35 Okay, cool. Well, this has been a fun recording. Yeah. Well, as with most years, in the last decade, I say, "Fuck you to 2022," and would like to burn it all down. So, we have that going for us.
Margaret 02:51 Alright, fuck you, 2022. I do that when I leave a state.
Brooke 02:58 You say, "Fuck you," to the State behind you?
Margaret 02:59 Yeah, yeah.
Brooke 03:01 Even even Oregon, even when you came to visit us out here?
Margaret 03:05 Why would I? Why would Oregon be any different?
Brooke 03:08 Because some of the people you love are in Oregon.
Margaret 03:16 Whatever, fuck you too....I mean, many of the people I love were also in the year 2022.
Brooke 03:21 Okay, all right. You got me.
Margaret 03:24 Okay.
Brooke 03:24 One point: Margaret , zero points: Brooke.
Margaret 03:26 Yep, that's what I was saying.
Brooke 03:27 Yeah. So. So, I was thinking about how we do this extra fun, special episode of This Year in the Apocalypse. And being typical Brooke, I was like, let's come up with a very orderly fashion in which to do this. I shall take all of the months and pick one thing per month, and we shall be organized. And spoiler alert for the audience. Margaret and I came up with separate lists. We haven't seen each other's lists. We don't know what each other shittiest things are.
Margaret 03:53 Wait, I didn't pick the shittiest things. I just picked stuff.
Brooke 03:56 Oh, damn, I pick the shitty stuff.
Margaret 04:00 Okay, well, I tried to go with a little bit of, there's not a lot of hope in here. There's a little bit of hope in here.
Brooke 04:08 It's funny, because when I was thinking about this, I was like, oh, Margaret should do the happy stuff, because Margaret does Cool People. And I can be the the Roberts Evans, everything's bastards side of the simulation.
Margaret 04:20 Okay, well, it's a good thing we're figuring this out right now, on air.
Brooke 04:23 Right?
Margaret 04:24 Okay. So, we'll start with your month by month and then I'll interject?
Margaret 04:28 That's fine.
Brooke 04:28 Super fun. Yeah. And like a disclaimer on the month by month is that not all months were created equal. So, it's like, whatever the shittiest thing in one month, maybe, you know, way shittier than next month. That's annoying to like, try and compare them in that way. It was a silly way for me to do it, but.. here we are.
Brooke 04:30 All right. flashing back 12 months to January, 2022: America hit a million COVID cases with Omicron surging, so Good job America. COVID ongoing and bad.
Margaret 05:04 We're number one.
Brooke 05:06 Yeah. The other the other real shitty, horrible thing in January was inflation, which technically was pretty crappy in 2021, as well. But we started feeling it more in January like that's when it started hitting and then was kind of ongoing throughout this year as businesses responded to the inflation, had to start raising prices and stuff. Well, had to...some had to, some chose to because they could get away with it.
Margaret 05:34 Should I? I wrote down all the inflation numbers for the end of the year.
Brooke 05:39 Yeah, baby.
Margaret 05:41 The OECD, which stands for something something something, it's a group of 38 countries that sit around and talk about how great they are, or whatever economic something, something. You think I would have written it down. They do. They calculate inflation for their member countries, based on the Consumer Price index. It averaged. This is as of October, the report in December, talks about it as of October, it averaged about 10.7% overall inflation across these 38 countries in the last year. Food averaged at...I wrote down 6.1%. But, I actually think it was slightly higher than that. I think I typo-ed that.
Brooke 06:22 In the US was closer to 8%.
Margaret 06:26 Yeah, and then, okay. More developed nations saw this all a little bit lower the G7, which is the Group of Seven, it's the seven countries who have the elite cool kids club, and try and tell everyone what to do. Their overall inflation was 7.8%, as compared to the 10.7%. Inflation in the US actually tapered off most than most other countries, probably because we fuck everyone else over, but I couldn't specifically tell you. Inflation is a bit of a black box that even the people who know what inflation is don't really understand. And, energy inflation in general was the most brutal. Italy saw 70% energy inflation in the last year. It was 58%. In the UK, it was 17% in the US. So energy, inflation is actually outpacing even food inflation. And most of the food inflation, as we've talked about, at different times on this is caused by rising costs of fertilizer and like diesel and things like that. Yeah, that's what I got about inflation. There was a lot of it. It's technically tapering off a little bit in the United States. Just this moment.
Brooke 07:41 Yeah, I was actually listening to a economics report about that yesterday about how it's tapering off a little bit. The extra shitty thing that happened in February, which added to the drastically increasing fuel prices and food prices, was that fucking Russia invaded Ukraine,and started bombing shit there.
Margaret 08:04 Boo.
Brooke 08:06 And that that might win as...if we're taking a poll here of all of the worst things that happened in the last year, I kind of feel like that, you know, that's got to be one of the top three.
Margaret 08:16 It's, it's up there. Yeah. Even in terms of its effects on the rest of the world, even like, if you're like, on a, well, what do I care about what two European countries are doing? Because, but it affects the shit out of the global south. Ukraine in particular, and also Russia providing a very large percentage of the grain and wheat that goes to, especially Africa. So, yeah, a lot of the energy inflation in the rest of Europe is also a direct result of Russian imperialism.
Brooke 08:47 Yeah, it's pretty...it's fucked up a lot of stuff. There was another shitty thing that happened before that happened in February, which is what the Olympics began. And you know, Boo the Olympics. Yeah. So then we then we moved into March and there was this thing called COVID. And then there was this bad inflation happening and then this war over in Ukraine, but then we also, in Florida decided to pass a bill, the nicknamed 'Don't Say Gay' bill.
Margaret 09:18 Yeah. I can't believe that was less than a year ago. That was like eight culture wars ago.
Brooke 09:26 I know, because I got some of the other ones coming up here. And it was like, oh, fuck, that's still a thing. And then moving into April, so, there was like this war going on, and inflation was bad, and people were dying of this pandemic that we were living in, and then also, the Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard trial began. And that might not seem like one of the shittiest things, but for like anyone who's been a survivor of domestic violence, and the way that trial it seemed like you know, every social media platform like you were getting like ads for it. Right? I know, other people talked about this, like everyone was seeing all these ads for news reports on it. It was like way at the top of the list. And, you know, again, domestic abuse survivor, like, I don't, I don't need to be reminded about, you know, this awful ongoing domestic abuse trial.
Margaret 10:19 Yeah, yeah, that was, um, I like try to avoid everything that has to do with celebrities, but realizing how much that that like, ties into, I don't know, how we all talk about all of this shit. I have nothing really clever to say besides like, oh, my God, it's so fucked up. And I don't trust mainstream discourse around any of it. Yeah,
Brooke 10:39 For sure. We also saw because of climate issues, Lake Mead was dropping to dangerously low levels, starting all the way in April. And I feel like we could have done this whole episode on climate catastrophes that happened in the last year, like This Year in the Apocalypse could have just been climate change. It was a lot.
Margaret 11:00 Yes, well, fortunately that will start overriding everything else over the next couple of years. So, you know....One or the other just to Lake thing on my note, Lake Powell, which provides power to 4.5 million people could reach minimum power pool status by July [2023]. So that's a that's an upcoming thing to look forward to.
Brooke 11:29 Yay, for the year ahead. Yeah, I don't even know what the status of Lake Mead is right now. I'm sure it's not doing great. And we'll probably start hearing about it again in the spring as it's at dangerously low levels, find more bodies and boats and whatever else.
Margaret 11:46 And they're both. Both are on the Colorado River. Yeah, they're both on the Colorado River.
Brooke 11:51 Yeah. And if you're not familiar with why Lake Mead matters, John Oliver actually did a really good piece on it on his show that talks about the water rights and stuff. I think it was John Oliver. Maybe it was John Stewart.
Margaret 12:07 And if you want to read a terrible...a very good, although misogynist dystopia about what's coming in terms of water rights, there's a book called "The Water Knife" by Paulo [Bacigalupi], whose name last name I don't know how to pronounce. It's an Italian name. I think yeah,
Brooke 12:21 I actually have that on my to-read-shelf.
Margaret 12:23 Yeah, it's, um, that man should not be allowed to write sex worker characters ever again.
Brooke 12:29 Thank you for the notice there on what to expect on that aspect.
Margaret 12:34 But other than that, other than that, it's very interesting book.
Brooke 12:40 Okay. May brought us a couple of big bad shootings, which is, you know, not again, not to diminish any other school shootings or shootings that happened or the fact that they're going on, you know, all the time in schools, but they were the ones that like, hit the news, really big. There was the Buffalo, New York supermarket shooting that happened. And then the towards the end of the month was that just God awful Robb Elementary School shooting in Texas, that I don't know how everyone else experienced it. But I, as a parent, you know, whose child who's only slightly older than that. It was absolutely horrifying for me and enraging, and I had a lot of feelings about it. And you know, school shootings are always hard to see, but that one in particular...
Margaret 13:29 This is the coward cops one, where they kept parents out who were the parents who were trying to like save kids?
Brooke 13:33 Yeah, for like 72 minutes or something like that, more than that they were outside the door where the guy was actively shooting on children.
Margaret 13:41 This is...the character of American law enforcement was laid bare on that day, is how I feel. I mean, I have many feelings on all of it, but...
Brooke 13:53 And that was in Uvalde, Texas, where they have two separate police systems. There is a police system just for the schools there in addition to the town's police.
Margaret 14:07 There was that, uh, there was that lawsuit 10,15,20 years ago, something, where a man who was like, I think it was someone who's like stabbing people on the train, you know, just like, just just doing that thing. And, and a man stopped him, stopped the stabby guy while the cops cowered in behind, like they went into, like the driver's compartment of the train, and they just hid from the stabby guy. And the the guy stopped the stabby guy sued...I might have the details of this wrong. Sued and was like, the police have a duty to protect people. And it came back, the judge is like, "Actually they don't, it is literally not the jobs. The police's job is not to protect you. That is not their job." And, the sooner we all realize that the safer we'll be, because the more people will realize that safety is something that we're going to have to build without the infrastructure that pretends to offer a safety, but absolutely does not. And legally is not required to.
Brooke 14:21 Yeah, I didn't know all the backstory of that. But, I know that that one went to the Supreme Court. And that became, you know, the national standard, because I remember reading about that part of it that, yeah, they don't, they don't have they don't have a duty to protect.
Margaret 15:27 I think it was the stabby guy on the train. But I, you know, I'm not like a classic thing rememberer, it's not like my skill set. I didn't put my points in character creation in memory.
Brooke 15:41 Well important thing there is was the the outcome of that. The other big bad shooting I remember making the news pretty loudly this year was also the Highland Park Parade shooting that actually happened in July. So that was a couple of months later. But yeah, good times. Guns.
Margaret 15:58 Hurray. [sadly]
Brooke 15:59 All right. So, we moved into June. And a couple of things are going on, on the global stage. Flooding began in Pakistan. And that flooding continued for a couple of months. We talked about this on one of our This Month, episodes, and even to right now, there is still flooding. And that flooding that did occur, you know, has displaced 1000s, if not millions of people. And it's really, really fucked things up and continues to fuck things up in Pakistan.
Margaret 16:25 And I would say that flooding in general, is one of the things that we're seeing more and more of all over the world. And it's one of the things that like...I think a lot of people and maybe I'm just projecting, but you know, I grew up thinking of floods as sort of a distant thing. And then actually where I lived, most recently, we all had to leave because of constant flooding as climate changed. And I think that floods need to be something....It's the opposite of quicksand. When you're a kid you think about quicksand is like this thing to like, worry about, and then you grow up and realize that like quicksand is like not...don't worry about quicksand. That's not part of your threat modeling. And, so I think that flooding is something that whether or not it was on something that you were really worried about, wherever you live, it is something that you should pay attention to. It's not like, a run out and worry, right. But, it's a thing to be like more aware of, you know, there was recent...New Years in San Francisco and Oakland, there was really bad flooding. And then again, a couple of days later, might still be going on by the time people listen to this, but I'm not actually sure. And you know, there's the footage of people running out with like boogie boards or surfboards or whatever into the streets and, and playing in the flood. And, I'm not actually going to sit here on my high horse and tell people to never go into floodwater, you shouldn't, it is not a thing you should do, but it is a thing that people do. But I think people don't recognize fast moving currents, how dangerous they are, just how dangerous floods are, no matter how they look. And, if there's more than a foot of water, don't drive through it.
Brooke 17:58 Yeah, if you're not experienced with floods, those are things you wouldn't know. So I have, you know, you said, that wasn't a big thing in your childhood, but because of where I live, it you know, I don't know if this is true of all the Pacific Northwest, but certainly, in my town, flooding is a big concern, we''re right on a river, and when there was bad rainstorms back in 96', like most of downtown got flooded. I mean, I was I was a kid then. I was I was a youth. And that experience, you know, kind of informed some of my youth, you know, we had a lot of lessons learned about how to manage flooding, what you do and don't do inflooding. So that's something that's been in the forefront of my mind. And yeah, as I see other people dealing with flooding for the first time in the news, it's like, oh, no, no, you don't. No. That's bad. Don't do that. Don't go in those waters. But it's their first time. They wouldn't know.
Margaret 18:53 Yeah. Unless you were like, directly saving something or someone, especially someone, and then even then you have to know what you're doing. You know, they're a bigger deal, even smaller ones are a bigger deal than you realize, I guess is the thing to say about floods. Anyway, so Okay, so where are we at?
Brooke 19:10 We're still in June, because there was, you know, in addition to the inflation, and the flooding, and the heat waves, and the war going on, and people dying of a pandemic, this little thing happened in the US where the Supreme Court's overturned a little a little old law called Roe v. Wade.
Margaret 19:29 That was about two different ways of interacting with water? [joking]
Brooke 19:33 Yes, exactly. Ties, ties, right and flooding there. Yeah. It was just a minor...
Margaret 19:39 Yeah, that's my joke about people losing their capacity to control their own bodies. Just a little light hearted joke. Very appropriate.
Brooke 19:48 As a person with a uterus, I genuinely can't...i can't joke about that one. Like, it's just too close to home.
Margaret 19:54 Yeah, fair enough. I'm sorry.
Brooke 19:57 No, it's I'm glad that you are, because it is good to laugh about these things that are actually very upsetting. It's how, it's part of our, you know, grieving process, how we deal with it as being able to laugh a little bit.
Margaret 20:08 Yeah. Yeah, although and then, you know, okay, so we've had this like, fight, you know, America's polarizing really hard about a lot of very specific issues: people's ability to control the reproductive systems being a very major, one people's ability to control their hormonal systems and the way they present being another one, I'm sure I'll talk about that more. And, you know, the, the weirdly positive thing that happened this week that I started writing notes about, but didn't finish, is about how there's now...they're changing the laws about how the accessibility of abortion pills and so that they're going to be available in more types of stores for more people in the near future. This will not affect people who are in abortion ban states. So it's this polarization, it's becoming easier to access reproductive health and control in some states, and it's becoming harder and illegal to access it in other states. My other like, positive...It's not even a positive spin. It's the glint of light in the darkness is that abortion was illegal for a very long time in the United States, and people did it, and had access to it and not as well, and it is better when it is legal. Absolutely. But underground clinics existed. And people did a lot of work to maintain reproductive health. And now we have access to such better and safer tools for reproductive health, whether you know, it's access to abortion pills, or just everything about reproductive health has...we know a lot more about it as a society than at least medical and Western, you know, methods of abortion. We know a lot more about than we did a couple decades ago. And then, the other big thing that I keep thinking about...so there was the Jane Collective, right, in the US is I'm just like moving into history mode. Is that annoying?
Brooke 22:06 Go for it.
Margaret 22:07 Teah. It's my other fucking podcast, all history and so like there's the Jane Collective in the US. And they were really fucking cool. And they provided all these abortions to people in Chicago, and they actually pioneered a lot of methods of abortion and pushed forward a lot of important shit, right? In the 1920s, in Germany, anarchists ran more than 200 abortion clinics. Basically, if you wanted an abortion in 1920s, Germany, you went to the syndicalists, you went to the anarcho syndicalists. And because they sat there, and they were like, "Oh, a large amount of crime needs to be done on an organized fashion. And what is anarcho syndicalism? But a way to organize crime?" In this case, usually it's like class war against bosses and illegal strikes and stuff. But, "How do we organize that on a large scale?" And the anarchists were the ones who had the answer answers to, 'How do you organize crime on a large scale,' and I want to know more about that information. I haven't found that much about it in English yet. But, that kind of thing gives me hope. It gives me hope that we can, it's better when it is legal, I'm not being like, this is great, you know, it's fucked up, but we can do this. And, you know, on this very podcast, if you listen to one of the Three Thieves, Four Thieves? Some Number of Thieves Vinegar Collective, Margaret, famous remember of details, they they talk about their work, developing reverse engineering or making accessible, different abortion drugs and how to basically like, create them, and get them to where they need to be, regardless of the legality of those things. But, you might have more to say about this, too. I just wanted to go into history mode.
Brooke 23:50 No, I I liked that. And yeah, you did those episodes in a few different ways about it that are super important. I mean, I don't think I need to rehash why Roe is so important. We we know that, you know, and it's not just about reproductive rights for people with uteruses, either. It's about the trends towards you know, bodily autonomy and regulation of bodies. And you know, what that signals as well, it's an issue for everybody.
Margaret 24:17 Yeah. And remember, like at the very beginning, some people were like, they might be coming for birth control next, and everyone's like, Nah, they're not coming for birth control. And now you can see the same, the same right wing people who are like, "We should probably just kill the gay people." They like say it and city council meetings. They're also being like, "And birth control on my right, like, fuck that thing?"
Brooke 24:36 Yeah. Frustrating.
Margaret 24:39 Yeah. Get it out of someone's cold dead hands.
Brooke 24:45 Yeah, this is one of those things where the months don't necessarily compare. Yeah.
Margaret 24:49 There's that meme....Go ahead. I'm sorry. No, go.
Brooke 24:52 We...you know there were historic heat waves going on. Continued flooding and droughts. And all kinds of climate nastiness. And then in, in Tariff Island, we saw a whole bunch of British officials resign, and then Boris Johnson resigning, which, you know, fuck the government and all of those kinds of things, and fuck that guy. But, it did also lead into this, what has been kind of a lot of turmoil in the UK as they've gone through now a couple of different prime ministers and just like, you know, just the the, the sign of the crumbles of how just overwhelmingly corrupt political leaders are, you know, at this point in so called, you know, democratic and stable democracies, that, you know, they're falling apart too.
Margaret 25:39 Now, that's a good point. Um, what year did that lady I didn't like die? What day? What month? Queen?
Brooke 25:48 I didn't put down the month because that's a happy thing that happened, not a shitty thing.
Margaret 25:51 I know. Remember positive things about 2022. And like, stadiums full of like, Irish folks being like, "Lizzie's in a box. Lizzie's in a box." There's like some positive things.
Brooke 26:08 I might rewatch some of those after this, just for a little pick me up.
Margaret 26:11 Yeah. The people dancing in front of the palace, anyway. Yeah. I don't like colonialism or monarchy. I don't know if anyone knew this about me.
Brooke 26:20 Yeah. No, same. I've been trying to explain to my kid about why Queen Elizabeth was bad. And she's having a hard time. Because, you know, children and fantasies and stories and kings and queens, and blah, blah, blah.
Margaret 26:32 Yeah. Which is the fucking problem.
Brooke 26:34 Yeah, a similar kind of thing happened in August in terms of like, you know, unstable, so supposedly stable governments, in that the the FBI had to raid Mar-a-Lago and Trump which, again, fuck Trump and the FBI and the federal government and all of that, but as a sign of, you know, our democracies actually not being very sound, and how just grossly corrupt politicians are and stuff, the only way they could get back a bunch of confidential documents and like, nuclear related stuff was to fucking invade a former president. Yeah. Also in August Yeah. monkeypox started hitting the news, which of course, speaking of culture was, right, that led into a whole bunch of stuff about, you know, a bunch of anti-gay stuff and reminders of what the AIDS epidemic was like, and just a whole bunch of fucking nonsense up in the news because of that.
Margaret 27:32 God, I barely remember that.
Brooke 27:34 Right, I think we did it on an episode, a This Month episode.
Margaret 27:38 I mean, I remember it now. It's just there's so much. There's so much. Yeah. Yeah.
Brooke 27:44 So September brought us protests starting to erupt in Iran. Finally. There was a woman, Masha Amini, who was arrested, you know, they had been doing caravans, were doing these crackdowns and the morality police and stuff. And so that was the start of a bunch of turmoil there that went on for at least three months. It's finally settled down some last month. But that was going on, and then also towards the end of the month hurricane Ian hit in Florida. So, not to make it all about the climate. But again, historic hurricanes and flooding and stuff.
Margaret 28:19 Yeah. And these things are related to each other. I mean, like, as you have global insecurity caused by climate, it's going to show all of the cracks in the systems and like, it's hard, because it's like, overall, you know, I see the the attempted revolution, the uprising in Iran is an incredibly positive thing and like reminder of the beauty of the human spirit. And also, like, what happened, the end result of that, that, I don't even want to say, 'end result,' though, right? Because like, every social struggle is going to ebb and flow. And, our action is going to cause reaction. And you know, and whenever people have uprisings, they remember power. They also remember fear, right? And the system is hoping that people remember fear. And the people are hoping that they remember power, you know, and, and it seems impossible to predict which uprisings will lead to fear and which ones will lead to power in terms of even when they're crushed, right? Whether that is the fertile soil for the next rising or whether it you know, has salted the earth to try and keep my metaphor consistent.
Brooke 29:43 Nah, mixed metaphors the best. Okay, yeah, it's not a bad thing that people were protesting against what was going on there. It's it's awful that they had to get to that point that the morality police were so bad that they had to start protesting and ongoing conflict and unrest in the Middle East, never ending.
Margaret 30:06 And I want to know more. I haven't done enough research on this yet, but another like hopeful thing about, you know, sort of global feminist, radical politics, there's been a recent movement of men in Afghanistan, who are walking out of exams and walking out of different positions that only men are allowed to hold, you know, in schools and things like that, in protest of the fact that of women's disinclusion.
Brooke 30:33 Okay, I hadn't heard anything about that. So that's, yeah, We'll have to add that to a This Month, because I want to know more about that too. That sounds really positive.
Margaret 30:40 Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know whether it's, you know, happened three times, and it's caught headlines each time or I don't know enough about it to talk about it as a movement. But it matters. That kind of stuff matters. And yeah, it's hopeful.
Brooke 30:57 Well, we moved into October and the fall season, and y'all might remember this little one, some South African asshole named Elon Musk, Mosh, Mosk, whatever that guy's name is,
Margaret 31:10 He's named after the rodent, the muskrat.
Brooke 31:13 Okay, that'll be easy to remember. That guy officially took over at the only social media platform that I don't mostly hate, which is Twitter. A lot of his fucked-up-ness...Nah, he did some of that the first week, that was still in October. And then definitely more came after that. But, he's destroying the microblogging site that we all love so much.
Margaret 31:36 Yeah, I will say, my favorite meme that come out of that was basically like, you know what, I've decided that I am okay with Elon Musk being in charge of the exodus of all the rich people to Mars. [Laughs]
Brooke 31:50 Yes, winning. Do that quickly.
Margaret 31:53 Yeah. He'll fuck it up. Like he fucks everything up. You've seen Glass Onion?
Brooke 31:58 Yes, I did.
Margaret 32:00 I don't want to like spoil it for people. But, I'll just say that movie did a really good job of pointing out that Elon Musk is just a fucking...is not an intelligent person, is not doing genius things. And it was pointed out really well.
Brooke 32:15 Can I point out something embarrassing?
Margaret 32:17 Absolutely, it's just you and I here.
Brooke 32:21 No one will ever know. I didn't realize when I watched it that that guy was supposed to be a parody of like Elon Musk specifically. I thought it was just like generic, you know, rich people are terrible. And then it wasn't till like after I watched it, and everyone else started watching it and commenting that it was Musk and I was like, "Oh, damn, obviously it is."
Margaret 32:42 Yeah, it's the like, the car thing and the space thing are the main nods. I mean, it's at the same time. It could be Bezos it could be any fucking, like tech billionaire asshole. But I think it was, I think it was intentionally Musk.
Brooke 32:56 Yeah, I've got to rewatch it with that in mind. I was too busy going, "Oh, it's that guy. It's that actor or actress. Someone I know that person. Enjoy the characters. Yeah. That was a thing that happened in December, but we haven't done November, so November, Powerball made some poor asshole into a billionaire. So I feel bad for that guy. Yeah. So the Powerball, nobody had won it for like three months, and the pot got up to like $2 billion. And a single a single person had the winning ticket when it was finally pulled. Which, if they take the cash payout, which I think most people do, it's actually only $1 billion. And then, probably the government takes that. So you're only half a billionaire, probably by the time all is said and done. But still, that's, you know, what a way to fuck up the rest of your existence by suddenly having that much money.
Margaret 33:51 I'm like, I'd take a shot.
Brooke 33:56 I like to think, you know, I have this list of all these nice things that I would do and people I would support and love, but the evidence bears out that anyone who's ever won something like that doesn't make all the great choices.
Margaret 34:09 No, no. Okay. Yeah, I think you need to have a council of people who direct...I think that any anarchist who's like, possibly going to end up rich, like, whether through inheritance or becoming the next Stephen King or whatever needs to, like, seriously consider how the dealing with that money should be a collective effort and not an individual effort. Anyway.
Brooke 34:35 I agree. Yeah.
Margaret 34:36 I went through this when, at one point, I did not get...I did not become a millionaire. But, at one point, Hollywood was interested in one of my my books, and we had long conversations about it. I had conversations with the Hollywood director around it, about whether or not they would adapt a certain book of mine into a TV show. And it didn't work out in the end. But, I like sat there and mathed it out and was like, oh, if they make it TV show out of my book, I will become a millionaire. And like, what would that mean? And, and so that's when I started having these, like, which just totally the same as winning the Powerball and having a billion dollars, and also not just not my weird...I don't know, whatever. Now everyone knows this.
Brooke 35:16 I don't think that's a unique thing. Yeah, so that happened in November. And that sucks. And it didn't make the news the way it should have. So I just wanted to highlight that horribleness. And then, also that orange clown douchebag potato that lives in Florida, said that he's going to run for president again. So, we have that to look forward to. But, then the third thing that happened, which isn't just isolated to November, but the World Cup started, and I have nothing against football, love football, the World Cup as a concept. Fine, but there are so many problems, much like the Olympics, with the way they do it. And what happens around all that.
Margaret 36:00 Yeah, yeah, I love...I love that I should be able to like a lot of things. And then the way that they're done by our society precludes me from really deeply enjoying them.
Brooke 36:10 Why do you have to take such a nice thing and ruing it.
Margaret 36:13 All things. All things. You could name anything, and we could talk about how capitalism and fucking imperialism ruined it.
Brooke 36:20 Yeah, pretty much. Down with those systems. Alright, so now we're finally getting into the end. You'll remember this one, because it was only like a month ago that there were some targeted attacks in North Carolina on power stations. 40,000 people without power for several days, in fact, it wasn't like a quick fix thing. They really fucked some shit up there. One that I didn't hear about, but that has some pretty big implications is that the country of Indonesia banned sex outside of marriage, even for foreigners living in their country, and stuff.
Brooke 36:54 Yeah. So, I don't know if the ramifications for that are. I didn't dig deeper into like, what is the consequence of you doing that. But you know, Indonesia's massive. I mean, that populations huge.
Margaret 36:54 I had no idea.
Margaret 37:05 Yeah, Lousiana just banned, as of I think January 1, you're not allowed to access porn on the internet from Louisiana without showing a government ID to the website. Which, means that now everyone, basically they passed a law saying you have to install a VPN in order to access porn in Louisiana.
Brooke 37:27 That's madness.
Margaret 37:29 Yeah, and it fucks up sex workers, right? Like any of this stuff, any of this bullshit, it always just fucks sex workers.
Brooke 37:39 Yeah, they become the victims of the law, even though they're not, they're not the bad guys here. And in porn, they're never the bad guys, Pro sex workers. My last horrible thing that happened in December was that China decided to just completely give up on all of its COVID protocols that it spent the whole year continuing to be super restrictive, and have lock downs and all of that. And then all of a sudden, it's just like, "No, we're not gonna do any of that anymore." Oh, just a great way to change policy is just to stop completely all of a sudden. Yeah.
Margaret 38:15 I just think it's really funny, because it's like, what? Sometimes people like really talk about how they want like a multipolar world where there's like, it's like what people use to defend the USSR, right, is that they're like, well, at least, there was someone competing with the US or whatever. But, when I think about COVID response, there was always like the US response, which was absolute dogshit. And then there was the Chinese response, which was like, too authoritarian and caused a lot of suffering and all of these things, but, was not a non response. And now, that one has fallen as well. And there's just like, I mean, there's more countries than the US and China. I'm reasonably sure. I couldn't promise. So, hurray, we're in it. We're just in it. That's...this is just COVID world now. It's COVID's world. We just live in it.
Brooke 39:13 Yeah, exactly. So I think you had some, like bigger overarching trends of things that happened in 2022.
Margaret 39:21 A lot of the stuff I have is a little bit like what we have to look forward to.
Brooke 39:26 Oh, nice.
Margaret 39:27 Just some like nice, light stuff. The National Farmers Union in the UK says that the UK is on the verge of a food crisis.
Brooke 39:35 Great.
Margaret 39:36 Yields of tomatoes and other crops, especially energy intensive ones like cucumbers and pears are at record lows. And there's already an egg shortage in the UK, and a lot of places where there were stores are rationing sales of eggs, you can only buy so many eggs at any given time. And, it's not because there's no chickens. It's that rising costs of production have convinced more and more farmers...it's a capitalism thing in this like really brutal way. It's the markets logic, right? If it costs too much to produce a thing, don't produce it. But, when the thing you do is produce food, there's some problems here.
Brooke 40:13 Are there?
Margaret 40:14 And I mean, I'm a vegan. And I got to admit, when I hear things like, they're cutting back beef production, because it costs too much. I'm like, that's good. That is good for animals. And that is good for the climate. However, that's not being replaced with more of other types of foods. So it's not necessarily good.
Brooke 40:33 And if Casandra were here, and she has very restrictive things on what she can eat, because of her health, she would be jumping in to say, "But protein!" because she needs to be able to have access to that.
Margaret 40:45 No, totally. And I'm not trying to, I'm not like specifically pushing for a vegan world. And I recognize that everyone's bodies are different, and have different needs around a lot of things. But, I do think that data shows fairly clearly that the level of animal agriculture that we do, especially in centralized ways, across the world is a major driver of climate change. And, it is a major driving of a lot of really bad stuff. It's just a very inefficient way to produce food for a large number of people. This is different at different scales. And I am not, I'm not specifically trying to advocate for...Yeah, I don't think a vegan world is a good or just idea. I think it is perfectly natural for people to eat animals. However, I think that there's both needless suffering that can be cut back and as well as like, just specifically from a climate change point of view. So...
Brooke 41:39 I hear you.
Margaret 41:39 That said, UK, dealing with egg shortage. Basically, farmers might stop selling milk because of production...that it cost so much to produce the milk. Not like, I'm sure there's still farmers who are going to produce milk. But, more and more farmers are stopping. Beet farmers are considering the same. There's also just literally about 7000 fewer registered food production companies in the UK than three years ago.
Brooke 42:04 Wow.
Margaret 42:05 Because at least in the UK, fertilizer costs have tripled since 2019. And diesel costs are up at about...both feed and diesel costs are up about 75% from what they were before. Shortages. The infant formula shortage might last until Spring according to one major formula producer. We very narrowly avoided a major disruption as a result of a diesel shortage in the United States recently. Basically, they like brought more diesel plants...I don't know the word here, refineries? Refineries, like online kind of at the last minute, like because there was going to be like really major disruptions in the way that we move food and other things around the United States because of diesel shortages. Let's see what else...
Brooke 43:00 Have...I'm super curious here, have food shortages in the UK ever caused problems of any kind? It seems like that's not a big deal. Like they're...they can deal with that. Right? That hasn't killed anyone, right?
Margaret 43:10 Ireland's not part of the United Kingdom. [laughs] Yeah, yeah. No, it's okay. I mean, it's interesting, because like, modern farming has really changed the face of famine. Famine used to be a very common part of...I can actually only speak to this in a very limited context, it's like something that came up in my history research, like Napoleon, the middle one, or whatever. I can't remember. Probably the second, maybe the third I'm not sure. The Napoleon who like took over and like 1840...8? Someone is mad at me right now. In France, who modernized Paris and made it like, impossible to build barricades and shit.
Brooke 43:52 We can FaceTime, Robert, real quick and find out.
Margaret 43:55 Yeah, yeah, totally. And, but one of the things that he did, or rather, that happened under his reign as a part of 19th century development, is that famine had been a very major common regular part of French life. And it ceased to be, and famine is something that the modern world, developed parts of the modern world, have been better at minimizing as compared to like, some historical stuff. Obviously, a lot of this just gets pushed out into the developing world. And you know, famine is a very major part of a great number of other countries' existence. But, I think that people get really used to the idea that famine doesn't really happen. And it does, and it can again, and it's similar what you're talking about, like we have this like, kind of unshakable faith in our democracies. But, they are shakable they, they they shake.
Brooke 43:56 They've been shooked.
Margaret 44:48 Yeah, they're They are not stirred. They're shaken. Okay. Okay, so other stuff: Pfizer's currently working on an RSV vaccine. I consider that positive news. My news here is about a month old. It's been given the like, go ahead for further studies and shit and, and that's very promising because we're in the middle of a triple-demic or whatever. But there's actually been as a weird positive thing. I mean, obviously, we've learned that society does not know how to cope with pandemics. But, one thing is we have learned a lot more about a lot of health stuff as a result of this, you know, and the types of new vaccines that people are able to come up with now are very, they're very promising. And a fun news, as relates to the climate change thing that's happening, more and more Americans are moving to climate at risk areas. Specifically, people are leaving the Midwest. And they're moving to the Pacific Northwest and Florida. And these are two of the least climatically stable from a disaster point of view areas in the United States.
Brooke 46:04 Okay.
Margaret 46:05 Specifically, specifically because of wildfire in the Pacific Northwest, and hurricanes in Florida. Also earthquakes on the West Coast and things like that, but specifically wildfire. And also within those areas, a thing that causes...humans have been encroaching into less developed areas at a greater rate. And this is part of what causes, obviously the fires are getting worse out west as a result of climate change, but it's also the way in which new communities are developed out west that is causing some of the worst damages from fires. So yeah, everyone's moving to those places. That's not a good idea in mass. I'm not telling individuals who live in those places to leave. And there's actually, you know, the Pacific Northwest has some like stuff going on about fairly stable temperature wise, and for most climate models, but this is part of why disasters are impacting more and more Americans as people are leaving the places to move to places where it's greater risk. Yeah, there's this map, just showing where people are leaving and where people are going to. And it's actually, there are other places that people are going to that would have surprised me like, Georgia, North Carolina, parts of Tennessee, like kind of like Southern Appalachian kind of areas, like more and more people are moving towards, and more and more people are leaving upstate New York, which really surprised me. But, and more people are leaving North Texas and moving to Southeast Texas, or like the general eastern part of Texas is growing very rapidly. Okay, what else have I got? Taiwan has set up a set group called the Doomsday Preppers Association, which is just sick, because it's called the Doomsday Preppers Association. And it's like, not a wing nut thing. And they have a wing nut name which rules, I'm all for it. There's about 10,000 people or so who are organizing together to prepare for natural disasters, and also to prepare for the potential invasion from China. Which, China's back to threatening to, to do that. And it's but, it's like people just like getting together to like, build networks, learn radios, and just like, be preppers, but in a, like, normalized way, and it's fucking cool. And, I'd love to see it here. Okay. What else? I don't have too many notes left. Florida, is expected to have major wildfires starting in 2023 according to the National Interagency Fire Center report, as well as Georgia, New Mexico and Texas. I'm willing to bet that New Mexico and Texas in particular, and probably Georgia, that's probably...those are very big states with very different bio regions within them. And, so I couldn't point you, if you live in one of those places, you might want to look for the National Interagency Fire Center Report, and read more about it.
Brooke 48:56 Speaking of moving, it's a great time to get the fuck out of Florida. With like, I could have done almost every month something just atrocious happened in Florida.
Margaret 49:06 Yeah. And one of the things that, you know, we talked a little bit about the culture war stuff. One of the things that's happened in 2023, overall, is that we've started to see more political refugees from within the United States to the United States. We have seen a lot of trans families, or families of trans children, have had to leave states where their providing medical care for their children has become criminal. Obviously also with the end of Roe v. Wade, a lot of people have had to change which state they live in. Although, I don't like doing this like comparison thing, because it's just fucked for everyone, but you can you can vacation your way out of pregnancy. You know?
Brooke 49:50 I don't know that I've heard it described that way, but...
Margaret 49:54 But if you want to be a 13 year old on hormone blockers, or whatever that you need in order to stay safe, a lot of people are moving, and a lot of people can't move. And there's really complicated questions that we all have to ask ourselves right now about like, stay and go. And like, like stay and fight, versus get the fuck out. And everyone's gonna have to make those questions differently. Okay, another positive thing a weird, like positive tech thing...
Brooke 50:20 Yay positive.
Margaret 50:22 So like I own, and I recommend it to people who spend a lot of time off grid or out outside the range of cell service. I own like a Garmin satellite communicator, it's a little tiny device, it looks like a tiny walkie talkie. And it can talk to satellites. And I can like text from anywhere in the world, I can see the sky, whether or not I have cell service. And more importantly than that, I can send an SOS. And these are fairly expensive things, they cost a couple hundred dollars. And then you have to sign up for service. And they make sense for people who are like backpacking a lot or driving in areas where there's no, you know, service or whatever, right? New new phones, specifically the iPhone 14, I hate to be like, I'm not telling everyone to run out get new phone, but as a trend is very positive, that some new phones have this already built in. So you won't need to have a separate device. And I think that is a very positive thing from a prepper point of view, to have access to a way to communicate when cell service is not there. Yeah, that is really important. And I have one final thing and it's very positive.
Brooke 51:29 Okay, I'm ready.
Margaret 51:30 It's actually a double edged sword. On January 5, I'm cheating. This was in 2023. On January 5, 2023, this current year, like last week, yesterday, as we record this, two assholes in Bakersfield, California tried to set an Immigration Services Center on fire, like it was a center that like, um, I mean, ironically, it helped undocumented folks or like immigrant folks pay income taxes, and like helped people navigate the paperwork of being immigrants, you know, because there's actually something that people don't know, all these like, right wing pieces of shit, is that like, undocumented people, like, many of them pay taxes. I don't know. Whereas a lot of the people who like to talk all kinds of shit about undocumented people, don't pay taxes. Anyway, whatever. What were you gonna say? Sorry.
Brooke 52:16 Oh, just this, that as an economist, as a group, undocumented people pay more into the system than they as a group take out of the system.
Margaret 52:25 That makes a lot of sense. So, there's an Immigration Services Center. Two assholes, tried to set it on fire. They set themselves on fire, fled the scene on fire and left their cell phone at the scene. The reason it's double edged is, because one it sucks that people attack this and they actually did do damage to the center as well, mostly to some equipment used by someone who ran I believe a carwash out of that shared some space or whatever. But yeah, they like poured accelerant everywhere. And then a guy just like, knelt down over the pool of accelerant and like, lit it. And then just like, his, like, his leg was on fire. So, his friend ran over to help and like got caught on fire too. And then, they just both like, ran out of range of, because it's all caught on camera, you know? And fuck them. And I hope that their fucking wounds are horrible. And by the time you listen to this, they were probably caught because they left their fucking phone there. And fuck them. That's my light news.
Brooke 53:36 I'll take it.
Margaret 53:37 Okay, what are you excited for, looking forward? Go ahead. Sorry.
Brooke 53:40 Well, hopefully more fascists are gonna light themselves on fire and other types of right wing assholes. I mean, I would be very happy about that happening in 2023
Margaret 53:48 Yeah. May this be the year of Nazis on fire.
Brooke 53:54 Yes. Agreed. That would be lovely. I don't know about...I don't know if I have a lot of global stuff that I thought about being positive. I have. I have like personal stuff, like I am going to be doing...hosting more these podcast episodes. I've got one coming up. Maybe this month, we're releasing it? But I did it all by myself. Yeah, more lined up to come out in the next couple of months and some really cool topics and people that I get to chat with. So I'm stoked about that.
Margaret 54:21 That is also something I'm excited about for 2023 is that this podcast is increasingly regular and it is because of the hard work of me...No, everyone else. Is the hard work of everyone else who works on this show are like really kind of taking the reins more and more and it is no longer, it's no longer the Margaret Killjoy Show and I'm very grateful and I believe you all will too. And if you're not grateful yet, you will be, because there'll be actual other voices, like ways of looking at things and and more of it because, you know, one person can only do so much. So I'm really grateful for that.
Brooke 55:03 I'm excited about this book that's coming out next month, that...
Margaret 55:06 Oh, yeah?
Brooke 55:07 Some lady I know, wrote it. And, and I got to do some editing work on it. And, it's hilarious and the cover is gorgeous.
Margaret 55:17 Is it called "Escape from Incel Island"?
Brooke 55:19 Yeah, that one.
Margaret 55:22 Is this my plugs moment?
Brooke 55:24 Did you know If you preorder it right now, you can get a poster of that gorgeous cover that comes comes with the preordered one?
Margaret 55:31 And, did you know that if you preorder it, I get a cut of the royalties when the book is released for all the preorders, which means that I can eat food.
Brooke 55:43 Oh, we like it when you get food.
Margaret 55:44 And I like having food. Yeah. So, if you go to tangledwilderness.org, you can preorder "Escape from Incel Island" and get a poster. And it's a fun adventure book. You can literally read it in a couple hours. It's very short. It's a novella. It's, to be frank, it's at the short end of novella. But that makes it good for short attention spans like mine.
Brooke 56:08 Yeah, that's dope. I'm looking forward to that. And there'll be some other books coming out from that Strangers Collective one, one that I just started editing, that I don't know how much we're talking about it yet or not.
Margaret 56:20 It's really cool.
Brooke 56:20 So, I won't give too much away here, but just sucked me right in as I was editing, and it's cool. I'm so excited to read the rest of it. And then for us to release it.
Margaret 56:29 Yeah. All right. Well, that's our Year in the Apocalypse, 2022 edition. And I know...wait, you're doing the closing part.
Brooke 56:40 Yeah, sure.
Margaret 56:41 I'm just the guest.
Brooke 56:43 No, you're my co host.
Margaret 56:45 Oh, I'm just the co host. Okay.
Brooke 56:47 Yeah. Yeah. So I'm curious what other people think the worst things are that happened in 2022, if it's something that was on one of our lists, or something else that you know of, and reach out to us like on Twitter at tangledwild or Instagram, or you can reach out to me personally on Mastodon @ogemakwebrooke, if you can find me there. And the Collectiva Social, I think is my whatever, I don't remember how it works. But I'm yeah, I'm curious what other people would have to say is the worst which thing they want to vote for, if they have their own. So hit us up? Let us know.
Margaret 57:22 Yeah, do it.
Brooke 57:29 So, our listeners, we thank, we appreciate you listening. And if you enjoy this podcast, we would love it if you could give it a like or drop a comment or review or subscribe to us if you haven't already, because these things make the algorithms that rule our world offer our show to more people. The podcast is produced by the anarchist publishing collective Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. Like I said, you can connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, or me personally on Mastodon, or through our website tangledwilderness.org. The work of Strangers is made possible by our Patreon supporters. Honestly, we couldn't do any of it without your help. If you want to become a supporter, check us out patreon.com/strangersInatangledwilderness. There are cool benefits for different support tiers. For instance, if you support the collective at $10 a month, one of your benefits is a 40% off coupon for everything we sell on our website, which includes the preorders for Margaret's new book, we'd like to give a specific shout out to some of our most supportive patreon supporters including Hoss dog, Miciaah, Chris, Sam, Kirk, Eleanor, Jenipher, Staro, Cat J., Chelsea, Dana, David, Nicole, Mikki, Paige, SJ, Shawn, Hunter, Theo, Boise Mutual Aid, Milica, paparouna, and Aly. Thanks so much.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Margaret and Casandra talk with Cindy Milstein about what anarchism actually is, why you should try it, possibly for life, the many horrors of fascism, and once again why community is all too important. They also talk about Milstein's new book from Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, "Try Anarchism for Life."
The guest is Cindy Barukh Milstein (they/them). Milstein can be found on Instagram @CindyMilstein on Twitter @CindyMilstein, on Wordpress at CBMilstein.wordpress.com on on Mastodon @CBMilstein. Their new book, "Try Anarchism for Life" can be purchased from our publisher at TangledWilderness.org
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Casandra can be found doing our layout at Strangers.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness
Margaret 00:14 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm one of your hosts today. Margaret Killjoy. And also with me is Casandra. How are you doing, Casandra?
Casandra 00:24 Pretty good.
Margaret 00:26 Today's episode is an episode that a lot of people have been requesting, which is, 'what is anarchism?' This thing that we keep talking about on this show. And how should you talk about it with other people? Or I don't know, whatever. It's what isn't anarchism, and with us today as a guest is the author of Cindy Milstein. And I think that you all will hopefully get a lot out of this conversation. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network.
Casandra 01:05 Hi, Milstein. If you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns. And just a little bit of background about why you're talking with us today.
Milstein 02:05 Yeah. Hi, to both of you. My name is Cindy Barukh Milstein and I use 'they' and I'm talking to you two, who are both part of Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness publishing collective. And you are about to put out my...your first book, and my somewhere in a bunch of books I've done called, "Try Anarchism for Life." Yeah, so I'm super excited to think it's actually in the mail to me now the real copy. Very excited to see it.
Casandra 02:45 That's handy that you authored a book about anarchism, and we want to talk about....anarchism.
Milstein 02:53 Wow, coincidence. Good coincidence.
Margaret 02:57 Wait, are you an anarchist?
Milstein 03:01 Time will tell.
Margaret 03:06 Is that like a 'we all aspire to this,' thing?
Milstein 03:08 Yeah, that was gonna be one of my answers to what anarchism is. Or like that, you know, a friend of mine was talking about recently how they're from Greece, and how people don't actually, they....I forget the whole anecdote, but anyway, that you can't say your something until after your life is over, then people can say it about you. So,
Casandra 03:33 Oh, interesting.
Milstein 03:34 You know, because we're all,we all really are aspiring to be an anarchist. I hope. And, and, yeah, I guess I do use that label. And it's on the title of some of my books so...
Margaret 03:45 Okay, well, that leads us into the first question, which is a question that I get a lot, that you might get a lot, which a lot of listeners of the show have. Milstein, what is anarchism?
Milstein 03:59 Oh, okay. Joking ahead of time, that if I am Jewish, yes, one Jew, they have two opinions. But if you ask anarchists, we probably have even more, and if you're Jewish anarchists, thousands. So I guess I was thinking about this, there's so many ways to describe anarchism, but lately I've really been thinking about it as like life, how we make life in common life and care. And do that in collective ways through self determination, self organization, self governance, because most of what we're facing that is not anarchism are different forms of deaths machines. So yeah, lately I've been thinking about what is that? You know, what does that mean to be staunchly in not just an advocate out but like actually, actively engaging in forms of bringing in essentially life? But yeah, I guess the other ways people...or I describe anarchism often is a compass, or sort of horizon made up of a bunch of ethics, which you often highlight on this show through various practices of like mutual aid and solidarity and collective care and all sorts of other nice warm and fuzzy ways we do good in this world or try to create better worlds. But yeah, I guess the nutshell other version, I would say is, to me, anarchism is both the absence and presence, and the absence of all forms of hierarchy and domination or striving to lessen them as much as possible. But, it's no good unless there's a presence of something to fill in those absences. Like, I don't know, anarchism isn't just like, we hate everything, let's like, you know, hate capitalism, patriarchy, chaos, whatever. But what is the presence of what we want and that's actually for me, where anarchism really shines, as a philosophy and practice of freedom, and liberation and liberatory practices of all sorts. So, I really like to think about that part of anarchism. And, and so therefore, the, that means that anarchism as a practice, which to me embodies the whole of your life every second of the day, is constantly juggling tensions, and between, you know, what we don't like and what we do and what we want to destroy, and what we want to create, or in a way, the core tension in anarchism is how do you create these beautiful societies and worlds based upon kind of balancing out freedom for each of ourselves and freedom, collectively? And, and that's hard. That isn't easy. But like, that's what anarchism is and is not. Like, we just want people to be free and do their own thing, which to me is capitalism or liberalism, or all these other things, like, "Fuck you, I'm gonna do my own thing." But anarchism is like, "No, you know, I should be able to become who I want to be. But I can only do that if you can do that too. And how we do that together is where it gets fun." And to me, that's what enter you know, a lot of what anarchism is about, that presence of all we do. So I don't know, what do you two think?
Margaret 07:04 I mean, okay, one of the things that you touched on....I actually do I would define anarchism as this like striving for freedom, but I would I define freedom a little bit differently than, well, certainly liberalism or capitalism would. You know, my argument being we're not free if we like live alone in the woods, I tried it, actually, I still had a society to fall back on. But, you know, freedom is like, not just the individual in a state of nature, or whatever. Freedom is, is something that we create, and build cooperatively with each other, because if freedom is the ability to like, maximize my own agency and act in the ways that I would like to the most or whatever, right? We can create that with each other. And I basically, I make the argument that freedom is a relationship between people rather than a static state for an individual. And so, I do you believe in maximizing freedom, in that I believe in creating relationships of freedom between people. And I really like, and I don't remember who said it, I think I'm kind of paraphrasing it from Ursula Le Guin, is that anarchism is about the marriage of freedom and responsibility, that basically we need to all be as responsible to each other as possible so that we can maximize all of our, our freedom. And so that's like, kind of what I set out to do as an anarchist, is create these relationships of freedom. But, I guess I would say like, if I'm talking to someone who is like, "Well, what is anarchism?" I think at its like, core, it's like, simplest is, you know, yeah, like, as you said, you know, are like people trying to live in a world without oppressive hierarchies, right? You know, traditionally, in the sort of Western philosophical tradition that anarchism is most often reflected through, you have basically the idea of like, it comes out of an anti capitalist movement, it comes out of a movement against capitalism, and they said, "Well, also the state," you know, they were like, "The state and capitalism are intrinsically linked, we are opposed to all of them, or both of these constructs." And then people very quickly took it from there to be like, "and also patriarchy, and also white supremacy and also all of these, like systemic institutions of oppression." And, you know, anarchism is the movement against those things, but has, as you talked about, always been tied into, for most people also a sort of positive vision, the creation of a society without these things as a, as a desired thing to move towards.
Milstein 09:39 Yeah, no, thanks for filling. I was I was thinking when you were speaking, it's like, so much of anarchism to me is it's like isn't a fixed thing. To me. That's why I like the idea of a horizon, your always kind of walking towards this beautiful thing, but you're never actually going to quite get there. But you know, like, you're never...you can see it but you can never fully, but so it's this process. And yeah, one other thing When you were speaking, I was reminded of as often I talked about anarchism is, like us together, figuring out different forms of social organization and different forms of social relationships that emphasize, you know, freedom and liberation and that it's impossible without the social, you know, like we we, we are social creatures. We can't possibly do this alone.
Casandra 10:20 But I thought anarchism was about chaos. You mean anarchists are organized?
Margaret 10:31 Sometimes we spend too much of our time on organization.
Milstein 10:34 Or trying to organize. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, another way, another way. I think that's why I like tensions, because another tension to me is the tension between sort of, you know, freedom and spontaneity or how do you know, like, in a way, maybe it's playfully in the, in the, like, the word anarchism and anarchy, you know, you can't...anarchism is like we can make, we can try to figure out ways to like, create, you know, neighborhood assemblies and info shops, and mutual aid societies and all these other things. And then there's all this fun, spontaneous, spontaneous chaos and play and joy that happens that we never even thought of, and that we actually balance both those things we're not you know, just...Yeah, anarchism is like, I also think of anarchism is like being really dynamic and flexible and open, and kind of like, "Oh, that's a cool new idea. Let's try that." Versus like a lot of things like borders: "No, this was the line in the sand." or state: "No, you have to do that." You know, that's really different.
Casandra 11:35 I feel like one of my favorite things about anarchism is that there are different ways to do anarchism. And that seems like counter intuitive still, even to a lot of anarchists. I'm thinking about like, I don't know, Twitter anarchists: "No, there's only one way to do this."
Margaret 11:57 Yeah, the idea that we're like, gonna find the the one right way is inherently broken. And I really liked the, you know, the quote from the anarchists adjacent, but not anarchistic or not not anarchist Zapatista is that, you know, "A world in which many worlds are possible is the goal." Yeah, and I like that it's, it's not about coming up with easy answers, or providing easy answers to people, which is actually I mean, it certainly limits our recruitment, because we're, we can't just be like, "Oh, well, here we have the answer. Anarchism is the answer." Anarchism, it's said is like a system by which to come up with answers collectively, amongst people, you know, it's like a, it's much easier to tell people what to do than to tell people to become free thinking individuals who work things out with each other, you know?
Milstein 12:51 Yeah, yeah. No, like, maybe the emphasis on like experiments and processes and us together. And the way you use the answers as plural is, you know, most other sort of forms of...yeah, like, politically engaging, first of all, are limited to like, one sphere of your life. But you know, anarchism is like, "How can we make the whole of our, of our lives feel whole," and, but to do that, there isn't like, one way to do things. And so you know, actually, when people get...the more, I just find this time and time again, to always is so beautiful, it's like, the more people you get together, the more incredibly beautiful creative solutions you have, or ideas or experiments. And, you can actually try multiple ones of them at once. And that makes for this kind of beautiful ecosystem, which is maybe another thing we didn't talk about anarchism, I think it's very, like, ecological in, not in the sense of necessarily like, you know, environmentalism, or making things, you know, but, like, very holistic, and understands things in ways like complicated ecosystems where it's okay for difference to coexist in an ecosystem, and actually, that makes us more resilient and stronger, is like some of the most, like, I love walking, you know, and observing the world. And when you walk around and just see some of the most like, you know, sort of ecosystems that are thriving, they're thriving, because there's multiple different types of plants and animals and species, and, you know, engagements and interactions and experiments going on. And they all shift and change through that. So, how can we think of that? So? I mean, often when people think about anarchists, and you're like, "Oh, and what kind of anarchists are you?" and you know, "I'm a feminist, anarchist, or queer anarchist, or Jewish anarchist, or, you know, et cetera, et cetera," and like that's like, some sort of problem and anarchism, and I think we're just actually trying to articulate that freedom and that ecosystem has to bring in the fullness of who we are. And the fullness of who we are isn't always the same. And it's that beautiful kind of interplay between what we care about in our own lives and our own, you know, experiences and identities and yeah. So, I'm just kind of rambling, but I don't know, lately, I've just been thinking a lot about the anarchist ecosystem. And that's actually, you know, I mean, so much of, you know, like white Christian supremacy homogenizes everything from calendars to, you know, time, to how we make decisions, to, you know, capitalism gives you the same, you know, type of, you know, hamburger or coffee no matter where you are in the world if you know if it's trying to like flatten out everything or actually destroy all sorts of foods so all we think of this certain foods, you know. And most like large scale forms of hierarchy and domination to succeed, they they flattened, I mean, we're looking at fascism, unfortunately, appearing in a lot of parts of the globe right now. And it's all about an essence creating this, like, pure identity, that's homogeneous identity, that should be able to survive while the rest of us should be killed off. And I mean, ultimately, fascism. If it ever fully succeeded in instituting itself would die because there's no possible way any kind of ecosystem can exist if it has only has one pure sort of being, right?
Margaret 16:13 Yeah, I think about the anarchist comicbook author, Alan Moore, makes this argument that the primary axis of politics in this world is not communism versus capitalism. It's not left versus right. It's, it's fascism versus anarchism as you know, these two opposing concepts and what you're talking about, but fascism is the making everything the same, in order to be strong. And then anarchism is about like, celebrating difference and creating....diversity as strength, you know, rather than, like, just unity as strength in this sort of fascistic context.
Milstein 16:58 Or, again, life. I mean, fascism, it has to engage in genocide, because there's no other way to get rid of all those things that aren't the one pure right, you know, sort of body you're, and, and, and we're like, you know, okay, we have to try to, like, bring forward life, and in a sense, and I guess one thing, when you're speaking, I was also thinking about with anarchism, it's always hard to sort of explain well what is anarchism is like, sure, some people came up with the, like, a word and applied it to, you know, a specific political philosophy at a specific time period in history. And those people that became anarchist love to travel and they wandered around the world, they, you know, convinced other, you know, through inspiring other people, a lot of people became anarchists. But anarchism is, is, is really this tendency of life unfolding. And when you get to the social realm, it's of people together, unfolding that life together, to create different forms of social relationships that allow people to live in more cooperative, mutualistic mutually interdependent and co-responsible ways. And all the things, you know, solidaristic, carrying all the many ethics we can throw in, but humans have been doing that, since the beginning of time, and continue to do that. And when we look at, you know, uprisings that have happened recently, whether it's, you know, in Iran or the George Floyd uprising, or we can name hundreds and hundreds of others, small scale and large scale. During the pandemic, which is still ongoing when, you know, people formed all sorts of projects in small scale and larger scale forms of solidarity and mutual aid to take care of each other. It's it's like that's anarchistic and I particularly don't really care to turn everybody into an anarchist, or to have everybody even say, "Well, this is about anarchism." This like, we, I think that's why Zapatistas are also super influential to me. And they, they also were like, No, we look for all the places in which we can listen to each other and hear the way we're all engaging. And watch each other and share with each other and borrow from each other and all the ways that we're engaging in creating that life and not worry about the labels. Worry about, and celebrate those places where people are like, throwing off hierarchy and domination, but not just throwing that off, but making their own lives together and going, "This is what we want our lives to be." I really think that's what's so powerful about these moments. It's like, you know, the uprisings, you know, the, all the hierarchical structures will say, "Oh, they don't know what they want. They're just angry. They're just ripping things down. They're just destroying things." And any of us who've been in these moments, or have done a mutual aid project with anyone, or done anything large or small, you know, that's not...sure we're like, you know, a window gets broken or, you know, someone takes the food out of a little library and instead puts some...or books out a little library instead of puts you know masks or food during a pandemic. We, but what you realize is people are creating different forms of social relationships that are around love, and care, and beauty, and they're sharing with each other, and they're acting in profound forms of solidarity. I listened to this beautiful piece recently that was talking about the George Floyd uprising and how, in the first especially few days is like, it was the most like counter to all this sort of conquer divide around race politics in the United States moment. Because suddenly, people...and all sorts of other things class, gender, age, all these people were acting in this beautiful concert, sharing, and helping each other get away from cops, but also sharing food, and knowledge, and joy, and painting murals. And, you know, when...I really remember Unicorn Riot, which is a great like anarchistic news media project, when they were up close filming the precinct being burned down, they walked in and go, "Oh these people are destroying the third precinct, police station," and then they walked in with their camera, and you're inside watching people trash the place, and it being set on fire. And then people's faces were joyous. And people walked outside and had a party basically. And I was like, watching that live. And going, this is why we revolt, we revolt....Why we just, quote, destroy things, destroy police stations that kill people, you know, status structures that are all these things, we're not destroying the...our lives, and we're actually...but that we do it so we can have that joy with each other. I'm rambling now. But I just I feel like that's the thing that gets so lost, but all of us that are part of these moments know it, and we have to....like anarchism asks you, this is a really, I think, a really powerful thing to trust in yourself and those around you to know we can do this. And, you know, there's nothing we have except sort of the trust of the things we promise each other in anarchism, because there's no you know, police force or bureaucracy or anything else. There's just this profound, deep promise and trust in each other. And we actually know that when we do it, we feel it, it feels different. It feels like life. It feels like love.
Casandra 22:05 We've talked about that some in terms of community preparedness, when we're talking about things like natural disasters. And my understanding is that they're realizing that when these giant catastrophes happen, whether it's like a social catastrophe, or natural disaster, or something, people tend to band together, and work together,r and help each other in larger degree. It's almost like, it's like a natural way for us to be or something.
Margaret 22:33 With the exception of the elites, right, you get that elite panic thing, if you have...I hate using the word elites, but it's, no, it's in the name of the like, the people who have power within a society are the people who don't band together in times of crisis, and instead try to like violently enforce the status quo. And, disaster studies stuff talks about that. That's the name they use.
Casandra 22:58 Of course they do.
Milstein 22:59 I feel like what's so sad is that we have you know, like, I hope that as an anarchist, I really hope we don't like be like, "Oh, romanticize disaster," as the places that this happens. You know, disasters are happening to us. We are... we want to create a society where, yeah, those moments show us that. But then we're like, "Wow, we can do this all the time. We don't have to just do this in disasters." Although we're pretty much in disaster constantly. We're in disaster always. I don't know, I don't also want to romanticize, Oh, I feel so great that we have this horrible, you know...fascism is getting worse. We're actually helping each other like, you know, provide community self defense in these wonderful ways. You know, it's like, all that does is point to I mean, you know, the point to the sort of, anarchistic dream of you know, autonomous communities or liberated zones, or all these places, in which we would still have arguments and we would still, you know, have behaviors that would harm us and antisocial behaviors, but they would be, I guess, I guess the other thing I want is you know is whenever you do these experiments that are anarchistic things still happen that don't feel great, but they happen to such a lesser degree, and we have so many more beautiful ways of dealing with them that aren't about prisons and police. And...or we try to at least, you know, we aspire to that, again, like going back to the beginning is like, everyone's like, "You know, you have all these, like, abolitionist ways of dealing with conflict, but yet we're not good at it." And I was like, "Well, how would we be, we've been raised in this culture for, you know, hundreds of years now, at this point, sadly, of, you know, police and until we're a few generations, which, again we have the Zapitistas to show us, because I think they've been around long enough to begin to be able to show us this is that, you know, their children and their children's children, I think they're now probably have grandchildren that have come out of them that have lived in autonomous communities, is each new generation is more able to do it better, you know, which is why in a lot of diasporic and long long time traditions that way, precede, you know, states and capitalism and a whole bunch of things. A lot of times the numbers, like seven is really prominent. And we think of, you know, some indigenous cultures talk about seven generations. Jewish, you know a lot of looking back to seven, like cycles of seven, and that it may take, you know, seven generations to be able to actually forget, like, sort of erase the socialization of how you know, and learn better ways to do this. So we're not instantly gonna have...I just want to emphasize you know anarchism is not, "Oh, great, everything's wonderful now," it's just about, we're gonna do things a lot better and more and better and better still, the longer we can hold and sustain these spaces of possibility.
Margaret 23:00 Yeah, I want to ask a question for each of us, which is, how did you become an anarchist? Or how did you realize you're an anarchist? Or however you choose to define that? I don't know who wants to go first? It looks like Milstein...
Milstein 25:49 Or one of you two?
Margaret 25:58 Alright, I'll go first. Can't see, but Casandra opted out by putting their finger on their nose. My story is very, like pithy, but also true, which was that, you know, when I was like, when I was a teenager, I was not excited about any of the political options that were presented to me. I had this like, brief moment where I was a libertarian, because I took a quiz online, and it said, and it had been made by the Libertarian Party. And it was like, "Well, do you like freedom? You must be a libertarian." And my, like, communist girlfriend was like, "No corporations would run everything." And I was like, "Okay, well, that's true." But, I don't want to be a communist, as I understood it, at that time, meaning like, state communist or whatever, right? And still don't. And, so I just kind of didn't care about politics. I was like, vaguely social democrat. And then I went to this protest in New York City on February 2, 2002, it's part of the, you know, gets called the ultra globalization movement, or whatever. And, and the anarchists were like wearing masks despite a mask ban in New York City. And I was like, "That's cool," right. And I didn't know anything about the anarchists, except that they were willing to wear masks, despite being told they weren't allowed. And that was like "That rules." So, I went up to this kid wearing a mask. And I was like, "Hey," and I'm 19, or something...well not 'or' something. I was 19. I said," Hey, what's this anarchism thing?" And he's like, "Well, we hate the state, and capitalism." And I was like, "Well, what are you gonna do about it?" And he's like, "Well, we're gonna build up alternative institutions while attacking the ones that are destroying the world." And I was like, "Well, do you have an extra mask?" And he was like, "Yeah." And he gave me a black bandana and I tied it around my face. And I became an anarchist. And I've not really looked back.
Casandra 27:53 That's the initiation, is donning a black bandana.
Margaret 27:56 Yeah. And like, you know, that day, I got, like, rounded, I got kettled. And I spent like, I don't know, five hours or something with like, 10 of us surrounded by like, fucking 20 cops or whatever. And, you know, then it was like, this very powerful moment in my life. And then it, it took me a long time to sort of like, become part of the sort of anarchist scene or milieu or whatever. But from that day forth, it was I called myself an anarchist.
Casandra 28:30 My story is less exciting. I had a really conservative, really religious upbringing, to the extent that I like, went to seminary and stuff. And when I turned 18, it was the first time I could vote. And, the discrepancies I was seeing between how we were told to vote and what we were taught was theologically sound was too much for me. So, I left, and, like the deconstruction of like, those things I was raised with and my concept of authority, the natural progression was just becoming an anarchist. It also helped that Crimethinc was based out of my hometown. So, I like lived and worked at the Crimethinc house for a while and got you know, exposed to all sorts of baby anarchist ideas through that.
Milstein 29:26 Oh, I love you're an anarchist. I love hearing stories because they're all different and great. Yeah, yeah. They're never isn't a form...Yeah, for a while I was there must be a formula to this. But, there are no which is actually yeah, no, it's great.
Casandra 29:42 How about you?
Milstein 29:44 Yeah, I feel like there was preconditions that made me like sort of like what you're talking about, Margaret that made me like, kind of looking for anarchism for most of my life, including like, my parents were like overgrown kids because of their own trauma. And so they made me their parent from the very beginning. And so they really let me like self determined with me and my friends. And we were always creating our own self organized spaces or going off on adventures. But, so were my parents. And so I also had to be...learn a lot of responsibility and how to take care of people, because otherwise no one else would. So in a way, it's like a traumatic responses, as like, you know, and I think from ancestors, I don't know. I more and more believe that there's, like, ancestral, both trauma and joy that has, like, made me understand that like, to sort of be diasporic, to be not...you know, do you make community where you are with those who are with you, and you take care of each other. And this vague notion of like, our goal, or sort of our aim as humans is to, you know, be as good as we can and try to create as good a world as we can, that just, there's all these preconditions that so I was kind of always looking around going, Oh, maybe this political orientation, or this group or that group? And I was like, nope, nope, nope. And then, you know, and then I met some anarchists in Vermont, Burlington, Vermont, where I was living, and they were like, "Hey, why don't you read this?" And they kept handing me free articles and books. And then they were like, "Hey, why don't you come to this self organized cafe where, you know, everyday, things are mostly free, but you can throw in money in a jar, if you want on, there's events going on." Or, "Hey, why don't you come join us in some of the organizing we're doing." And I just, I, they were just so generous, they kept just gifting me. And it wasn't like they were asking me to be them or to change or they weren't even, you know, they were just like, this kind of like, I guess that's right, come back to the sort of, like trust and faith in anarchism is like, you don't have to like sell it to people, you can gift it, you know, and share it and and then they're like, "Hey, do you want to come here, Murray Bookchin speak at something called the Institute for Social Ecology that was happening then and Murray would, you know, I went to hear him speak and 12 hours later, after his first talk, he because he would just talk during this program. And people came from all over the world, so there were anarchists from all over the world sitting in this room, and it was like, wow, they're anarchists, and multi generational, all different ages listening, you know, and asking him questions and engaging. And I was like, whoa. And then as he came up to afterward, my friends introduced me and they go, "Hey, this is our friend, Cindy, Murray," and Murray's like, you know, "Where do you live?" I go, "Burlington" and he was like, "What's your last name?" And then he goes, "You need to study with me."
Margaret 32:25 That's amazing.
Milstein 32:26 And then he like, really, like, as he did for many, many people, he's just like, "Come to my house." And we would like, you know, he lived very, very modestly often in like, a studio, and we just, like, would crowd around this room and just read and, you know, so I just started with him and anarchists in that community doing organizing and reading and studying. And, yeah, and also, I never looked back from there, too. And I think it's because Murray, you know, maybe because we had affinity, because we're both like, culturally, really similar. And, but he's, like, you know, "I want to give you, you know, you have to, like, think and act for yourself," and I'm so shaped by him in a way, you know, he was like, he was so interested in what we would do to...what we would, how we would replace the state with what. What would we replace capitalism? You know, what would we, you know, and it's like, and maybe that just, you know, felt like...I felt at home, I guess that's why we know, for the first time, like, "Oh, this is where I should be," you know, so. And that it wasn't, I guess, less than want to say is like that, that group and Murray...yeah. And then I start doing the same thing. There's a, you know, gigantic, you know, movements going on and, you know, I was in at that time period, then started you know, going to New York, Montreal, all these other places, because I love wandering around and there was all sorts of incredible anarchist organizing, and then big movements started, you know, similar the alt globalization, movement and movements were constantly people were like, hey, read my scene. Hey, do you want this Hey, do you want that? Hey, do you need water? Hey, do you need a mask? And that's just generosity of spirit like why would you not want that. I just feel like it's like I just feel like more and more I just into this kind of big social fabric of...which doesn't mean all anarchists have been nice to me or great to each other. It's just yeah, it's just overall it's like far more generous of spirit and yeah. So.
Margaret 34:17 Well that that...one of the things that you brought up during that you know, going into this like multi generational meeting and seeing that there's like anarchists from all over the world. I think one of the things you know if the primary target of this particular episode Oh, I guess try and do it with every episode of Live Like the World is Dying is people who are may not know, the things that we're coming into it knowing right like so someone who's listening to this might have only barely heard of anarchists, or only seen I guess what I would kind of say is sort of the tip of the anarchist iceberg, like the most commonly seen or known elements of anarchism change over time. I would actually say I wonder right now if it's not the mutual aid projects,
Casandra 34:57 Oh, I was gonna say that crappy documentary.
Margaret 35:01 Oh god, I wasn't even trying to think of...we could talk about An-caps [anarcho-capitalists] later, but ya know, like, okay, but of the actual anarchist iceberg...because there's a very...I hate gatekeeping but there's a certain....anyway you know, when I was coming up, the tip of the anarchist iceberg was like the black bloc, you know, people wearing all black and matte...I'm literally wearing a black hoodie as I say this, but but I don't have a bandana over my face. But, that was part of me becoming an anarchist, I guess. But, you know, this, this idea of the people who wear all black and break things, right, is like the tip of the anarchist iceberg. And there's this like presumption that people have that is incorrect about all of those people being young, able bodied, like cis white men, right? It's probably changed enough that some people think that it might, there might be some queer folks in there too, right. But this, like, youthful anger movement, is what people know about. And I think that that's, well, that's what, you know, the media presents us as, and all of these things, but actually finding out that it's this like multi generational movement, and this like multi like, like literally multicultural movement, like different people coming from very different, like cultural ideas of how they want to live, and like how they express themselves, you know, within that is actually the kind of more beautiful part of it. I have nothing against the people....I have nothing against the black bloc, but it is like, only some tiny portion of what anarchists do. I don't know, I don't know why I'm going on that rant.
Milstein 36:35 I mean, in a way, I think what like when people go, Oh, anarchists, you know, I wear black bloc and I wear a black mask constantly, every day now. Because, the whole time since the pandemics been going on, it's like how do we be collectively carrying is we wear masks, and which is what the point of the mask were in the first place, which is like a black bloc was a way to take care of each other in moments when the police and the state are trying to target you. And all sorts of social movements around the world have...mask their face to protect each other, in moments of danger from the structures that are trying to kill us and do kill us. So, I think that's what gets lost is like that it's just black bloc is one tactic, you know, wearing masks for variety of reasons in a pandemic, is the similar tactic. And the underlying again, that ethic below it is, you know, you just have to push a little bit, but with anarchism it's about we try generally a lot harder to try to balance like how can we have social relationships structured around taking care of each other when there's like perfect moments of profound abandonment. And so like a lot of people coming into anarchism right now, a lot of the younger folks that I've met lately, and that's why I think multi generational spaces are important is the caveat is like, it's not because Oh, the older you get, the more you know, it's like no, if we're in multi generational spaces, we all...in all sorts of different directions learn from each other. Because I don't know what it's like to be 12 right now. But if I hear a 12 year olds telling me their experience, I'll better understand the world and better understand how they understand, you know, it's like we need each other in these multi generational spaces. So, I would like...folks that have been coming into anarchists in the last couple of years, it's either, you know, been because of the George Floyd...in North American continent at least, the George Floyd uprising, or mutual aid projects and solidarity, you know, disaster relief projects that are kind of structured in anarchistic ways. And, and, yeah, so there's just a different...like what values do people come in at anarchism at different moments to understand and so, you know, I, I think if people at these moments are there in person versus on, you know, Twitter or social media, which sadly, more and more has become, you know, a default, which is another way, you know, sure people find anarchism, but I still don't really think that's anarchism, you know, it's like a flat version, because you'd have to practice it in ways, in embodied ways face to face makes a big difference. But oftentimes, when people are in their spaces, they realize, wow, there's lots of anarchists here, and they don't even like tell me, they're anarchists, but I can kind of, if you're, you kind of look around and start asking people, you know, get to know them or start asking then people go, Yeah, I kind of been doing this for a long time. But you know, I can't run as much now. So like, Yeah, I'm like, I cook food and I bring that or I'm, you know, a legal observer, or, you know, I'm what, you know, I, I can move fast, but I don't want to run right now. So I medic, or all of these different, all these different roles is like, oftentimes, I kind of like think of anarchism now too, is like, we're not huge in number oftentimes, but we're so damned dedicated to being this like infrastructure of self organized, you know, mutual aid and care and solidarity and life making that we're almost always like, there are all sorts of these pivotal moments to be like, Hey, we don't have to, you know, control or tell everybody how to do mutual aid, but if people have questions about kind of how to do it, you know, we can kind of like offer some advice, or we can show you how some like, you know, decentralized yet federated structures worked in the past. And often, if you look around there actually is sort of multi generational anarchism, but sadly, sadly, I think, especially in in the US context, you know, I really, really encourage you, you know, this is another caveat, is like anarchism is this profound, profound, difficult duty, and really think of it as a duty. And it's hard, really hard to stay an anarchist, to continually make the spaces you want, even if it's difficult, and it gets more and more difficult over time. So, you know, I really committed to making all sorts of different kinds of spaces where we experience what it feels like to be the people we want to be for in a in a space we want and that doesn't always end up looking pretty or great sometimes. But often, it's pretty magical. But part of that commitment is bringing together, you know, different genders, and different cultures, and different skin colors, and different bodies of all sorts, and different ages and being really committed as an anarchist, the older I get to not be like I've been there before, it's really boring. I don't want to go to that thing. I don't want to be around young people, blah, blah. Yeah, sure, you know, but I get so tired of "Oh, no, this thing again." Can we learn to at least make better mistakes?
Casandra 41:43 Oh, God. I feel that.
Milstein 41:45 Yeah, but I don't know. I'm also really committed to that like, creating and being in multi generational spaces. And when I'm in those spaces, myself, and others, encouraging us to all listen to each other, and all tell our stories, and all be curious ,and not think we know everything you know, and like that, to me is part of an anarchist practice. Maybe that's why I say 'aspiring always,' you know, is like, how do we create those spaces where...Yeah, where we see the anarchism isn't the stereotype. We...Yeah, I should go back to like Murray. I was like, when I first met him, he's like, so so well read, like he never went to barely...I mean, he was like, a radical, and he was like, a baby. He was like, never had a childhood. And so but, you know, we moved from, like, sort of Marxism and to anarchism. And then he was just super, super, super well read. And for the first year, he was like, just, you know, never asked for anything, just would like spend hours and hours teaching, engaging conversation. The first year I go, his ideas are just so big and so expansive, and brings into so much beautiful things from all sorts of different historical movements, and philosophies, and tendencies, and logics that you should think of that, you know, are dangerous, like fascism, and all these other things. But also, I know, there's things that don't sit with me, right, but I couldn't, I didn't feel like I could feel my brain like stretching these beautiful growth ways. But I couldn't figure out how to argue with him, like, argue in the sense of like, not angrily, but like wrestle with ideas with him. And even other things I don't think I agree with him points, but I don't know how to articulate it yet. And I was like, I have to just let my brain keep expanding and keep, you know, and he kept saying, "I want you to learn to think for yourself." That's why I'm like, expose, you know, all these ideas, all these different tendencies. And then at one point, I was like, hey, whoa, and then like, you know, and then you reach this point where we could have these, we became good friends, and I could wrestle together with him with things I agreed with or disagreed with, or, you know, or things we both didn't know the answer to, which is even more interesting. And, and how do you how do we create spaces as anarchists that allow for I feel like that was such a gift, you know, to allow for that, that growth and to allow for us to see that there's so many different ways of doing things in the world. And we have to give ourselves the patience, and the time, and the space with each other to do that. And otherwise, it's just going to remain....I mean, there's lots of reasons but you know, I don't want to anarchism just to be you know, 18 year olds who stay anarchists for two years, and then it's, you know, it has to be grounded and so on. Yeah. Yeah. You know, more reasons to stay an anarchist. Well, that I'm kind of all over the place there.
Milstein 42:33 But that does tie well into the next question that I have, which is, the title of your book is "Try Anarchism for Life," seems to be addressing that sort of thing. Do you want to talk about your new book?
Milstein 44:41 Um, yeah, I mean, I kind of came out as I used to hate hashtags. I used to hate social media. I still I still do. But anyway, I used to roast hash tags...because I really like how can we boil down our ideas to two words or three words in a hashtag? But anyway, I started using "Try Anarchism for Life" at one point, but I was like, Oh, how do I fill that out? Because I guess for me, it was kind of this playful hashtag, but then I really meant like, anarchism has to be something once you embrace it that you you want to act anarchitically for the whole of your life and I don't understand how you can't once you embrace it, because I don't understand. Although I've known plenty of people who have, you know, but how once you've eyes widened to see hierarchy, domination, you kind of go What, whoa, wait, I don't believe that anymore. I just don't understand that. But ,once you know, once, you're sort of like, in anarchism and anarchistic, how, how do you do that for the whole of your life, but in service of life? So, that is kind of like puns play on or like word plays, like, try and anarchism for the whole of your life and for the life of all the ancestors that came before you, and the life of those will come after you, but also in service of life. And that it's trying because we're never actually going to all have to keep experimenting. So yeah, so I whatever, I kept playing with it and writing little little things about it on my plate to do sort of picture posted on Instagram. And then I don't know last winter, especially this time period has been incredibly bleak and traumatizing and horrific, horrifying, depressing. And, I'm not making light of it, it's just been a hellish, hellish, a lot of hellish time periods in history, but there are some that are particularly, yeah, horrific. And this is one of them. Fascism. Ecocide. You know, collapse of all sorts of any kinds of supports systems. Yeah, it's a really horrific time. And so yeah, I don't know, last year, especially last winter, I was like, what if I wrote little prose that really kind of tried to figure out, to kind of answer the thought experiment what are some of the many beautiful dimensions of anarchism? And it came about to talk about this in a little prologue to the book, but it came up on me posting things on Instagram originally, I don't know when I started doing that with the scriptwriter because I'm for life. But I take a lot of pictures of graffiti and street art and write little stories about some. I have thousands I have not yet written stories about on my camera. But uh, but I started just thinking, why is it that we like, mostly, you see a lot of spray painted Circle A's, but they're kind of haphazard? And just what does it say? When someone just the random person looks at a circle, like they might not know what it is. Or they might think oh, those anarchists things, people that break windows or black bloc, you know, like, it's this, we're not, again, doing justice to the beauty of the beauty of activism with Circle A's even though I love to see Circle A's everywhere. So then I, on Instagram was like, hey, who could? Who? What artists, friends of mine can draw Circle A's that, like, embody within the drawing the values and the beauty they find in anarchism. And yeah, I was so struck by how hard it was for so many folks would kept sharing things with me. And a lot of them were just things being set on fire, which is great, you know, police cars, fine, you know, but, you know, hey, we can maybe use those cars and buildings later, maybe, you know, the point is to tear down that world. Who cares? You know, what would we put in the place of others. And so, but then people started drawing them. And I started going, Okay, I'll do a little book of these things, just for fun. And so this book is 24 or 26 of these little stories. They're all very short and compact. They're kind of playful, poetic, lots of sort of puns, there's, they're kind of poignant in places, but they're very compact. I was like how can I say a lot in a small space. So I hope you look, there's a lot of little things in there that if whether you already know about anarchism, or you don't that kind of gesturing toward a bunch of wider things, but I love that forum, and I used 26 of the different drawings that people started creating all over the place. And since then, a lot of artists have been creating a lot more. So, it feels really exciting to see a lot more beautiful Circle A's out in the world. And yeah, I want to inspire people to, you know, I really think part of, you know, we as anarchists were like, Oh, this is this cool club, and we know how great it is, well, you know, we're just going to do Circle A's, you know, scrawl Circle A's, but we're not going to..... I don't know, I've been accused of being a friendly, welcoming anarchist. And I think that's a good thing. So, this book is, is also like, I also want people to act more anarchistically, and I don't want it for I want it because seriously this world, if we don't do that we are it really is a choice between anarchism, fascism or ecocide. And so I hope this book contributes in a small way to encourage all of you who read it or even think about any of the circle's in it, to think about how you can portray the beauty of anarchism more and more through your life, through your practices, through modeling it, through the projects, you do, the art you do, so that other people can find it and embrace it, because sometimes it's really damn hard to find anarchism and it shouldn't be, or to find that beauty and it shouldn't be, you know, and in this moment, we need it and I don't know I was really struck last winter, which was, you know, absurdly bleek, I started writing these prose and was, you know, like, feeling so crappy before I was doing it. And then the more I just was like, I'm just gonna get obsessed in writing these, that's all I'm going to do right now, because the world's going to hell, just I could focus on this for the next couple months. And I was like, it was like, this good medicine from my brain. Like, the more I just was, like, just focus on what's beautiful in anarchism, and try to write about some little practices, and not pie in the sky. Some of them are playful and fanciful, but most of them are things we really do. Also, the more I did it more as like, whoa, wow, I start my brain started remembering that it's not just all fascism and ecocide, and tragedy and depression, despair or death. I like remembered that, that tension that, you know, there is always trauma and joy, there is sorrow and joy there is we're never wholly in collapse or, you know, we're never wholly in disaster. We have. Yeah, so I don't know, I think, even on that level, for us to really stretch our brains to think about and practice that beauty, you know, I don't know, I've, I've done different, like, hospice care and other forms of care around death and grief. And, you know, people think, Oh, this is hard to deal with death. And I don't know something about like, being really open to these moments, when people are experiencing most sort of profound transitions in life, you know, going from this life to whatever after you believe happens. It's a pretty profound, intimate moment that only happens once in your life for each of us. And to accompany someone through that....Wow. It's, I think the sort of, you know, if we're able to do those things well, to take care of each other well, to really intimate moments of grief and or dying, and death is, is we find out all the people that are like, "Oh my god, I should have been living my life, I should have been telling people I love them, I should have been telling people I don't love them," you know, like people become genuine and like actually, strive, oftentimes people become, not everybody, but a lot of people like it calls into question your mortality an you try to be suddenly like recommit to life, which a lot of people I've heard, say, during the pandemic, too, this is just telling me what's important in life, you know, we show the world is in hospice right now, you know, and we don't know if there's going to be a future in the next 10 years, or what humans if humans as a species will survive this time period. And, but we do know, we can treat each other as good as possible and alleviate as much suffering as we can, and make every moment until that last moment, as beautiful as it can be, which is what hospice is, in the best of scenario's goal is, is to alleviate unnecessary suffering, and to accentuate as much beauty and collected care as you can. And so I don't know, I'm not it, I hope this book says, please, you know, all of us can't give up. Too many of us have lost friends to them killing themselves or taking too many substances intentionally or unintentionally, or depression, or, you know, all sorts of other reasons. And, you know, that's, that's there, that's real, right? And I want more of us to be here, you know, and so how can we be there to help alleviate as much suffering as we can and accentuate forms of collective care, even if we only think we have another six months or 10 years, or whatever it is we have, and not give up? Don't give up? Because that's, we might, you know, I don't know, to me as an anarchist, that's always like, I don't know how they always stay an anarchist. Because, you know, that's like a question we could talk about. But part of it is just this belief is like, I don't know what else I'm like, This is what I want to my last breath is to try really hard to be encircled by solidarity and care and love. And, you know, in ways that we do it non hierarchically, you know, in ways that we do together. That's all one sort of can ask for, but one also can try to do. Long winded version of, "Why you're doing this," but the last thing I want to say or not, the last thing cause I can say many things, cause I'm so grateful to all the 26 people who do this incredible beautiful Circle A's and the many other people sent me one that I didn't include because I was like, I can only write so many pieces. And, but, and they've all been really generous with the Circle A's and they're all in the same thought about if people use them for all sorts of things. And again, anarchists we're like cool, take it and turn it into a t shirt, or stencil, or spray paint it, or make a poster. And same with my words. I really love that we give those things to each other. But, I also really want to thank you two, and your whole collective of Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. You've also just really embodied like anarchistic values and how like we collaborate, and you treated me and the whole process. It's been like, you know, learning together, experimenting together. It's been like a really beautiful experience. So, for me books aren't this like thing, this commodity which unfortunately we have to charge for because capitalism, you know, someday and hopefully we won't have to that's the irony, you know? Like, you know, not irony, just the sorrow, right? You know, we can't do the things we love as anarchists completely in ways we would want to. But we can do them as much as we can in the ways we want to. And so everything about this book, for me books are I do them as labors of love. The funds are going back to you all to support your publishing project. But I, I for me, it's the process of them that's anarchistic, like how do we? How do we think through doing them? Why are we doing them? Who are we doing them with? And for? And how do we treat each other while we're doing them? And once it's out in the world, how do others use it? And how do we engage with it? Right? I put books out in the world not to be a commodity and sit on someone's shelf or whatever. I do it because I want people to, to think and engage and transform the world. So, it's part of my way of inspiring and intervening in that, trying to push proof prefigurative politics, which is always my underlying agenda. Come on, we can do this.
Margaret 55:55 Well, I like it that you picked 26, because in my mind, it's an alphabet book. It's just you know, a, a, a, a, a, a,a ,a.....
Casandra 56:05 There's an alef in there.
Milstein 56:07 Oh, I never even thought of that. There's an alef, an alef is the first letter in many different Jewish alphabets and probably other alphabets, too. And so there's a Circle Alef in there. So you have to get the book and read the story.
Casandra 56:24 Yeah. And my my plug for it is that I think it was a perfect first book for our collective to tack and I'm just so grateful that you came to us and that this all worked out. And but what...is it really...today's release day? I just realized we're recording this on release day. Is that true? That's true.
Margaret 56:42 And people might not be listening for a couple months? We don't know yet.
Casandra 56:46 Yeah. But now they know, we're recording this on November 15th. I really appreciate that it's like an intro to anarchism in practice. I think that theory can be really intimidating for people. But, I just find your work immensely approachable. And, I think that's something that'll be really beneficial to people.
Milstein 57:11 Yeah, I hope so. I also hope, I feel like I've sent it out to a lot of different folks to read it, like, well, some who are longtime anarchists, and I don't know, I also they're like, Oh, I also really hope that it lends like, you know, love and solidarity. People have been anarchists for a long time. Or it just reminds them why they're anarchists or think through different things, you know? Yeah, it's, I hope it's accessible for folks that don't know about anarchism, which I think it is, and also just like a gift to people who already are, because we also have to keep each other anarchists for life. Because, you can't do that alone. You have to keep reminding each other. Yeah, yeah. We're not just you know, So well, but anyway, you know, I'm really, really grateful to Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness collective.. So if folks listening to this have not checked out their website, and their growing list of projects,they don't just do books, they do all sorts of wacky things.
Casandra 58:00 Like podcasts, like this podcast. Fancy that.
Milstein 58:06 Baked goods, I don't know. Oh, one stop shop.
Margaret 58:13 Well, is there is there any last word on on "What is anarchism?" or anything like that, that anyone wants to touch on?
Casandra 58:23 I mean, I feel like we could talk about it forever. But I also feel good about what we've talked about today.
Margaret 58:29 Yeah, fair enough.
Milstein 58:31 Yeah, yeah. How about you, Margaret, what do you think anything else you want to?
Margaret 58:35 I'm willing to give it a shot, I'll try some anarchism.
Casandra 58:40 Will you try it for life?
Margaret 58:42 So far, so good. I've been an anarchist more than half my life. And nothing's really shaken that, which is funny, because I go through these intentional kind of crises of faith with anarchism every now and then, where I'm like, Wait, really, and I kind of try and like break down the whole thing and like, come to a new conclusion. And the conclusion I keep coming to, I do this every couple of years, usually, because someone in the anarchist scene annoys me so much that I'm like, how am I in the same movement as that person? And then I like go through and I'm like, oh, because I hate the state and capitalism, and like, white supremacy, and you know, all that stuff. And so then I like, come back to it again. But, so yeah, I'm willing, at this point. I'm pretty sure I'm willing to try it for life. I mean, who knows? I'm not, you know, maybe...
Casandra 59:27 That's very anarchistic of you to interrogate your anarchism.
Margaret 59:31 Thank thanks.
Milstein 59:32 Yeah. Which, we actually feel like we need to. I feel like that's a profound anarchist value, like, I don't know, I feel like one reason I've stayed an anarchists for a long time is often because of that, like one of those personal...I really felt them or like going through sort of like I hate all anarchists, but I'm still an anarchist. I don't like...okay. I have to figure out how to keep going in those moments. And...but I don't know like, I think that's the real value of some of the my favorite like projects and collectives, like, oh, we have to, every six months, stop and actually reevaluate if this project makes sense anymore if we, you know, and then end it well, when it doesn't, that was some of my favorite things. Yeah, like, continually reevaluate and reassess. But yeah, I don't know, how do you stay? I'd love to hear how do you think you stay a anarchists for life? Like, as long as you have so far, because I think that's really, it is a challenge when society, everything in the world...it's like right now wearing an N95 or KN95 mask, which I hope most people are doing, or everyone is doing, you know, you walk into spaces, and you can literally be the only one for days on end in public places. And you know, it's a good exercise in building up one's.... Yeah. How do you do things when the whole of society reflects back to you that you shouldn't be doing that? And you're like, "No, I know. This is right. I know this is the ethical thing to do. I know it's the kind of practice I want."
Margaret 1:00:57 Go ahead, Casandra.
Casandra 1:00:59 I was just ascentinthat is difficult. I was thinking about my child, actually, my kid who's eight and the only one wearing a mask. Which is not related to anarchism, but it's hard to be different.
Milstein 1:01:12 Yeah. How do we do...but how? Yeah, so how does, as anarchist, does one you know, to sign up sort of anarchists for life is to sign up for a lot of like, grief and a lot of not seeing the world reflected that you want to see, and knowing that there's a far better world, you know, that dissonance...I always been like, you know, I get depressed a lot. And then I'm like, Why do I get depressed? It's because of that gap between the world that I want to see and the world that I live in. I know where that depression got strong. It's not a mystery, you know? So. Yeah. So, how do you...I was just curious, like, either you how you stay the older and older you get this? How do you stay an anarchist?
Casandra 1:01:45 Community, I think. Not being anarcho individualists.
Margaret 1:01:51 I, it's funny, because some of my answer is like, kind of, like, I'm used to being the weird one in the room, like, you know, like, like, if I walk into a grocery store, the weird thing about me isn't that I'm wearing a mask. The weird thing about me is that I'm a trans girl, and I exist, you know, and so I'm like, the mask is like, Yeah, whatever. And then, like, in some ways, the anarchism or like, you know, the way that that's like, sort of visually expressed for me, because I still sort of well I dress sub culturally, but that really kind of predates my anarchism, actually, I was just always a goth kid. But like, I'm sort of used to being the weird one in the room. And I'm kind of used to having the ideas that are like, a little bit more out there. But, honestly, in a lot of ways, I actually feel easier and more comfortable about being an anarchist now than I did when I was younger. One, because it's, it's reflexive for me, right? Like, it's, you know, people always say, you're gonna get, you know, you're gonna calm down as you get older. Right? And in some ways, I have calmed down. But, but I've settled into the, the ideological positions that I hold, and they feel more and more concrete to me, like, the idea that capitalism could possibly make sense or that authoritarianism could possibly make sense just completely disagree with everything that I learn and everything that I experience. So, I don't know. And then also, there's just, frankly, more of us than there were 10 years ago. And, the thing that I have more interest in and excitement about is the breaking out of it from subculture. I say this as someone who's sub culturally, I'm involved in music subcultures, and I'm also sort of sub culturally anarchist in terms of that has been like my primary, like friend groups and things like that over the past, like maybe 20 years. But, more and more anarchism is a more mainstream position. And that is what gives me hope, way more than anything that happens kind of within subcultures. The fact that increasingly, because we've been saying, like, "Hey, here's the stuff that's wrong," and people been like, "I don't know about that." And then all this stuff happens. And people are like, "Oh, I think this is what's wrong." And we have to be over here. We, we can't be like political hipsters about it. We can't be like, well, "I liked it before it was cool." But, people are more and more aware of that. And I'm, I'm very excited about that.
Milstein 1:04:08 Yeah, I think that's really true. That's great. Yeah. I mean, before the pandemic, I spent, like, not as much time as I wanted to, I wanted to spend more time but who knows if I ever will. But in, in Greece, or I spent a lot of time in Montreal, and those places, there's like, large multi generational incredibly multi generational, you know, like kids to 90 year olds, actively engaged in anarchism, you know, and it's, it is like a public thing, like people....It isn't something like people are scared to say oftentimes or that, you know, it just feels like it's a, you know, anarchism is part of the, yeah, the ecosystem, you know, and the antagonisms are at least clear, but the social integrity between the fascists and police or things like that, but I don't know what space is. I always feel it feels so different. Like it's maybe that's what one thing that keeps me is like, like wow, this is possible to sustain this and to build to build this and to grow it and to see it widen out beyond anarchist milieus, to be something that you know people like, consider in in, you know, engaging in in their life whether they become anarchists or not, you know, they'll engage in solidaristic practices, even if they don't become an anarchist, because they're like, "Oh, the anarchists are doing this really well." Yeah, I was just thinking, like some of the things in we were talking about like that, instead of my grumpy like, oh, it's really hard to stay an anarchist. Because it also is, it is so hard to stay an anarchist longer. It just feels, dispiriting in a lot of ways, but I don't know, I just also feel like, it's beautiful. Because you just, the world becomes more and more....I like less and less binary and more and more nuance, and open and beautiful. And, like I was thinking about, like, things, you know, I just more and more things come into my like, framework, and anarchism just seems to become so much more like, you know, I don't think it's become more...it has become more feminist and queer and trans, it needs to become more like still, but I, that's because a lot of us can put a lot of hard work into making it. So it's been a ton more aware of like, you know, race, and colonialism, and spirituality, and a whole bunch of other things because a lot of us have said, Hey, these are parts that anarchism needs to sustain itself for a long time. And it feels really beautiful to have more brought into anarchism to make it possible to bring the whole of ourselves into anarchism and not have to choose between, you know, being a queer and an anarchist, or being, you know, having some sort of spirituality and being an anarchist. Even if I don't believe in God. Yeah, but, but I also think..I was just thinking when you're talking, it's like, funny, it's not funny. Maybe that's the wrong word. In this odd way, it feels like the longer I'm an anarchist, the more kind of...I mean, it feels kind of intense, because, you know, years ago, I'm like, wait, fascism is coming. And you kind of feel like you're screaming it, nobody's listening, you know, and then, but I don't know, it also feels grounding, to not be surprised by what's happening in the world, and to be able to be calm about and say, Hey, no, we kind of, you know, we've been thinking about this for a while. Hey, we already have.
Casandra 1:07:02 We've already accounted for that.
Milstein 1:07:04 Yeah, I think it's really calming and grounding to not, not like there's many other emotions that we might have. But, we're not necessarily surprised that everything is falling apart. You know, we're like, "Hey, we already knew that. We've already been like, engaging in all sorts of like imaginative, creative, solidaristic, mutually responsible projects and practices." And yeah, I don't know, that keeps me going as an anarchist in this weird way that's kind of grounding. So yeah, I don't really appreciate...I just hope folks listening too, like, really try to think of all the different practices that can keep you there for, you know, the whole of your lives in whatever ways that is, because, yeah, I just, I don't know, I, I can't, none of us can fix things. But we can be there to support each other through things. And I really want to give a shout out to the last couple, few years during the pandemic, growing giant, bigger and bigger circles of queer, trans and Jewish anarchist circles that I feel really grateful to be part of, and those circles have like, long, long time, you know, and people who are diasporic, I'm gonna widen that circle. So people who are diasporic, have long, long, long practices of how you get through moments of fascism, or, you know, aloneness, or loss, or life transitions, or, you know, which anarchism by itself doesn't necessarily have and needs to to more. And so, I don't know, I just feel like the more we bring, we expand the ecosystem of anarchism and bring in more the whole of ourselves. We'll have all these different kinds of things we can draw on to help us get through things, you know, yeah. Yeah, that's an actually yeah, so anyway, just want to my pitch is like, No, like, we all need to be there for each other. So to end on, like, Casandra's thing is like, community, community, community, community community.
Casandra 1:08:53 Yeah, for sure.
Margaret 1:08:55 Right, well, that does seem like a good note to end on. Thank you so much for coming. And if people wanted to check out your work on social media, what are your social media handles?
Milstein 1:09:06 Oh, I love using Instagram, although, yeah, sure. I don't like the ownership. And I just started to experiment with Mastodon. We'll see. And I'm pretty easy to find in other ways. So, and I love when people get in touch.
Casandra 1:09:21 I think use or you see CBMilstein, is that right?
Milstein 1:09:26 Yeah, I think I'm CBMilstein. Yeah. And I'm also have a blog that I sometimes use, I think, at CBMilstein at WordPress.com
Casandra 1:09:36 And you can find "Try Anarchism for Life" through AK press and on the Strangers site.
Margaret 1:09:43 Yay.
Margaret 1:09:52 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, you can support it by telling people about it. Tell people about it in person ideally, but also mess with the algorithms that run the world by rating and reviewing and it's not really messing. It's really playing into their systems, but it still allows this kind of content to get put in front of more people's eyes. So, and you can also support this podcast by supporting us directly or rather supporting the publisher, which is Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which you've heard a bit about during this episode. You can support us on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersInatangledwilderness, we send out a monthly zine we also have another podcast called Strangers in the Tangled Wilderness that includes the content from that monthly zine that is available to all people. And in particular, we would like to thank Hoss the dog, Micaiah, Chris, Sam, Kirk, Eleanor Jenipher, Staro, Kat J, Chelsea, Dana, David, Nicole, Mikki, Paige, SJ, Shawn, Hunter, Theo, Boise Mutual Aid, Milica, and paparouna. Thank you so much. And thanks, everyone for listening, and I hope you all are doing as well as you can with everything that's happening.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Brooke and Casandra talk with Why We Fight author, Shane Burley about conspiracy theories, false consciousness amongst the right, how mythos get built to influence how people think, and how the root of a lot of conspiracy theories is anti-semitism.
Shane Burley can be found on Twitter @Shane_Burley1, on Instagram @ShaneBurley, on Mastodon @Shane_Burley, and on Patreon at www.patreon.com/ShaneBurley
Casandra rocks. Brooke can be found at Strangers helping up keep our finances intact and on Twitter @ogemakweBrooke
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
This Year in the Apocalypse on 12/30/22 and every two weeks there after.
Live Like the World is Dying: Shane Burley on Conspiracy Theories
Brooke 00:18 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcasts for what feels like the end times. I'm Brooke Jackson, one of your hosts today, along with Casandra. Today we have the honor of talking with the author, researcher, and journalist Shane Burley. We're going to discuss conspiracy theories or whatever rabbit holes that topic takes us into. But first we'd like to celebrate being a member of the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts by playing a little jingle for one of the other podcasts on the network. Here it goes.
Brooke 01:29 And we're back. Shane, thanks for joining us today to talk about conspiracy theories. Would you tell us a little bit about yourself, including sharing your pronouns?
Shane Burley 01:36 Sure. Thanks so much for having me on. My name is Shane Burley, my pronouns are he/him or they/them. I research the far right amongst other things. I've written a few books on it, Why We Fight from back in 2021 and Fascism Today from 2017. And most recently edited this big anti fascism anthology called an No Pasaran: Anti Fascist Dispatches From a World in Crisis. And right now I am working on a book with my co-author Ben Lorber for Melville House books, on anti semitism.
Brooke 02:06 Nice, thank you. Yeah, the one you wrote back in 2017 - Casandra has a copy of that book. And when I realized that my beliefs align with anarchism, I was like, I should learn about what this is. And, you know, learn more about fascism, too. And I was like, Casandra, do you have a good, like, primer book on this for me? And she just went to the bookshelf and pulled that one out. It was yours! Handed it over.
Shane Burley 02:33 Oh, awesome. That's what I was hoping for, when we wrote it because there wasn't a lot that was good and straightforward at the time, at least from our side.
Casandra 02:40 Spreading the good news about anti-fascism.
Brooke 02:46 That was, it was a good piece for, for getting started and learning there. So thank you for writing that. And for your continued work.
Shane Burley 02:53 Yeah, thanks so much for saying that, it's really kind.
Brooke 02:56 So we wanted to talk today about conspiracy theories, and I'm just gonna start with a real basic question just to make sure we're all kind of on the same page as we're having this conversation, of what is a conspiracy theory?
Shane Burley 03:08 And conspiracy theory is a theory about a conspiracy that is not true. More appropriately, it's one that could not be true. So I think it's distinguishing from actual conspiracies because there are conspiracies in the world. So, you know, a good comparison about this would be the killing of JFK. There's conspiracy theories that range from three people did it to 10,000 people did it. But no matter what one person had to engage in some kind of collaboration, so some kind of conspiracy is possible, which is separate from conspiracy theory. So I think we separate it from like the various kind of quote unquote "conspiracies" that lots of organizations and governments engage in just in day to day work, versus ones that basically come up against the basic laws of physics and how we understand the world to work, and specifically divert our understanding of how complex issues work by sort-of putting an element of fantasy into them.
Brooke 04:03 So that kind of answers one of the questions that I've been pondering, maybe we can talk about it more? Casandra has been wondering about, you know, why conspiracy theories have become so mainstream. And my sort of corollary thought was, it seems like they're so appealing to people, you know? Those two things are kind of tied together - the mainstreaming and the fact that they seem to really appeal to people for some reason.
Casandra 04:28 Not even just mainstream, as in the rest of society mainstream, but mainstream on the Left.
Shane Burley 04:37 I was interviewing a friend, Brendan O'Connor, who wrote a book, Blood Red Lines, about anti-immigrant kind of nativism and border politics. And he made a comment that I thought a lot about which was that he's kind of unsure about where the line between conspiracy theories and quote unquote, "false consciousness" lies. What's the difference between conspiracy theory, and what's the differencce between misunderstanding sources of oppression and how systems work, which is a common thing?
Shane Burley 05:06 I think one of the realities about a conspiracy theory is that it is an attempt to liberate oneself; it is actually an attempt to do that. It's an attempt to explain people in power and explain your own disempowerment. And so in situations in which lots of instability or feelings of loss of status - whatever they are, real and imagined - when those things start to sort of percolate, conspiracy theories are the easier answer. They don't require a ton of political education they don't depend on a lot of shared reality, even. And our society depends really heavily both on false consciousness and conspiracy theories. Depending on how you put those lines.
Shane Burley 05:48 Take the entire Republican Party: [it] has built a mythos on working class people, specifically, not elites, right? That's the language used. And their policy is entirely based around basically inculcating the rich and the people who own capital. So how do you explain both of those things? It has to be institutionalized false consciousness, which in itself engages a certain amount of conspiracy theories. How can you understand empowering the rich and empowering the working class at the same time? Those things don't comiserate. Except millions and of millions of people assume that they can. And so I think there's an institutionalization of that kind of thinking. Conspirarcy theories, the wild ones, actually aren't that far afield from that, you know? Because if you think about the way that things - just basic [things], like taxes and social services - versus the kind of benefits of the rich, it seems pretty obvious that when those who own capital are enriched that that money comes from us. I mean, it doesn't require a master's thesis to explain that. So you have to get millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people to basically avoid thinking about that, or to believe it's untrue. And so that, I think, is foundational to the way that we think about conspiracy theories because we all - not all of us, hopefully - but huge portions of us engage in some level of conspiracy thinking,
Casandra 07:03 You can tell me if you think this is accurate: it seems like conspiracy theories often try to blame individuals, rather than looking at systems for instance, it sort of frustrates me when people are like, you know, eat the rich. Which yeah, eat the rich. But like, "If Jeff Bezos would just, you know, redistribute his wealth, everything would be fine." But it wouldn't be because capitalism would still exist, and there would just be someone else super rich. You know what I mean?
Shane Burley 07:32 Yeah, I think the kind of classic line on this is that conspiracy theories - and particularly anti semitic conspiracy theories, just as like the archetype for it - are one of the most effective defenders of capital because what it does is divert your attention away from a system and places it on supposedly corrupt individuals. And there's a couple of reasons I think this is really attractive to people. I think one is that it actually plays on bigotries really well, and validates them in a certain sense. So there's certain stories that people tell right? So one is that they're aggrieved and legitimately so. I would say that most members of the working class are having a problem, right? They're being exploited at work. They're not being paid, obviously, what they're worth; paying bills is hard. It's miserable. It's very upsetting, the things that we go through, even people who are reasonably affluent but not ruling class, it's actually quite difficult. And so that's a legitimate grievance. And I think that grievance has a lot of anger built up with it. And that anger inside people's bodies and minds is often indistinguishable from bigotry. I think it's actually those things intermix a lot. So it's the impulse that if someone is actually legitimately your oppresser in a dynamic, you know, your boss, there's an impulse to actually want to say something bigger to them.
Shane Burley 08:45 There's a lot of research about people being pushed, and saying things and doing things they never thought they would in the direction of bigotry, simply as a way of harming those they think are harming them. And so what a lot of these conspiracy theories do - and populists conspiracy theories in general - is allow you to sort of indulge in that a bit. So it's not uncommon to focus on the effeminacy of the ruling class. So you'll see this a lot: "Jeff Bezos, look at his soft hands. He can never do the hard work like us." There's a certain kind of 'let's make them look effeminate. Let's make them look queer, code them as queer.'
Casandra 09:18 Also, the lizard thing, like talking about how they look like lizards
Shane Burley 09:24 Very much about their appearance. I mean, if you look at... early 20th century socialist literature, the inordinate focus on making the capitalist class look fat, just absolutely rotund, as if they're consuming things that, you know, they're eating so much that you can't eat. You become small and they become big. So I think that allows, it gives us a twofer, right? That says, okay, yeah, they're the capitalist class, they're oppressing in that way. And also that discomfort you feel of fat people, those are now one and the same, and one actually mobilizes the other, like one becomes a weapon for the other. So I think that's an easy way to focus on that personalization.
Shane Burley 10:01 And the other thing is, if getting rid of Jeff Bezos doesn't solve the problem, what the fuck would solve the problem? That's really scary. I think this idea that there are certainly targets in terms of the kind of super rich and stuff. But it's not, that's not enough. Like, what does it mean to go after a system of capital? What does that even mean? I think that's a really confusing prospect. And it's one that is really emotionally unsatisfying, when it gets right down to it.
Casandra 10:30 Yeah, cuz we haven't. We haven't imagined alternatives. Or, you know, the average person hasn't imagined alternatives to that.
Shane Burley 10:37 Or how will you even get there? Like, what's the pathway to alternative? I think the idea of getting rid of Jeff Bezos, whether or not it's realistic, at least you kind of understand the physicality of what that would be. But what does it mean to communize the entire economy? I mean, what does it mean to actually look at your life and say, "How can I fix these really deeply laid traumas and undo them, and replace it?" That is just such a mammoth task that it's, I think, it's hard to build up a consciousness that's really easy, has a quick fix mentality that's easy to communicate to another person. It's a lot easier to say, you know - I've worked for unions, I've been a union organizer - to say like, "It's that boss, look what he's doing, look at what the car is driving, he couldn't do your job." Those things are easy. And they are true in most of those cases, but they're not the end of the story. And so I think we end up with that really foreshortened perspective because the other stuff is just so big.
Casandra 11:32 Yeah. And I wonder if... when we explore the big stuff we also have to look at the ways that we participated, which is difficult. Yeah.
Shane Burley 11:42 Yeah. I mean... capital's really complicated now. And the way we, our lives, are intertwined in it is really difficult. Huge portions of the economy are made up of people that would have previously been considered petty bourgeois: freelancers, contract workers, you know. Is an Uber driver a business owner? I mean, there's these things that don't really make sense in the traditional kind of Marxist sense, are the ways we talk about activism and capitalism and wealth. And so it ends up being really complicated. And then when you add the dimensions of being, you know, white folks or in the Global North, that's sort of hyper exploited, under other countries, it's like, well, how does that relationship work? You know, does it? Do I see, am I doing that? Do I benefit from it? What does it mean to benefit from it? You know, I think that actually adds those layers of complexity to it. I think that's why this is the new story. I mean, that's why conspiracy theories are the story that we tell - it's a really important story. And like you said, it's not just the Right, it's the Left, too.
Brooke 12:44 So why do you think that they have become so much more mainstream? Because they've always had that quality of being simpler explanation or an easy thing to point to, but now we're seeing them becoming more common. And as Casandra said, you know, more common on the Left as well. Like, what's the rise about? Why is that happening?
Shane Burley 13:07 I think that it comes partially from the destabilization of kind of Western economies. The the center has collapsed out, so you're not having as much as moderate politics in general. The radical version of right wing politics is conspiratorial, it's necessarily conspiratorial, so the more radical it gets, the more conspiratorial it's gonna get. That's really, really important for how it builds up sort of an enthusiastic base of supporters, is built on conspiracy theories.
Shane Burley 13:36 Again, the Left and the Right will build their energy on similar impulses, right? The impulse to liberate oneself. Well, if we're talking about, quote, unquote, "white working class" - which is a kind of an artificial category - but if we're going to talk about that in the kind of MAGA/Trump sense, they are people, like all people, who have diminishing 401ks and have, you know, rent they can't afford and stuff. Even though they're not disproportionately poor or anything, it's a general feeling of decline, right? So there is decline generally happening. And so that radicalization is going to be in the direction of conspiracy theories because if you were straightforward about right wing politics, no working class person would ever accept such a thing. I say, "So you're going to keep taxing me and then and then give tax breaks to rich people?" Which makes no sense when you think about it. "You're going to bust my union, I won't have as good of a pension?" You have to have conspiracy theories, and bigotries underlying that. So those simply just radicalized more. And they give a narrative, a mythology, to the real emotional turmoil people are living with. Stop the Steal makes a lot of sense if you feel like everyone's stealing everything from you. Like, you're always being stolen from, of course they can steal this election; "This election told me they were gonna fix problems and they stole it from me, just like they stole my pension, just like they stole my home in foreclosure." So I think those things are transpiring.
Shane Burley 14:50 I think on the Left there is an increase in conspiracy theories because of the decline in political education and us talking things out. There's not a really good sense about systems. And there's also just a rapidly increasing sort of social network of sharing information that shortens it a lot. So instead of sort of talking about complex issues, it's a lot easier to package them in bite-sized bits. And those things become a lot more viral.
Shane Burley 15:13 People also really enjoy thinking that they are participating in secret knowledge of some kind. Like they've been smart. They're ahead of the curve, they're ahead of the official information. I mean, Google search, you know, "Epstein didn't kill himself," and see all the people that have decided that they know something that the rest - everyone else - doesn't know... There's an effort to step past uncertainty, and confusion and complexity, and just kind of claim knowledge. And so that's, I think, an important part of how those discourses happen, and then they just happen so rapidly. Now, they just they progress so quickly.
Casandra 15:46 Yeah. I know deep down that conspiracy theories on the Right are ultimately more dangerous. But I get so much more frustrated when I see it on the Left because I feel like we should know better. You know, I was thinking about the, like, to the Right, Jews are dirty communists, and to the Left Jews are dirty capitalists. And one makes me more angry than the other.
Shane Burley 16:14 It's interesting because we associate the Jew as the communist with the Right, and actually the Right use the "Jew as the capitalist" more. So for example, the second generation Klan would focus on Jewish capitalists. Part of it is that most likely a lot of the people in the Klan base hadn't met Jewish communists, and people in other countries might have met Jewish communists, you know? But this is one of the things I think is interesting is that there is just a rhetorical crossover that happens here, and actually, when you see - and this does happen, it's not it's not nearly the level that the Right or liberals want to make it sound - but there is moments of crossover when people from the Left take on really far-right ideas or can move to the far right, it has happened. And anti-semitic conspiracy theories is one of the primary ways that happens.
Shane Burley 17:04 This sort of anti capitalism - I use the term fetishized anti capitalism, but you know, basically any enemies of capitalism are therefore my friends. And so even these kind of radical traditionalist forms of anti capitalism - these ultra conservative, nationalistic or fascistic forms anti capitalism - sort of start to feel like, well, they're opposed to the same systems, they must be the same thing. And that happens with with anti semitism. And I think we allow for this in all kinds of ways on the Left.
Shane Burley 17:32 I mean, the amount of times I've been at international solidarity rallies where really despotic regimes are being - kind of like with signs and flags - simply because they're enemies of our enemy, either the US or the West, or Israel or something, or far right groups, are propped up because they supposedly are against the banksters... Their theory about it involves all kinds of like Rothschild conspiracy theories, and you know, they want a certain kind of Christian nationalism. So we overlook those really commonly when they are our enemies, or when they are ourselves. People are very soft on each other's conspiracy theories.
Shane Burley 18:11 I mean, how many 911 Truth folks have you known in your life, you know? And those are fundamentally anti-semitic conspiracy theories, they depend on them. That's how they function. And this is true in the environmental movement. This is true, obviously, in feminist circles. It has different targets, different constituencies, but it's what we see with the kind of growth of turf-ism and that, these use of conspiracy theories to explain. So it's something that we're not prepared to sort of deal with. And we don't, I think, always communicate why it's a problem. I don't think there's a general consensus on the Left that it really is a problem.
Shane Burley 18:51 I'll go back to the Epstein thing, you know, the Epstein case. It's really suspicious. People should probably look at that, but I don't know what happened. And I have no reason to believe it was conspiracy. I just don't, and the assumption by everyone jumping immediately into it sort of communicates to me that people feel totally fine, and engage in conspiracy theories when they have gaps of information, and everyone's pretty gentle on this. And that's not the most serious conspiracy theory. I'm not gonna put my stake in the wall in that. But I think we need to start talking to each other about that.
Shane Burley 19:19 The other thing about this is that it's a losing strategy. You know, this, it's one of the worst ways of liberating yourself is to do it in accordance with a conspiracy theory because you will necessarily lose. We will always necessarily lose. There is no conspiracy theory that has ever led someone to an effective social movement to change anything.
Casandra 19:39 Ugh. Yeah. That's all I have to say. Amen.
Brooke 19:49 Yeah, so you guys started getting into the the ties between conspiracy theories and anti-semitism. And there was a whole bunch that went on in that conversation that was just over my head here, that I did not pick up on.
Casandra 20:02 You can ask for clarifying statements.
Brooke 20:08 I know, but you're on a roll, I don't want to interrupt.
Casandra 20:12 We try to make this digestible to someone who's not familiar with the topic. So you know.
Brooke 20:22 But I am definitely curious to talk more about the ties between conspiracy theories and anti-semitism. I brought that up the other day and Casandra made the point of, I think you said something like, "All conspiracy theories eventually lead back to anti semitism" or something like that? If I'm totally misquoting you, please correct me. It is not a thing I've ever heard before. And I wanted to dive into that statement that you made and understand it. So I want to talk more about the links between conspiracy theories and anti semitism.
Shane Burley 21:00 Anti-semitism has always held a conspiratorial element - a conspiratorial core even - before it engaged in what we would know as conspiracy theories today. So anti semitism, historic anti Judaism in Christianity - and when we say anti semitism, we're specifically talking about the type that was formed in Christianity, we're not talking about broad xenophobia against Jews. So for example, in the classical Muslim world, Jews were far from equal in Muslim dominated countries, but they [Muslims] didn't engage in the kind of like vicious, conspiratorial, genocidal anti semitism that you see in Europe. That's very much a European-Christian invention. But what they essentially did was, in the development of their theological differentiation they had to build on earlier libels around Jews as a sort of conspiratorial cabal of people that engage in really nefarious practices for misanthropic or even demonic reasons. And part of this has to do with the Jews' resistance to assimilation. Jews of 3000 years ago are not the same as Jews today, but there is a certain amount of, like, "We don't change according to societies that we're enbetted in or engaged with." There's a certain amount, for example, with Holika Jewish law things do have a certain continuity to them. And that's sort of threatening to people who want to remake entire populations of people. It's kind of inherently anti assimilationist. And it's very easy then to paint them as an outsider, ones who aren't playing by our rules and not part of our society. Christianity, in an effort to differentiate itself as a breakaway religion from the Jews, and focus really heavily on Jews sort of failing to understand the real spiritual message of their own scriptures, failing to live up to the promise that their religion. Like, "Christians are the new Israel" right? Then eventually develop that into open hostility, and then the suspicion that Jews are engaged in something really nefarious.
Shane Burley 23:00 So the blood libel is an example of this: the idea that Jews are secretly kidnapping and killing Christian children to use their blood in different rituals. "Host desecration" is one; after the Catholic church decided that the the wafer - the host - is literally the body of Christ, they then started accusing Jews of stealing that host and stabbing it because they're so cruel. They have, you know, accused them of having pacts with the devil, engaging in all kinds of horrific things. And then at the same time: Jews, they weren't disproportionately moneylenders, but a number of Jews were involved in money lending because of their prohibitions in other industries. And then, of course, Christians used that as a propaganda tool, and basically kind of trumped up the charge. And so that populist anger was starting to intermix with the stories about Jews, and you get incredibly violent hostility.
Shane Burley 23:46 I was talking with my co-author, Ben: I don't think at this point in history it's good to luxuriate in all the terrible stories of things that happened to Jews, I think that's almost, like, pornographic in a sense. But if you read pogroms that are kind of a mix of this theological anti Judaism and the reaction to the monarch, basically, they're targeting the Jews, instead of targeting the people who actually hold power. There's this kind of guttural rage, and the kind of cruelty that they're engaged in is totally off the map, it has no productive function other than just as much kind of creative violence as possible. And that's kind of a very particular impulse. And this is one, I think, is the flip side of the impulse to liberate yourself: to engage in oppression of others has some of that element to it. And it's very ephemeral. It's very kind of gut driven.
Shane Burley 24:37 But those stories about Jews went through a lot of versions. A lot of ideas about Jews - Jews as moneylenders, Jews as people who steal from Christians, inherently dishonest people - those were secularized into what became known as anti semitism, opposition to Semitism. It was a kind of pseudo scientific idea that Jews had a particular ideology almost in their genes, and they were affecting society in particular ways. So the movement against them, the movement against semetic influence, was sort of productive movement to stop them from kind of degenerating society. The idea of how they're influencing society is that they're engaged in these cabals, either banking cabals, cabals involved in the media, you know, they're changing public perception, they're involved in legal professions, obviously, again, money lending, all forms of like banking and finance, in particular, all these kind of new industries and early capitalist environment. And so these are what we know as the most popular conspiracy theories - about secret societies, about Rothschild bankers, things like that - emerge out of that period. And that's the beginning of what we know today as a conspiracy theory.
Shane Burley 25:39 A really coherent secular conspiracy theory, you know, it might have some religious overtones, certainly, but it doesn't argue itself necessarily in purely religious terms. All conspiracies that come later basically have the same format that was developed around this. They all have the same basic structure. And most conspiracy theories have lineages that you can trace back - one came from another one which came from an earlier one, and so on and so forth. They always come back to Jews. And most conspiracy theorists today hold that same anti semitic structure. So Q-Anon is a really great example of this. You know, Q-Anon rarely, quote unquote, "names the Jew." Names the Jew is something that open white nationalists do, right? They'll say, "Okay, this is typically the Jews." But instead, what Q-Anon does, is they'll use the figures of the cabal, they'll take all the structures of this earlier anti semitic conspiracy theory, they'll use verifiably Jewish names, or stereotypes associated with Jews, they'll take older pieces of those conspiracy theories, theologic pieces, and secularize them. So for example, they believe that a cabal of satanic Democrats with curious R last names are taking children and sacrificing their adrenal glands to extract this substance that they use then in rituals to intoxicate themselves. Right? It's familiar, uses a lot of sciency sounding words - Adrenochrome, which is not a real thing - but it sounds like...
Casandra 27:01 They were making the forbidden matzah or whatever, right?
Shane Burley 27:04 Exactly. What they're doing is basically capturing Christian children and using them for their evil Hebraic rituals. But again, they don't always say - some of them do, increasingly, they do say Jews, but it takes just a tiny scratch on this. 911 Truth is a really good example, you know, where cabals of bankers - or you know, Israel, whatever it is, that's verifiably not involved - are accused of being involved. And the pattern for how this works has an earlier anti semitic conspiracy theory to it. So these are generally how those kinds of work.
Casandra 27:06 Can you can you really quickly explain what you mean by "ur" something?
Shane Burley 28:40 Ur would mean the kind of universal base form. So the most origin point. So it's saying that ur conspiracy theory maybe means like the first conspiracy theory, or the kind of conspiracy theory that established the format for it, so you can look back and say, okay, it started here. What's the thing that these all hold in common? Then I think you'll see that in the blood libel is that they all hold those basic structural points in common layer.
Shane Burley 28:48 In my book I interviewed David Newark, who wrote Alt America and other books about the far right and conspiracy theories. And he, you know, says that basically, the blood libel is the "ur" conspiracy theory. It's like the basic source of all conspiracy theories because the idea that small cabal of people are engaged in this really nefarious work of extracting goodness and turning it into something evil. So anytime you have a conspiracy theory, it's going to have this DNA. Is there any conspiracy theory that engages in a way that's not anti semitic? I think part of the problem is that we live in a globalized world. So other cultures have had conspiracy thinking in them, but the West has really exported anti semitism as a subtle cultural code.
Shane Burley 28:48 So I mentioned earlier Muslim anti-semitism, obviously, there is anti semitism in Muslim-majority countries and some Muslim communities, but when you look at it, it actually looks much more like exported Christian anti semitism with some Islamic kind of branding, or like some opportunistic use of Muslim sources. It very much looks like a Western export. And I think that's what we're seeing now globally on conspiracy theories is that even if there was versions of these - and other cultures had conspiracy theories against diasporic people, you know, there's conspiracy theories about Chinese immigrants in Malaysia and there's conspiracy theories about Koreans in Japan, there are those - nowadays, the exporting and universalization of the anti semitic conspiracy theorists, the"ur" conspiracy theory, has affected all peoples sense of how they build those. So you're gonna find spray paint in Japan, that says, "The Jews did 911" in a place where those people likely had never met a Jew, and maybe no one in their ancestry line has ever met a Jew, right? So this isn't about Jews. So in that way, we globalized so effectively and exported our own bigotry so much that there is really no place in this conspiracy thinking that doesn't involve Jews.
Brooke 30:06 You might say the genesis of conspiracy theories? (Laughter.) I learned so much in the last 10 minutes. I feel like when I go back and listen to this episode, I'm gonna play it at three-quarters speed and pause to ponder things. No, seriously, I really did. Thank you for the deep historical context there because a lot of that that was unknown to me, that I went, you know, "What, what?"
Shane Burley 30:36 I also know it's a lot, too. And I think this is part of the problem is that in any given situation, particularly in situations of anger, how useful is it for me to explain to them what host desecration is, you know? I think it's actually hard to intervene in these spaces. And it's especially hard to intervene when there's really contentious stuff, like Israeli colonization of Palestine and stuff. So it's actually really hard with this very justified anger. And the targets of those angers are actually are coded as Jews. I think it's actually really hard to then intervene and say, "Hey, hold up, you're actually doing a thing. And it has a history and it's a problem."
Casandra 31:15 It also makes it difficult to talk about anti semitism in simple terms. I feel like sometimes when people ask me questions about it, that should be simple questions, I'm overwhelmed by the amount of information I'd have to transmit to give them proper context. You know what I mean?
Brooke 31:32 I have literally been that person to Casandra.
Casandra 31:37 I was interviewing him and I was like, we should do an interview about this.
Shane Burley 31:41 We transmute American racial taxonomies on to anti semitism that don't really fit, you know. The couple of interviewees that I had for the book that made this interesting point, they phrased it in an interesting way. And I think JFRCJ, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, had framed it this way, as well: Only sometimes does anti semitism make Jews poor. It doesn't make us poor all the time. And in fact sometimes it stabilizes Jewish income. So for example, in areas when Jews would have been a hyper exploited population, they're allowed to have certain amounts of wealth as a way of defecting anger from peasant classes away from the actual rich people and onto the Jews. So they might not actually interact with a noble person, but they would interact with a Jew, and they might see the Jew having stable money, and there might be nice things in their home, and that would communicate to them: "This is the person that's exploiting me, rather than the Noble who I've never come across." And there's a certain kind of positioning of Jews in a lot of those situations.
Shane Burley 32:40 You know, one thing we talk about in the book is this phenomenon of Jews, and the relationship of white Jews to whiteness, is that when white Jews were very openly accepted as white folks in the US, particularly after the Second World War, there was a kind of class jumping that took place. But what happened was that a lot of Jews - particularly what we call a kind of second wave Jews moving here in the 1920s - were very poor, a lot of them socialists, a lot of working in garment factories, union organizers. But basically, in these dense urban areas, they started to leave those urban areas as they were kind of coded as white, became middle class, and in a lot of ways conservatized, right? Israel was formed in 1948. There's other things that kind of made more conservative. And who moved into those areas? It was a lot of black folks, it's a lot of Puerto Rican folks, lots of communities of color, where Jews now might be the business owner. They might be the landlord because they kind of class jump. They might own the grocery store that all the folks in the community use, and have maybe jacked up prices, or they work and they're not being treated really well. And so again, that dynamic is continued of them being sort of the middle agent, you know? The Jewish shop owner does not control capitalism, but they are the person you might see. And so again, you kind of repeat that dynamic.
Shane Burley 33:55 So it's not always that Jews are going to experience anti semitism in the way that black folks experience anti blackness in the same kind of structural way. And also the US is not foundationally built on anti semitism in the way that it's built on anti blackness and colonialism. So it works fundamentally differently. There are some cases in which it looks more similar. So for the Orthodox Jews, they are more likely to be, you know, hurt by police, they are more likely to be poor. There's a recent study that came out that if someone is coded as Jewish in employment, they're much, much less likely to hire them. There's usually other things that kind of go along with it... There's limited data on this, but it's not with someone who's coded as a secular Jew, it's more like if they're coded as Orthodox, where someone's different, seems like it might cause you a problem, or it might make you uncomfortable. Or if it feels like they hold Jewish qualities that are associated with unsavory-ness, you know, like large noses or weird ways of speaking. Or maybe they bring weird food into the office, stuff like that. So those things do actually happen, but in general, it works differently.
Shane Burley 35:04 And so there's a certain kind of structural unsafety for Jews, they're always kind of worrying about whether the other shoe was going to drop because anytime there's instability Jews often get targeted in that. But that doesn't mean in the day to day they usually, you know, can't find a job, or [get] pulled over at disproportionate rates. So it works differently. It's hard for people to identify that.
Shane Burley 35:24 This is kind of true in general when we're talking about oppression outside of really narrow terms, people generally have learned to understand things in a certain way, and dominant hegemonic discourses, and then learning new ways is really, really tough. I think it really, it's really clear, for example, in the way that the Left just seemed totally unwilling to understand trends and issues for decades, just totally looked like they couldn't compute how little they understand sex work issues, or body issues, fat issues. It's an unwillingness to see that oppression is actually different for different folks, either individually or as groups, and to sort of accommodate for that, and to think through how these things are complicated. And so we can't assume that one thing tracks with another, that you can talk about oppression in one situation and have it be the same for another. So I think that creates that problem you're talking about. So what are you going to do, you know? Sit down and say, "Look, we need to have a conversation about, you know, second century Egypt, BC, and how Jews are coded as this." I mean, it's, it's a hard proposition.
Casandra 36:32 We have to talk, we have to go back to 1905. Talk about Czarist Russia. (laughter.) Yeah. I'm wondering, so I'm trying to remember exactly how you phrased it. But when there's, when there's instability, that's when people tend to target Jews. And when there's instability, that's when conspiracy theories also seem to, like, foment as well as fascism. And I'm wondering if you can talk about how those things are related, especially because you write books about fascism and anti semitism.
Shane Burley 37:07 I mean, fascism is also an attempt to liberate oneself, right? It's to liberate oneself by inculcating more oppression, like an auto immune response, right? We're gonna attack the immune system, as if that's actually what's harming us. We're gonna attack, you know, the movement to undo white supremacy because that may be what's harming us, rather than, obviously, the reverse. So it's tenfold by two things: One is a sort of a centralized identity, and one is a sort of social stratification. So the idea is that your identity is fixed and must be preserved. And that's an essential piece, usually racial identity, but sometimes it's others. And then the other thing is that all of humanity has to be stratified in this hierarchy, you... are white, because you are not black, and that whiteness is above blackness, for example. And this is a way of taking a privileged part of the class and telling them that their oppression is the cause of the progress of other parts of the class. So it's specifically about splitting the class. So in a way, it's very clear what it's doing, it's disallowing you the ability to organize amongst working people or non-rich people, to change the society that is better for all of you. Right? So it's very specific in that way.
Shane Burley 37:42 Anti semitism and conspiracy theories are a story about your oppression that never get to the structural roots, that are usually factually untrue, and are able to kind of break potential solidarity. So I think where the immediate hardships of actual organizing are onerous, confusing, and frightening: conspiracy theories actually disallow that. So for example, if I really want to change the world, it's going to require things of me, right? I'm going to need to figure out how I'm participating in white supremacy so that I can actually collaborate with non white folks. And once we do that, it actually changes the world for all of us, right? This makes it much better for us, like I personally benefit from that. But getting there, it's a little bit hard sometimes. It's also confusing, I don't quite see it, I've never seen it before, right? And I'm actually running into this movement. It's telling me that my whiteness is actually the thing that would make me happy, that whiteness is actually the thing that historically kept me safe, that whiteness is actually what I'm trying to protect. It's not all this class conflict stuff. That's the lies that they tell you, you know, those cabals that actually want to take from you, they're all socialist movements. And I think, so, people are out there and confused.
Shane Burley 38:19 And remember, bigotry, it's really interesting because it speaks to people almost like their conscience, it's impulsive. It felt really emotionally... it feels true to people. I can tell you what doesn't feel true is Marxist jargon... That's what feels true. A lot of times when someone speaks of it they're trying, you're searching for a way to liberate yourself. You're looking for a revolutionary story about it. And then someone comes in and tells you something that actually tracks with a lot of the impulses you felt historically because being raised in the society we are that teaches people to understand the world in a certain way. So I think those movements come up in that way.
Shane Burley 40:12 You know, fascism is just a particularly modern and revolutionary version of something that happens all the time. It has historically happened for centuries, you know, this kind of impulse to actually, to barrel down into a hierarchy, to basically reestablish tradition and immobile social roles, and to focus on identity at the cost of all others. So, instability simply radicalized this people to change their lot. And that is what's happening at such a systemic level. Now, because capitalism is imploding, the environment is collapsing, the stasis of the 20th century cannot continue any longer. And so that necessitates radicalism of all types. Which is also why, in a sense, stay anti fascism, because if you want any kind of revolutionary movement that's positive, you're gonna have to reckon with the revolutionary movement that's not positive.
Casandra 40:58 Right? Seems simple enough.
Brooke 41:06 So you're working in some real toxic material, they're dealing with fascism with anti semitism with conspiracy theories, and that's got to, you know, take a toll on you on your mental health and well being. And I'm wondering what you do for yourself to help take care of yourself? And spoiler: this leads into, you know, a deeper question, which is what we always try to get to in Live Like the World is Dying, is talking about how we help others, and then we help our communities with this. But what do you do for yourself?
Shane Burley 41:38 Having Andy Ngo sub tweet you, or whatever.
Shane Burley 41:38 I don't, I think the reality is that I don't have a good, solid answer to that question. I don't, think that I formed health in my life in a very perfect way. But there's a couple of things I kind of thought about. I mean, I think one is that I think researching the far right is actually sort of empowering to people. I think, you know, if I kind of tried to figure out what it is I'm doing here, like, why am I here, it's not just for productive work, it's not just that I want to produce something that will stop it, I think, is productive. I mean, that's certainly a part of it. But there's also a certain part of it about looking at something that seems frightening and confusing, and sort of under the illusion that if I keep listening, and I keep reading it, it will somehow make sense to me. And that gives me sort of control over my life in a way. And I feel like I can sort of manage it, even though it actually brings instability into my life, you know, putting my name on an article about it, and you know, get threats from proud boys or white nationalists, that brings instability and -
Shane Burley 41:49 Totally, I mean, that is actually unstable. But there is a sense that looking at stuff, I think, brings a certain stability. You know, in doing this book, I was interviewing a rabbi from Chabad-Lubavitch which is like a Hasidic. He's kind of particularly like, left leaning. Hot Seat. But, you know, I was talking to him about anti semitism, particularly in Orthodox communities, which often gets discussed as being the more, sort of facing it more frequently because of their visibility, you know, an Orthodox Jew is very visible. And a Herati, or ultra-orthodox view is even more visible than that, you know, black hats, suits, people kind of know what they're looking at. And he was telling me about, you know, "I don't really concern myself much with anti semitism." And I was like, "Well why not?" He's like, "Well, it's not very Jewish." And he was like, "I actually fill my life with Jewish things. And this is particularly not Jewish." And so, you know, part of me is sort of like, the opposite to this is to engage, is to deny engage with things that aren't Jewish, is to basically say, "Actually, I am going to be really purposely involved in the antithesis to these." You know?
Casandra 43:58 There's also something very Jewish about deconstructing something like down into its tiniest parts.
Shane Burley 44:07 No, yeah, they had all the quotes from from the rabbi about this, which I thought was great... We forget, I think, what we're doing here all the time, being involved in organizing, being involved in work of any kind is meant to create a joyous life. It's meant to actually do something, perform something in your life. And I think we get so obsessed with functionality, and we don't actually live those lives. And the answer to that is actually living those lives. It's building strong relationships with other people. It's engauging art and spiritual life, the things that give your life meaning. I think engaging in that as openly and sort of like flagrantly as possible is is what you do there. And it's interesting because what the far right does is it sort of shows you the vulnerable empathetic parts of yourself, right? Because it it appears in those cracks, it appears in the things that they target. So those in a way are how you come to learn about what's meaningful about yourself, you know. Jewishness is targeted. That's exactly what I find meaningful. Those are the things that I bond with other people about. That's how I find a path forward in my life. And so I think all those sorts of things, engaging as much as possible with that. And I think it's perhaps on us to think less about what we can produce and give to people, as much as we can be with them. I mean, this happens all the time in organizing spaces. I used to be the worst offender about this, you know? "No, that's bad organizing. No, that's just cultural production. No, that's navel gazing." No, I think we should engage in cultural production and navel gazing, like, we should make us happy. I think that there needs to be a lot more of that. And any kind of organizing work that people are engaged in, or when any kind of work needs to be in the service of that, and that's how it should be measured. And not like reproducing the same metrics or bosses do about how productive we should be and what that's about.
Casandra 46:03 We shouldn't just reproduce capitalism in our anarchist spaces?
Shane Burley 46:07 I mean, this happens all the time, right? It happens all the time. We are ritually unkind with each other, unloving, unwelcoming. It's the absolute worst. And I think it's interesting because we used to talk about, statistically for example, abuse, domestic abuse, and sexual assault are commiserate in activist spaces as they are in the rest of the world. There's no actual difference. So like, all the people that are doing these workshops on consent, and addressing abuse and stuff, tend to reproduce those dynamics as much as anywhere else. I would say that unkindness and a lack of community is even worse in active spaces; they are not particularly joyous places to be. I find them very hard in a lot of ways to be in those anymore. And I think that's sort of what we have to do, we have to look really carefully about how we build those relationships in authentic ways. That's how I think you survived doing hard, kind of trying work, putting yourself in vulnerability. Vulnerable spaces only works if you can live in a comfortable, vulnerable way. So I think when I say I'm not really there yet, I feel like I that's the direction I would like to go. That's how I would stay sort of healthy in a way, if that makes sense.
Brooke 47:27 Yeah, so part of our community response to conspiracy theories and conspiracy theory thinking, and fascism and anti semitism, is kindness and compassion for others. And when they show up with their vulnerabilities, accepting those?
Shane Burley 47:44 Absolutely. I mean, there's this old IWW poster, it says something like, "If you're not talking to your co workers, somebody else is," and it has a picture of the Klan.
Brooke 47:57 Hardcore.
Shane Burley 47:58 You know, like, if you're in rural America, we aren't talking to folks, but someone is talking to them. And they are validating their experiences. And they're saying, "Yeah, that's really fucking hard." They're not going to someone who's losing their farm and a foreclosure and saying, like, "Just to be real, have you checked your privilege, and like, you're not the most marginalized person in this situation." That's a hard thing to throw at people, people are actually having a really tough time most of the time. And we have to find a way to connect with them, and also not put up with their bullshit and actually talk to them about conditions of settler colonialism, white supremacy, but we need to actually invest in people. They will not care about us unless we care about them. And conspiracy theories very much are people's attempt to make sense of their lives. And so participating with them and making that sense, I think, is useful. You know, I'm Anti Fascist first, which means I'm defense first, defense always comes first. We protect communities before we do anything else. I don't think that's the same though is addressing cconspiracy theories all over the place, and figuring out how we address them with compassion with people. We care about how we address them institutionally. How we stop them when they need to be stopped, like how do we create barriers and borders, all those things are important. But I think in our communities, in general, a lot of conspiracy theories emerge out of dispossession. And we have to choose whether or not to possess those people basically, do we want to create that? Margaret says this too. I mean, the best way to confront conspiracy theories is to give someone a life that matters. I mean, that's what we're actually doing here. So I think focusing on that underlying fertile soil, figuring out how to change that dynamic, give people real tools, give them real relationships and friendship. I think that's really important.
Casandra 49:42 Do you have any favorite tools or resources? So my preface to this is that I've had people ask me this question and the reality is that my favorite resources on anti semitism and conspiracy theories are really dense, and most people will not read them. So I'm wondering if you have any favorite tools or resources that are more digestible?
Shane Burley 50:03 Yeah, I think there's a few good pamphlets right now that exist that are useful on this. Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, which has been around for decades, it's this progressive left-leaning Jewish group, has a pamphlet on anti semitism that's particularly good. April Rosenbloom has a pamphlet called The Past Didn't Go Anywhere. That's also really good on this. There's a pamphlet put out by, I think it was a group called Unity and Struggle, called How to Overthrow the Illuminati. It's specifically about conspiracy theories and black communities. That's a really good resource. And there's a few others. Again, I think what, you know, one thing you're pointing out is that one of the issues around anti semitism is that the Right has sort of captured the rhetoric on it because they use it to defend Israel. They use accusations of anti semitism to defend Israel. And they over shoot the claims that the Left is anti semitic. So a lot of these groups just simply don't share a worldview with us enough that their analysis I find particularly compelling. But there are some versions of the Left that have done it, and they tend to be particularly academic. So Critical Theory, and Frankfurt School of Marxism, you know, there's a lot of that stuff, right. And that's good, but gobbly gook most of the time. There's a basically lost, forgotten world of Jewish feminism from the 70s and 80s that is actually quite interesting. But it's like next to impossible to find. So the anti fascist stuff, because anti fascists are kind of ahead of the curve on the anti semitism question. But I think those pamphlets are particularly good to hand someone, and hopefully Ben and my book will be will be like that. I'm hoping it will be.
Casandra 51:45 Yeah. Yeah. Maybe this is just part of anti semitism, and also conspiracy theorism, because critical thinking is difficult and can't always be, you know, handed to someone in a tiny package. But it just feels someone has to actually be invested in learning about it. It's difficult to explain.
Shane Burley 52:13 David Renton, who's he's this great author and an attorney in Britain - and he writes a lot about the history of anti fascism - he wrote this book on the Labour Party's anti semitism, controversy. So people who don't know: the Labour Party in Britain has been embroiled in this big anti semitism controversy for the past several years. It has been cynically employed by the Tories as a way of attacking the party. And it's pretty obvious that that's what's happening. But it's also obvious that there has been some instances of anti semitism in the party. It's not nearly what the Right says of this, but it does happen. And, you know, David's sort of relitigated this and kind of pointed out that it's, you know, the party is turned towards populism and everyone's turned towards populism. A few years ago, populism became kind of the thing that had a weak point, and basically kind of didn't call out conspiracy theories, so they started making their way in, or kind of crude anti semitic ideas. And it's like the answer to that is actually if you look at the what works for the Labour Party, it's actually class war is the answer to that, actually talking to people about class ends up being the antidote to that and having political education. Daniel Randall, another friend of mine, from Britain, had talked about, wrote about this. And I get political education is something that feels really dorky, and not fun to do, and not what people want to do in a lot of spaces, but it was an essential piece of radical movements that aren't there anymore. So actually talking to people about these things, and getting involved people to read some things. I think, you know, people do this in really overblown ways. Lord knows there's a million Marxist groups that make you sit in reading groups all day, and no one wants to be a part of that. But like having some progress on stuff and explaining what kind of anti capitalism we actually mean, I think is a useful thing. And it's one of the better ways intervene on that.
Casandra 54:01 That book, Daniel's book, what is it? Confronting Anti Semitism on the Left? He's the one who wrote that, right?
Shane Burley 54:10 Yeah, yeah.
Casandra 54:11 That sounds right? That book was incredible.
Shane Burley 54:14 Yeah. He's really incredible. Yeah, I think I think, you know, one thing is when it comes to anti semitism, specifically, most people don't know Jews and don't know much about Judaism. So I think just letting people know. I mean, the amount of times I've heard things repeated that are just bombastically untrue - like, for example, I was a Student for Justice in Palestine, and we had this event and someone asked the speaker where Zionism came from, and he said, "It's in the Talmud." Just like bonkers stuff, you know?
Casandra 54:52 Which is a think that, like, a Zionist might say. Ironically.
Shane Burley 54:58 I interviewed Sean Magee when doing my book, and he made a point that a lot of the worst corners of anti Zionism tend to agree with the settlers. And so I think it's just getting people that kind of understanding. I think if people understand conspiracy theories and why they're toxic and what the consequences of them are, I think that's more useful. And then again, getting people in verifiable forms of community that actually meet their needs, I think that actually is more useful. I think when people get involved, for example, in the labor union, that tends to actually decline because they're like, "Okay, I could actually do this thing, I improve my wages this way, I actually have all this tactile control over my life." And then when people are in community with others they have these vulnerable, caring relationships, and they don't... have the same impulse to build the kind of alienating, almost cosmic-level, theories about the world. You know, believing in Q Anon is a really lonely thing, breaks up families or breaks up relationships. So I think all that kind of stuff is really alienating for people.
Shane Burley 56:02 But you know, there's this thing called the wave, and SEIU - SEIU is a big labor union - and they have this model of what they call a union conversation, they call it the wave. It's eight steps of how to have a conversation. It's very dorky. But in the conversation, you do a few things, right? You introduce yourself. You listen to what people are saying, you agitate on their issues, you call questions, you know, you do a number of stages to get someone thinking about their issue, why it upsets them and what they can do about it. But you do two things: One, you always plan that when you talk to them, how can we win on this issue? How can we fix it? Is it possible? And then you inoculate them against what the boss will say. What will the boss say when you try and do that? What do they say to you? How is that bullshit? And we don't 'plan the win' with people. And we certainly don't inoculate them. People need to see how they can win. They have to know how it's possible. If someone's having issues in their lives, they have to see how it can win. And if we don't have a sense of that, we're not gonna be able to help with that. And we need to work that out with folks.
Shane Burley 57:08 And also talk to them about, like, people are gonna give you other messages about this. Like, what do you think about that? What would you say back to that? Because I think particularly conspiracy thinking, a lot of people get trapped in not understanding the systems and saying, "Well, fuck, I guess that's the deal. I guess the Rothschilds do own it, I don't know." And so I think planning the win and inoculation are really important in that. And that's true in general. There's this assumption that if such a situation gets so bad, that the working class will rise up and overthrow it, but there's no evidence to suggest that. None. What does statistically show people, or what simply pushes people to taking that kind of action, is seeing that they can win. So small victories in their life or in organizing leads to big victories. You have to show people they can win. The pathway to winning using multiracial, you know, community organizing of whatever it is that base building that's, I think, the most important piece because that will then totally push away the sort of false answers.
Casandra 58:08 That seems important in terms of motivating people to care as well. You know, like, no, strategically, this is very important in all of our best interests.
Shane Burley 58:18 I had this conversation with a member of the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, which is an anti-fascist group from the 80s, and I was talking to them - I'll just withhold their name for the sake of this conversation - but I was asking him like, how do you commute? Because, you know, John Brown was essentially a white organization, it recruited white leftist folks in support of a kind of anti-white supremacy platform in support of black nationalism and some other things. In a lot of ways kind of divisive, a kind of divisive organization, their politics are a little divisive. And asked, like, "Well, how do you communicate to white working class people why eradicating white supremacy is in their interest?" And she said, she kind of paused and said, "I don't know that it is in their interest." She's like, "I don't communicate with him on that. I communicate with them about what kind of world do you want to live with?" And I told her, I was like, I just disagree with that entirely. I think it is in their interest, and you have to tell them why it's in their interest. And you have to plan out why it's in their interest. I do believe it's in my interest. And when it comes to conspiracy, there's anti semitism, it's super clear why it's in their interest because anti semitism will stop you from winning. It's just so point blank, right? Like George Soros is not the reason you can't pay your mortgage, it's simply not that...
Casandra 59:34 Anti semitism, however.
Brooke 59:36 Is also not the reason, just to be clear. Not the reason.
Shane Burley 59:40 Yeah, that's really great. So Shane, you've mentioned your books, you've got one that just came out right? No Pasaran.
Shane Burley 59:40 There are people doing this and they have names and addresses, but... what you're saying is a false pathway. It's totally to direct you the wrong way. And we should talk to people about what happens when they don't just double down on privilege. They don't just double down on those sorts of things. What happens when they reach across communities and build large committees? They become infinitely more powerful. I mean, it's just so overwhelming the kind of change that you can have and not just in the long term, in the immediate term. You can see that with a labor movement. You see that with any social movemnet, that's one serious gain that happened by doing that. It never happened by doubling down on their privilege. So I think talking to people about their interests is essential. And that also shows that you actually give a shit about them because of their interests are your interests, that shows that there's an actual shared bond there, and you can build something.
Shane Burley 1:00:38 It was a phrase used particularly during the Spanish Civil War, about blocking fascist access to space and movement into communities. So it's about blocking them, their ability to, to arrive.
Brooke 1:00:51 Nice. Okay, so No Pasaran, that just came out. I've got a friend who picked it up at Powell's when you were there doing a book event or reading recently. He said it's really good, and is gonna loan me his copy. So I'm excited to get to read that too. I know you're working on another one - we've talked about it here - on anti semitism. Does that one have a name yet? Do you know when it's coming out?
Shane Burley 1:01:11 Yeah, it's called Safety Through Solidarity.
Casandra 1:01:15 Nice.
Brooke 1:01:15 Beautiful.
Shane Burley 1:01:16 Yeah. And I think it'll come out like this time next year. I think that's what it is. So we're sort ofstarting to wrap it up now, like in the writing of it.
Brooke 1:01:27 So in the meantime, people can pick up No Pasaran, and then look forward to that. Anything else that you want to plug today, Shane?
Shane Burley 1:01:36 Actually, yes, I will be doing more book events in January and February in New York, Philly, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Spokane, and Corvallis.
Casandra 1:01:49 Those all made sense until you got to Spokane and Corvallis
Shane Burley 1:01:54 So I am I am there for it. I will hang out.
Casandra 1:02:00 I love it. Thanks for being here and answering all of our questions.
Shane Burley 1:02:06 Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Brooke 1:02:08 Yeah, really appreciate it. I've been looking forward to this conversation, you know, ever since we started trying to schedule it. I was really excited to talk to you.
Casandra 1:02:16 Oh, we're supposed to ask about where people can find you.
Shane Burley 1:02:21 Yes, you can find me on Twitter, the doomed Twitter, at Shane_Burley1. Instagram at Shane Burley. I am on Mastodon, everyone's excited about Mastodon, at Shane_Burley, I think. I'm still figuring out my Mastodon life. So yeah, you can find me those places. I'm usually on -
Casandra 1:02:43 How about Patreon?
Shane Burley 1:02:45 I am on Patreon. Yeah, Patreon slash Shane Burley, all one word. You can check me out there. I actually do a lot on Patreon. So Iyou can check me out there. I post constantly, I inundate people with things. I also have a newsletter called The Messiah Review, which is sort of like a Jewish review of books, I write about various Jewish things, interview authors, talk about lit and stuff like that. I'm starting a series on Jewish horror books. It'll be on there.
Brooke 1:03:16 Awesome. Cool. Well, I didn't know about all those other ways to connect with you. So I'm gonna go check those ones out.
Brooke 1:03:26 And to our listeners, we want to say thanks so much for listening. If you enjoy our podcast, you can please give it a like or drop a comment or review, or subscribe to us if you haven't already. These things make the algorithms that rule our world offer our show to more people. This podcast is produced by the anarchist publishing collective Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. You can connect with us on Twitter at Tangled Wild and also on Instagram. If you check out our website, tangledwilderness.org, you'll discover that we have a new book available for pre order, it's called Escape from Incel Island, written by the one and only Margaret Killjoy. And if you preorder it now you're going to receive a color poster with your copy when they ship in February.
Brooke 1:04:07 Much like Shane's work, our work here at Strangers is made possible in part by our Patreon supporters. Actually, honestly, we couldn't do any of this work without our Patreon support. So if you want to join and be a supporter, you can check out patreon.com slash strangers in a tangled wilderness. There are some cool benefits at various support tiers. For instance, if you support the collective at $10 a month one of your benefits is 40% off of everything on our website, including preordering Margaret's new book. We'd also like to give a specific shout out to some of our most supportive Patreon supporters. These include Hoss the dog, Micaiah, Chris, Sam, Kirk, Eleanor, Jennifer, Staro, Cat J, Chelsea, Dana, David, Nicole, Mikki, Paige, SJ, Shawn, Hunter, Theo, Boise Mutual Aid, Milicia, Paparouna, and Ali. Thanks so much
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Margaret and Ellie talk about building a better culture around guns, the importance of gun ownership for community and self defense, some basic tenets of firearm safety, ideas around conflict deterrence, some problems with our current gun culture, consent and guns, mental health and guns, and unsurprisingly how community might be a big piece of the answer to maintaining better gun culture.
The Guest is Ellie Picard and she is a hand gun instructor with Arm Trans Women. The group can be found at https://linktr.ee/atw.firearms.inst or on Instgram @ATW.firearms.inst or @Codename_Ellie.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Hopefully will come out Friday, December, 16th.
Margaret 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. And this week we are going to be talking about what it takes to build a better gun culture, a gun culture that keeps people safe instead of not safe. And, with me to talk about that I'm going to have on an instructor named Ellie Picard. And, I think that you all get a lot out of hearing what she has to say. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show in the network.
Margaret 01:36 Okay, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then kind of your background with the stuff that we're going to be talking about today?
Ellie 01:46 Yeah, for sure. My name is Ellie Picard, and I use she/her pronouns. Currently living in Charlottesville, Virginia, I'm originally from the District of Columbia. And, I've been interested in firearms for most of my life, I've only been actively shooting and training with guns for the last three or four years. I became a certified handgun instructor a few months ago, and I work with another trans instructor. Here in Virginia, we have a company called Arm Trans Women. And we offer classes, not just for trans folks, but for literally anyone who signs up. But, we particularly enjoy and emphasize the importance of teaching queer folks, people of color, other marginalized people, because we're the ones who really need to know how to defend ourselves in our communities and our families, because no one else is going to. And I'm also a doctoral candidate, a researcher in political science, and my research focuses on radical queer militancy. And so studying and paying attention to radical gun culture, or queer gun culture has been a big part of my research life as well as my personal life. So, I'm not just actively, personally involved in these things. It's something that I dedicate a lot of intellectual, you know, resources to thinking through and dealing with as well.
Margaret 02:07 Yeah, I get really excited when I have on a guest and I didn't even realize they're even more qualified than I originally thought.
Ellie 03:09 I'm not qualified, but whatever.
Margaret 03:18 I didn't know about the the academic work. Well, the main thing that I want to talk to you about, yeah, is this idea of building a better gun culture. But ,before we get into that, do you want to talk a little bit about the the trainings that you do? Like, what does it mean? Are you teaching to a certification? Are you helping people get, you know, concealed carry permits? Or is it more of like a self defense class? Or what kind of work are you doing there?
Ellie 03:44 So, most of what we do is we teach heavily modified versions of the NRA basic pistol course and the NRA concealed carry course, because that's what most states require people to take in order to get a concealed carry permit. Here in Virginia, folks need to take the basic pistol course. And then they can go and qualify for a license to carry. So, we do that we also are certified to qualify people for Maryland carry permits. And so, that's mostly what we do is basic pistol classes and CCW classes, we also do some one-on-one instruction that can range from sort of basic to more advanced defensive shooting. And, if anyone listening has sort of taken one of these basic NRA courses, they are full of a lot of stuff that that is oriented toward the NRA's ideology and projects. So, obviously we have sort of cut out a lot of that stuff. We emphasize why self defense and why gun ownership is potentially so important for marginalized people, and why we are sort of why it's harder for us to engage with both firearms culture and the sort of infrastructure around learning how to to use and acquire guns, and all of the other ways that sort of traditional and well established firearms training, leave a lot of people out or sort of perpetuate a lot of the issues that exist in society, a lot of this sort of ingrained racism, and sexism, and other sort of things that are that are baked into our...a lot of our sort of firearms, infrastructure and commerce in this country.
Margaret 05:27 Yeah. What are some of the things that you end up kind of taking away from the NRA's version? Like, what are some of the things that are in the NRA's training that are a little bit more ideologically focused?
Ellie 05:37 A lot of their basic slide deck that they give instructors is...it's just, it's sort of steeped in this Second Amendment worship and basic sort of, you know, reverence for America and for our rights and freedoms of gun ownership, and for the political aspect of gun ownership, as the NRA understands it, which essentially, you know, protecting the rights of people, predominantly white men, because that's the majority of their membership, to own guns. And, we take a lot of that inflected language out...well, we also take a lot of their you know, they're also just the NRA materials aren't very good at teaching what they're supposed to teach, in some ways. They are very clunky. They haven't been edited in a long time, they've a lot of extraneous material in there, the way that they phrase and talk about the rules of handgun safety is very different from the ways that we often talk about it in other gun communities online, so we sort of adjust that to make it more accessible and more consistent with the what we're used to seeing and thinking about when it comes to gun safety. And we've also actually changed, taken out a lot of the actual, like, practical and technical stuff that's in the NRA instruction materials, like the stances for handgun shooting that they teach, which are pretty outdated, and in our opinion, not as effective or preferable as, as as other stances and styles. So, we teach our own sort of version of what we call a natural fighting stance, rather than the NRA's approved, like isosceles stance. So, things like that ranging from, from practical aspects to that sort of political inflection. And, we do, I mean, we certainly replace some of that with our own ideological inflections in our teaching, and emphasize the fact that not just American society, but also gun control laws and gun control efforts are often harmful to marginalized populations, and to folks like us and the people who we're trying to train and arm. And, you know, the ways that this country has chosen to restrict access to guns, as well as the way that it promotes access to guns and sort of promote the proliferation of guns. These are all things that end up being harmful to minorities and marginalized people. And we sort of try to emphasize that and highlight that. I also make a point of doing things that I don't...that are not in the NRA trainings, like talking about mental health and the importance of, you know, what do we do with all of these guns that we're encouraging you to buy and carry, if we're suicidal, and if we have people in our homes who can't be sort of trusted or shouldn't be allowed to, or able to access guns, stuff like that, that that's often, you know, stigmatized or just ignored in other areas of gun discourse are things that we try to focus on and normalize and bring into the conversation as well.
Margaret 08:42 Okay. Well, I guess to start out, then, why carry? Why is it worth...you know, as you pointed out, we have this like, massive proliferation of guns in our our society, right? What is it...And the answer is sort of self evident in some ways, but I'd love to hear...I'd love to talk about it. Why push for more people being armed? And why push for specifically, trans women to be armed or other marginalized folks?
Ellie 09:09 So first, I mean, if we just look at the distribution of guns in this country, we have more firearms than humans in the United States currently, but they are overwhelmingly concentrated in certain among certain demographics. White men, conservative white men still make up a majority of gun owners. That's starting to change, but it's but not, not quickly. We've seen surges in the last few years of both people of color, women, queer folks, and liberals, and leftists buying guns at increasing rates, but that doesn't mean that you know, white conservative men have stopped buying guns, and we're not going to sort of catch up to them. And so I guess like that's the first part of my answer is we a lot of the firepower in this country is concentrated, in what in my perspective is sort of dangerous hands, and in order to counteract that it makes sense to arm the folks who are generally disadvantaged by conservative, white male society. And the other thing is that, you know, we see that marginalized communities, queer communities, trans people, black people in this country are overwhelming are the targets of violence more often than white folks, statistically, proportionally, and yet less likely to be able to defend themselves with firearms, less likely to carry and be trained on how to use them. So, there's that sort of aspect of it, where just sort of one can, I guess, think of that as trying to level the playing field. But, more I think, it's not just about leveling the playing field, from my perspective, I also kind of have a deterrence mindset here on a larger scale than the personal. By which, I mean that, you know, it's not just about, you know, broadcasting the fact that I as an individual transfem, I'm able to defend myself and own a gun, but trying to I guess, or I guess, I sort of would like to see the day where, where folks assume that if they see a transfem walking down the street, there's a fairly good chance that she is armed, and she would, you know, she'll use her gun to defend herself. If you fuck with her, the more that that kind of idea becomes ingraine, you know, the less...the more chance there is of sort of pre emptive deterrence of violence against marginalized people. That's, I guess, the hope anyway. So yeah, I would like...
Margaret 11:45 ...Like becoming spiky.
Ellie 11:46 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I would like people to be afraid of me. I honestly would. I'm not a very scary person, but I do things to make myself more intimidating in the street, and I do things to make myself less desirable or appealing to normies and cis folks, and you know, arming queers and arming other marginalized people is part of that, sort of broadcasting or contributing to this broader understanding that oh, yeah, you, you can't actually just fuck with those people. They're not soft targets, and you're likely to get hurt if you try.
Margaret 12:19 Yeah. Well, okay. So I mean, the main reason that I carry or when I carry is, yeah, out of like, well, I mean, self defense, and I carry when I'm more concerned about my personal safety. But, you know, I like this idea of like, being spikier, be known to be spiky, right? Like, if you fuck with people, then it might go really badly.
Ellie 12:44 Yeah.
Margaret 12:46 But, the thing that you're talking about earlier about, okay, kind of the leveling the playing field argument, it is a, it's a different argument than the primary liberal argument in which, which has some validity from a higher level, but it's like, counteracting by arming, or counteracting a right wing threat, by arming ourselves rather than trying to disarm the population. And it seems like, if you were a dictator, and wanted everyone to be safe, like when guns are not in the equation, people are generally safer. I believe that statistics sort of bear this out as, as at least as far as I've seen. And so in some ways, arguing that, well, they're armed, so I should be too is, is escalatory, right? It is more likely to put ourselves in a position of conflict. And yet it still, to me feels like the appropriate approach to our current context. It feels like, I mean, one, we can't disarm them.
Ellie 13:51 Right.
Margaret 13:52 The 'We' is not in power. And even if it was in power, then you're just creating the systems by which people can make that kind of decision for other people. And that always goes very badly. Well, actually, not even 'one,' that's just my main point, right, is that like...
Ellie 14:07 I mean, I think, you know, it's sort of a matter of basic physics, we can't make all the guns in this country disappear. We can't unarm the folks that I see is as primarily dangerous to us. That's not possible. So, and you're right, in doing so we're sort of hand more power to people who we also also are likely to do us harm. But so I think, ya know, yeah, well, you could potentially see it as escalatory. But, absent that escalation, you're not eliminating the potential for conflict. You're eliminating the potential for us to win the conflict.
Margaret 14:43 Right.
Ellie 14:44 I guess like, that's, you know, the other part of that that I didn't really mentioned before, is you know, there's a significant self defense aspect to why I carry it as as an individual, but there's more of a community defense or collective defense aspect to it, honestly. I...if I'm just out by myself running errands and stuff, I'm nine times out of 10 not going to have a pistol on me, honestly. I have other things, I'm a knife slut, and I've got all sorts of other weapons. But, I don't always carry a gun. When I do almost certainly carry a gun is when I know I'm going to be around other queer people, with other queer people in public and I know that I won't be prohibited from it. Because that's, you know, we're more, we're often you know, I'm not gonna say we're more often targeted in groups than individually, that's not true, but that's where I really want that deterrent message to be clear as that, you know, is that queers collectively, are likely to be armed, not just me as an individual person. So, it's being able to and prepared to defend our community, not just to defend my person, and to defend political existence, not just sort of physical existence, that I see as particularly important.
Margaret 16:05 Yeah. Okay, so if...this is this is my logical thinking coming into this, and part of why I wanted to have you on is, if we are choosing to overall arm ourselves, right, and overall, try and create a, a spiky culture or position, a culture in which like, if large scale conflict or even small scale scale conflict happens, we're capable of winning. If we choose to do that, it seems like there's a lot of traps that we could fall into, that...because some of the problems of gun culture are not just the problems of right wing gun culture, because I do believe that there is a sort of center gun culture, or an apolitical gun culture in this country as well. It's not as large maybe, but there are a lot of dangers involved in in gun culture, right. And this is something that I think about a lot as someone who, you know, promotes the idea that certain people should choose to be armed if their mental health and their community situation, you know, makes that make sense. How do we create a culture that doesn't fall into some of these traps? Or minimizes the risks that...because there, it seems like a risk management rather than risk elimination, right...
Ellie 16:09 Mhmm.
Margaret 16:23 ...when you're introducing firearms into a situation, there's no way to, to make that completely safe. But, it seems like there's ways that we can stay safer while doing that. And I'm wondering, you kind of hinted at some of those things earlier. And I'm wondering if you want to talk about those things?
Ellie 17:37 Yeah, for sure, and there are a few different sort of, I guess, like scales, we can think about that at. But, one thing that I see that I think is very encouraging to me is is that thus far, if we look at discourse within leftist gun culture, and you know, I can get into this, you know, it's it is worth sort of figuring out or specifying like, what the 'we' is that we're talking here. But, leftist gun culture is extremely queer, it turns out already. We don't have to make that happen. It's just the way it has happened so far. And that sort of queer leftist gun culture idea's....discourse about safety is really prominent, and I'm not sure exactly why that came to be the case. I think partially it came to be the case in response to or a sort of a, you know, a conscious way of differentiating this culture and these discourses from a lot of the ways that we see guns talked about in right wing gun culture, and maybe even in this sort of the more centrist gun discourse, but very basic stuff, like you know, the the four universal rules of firearm safety are things that if you're in a leftist gun forum online, or somewhere, you're gonna see this stuff constantly, like it's over emphasized, it's constantly there.
Margaret 19:07 You can...go ahead and emphasize them.
Ellie 19:09 Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, assume that every gun you encounter is loaded, and/or some people prefer to phrase that as, make sure you know the condition of any gun you encounter. And never point a gun at anything or anybody that you're not willing to destroy. Always know your target, and what's beyond it. And, when you are shooting or holding a gun, keep your finger off the trigger unless you're on target and ready to shoot something. So, this is sort of four basic rules that we encounter every day that we're sort of interacting with radical gun core, gun discourse, or leftist or queer gun discourse. And what I see a lot of also is, you know, in these online spaces or real world spaces, just a lot of critique, whether it's like sort of humerous and making fun of people or more seriously criticizing folks for dangerous practices for, you know, unsafe gun handling, for unsafe attitudes, for bringing guns into places where they're just don't reasonably seem to make sense. These types of things.
Margaret 20:18 Like where?
Ellie 20:19 Well, so I've, I've noticed a lot, or a fair amount of, of discourse and sort of debate about gun ownership among unhoused people and in, you know, in encampments and places like that, where most folks who are living on the street or living in tents or something aren't going to be able to have a safe in their tent or with them as they're moving around the world. They're not gonna have a lockbox or something heavy like that. So is it responsible to have a gun in a situation like that? Even you know, we know that situations like that put people at more risk for violent crime and for being victimized, but is having a gun something that's actually feasible and safe in that context? That's the type of question that I that I see discussed a lot in the spaces that doesn't, I don't think come up to the same extent in in other areas of gun culture, sort of the more right leaning gun discourses out there. So yeah, discussions about whether or not it's actually always a good idea or always safe or reasonable to have guns in certain contexts. Conversations about the logic and the suitability or appropriateness of open carrying and various public contexts, these are things that I think, receive a lot more attention and debate in our area of the gun world than in others. Not that everybody's always on the same page, or always agrees, but that there's discourse and debate about these things, I think is telling. And it seems like, no, I mean, I've seen queer online celebrities in the sort of online gun world get, you know, criticized or canceled for doing dumb shit with guns on Instagram or whatever, just being unsafe and not sort of upholding what this community has decided its values around gun safety are. That's that I mean, it is becoming more common in centrist and right wing gun discourse to talk about certain things like mental illness. We see more and more programs, like Hold My Guns at, you know, mainstream, right wing gun shops and stuff where people are able to store their guns for free if they're in a dangerous situation. So that's, it's not entirely absent. But, I think it's something that we embrace and sort of emphasize more. It's not just this thing, that's never...that's available, but not mentioned, or that sort of, you know, stigmatized, it's understood that this is part of part of our lives, you know, as queer people tend to be very open about mental health, open about issues of safety and comfort, stuff that we talk about all the time in various contexts. And so adding that, you know, adding this sort of gun safety dimension to that is not difficult or uncomfortable for us as it is for some other folks.
Margaret 23:11 To talk about some of the specific practices, I'm glad if gun stores are starting to do that. Because one of the one of the complicating factors in any kind of...I probably said this on the show before, but in general, I believe a thing that communities should consider adopting, and I've been part of communities that adopt this is that if you get broken up with, it doesn't matter whether or not you personally think your mental health is doing just fine. Right? But at that point, your risk model has changed to self harm is more...is a higher threat than external harm in most situations. So like, I've been in parts of communities where it's like, it's not a question. So you're no longer analyzing, "Oh, how am I feeling today? Should I give up my guns today," but instead of just like no, if you get dumped, or you go through a bad breakup, or you know, a bunch of other different types of things, like, you know, one of your friends will come, and since the transfer of firearms is very complicated, legally, usually take the bolt out of any kind of rifle or take the, the barrel out of any kind of handgun, and just hold on to them until, you know, a little bit of time has passed and you can start having conversations. And I've been really proud to be part of communities that do that. And I don't know I....that's one that I like, I'm wondering, I'm curious if there's examples of things that you've been around or things that you've seen have worked that are very, like concrete?
Ellie 24:36 Yeah, I mean, that's a that's such a good example. I mean, I you know, I'm a firearms instructor and make a big deal about the importance of being armed. But, you know, I went through a thing a couple of months ago, and I gave a friend of mine the keys to my gun safe for several weeks. So, I think that it's great to have norms and to have that as sort of like an accepted thing that we do. Other sort of concrete stuff, I think, like, as I was kind of hinting at earlier, one concrete practice that I see in leftist and queer gun communities is the willingness to just shame people with a pretty low bar for shaming for any sort of perceived unsafe practices. And beyond that, you know, we...I've been part of conversations about, you know, whether it's appropriate or acceptable to, you know, have a have an occasion where we're drinking and shooting guns, because drinking is fun and shooting guns is fun, so we can do these things together. And that's something that that has been sort of an idea that's been shut down pretty quickly. Obviously, this is not a universally agreed upon concept that you shouldn't shoot while you're drunk. But, it's something that that I see a lot of people talk about and agree with.
Margaret 25:53 I think you shouldn't shoot while drunk. I'm just gonna go on the record here.
Ellie 25:57 I'm gonna endorese that as well. In my professional capacity, I highly endorse that position. Also, you know, I see folks who do, you know, instructional content online, stuff like that, really emphasizing pretty mundane safety concerns around stuff like dry fire practice, you know, we make a big deal out of rules, like if you're going to do dry fire practice, which everyone should be doing every day, by the way, you have all live ammunition in a completely different room of your house. You just have no proximity between ammunition and firearms when you're not trying to have loaded guns for a particular reason. So, there's that sort of thing. And it's, I guess, like, what I mean by that is, if we, if we look at all of this sort of online gun content that's created by leftists and queer leftists, I rarely see the importance of dry fire practice mentioned without also in the same breath, mentioning, make sure there's no live ammo here. So things like that there's sort of constant emphasizing of safety at every different sort of stage or aspect of gun ownership is definitely a thing.
Margaret 27:10 Okay, well, beyond gun safety, right? Gun Safety is like kind of one element of it. But, I think that some of the negative feedback I've heard, and honestly, some that I share about the gun culture that we're building, or things that we could be doing better, one of them for me is that I...I see, and I'm curious, your thought about this, like, a balance between people starting to go kind of macho, and then people kind of trying to rein that in. And I don't necessarily mean macho, and I like masculine way, it's a very complicated word. But, you know, this idea of like, Hmm...I think that sometimes people get excited around the concepts of conflict, and they get excited by having the means to deadly force on their person. And personally, and I, you know, say this, as someone who's, you know, roughly 40, or whatever, it's easier for me to say, in some ways, I think that that is a terrible, a grave mistake. I think that carrying is this very serious and weighty thing that changes the way that you interact with space, it changes the way you interact with people, both strangers, and your friends. And, it should be felt as a burden in the same way that any, like heavy responsibility should be felt as a burden. If I am carrying I have accepted the responsibility of staying sober. I've accepted the responsibility of defending other people. I've also accepted the responsibility of like not being able to talk shit, which is like really frustrating. This is kind of a tangent, but like, one of the...one of the most annoying things for me about carrying is that you just gotta let shit go.
Ellie 28:56 Yeah.
Margaret 28:57 And, and sometimes that's not how you want to be. But I worry about an excitement around guns, turning into an excitement around conflict, rather than being a prepared for conflict. And I'm curious, your thoughts on that. This is me sticking a question mark at the end of my own statement.
Ellie 29:17 Yeah, I mean, I think that the way you've just sort of talked about the the weightiness of carrying and carrying a gun as a responsibility, I really see those same ideas very prominent in the discourse. Basically, like I would say that most people I talked to explicitly about, you know, gun...about carrying guns and about self and community defense have said similar things to me. And I've also I've heard from a number of, of, of radical gun owners, you know, not just that sentiment that you've expressed, but also this, and I don't know how, you know, valid and true it is, but this idea that well, the other folks, you know, focus on the right conservative gun owners, they don't have this mindset of responsibility and of avoiding conflict. In fact, you'll often you'll often sort of see or perceive this, this eagerness for conflict. You can go into right wing forums and hear people talking about how excited they are to, to have an opportunity to be a good guy with a gun, to use that gun. That's an idea that a lot of folks on the left have expressed to me and these conversations like, and I, I have never sort of tried to do a quantitative study of whether or not that that's the case. But, I certainly see, even if there's not this eagerness for armed conflict among the people we envision as our opponents or as, or as our threats, there is this ingrained and very vocal idea in queer and leftist gun culture that eagerness for conflict is wrong, that, you know, we're not carrying because we want to find an opportunity to use these things. We're carrying with the steadfast hope that we never will, and that, and the sort of commitment to minimizing occasions for having to use these tools of force. And I think, you know, I see a lot of folks, you know, talking about all of the other things that one has to know how to do if one's going to carry a gun. And this is something that I talk about when I'm teaching as well, you know, if you're going to carry a gun, you had better also be carrying something less lethal, you would also better be confident in your skills to at least try to de-escalate a situation, and to try to escape a situation. You know, the way the way that I sort of think about it, and that I I see a lot of other people talk about it is, you know, the first best option, if you're in a threatening situation is to leave it. And if, or only when you cannot escape that situation, you should be prepared to fight. And if you're going to be prepared to fight, you need to be prepared to win. And that's particularly important when other people are involved when talking about a sort of community defense situation, rather than than an individual personal defense situation. It's not about courting violence, but it's about you know, understanding that when you are at that last recourse, that you have that recourse and you're prepared to use it. But I do see that this idea emphasized pretty frequently and pretty prominently in the discourse that you know, that we have this responsibility to know how to avoid, to know how to minimize or de-escalate conflict, and that we cannot ever sort of go around looking for it.
Margaret 32:48 Yeah.
Ellie 32:49 Whether or not that really ends up being the case in practice is a little bit harder to say, I mean, you know, we're seeing a lot more leftists and queers bringing arms to public demos and protests and stuff like that. That's not a bad thing. Because a lot of the time that people who are threatening these public events and demos or whatever, are doing so with arms. And I think, as I said earlier, like armed deterrence is crucial for our community. So, I'm not opposed to people making a show of arms in public. But we have to make sure and, you know, I can't sort of say without a lot more data, that when we're doing that, we're not doing it provocatively. And there's sort of, you know, I, I have seen, I've seen in some contexts, some discourse around defending...for instance, there, in certain parts of the country, there have been a lot of attacks or threats against drag queen story hours, or other sort of queer events in various places and armed defensive operations to protect those events. When we're doing that, are the people who are showing up to defend or who are talking online about those defensive actions, are they talking shit? Are they, you know, flaunting this ability to use armed force? Are they sort of going out and and thumping their chestat the adversary or the imagined adversary? If they are, that's highly problematic, and I'm not gonna say it doesn't happen. I think sometimes it does. I do think that, that our discourses tend to stress the responsibility and the necessity of avoiding that, but I don't know that it actually happens less frequently than with other, you know, with folks on the right. I hoped that it does, but...
Margaret 34:48 Yeah, I mean, I think that's why I was wanted to frame it at the beginning. It's like talking about minimizing the problems that are going to be involved when you introduce guns, because I think it's on some level impossible to introduce firearms into a situation and not have people feel....Some people feel some level of excitement around that, right? And, and I don't think that's inherently wrong, I think it's just something that we need to be like really cognizant of. And I do wonder, you know, this idea that the right wing, you know, is chomping at the bit...champing at the bit, whatever, you know, in order to cause violence or whatever, I suspect that it's at a higher rate. But I also suspect, the sort of center right, or the more like, just excited about guns and just excited about comu....well, they probably wouldn't phrase it community defense, but just excited about like, the concept of being a, you know, protective person or self defense or whatever. You know, when I personally interact in a gun space with someone who probably isn't ideologically aligned with me, they take that weight very seriously. But, as compared to...I don't, I probably don't interact with the far right, you know, on purpose ever and so it's hard to know, but I think that another thing that I worry about, especially in a situation, it's basically it's like, everything is a lot more serious when there's a fucking gun on the table.
Ellie 36:16 For sure.
Margaret 36:17 You know, I worry about anything that we do to dehumanize our enemies, while still recognizing that they're...I mean, they're enemies, there's increasing section of the US population that would like to see me dead, that believes I am a like crime against the Bible or something for existing, you know. And I seek to be prepared for those people coming to power, those people individually trying to harm me or my community. But I worry about...a lot of rhetoric that I think the left used before everything was armed, probably can't really keep going now that everyone is armed around this kind of like, oh, well, fuck all of these people who are outside my own ideological framework or whatever. I think we have to be like way more specific about who...I'm trying to be really careful about my words here, because I can kind of see both sides of the same of the thing that I'm saying here. But I think we have to be really careful about who we declare an enemy. You know?
Ellie 37:21 I think that's fair. Yeah. I mean, that that makes a lot of sensee. Absolutely. I and it is definitely, there are definitely tendencies on the left to adopt a kind of, you know, if you're, if you're not with us, you're against us mindset towards society at large and toward, you know, the political realm, especially. You know, we often as leftists, and as as queer people, you know, talk shit about liberals and talk shit about centrists. I mean, this idea that literally everybody out there wants to hurt us, and is part of the problem. Yeah, it does. That can certainly translate into sort of a not just a factionalization, or a hardening of social identities, but to a dehumanization, I think. I think it's absolutely right to call out that risk. One thing that that sort of made me think of, though, it's kind of a separate, it's a distinct issue, but I think it's relevant in some ways is whether or not we dehumanize the people who are on quote, unquote, "our side" as well. And I think one really important difference between between radical gun culture, and both centrist and sort of state friendly gun culture and far right gun culture is whether or not armed people are distinguished from everybody else. And I think, you know, one of the most common catchphrases in leftist politics and street organizing and direct action, all sorts of stuff is you know, "We keep us safe." And that's a phrase that actually really encapsulates an important concept that it's not about...carrying a gun for most of us, I think is not about being that good guy with a gun, like yes, you're equipping yourself to be able to use armed defense, but you are not separating yourself from the people you're defending. Whereas I think, on the right and and traditional or or sort of mainstream hegemonic gun culture, there is this distinction, it's, you know, one takes on the role of the protector of the family, of women folk, of whatever, of people who aren't able to are capable of protecting themselves and sort of separates themselves from the rest of the group from society, whereas I think that, or I see that on the left there's any sort of distinction between, you know, armed protectors and everybody else is frowned upon, is often countered sharply, rhetorically, and the ideal instead is that we all of us collectively participate in our own defense and in our mutual defense. And if we do so with arms, that doesn't sort of make us different, it doesn't put us in a different caste than everyone else who isn't armed. It's just sort of, that's our capacity that we're able to take on. It's what we choose. And we all have different roles to play in defending the collective. Some people do that through arms, but they're not sort of, you know, the assigned defenders. And this comes up a lot in street action contexts where, you know, you have people, you know, throughout 2020, we saw folks doing protest defense and stuff like that. And there was often a lot of debate or argument about, you know, the, the concept of people providing security or people sort of taking on the role of being part of a security team. And that's been heavily criticized in a lot of quarters. It's like the idea of, of sort of separating yourself out like that, it just makes you a makes you a leftist cop. It doesn't make you...it takes you out of the collective. So, that's a, that's an aspect that I think is extremely valuable in our gun culture.
Margaret 41:21 And both things are related to the same thing about how guns escalate problems of power and authority, right? And so we have to be more on top of our shit, in terms of avoiding any sort of authoritarianism, avoiding any sort of, yeah, leftist cops or whatever. No, that's such...I remember, the first time I heard about this sheepdog concept I was doing...I was sitting by the side of the road at a forest defense camp like 20 years ago in the land far, far away. And a cop drives by and I, you know, radio it in, and he's like, "Hey, you're on channel four, aren't you?" And I'm like, "Yeah, whatever." And I was like, "Hey, I got a question for you." And he's like, "What?" I was like, "Why did you decide to become a cop? It's like, the most hated job in the world. Like, why would you do that?" Which I do not advocate this as a way to interact with police. But it was what I chose to do. And, and he was like, "Well, that's not the way I see it." And I was like, "Well, how do you see it?" And he's like, "There's three kinds of people in this world. There's, there's wolves, and there's sheep." And I was like, "Okay, that's, that's two kinds of people." And he was like, "And then there's me, I'm a sheepdog." And I thought about it for a minute. And I was like, "Are you calling me a wolf?" And then he like kind of couldn't justify that because I was literally just some fucking hippie punk by the side of the road and trying to stop some logging. And so he like rolled up his window and drove away. And, and it was the first time I heard of this concept that's very common in police circles. And, I don't know if it's common in right wing militia circles, but it's common in a lot of like right wing gun culture, at least center right gun culture, this idea that the world is sheep and wolves, and you are the Sheepdog, the other dangerous creature, you know, the good guy with the gun. And it's always rubbed me the wrong way. And you articulated it better than that. I just want to tell the story about yelling at a cop, which no one should do.
Ellie 43:12 Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Yeah, that's sort of, you know, I see a lot more calling out of that kind of mindset than I see a repetition of that kind of mindset in leftist gun culture.
Margaret 43:25 Yeah. No, this is actually very exciting, because I am not deeply involved in...well I live alone on a mountain. And so hearing you talk about the way that these things are developing and stuff feels very optimistic to me, not in a like blind optimism, like just like, literally, like, it seems like these are the conversations that are happening and that need to keep happening. I'm wondering if there are other, you know, weaknesses that we need to shore up or like things that you think that we should be doing better? Or things that you're really proud of that we do? I mean, I guess you've talked about some of the things that we should be proud of, that we take these things into consideration, but...
Ellie 44:07 Yeah, and maybe I'll start with another one of those sort of, 'Yay for us angles,' which is the you know, gun ownership and, and the capacity or skill for armed defense in queer and leftist gun culture is...has been strongly or been pretty decisively detached from any version of masculinity that exists in our world. And what we see a lot of is sort of celebrations of or acknowledgement of this link between both queerness broadly and queer femininity and guns. There's been a lot of sort of, I see a lot of reclaiming of, of sexuality, of links between sexuality or sexual expression and gun ownership, but done in ways that are extremely positive and empowering and self determined rather than sort of ex....rather than based on an external male gaze, but based on the sort of like, "No, I am a sexy queer femme, and I'm gonna pose naked with my rifle, because I fucking feel like it." There's a lot of that, you know, very conscious and overt queering, and regendering and resexualizing of guns and of competence, you know, of gun skill that goes on in this discourse in these communities, which I think is really cool and really healthy. Things that that we're...that we're not great at, or that we need to be careful of. I think that you know, that sort of sheepdog concept that we were just talking about, it's what...that's an ever present threat, and it's something that's going to wax and wane based on context. When we had, you know, in 2020, when we had shit going on in the street all the time, and so many more people getting armed and so many people, both participating in street protests and direct actions, and people engaged in defense of those actions, the more of that we saw, the more slippage there was in this sort of, you know, dedication to a pure and unadulterated, you know, collectivity and non differentiation of protectors and protected. So, that's always going to be a significant pitfall when things get hotter, and when things get more active, and, and arms are needed more prominently and more frequently. It's something that's always...it's a battle that always has to be fought both sort of in one's own psyche and in the community. That one's not going to go away. I also sort of...I wonder about the, I mean, I think I've sort of talked about regendering and I think that that's happening in a way that that makes a lot of sense. And that is very positive as I've said, but there are also pockets of leftist gun world where armed defense is mostly being done by white cis men, or even, God forbid straight men. And there does seem to be this sort of, not necessarily a conscious or deliberate division of labor. But, you know, in this society, boys grew up playing with guns, and men are still more likely to own guns and be comfortable around guns than women are. And I think it may be the case, it may, it may be the case, in fact, that the reverse is true among trans people for that obvious reason of socialization. But either way, those gender divisions still do exist. And it has to be a conscious and deliberate process of undoing them, otherwise, they're going to just stay there. So assuming that you know, that queers are going to automatically queer gun culture is overly simplistic. We won't. We have to really want to, and we have to be always trying to complicate, and queerl and question gun ownership and everything about owning and using guns, and not just assume that we're going to do it better than they do, because we're better people, because we're more evolved people, because we're, you know, leftists and we don't want to hurt people. So there is that, for sure. I think also, you know, I mean, I guess the sort of biggest pitfalls are the ones we've already talked about that one, and then also the problem of whether or not people are going to be seeking out or, or might be more likely to get into conflict. Other than that, I mean, one thing that is always going to be an issue with guns is access, and particularly access in terms of affordability, monetary access, like, it's still the case that, that guns cost a lot of money, and certain of us are going to be more able to buy them than others and certain of us are gonna going to be, you know, more likely to prioritize that in our budgets than other people. And I think that working a lot more, to bring access to guns and to defensive skills in line with our leftist sensibilities and values is really important. It's not enough to just, you know, want everybody on the left to get armed. What are we doing to make sure that people who can't afford a gun still get one and know how to and are trained and using it, people who can't afford to take classes are able to do that. We have to be taking really deliberate and conscious steps and building a sort of infrastructure in order for that to happen.
Margaret 49:55 Yeah.
Ellie 49:55 And we still don't see anything, you know, like large scale efforts to manufacture and distribute guns among queers and leftists, which is totally feasible, it's something that can be done, but we're not doing it. And it's still, you know, it's still cost a lot of money to do something like take my basic pistol class, and we can sort of put aside free seats or have sliding scales for stuff like that. But if we're not actively doing that, then we're not making things more accessible for everybody, we're still sort of following the same lines of access and division and distinction that already exist. So that, you know, yeah, so that's a big one to me.
Margaret 50:32 Well it's interesting, because one of the things you brought up earlier about how, in some ways within a queer gun culture, trans femmes probably have, like, it's possible that we are the more armed, contingent or whatever. And, you know, and I think that, you know, the point you brought up about, like, growing up playing with guns and things like that, and just like, the socialization we receive, based on, you know, the sex we've been assigned to birth or whatever, seems to play a big part in it. And it also, I think it does position us in this, in this way to be good at bringing these skills into femme spaces. And maybe that's like a little bit too, I don't know, it's the kind of conversation it's like, sometimes hard to have, because I think people have a lot of, for very good reason, very intense feelings about, you know, what it means to be trans feminine, what socialization looks like, all of these different things. But I have found that not universally, whatever, I'll just my...Twitter brain is on. So I keep thinking about everything I'm saying, and how could possibly be considered wrong. But I have had experiences where I often learn better from women, and other women I know often learn better from women. And so I've been able to use that in positive ways, as a woman teaching other women, or as someone who isn't a cis man teaching other people who aren't cis men. And I think that is something that, you know, we can really break down and a lot of my friends who are, you know, cis men or, you know, straight cis men or whatever, you know, are wondering how to put their skills that they've carefully cultivated to use and training and stuff like that. And I think that that is very useful and very important. But I personally would say, and you might have, you've probably done more thinking about this, teaching trainers, you know, teaching other people who can then go out and be trainers, rather than necessarily being the end...the person who teaches all of the students is a good way to then actually distribute power and break down a lot of siloing of information. I don't know.
Ellie 52:48 Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's, that's a really good point. And just generally speaking, anytime we can take whatever privilege we find and distribute it, and thus undo it, it's always a positive thing. But I think you're right. I mean, I definitely, throughout my life always avoided whenever possible male teachers and male instructors or male authority figures at all in preference for female ones. And that still remains the case. And I think that that is, that's pretty common, for sure. So it's, it is important, we need to be conscious of that. And I think, you know, making sure that men with particular skills don't just sort of automatically appoint themselves as the the teachers of these skills is a great point. Yeah.
Margaret 53:37 So I've one final question. And it's like many of my questions today, not incredibly well formed. But we talked earlier about self harm, and how communities need to, you know, stay aware of everyone's kind of risk model and things like that as relates to self harm. But, there's also intimate partner violence. And one of the things, one of the push backs I've gotten from, you know, a queer anarchist friend of mine, who I had a conversation with this about recently, is sort of part of the mourning of the army of the left is even while accepting on some level, the necessity of it based on what's happening in the world and what's, you know, the increased likelihood and increased presence of the need not just for self defense, but community defense. Is that...Well, basically that it statistically, historically makes a lot of people less safe, in terms of intimate partner partner violence, and specifically like...I should have looked up the studies before I started recording, but I've, you know, I've read some articles about some studies that talk about how a cis woman who lives with a man with a gun is just less safe on a like statistical level. And it opens up a lot of questions. And one of the questions for me, is how does a community decide, you know, decide who has guns at any given moment? You know, how does...How do we minimize the danger of not just self harm, but of like, you know, people getting mad about some bullshit?
Ellie 55:30 Yeah. That is such a tough question. I think that...
Margaret 55:36 Yeah, I saved the easy one for the end.
Ellie 55:40 I mean, and I guess, you know, I'll admit, first of all that, you know, this is not an area that I particularly specialize in is sort of thinking about domestic partner violence and intimate violence, but it's something that matters a great deal, obviously. I think that clearly having guns in the house, as you say, is, is going to make people less safe who were in abusive relationships or violent relationships. But I do think, you know, again, it's not gonna be blind optimism at all, but we do think a lot more in queer communities and in leftist communities about all of the ways that people need to be able to access safety and able to escape dangerous situations, and, and also the ways that, you know, danger and and sort of harm and in the domestic environment hide from public view and from the community. We think about these things more than other...that doesn't immunize us to these dangers, obviously. And I don't know how to really ensure that we're...I don't know how to minimize this threat effectively, other than to probably I think, normalize and really spread the idea that what's going on in each other's relationships, and homes, and families, actually is the business of the community. And I think that that's, you know, that opposes a lot of thinking that, you know, exists in mainstream society, and especially in like, sort of nuclear family based society, where in the house and the household is sovereign and sacred. I think that leftists in particular, and queers in particular, because we have different understandings of what society is supposed to be. And we, particularly queers, have different understandings of what family is supposed to be and can be, there's a better...we have an opportunity to sort of establish norms of maybe one way to think about is domestic transparency, you know, it's not just my business how I treat my spouse, or my partner, or my kids, it is, in fact the business of my comrades in my community, the business of, you know, my buddy on the community defense team, my, you know, my friends and sort of comrades at the mutual aid project or whatever. It's all of our business whether or not I'm in an abusive situation, whether or not I am an abuser, whether or not you know, somebody in my life is dangerous to me, or is at risk. I guess making these things our business and normalizing some level of that transparency in that in the household and sort of making more porous, those boundaries of domesticity and of intimate relationships may be part of the solution here, or part of the way that we mitigate that danger more effectively than society has done thus far.
Margaret 59:03 No, that, that makes a lot of sense, it does feel like almost every time there's a problem, the answer is community. You know, and it keeps coming. It's a recurring theme on the show, and not even necessarily on purpose, you know, just as you think through various types of problems. I do think that there's something that I wish...well, I'm opinionated about, which doesn't make me right, but I've seen some discourse around and I've not been totally pleased by what I've seen, personally, which is that like, around consent and guns, around the idea that like, like...if I'm going to have someone over to my house, I want them to know the situation of the guns in the house and I want them to have a say in that, you know? There's like a would...is it okay if someone brings a gun on a date discourse, right, that I've I've seen a bit of, and like, you know, there's sort of a, "It's nobody's business if I'm carrying," and I don't believe that. I believe that it would be a perfectly reasonable position to be like, I'm going on a date with someone and I don't know them very well.I don't want them to have a gun on them. I think that that is a, a reasonable thing that someone could want or a thing that might be worth clearing with people, you know, if that is like, a thing you do regularly, for a lot of reasons. And, you know, a lot of people need guns to be unavailable in certain ways for a lot of different reasons.
Ellie 1:00:41 Yeah.
Margaret 1:00:41 I don't know. That's really more of a...I keep doing this statement instead of question thing in this conversation.
Ellie 1:00:46 No, I'm super glad that you brought that up. I think that's really important. And I've sort of...since I started carrying, I have myself, made that a practice, essentially, I don't carry a gun on a first date. And thus far, it's been my practice to make it a second date conversation. "Hey, I sometimes carry a pistol."
Ellie 1:01:10 "Does that make you uncomfortable?" And if it does, like, that's okay. I don't always...I don't have to carry it when we're together. And so far, the people I've done that with have told me "No, I'm feeling much more comfortable knowing that you're caring. I like that. And I think that's good." So I think that is a conversation that really, it's definitely no harder or no more awkward to have than all of the other things we have to be talking about on first and second dates, like, you know, or, our STI status and all of that sort of stuff. And, and yeah, being conscious of that. And, you know, for instance, are you going to see a friend who who has kids living with them? Are you going on a date with somebody who has a family? Like...Are there people involved in the situation who do not have the opportunity to consent to me being armed? And if so, I...It's probably best that I'm not until I can, you know, change that dynamic. I think that that's a great way to think about it is connecting it to that consent conversation. Absolutely.
Margaret 1:01:10 Yeah.
Margaret 1:02:11 Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe that's a good note to end on. Unless you have additional things that you really feel like we should have covered or....
Ellie 1:02:21 No, I think I thought of something really brilliant a little while ago, and then it went away. So I think I'm happy there. Thank you.
Margaret 1:02:29 Yeah, well, okay, if people are interested in knowing more about you, or your classes, or any of the stuff that you do, is that something that you want people to know about?
Ellie 1:02:39 Yeah, for sure. We, my co instructor and I, have a an active Instagram presence that people can check out that's a somewhat clunky username but if you're on Instagram, it's "ATW" as in arm trans women, "dot firearms dot INST" (ATW.Firearms.Inst). And It's not a good handle, but it's the one we have my own handle on Instagram is "Codename_Ellie" and people can very easily connect to my all of my gun work through that personal account as well. In addition to some other cool stuff that I do, so yeah.
Margaret 1:03:15 Cool. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on.
Ellie 1:03:19 Thank you, Margaret.
Margaret 1:03:19 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed today's episode, please tell people about it. Tell people about it in person, and you've heard me if you've ever listened this podcast, you've heard me make this Schpeel many times before, but tell the internet, tell your friends. Word of mouth is the main way that people know about this podcast. And so really appreciate any word of mouth that you feel like doing. You can also support this podcast more directly by supporting it financially, by supporting our publisher, which is Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness, which is a super cool collective of anarchist publishing that does podcasts, and zines, and books, and stuff, including our latest book, which is called "Try Anarchism for Life" by Cindy Milstein that is really worth checking out and that's at "Tangledwilderness.org" But if you want to support the podcast, you end up supporting the people who, at the moment I don't take any money from hosting this, I'm not opposed to it, but you know, we don't make enough just yet because more importantly, the transcriptionist and the audioeditor and the producer, some of which overlap, other people who work on this podcast get paid for their work and I think that that's like a really fucking important thing. Because it's a lot of work. And so if you want to support us go to "patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness". And in particular, I would like to thank paparouna, Milica, Boise mutual aid, Theo, Hunter, Shawn, S.J., Paige, Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Cat J, Staro, Jenipher, Eleanor, Kirk, Sam, Chris, Miciaiah, and Hoss the Dog, your contributions make this possible. And yeah, everyone else well, and including the people I just mentioned, I hope you're doing well. And yeah, I don't know and I hope everything is good and happy and good in the world, even when it's not.
Ellie 1:03:19 Thank you, Margaret.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Margaret and Smokey talk about ways to go about mental first aid, how to alter responses to trauma for you self and as a community, different paths to resiliency, and why friendship and community are truly the best medicine.
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Hopefully will come out Friday, December, 2nd and will probably be This Month In the Apocalypse.
LLWD:Smokey on Mental First Aid
Margaret 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast are what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret killjoy. And, this week or month...or let's just go with 'episode'. This episode is going to be all about mental health and mental health first aid and ways to take care of your mental health and ways to help your community and your friends take care of their mental health, and I think you'll like it. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network.
Margaret 01:52 Okay, with me today is Smokey. Smokey, could you introduce yourself with your your name, your pronouns, and I guess a little bit about your background about mental health stuff?
Smokey 02:04 Sure, I'm Smokey. I live and work in New York City. My pronouns are 'he' and 'him.' For 23 years, I've been working with people managing serious mental illness in an intentional community, I have a degree in psychology, I have taught psychology at the University level, I have been doing social work for a long time, but I've been an anarchist longer.
Margaret 02:43 So so the reason I want to have you on is I want to talk about mental health first aid, or I don't know if that's the way it normally gets expressed, but that's the way I see it in my head. Like how are...I guess it's a big question, but I'm interested in exploring ways that we can, as bad things happen that we experience, like some of the best practices we can do in order to not have that cause lasting mental harm to us. Which is a big question. But maybe that's my first question anyway.
Smokey 03:12 I mean, the, the truth is bad things will happen to us. It's part of living in the world, and if you are a person that is heavily engaged in the world, meaning, you know, you're involved in politics, or activism, or even just curious about the world, you will probably be exposed on a more regular basis to things that are bad, that can traumatize us. But even if you're not involved in any of those things, you're going to go through life and have really difficult things happen to you. Now, the good news is, that's always been the case for people. We've always done this. And the good news is, we actually know a lot about what goes into resilience. So, how do you bounce back quickly and hopefully thrive after these experiences? I think that is an area that's only now being really examined in depth. But, we have lots of stories and some research to show that actually when bad things happen to us, there is an approach that actually can help catalyst really impressive strength and move...change our life in a really positive direction. We also know that for most people, they have enough reserve of resiliency that....and they can draw upon other resiliency that they're not chronically affected by it, however, and I would argue how our society is kind of structured, we're seeing more and more people that are suffering from very serious chronic effects of, what you said, bad things happening, or what is often traumatic things but it's not just traumatic things that cause chronic problems for us. But, that is the most kind of common understanding so, so while most people with most events will not have a chronic problem, and you can actually really use those problems, those I'm sorry, those events, let's call them traumatic events, those traumatic events they'll really actually improve your thriving, improve your life and your relationship to others in the world. The fact is, currently, it's an ever growing number of people that are having chronic problems. And that's because of the system.
Margaret 06:19 Yeah, there's this like, there was an essay a while ago about it, I don't remember it very well, but it's called "We Are Also Very Anxious," and it it was claiming that anxiety is one of the general affects of society today, because of kind of what you're talking about, about systems that set us up to be anxious all the time and handle things in...
Smokey 06:42 I think what most people don't understand is, it is consciously, in the sense that it's not that necessarily it's the desire to have the end goal of people being anxious, and people being traumatized, but it is conscious in that we know this will be the collateral outcome of how we set up the systems. That I think is fairly unique and and really kind of pernicious.
Margaret 07:17 What are some of the systems that are setting us up to be anxious or traumatized?
Smokey 07:23 Well, I'm gonna reverse it a little bit, Margaret. I'm going to talk about what are the things we need to bounce back or have what has been called 'resilience,' and then you and I can explore how our different systems actually make us being able to access that much more difficult.
Margaret 07:47 Okay. Oh, that makes sense.
Smokey 07:49 The hallmark of resiliency, ironically, is that it's not individual.
Margaret 07:57 Okay.
Smokey 07:57 In fact, if you look at the research, there are very few, there's going to be a couple, there's gonna be three of them, but very few qualities of an individual psychology or makeup that is a high predictor of resiliency.
Margaret 08:20 Okay.
Smokey 08:21 And these three are kind of, kind of vague in the sense they're not, they're not terribly dramatic, in a sense. One is, people that tend to score higher on appreciation of humor, tends to be a moderate predictor of resiliency.
Margaret 08:46 I like that one.
Smokey 08:47 You don't have to be funny yourself. But you can appreciate humor. Seems to be a....and this is tends to be a cross cultural thing. It's pretty low. There are plenty of people that that score very low on that, that also have resiliency. That's the other thing, I'll say that these three personality traits are actually low predictors of resiliency.
Margaret 09:13 Compared to the immunity ones that you're gonna talk about?
Smokey 09:16 So one is appreciation of humor seems to be one. So, these are intrinsic things that, you know, maybe we got from our family, but but we hold them in ourselves, right? The second one is usually kind of put down as 'education.' And there tends to be a reverse bell curve. If you've had very, very low education, you tend to be more resilient. If you've had extreme professionalization, you know, being a doctor, being a lawyer, well, not even being a lawyer, because that's the only...but many, many years of schooling, PhD things like that, it's not what you study. There's something about...
Smokey 10:10 Yeah, or that you didn't. They're almost equal predictors of who gets traumatized. And then the the last one is kind of a 'sense of self' in that it's not an ego strength as we kind of understand it, but it is an understanding of yourself. The people that take the surveys, that they score fairly high....So I give you a survey and say, "What do you think about Smokey on these different attributes?" You give me a survey and say, "Smokey, how would you rate yourself on these different attributes?"
Margaret 10:11 It's that you studied.
Margaret 10:32 Okay.
Smokey 10:59 So, it's suggesting that I have some self-reflexivity about what my strengths and weaknesses are. I can only know that because they're married by these also.
Margaret 11:11 Okay. So it's, it's not about you rating yourself high that makes you resilient, it's you rating yourself accurately tohow other people see you.
Smokey 11:18 And again, I want to stress that these are fairly low predictors. Now, you'll read a million books, kind of pop like, or the, these other ones. But when you actually look at the research, it's not, you know, it's not that great. So those..however, the ones that are big are things like 'robustness of the social network.' So how many relations and then even more, if you go into depth, 'what are those relationships' and quantity does actually create a certain level of quality, interestingly, especially around things called 'micro-social interactions,' which are these interactions that we don't even think of as relationships, maybe with storepersons, how many of these we have, and then certain in depth, having that combined with a ring of kind of meaningful relationships. And meaningful meaning not necessarily who is most important to me, but how I share and, and share my emotions and my thoughts and things like that. So, there's a lot on that. That is probably the strongest predictor of resilience. Another big predictor of resilience is access to diversity in our social networks. So, having diverse individuals tend to give us more resiliency, and having 'time,' processing time, also gives us more...are high predictors of resiliency, the largest is a 'sense of belonging.'
Margaret 13:14 Okay.
Smokey 13:15 So that trauma...events that affect our sense of belonging, and this is why children who have very limited opportunities to feel a sense of belonging, which are almost always completely limited, especially for very young children to the family, if that is cut off due to the trauma, or it's already dysfunctional and has nothing to do with the trauma, that sense of belonging, that lack of sense of belonging makes it very difficult to maintain resilience. So. So those are the things that, in a nutshell, we're going to be talking about later about 'How do we improve these?' and 'How do we maximize?' And 'How do we leverage these for Mental Health First Aid?' We can see how things like the internet, social media, capitalism, you know, kind of nation state building, especially as we understand it today, all these kinds of things errode a lot of those things that we would want to see in building resilient people.
Margaret 14:28 Right.
Smokey 14:28 And, you know, making it more difficult to access those things that we would need.
Margaret 14:34 No, that's...this...Okay, yeah, that makes it obvious that the answer to my question of "What are the systems that deny us resiliency?" are just all of this. Yeah, because we're like....most people don't have...there's that really depressing statistic or the series of statistics about the number of friends that adults have in our society, and how it keeps going down every couple of decades. Like, adults just have fewer and fewer friends. And that...
Smokey 15:00 The number, the number is the same for children, though too.
Margaret 15:05 Is also going down, is what you're saying?
Smokey 15:07 Yes. They have more than adults. But compared to earlier times, they have less. So, the trend is not as steep as a trendline. But, but it is still going down. And more importantly, there was a big change with children at one point, and I'm not sure when it historically happened. But, the number of people they interacted with, was much more diverse around age.
Margaret 15:39 Oh, interesting.
Smokey 15:40 So they had access to more diversity.
Margaret 15:43 Yeah, yeah. When you talk about access to diversity, I assume that's diversity in like a lot of different axis, right? I assume that's diversity around like people's like cultural backgrounds, ethnic backgrounds, age. Like, but even like...
Smokey 15:56 Modes of thought.
Margaret 15:58 Yeah, well, that's is my guess, is that if you're around more people, you have more of an understanding that like, reality is complicated, and like different people see things in different ways. And so therefore, you have a maybe a less rigid idea of what should happen. So, then if something happens outside of that, you're more able to cope, or is this...does... like, because I look at each of these things and I can say why I assume they affect resiliency, but obviously, that's not what you're presenting, you're not presenting how they affect resiliency, merely that they seem to?
Smokey 16:34 Yeah, and I don't know, if we know exactly how they affect, and we don't know how they...the effect of them together, you know, social sciences, still pretty primitive. So they, they need to look at single variables, often. But you know, we know with chemistry and biology and ecology, which I think are a little more sophisticated...and physics, which is more sophisticated. The real interesting stuff is in the combinations.
Margaret 17:09 Yeah. Okay.
Smokey 17:10 So what happens when you have, you know, diversity, but also this diverse and robust social network? Is that really an addition? Or is that a multiplication moment? For resiliency.
Margaret 17:23 Right. And then how does that affect like, if that comes at the expense of...well, it probably wouldn't, but if it came at the expense of processing time or something.
Smokey 17:33 Exactly.
Margaret 17:35 Or, like, you know, okay, I could see how it would balance with education in that, like, I think for a lot of people the access to diversity that they encounter first is like going off to college, right, like meeting people from like, different parts of the world, or whatever.
Smokey 17:49 I forgot to mention one other one, but it is, 'meaning.' Meaning is very important. People that score high, or report, meaning deep, kind of core meaning also tend to have higher resiliency. That being said, they...and don't, don't ever confuse resiliency with like, happiness or contentment. It just means that the dysfunction or how far you're knocked off track due to trauma, and we're, we're using trauma in the larger sense of the word, you know, how long it takes you to get back on track, or whether you can even get back on track to where you were prior to the event is what we're talking about. So it's not, this is not a guide to happiness or living a fulfilled life. It's just a guide to avoid the damage.
Margaret 19:01 But if we made one that was a specifically a 'How to have a happy life,' I feel like we could sell it and then have a lot of money.Have you considered that? [lauging]
Smokey 19:11 Well one could argue whether that's even desirable to have a happy life. That's a whole philosophical thing. That's well beyond my paygrade
Margaret 19:22 Yeah, every now and then I have this moment, where I realized I'm in this very melancholy mood, and I'm getting kind of kind of happy about it. And I'm like, "Oh, I'm pretty comfortable with this. This is a nice spot for me." I mean, I also like happiness, too, but you know. Okay, so, this certainly implies that the, the way forward for anyone who's attempting to build resiliency, the sort of holistic solution is building community. Like in terms of as bad stuff happens. Is that...
Smokey 19:58 Community that's...and community not being just groups. Okay, so you can, I think, you know, the Internet has become an expert at creating groups. There lots of groups. But community, or communitas or the sense of belonging is more than just a shared interest and a shared knowledge that there's other like-minded people. You'll hear the internet was great for like minded people to get together. But, the early internet was really about people that were sharing and creating meaning together. And I think that was very powerful. That, you know, that seems harder to access on today's Internet, and certainly the large social media platforms are consciously designed to achieve certain modes of experience, which do not lend themselves to that.
Margaret 21:06 Right, because it's like the...I don't know the word for this.
Smokey 21:10 It's Capitalism. Like, yeah, we're hiding the ball. The ball is Capitalism.
Margaret 21:14 Yeah.
Smokey 21:14 And how they decided to go with an advertising model as opposed to any other model, and that requires attention.
Margaret 21:21 Yeah. Because it seems like when you talk about a robust social network, I mean, you know, theoretically, social network, like social networks, you know, Twitter calls itself a social network, right? And is there anything in the micro social interactions that one has online? Is there value in that? Or do you think that the overall...I mean, okay, because even like looking at...
Smokey 21:46 I think there has to be value, I think, yeah, they did. I was reading just today, actually, about research, it was in England, with...this one hospital decided to send postcards to people who had been hospitalized for suicidal attempts.
Margaret 22:09 Okay.
Smokey 22:10 Most of them ended up in the mental health thing, some of them didn't, because they they left beyond, you know, against medical advice, or whatever. But, anyone that came in presenting with that a month, and then three months later, they sent another postcard just saying, "You know, we're all thinking about you, we're hoping you're all you're doing, alright. We have faith in you," that kind of thing like that, right. Nice postcard, purposely chosen to have a nice scene, sent it out. And they followed up, and they found a significant reduction in further attempts, rehospitalizations of these people, so that's a very, you know, there's no, it's a one way communication, it's not person-to-person, and it had some impact on I would guess one could argue the resiliency of those people from giving into suicidal ideation. Right.
Margaret 23:13 Yeah.
Smokey 23:14 So I think this is to say that, you know, we'd be...unplugging the internet, you know, that kind of Luddite approach doesn't make sense. There is a value to answer your question to the the internet's micro social interactions. It's just we...it's complicated, because you can't just have micro-social interactions unfortunately, but you need them.
Margaret 23:44 Yeah. No, that that's really interesting to me, because yeah, so there's, there is a lot of value that is coming from these things, but then the overall effect is this like, like, for example, even like access to diversity, right? In a lot of ways, theoretically, the Internet gives you access to like everything. But then, instead, it's really designed to create echo chambers in the way that the algorithms and stuff feed people information. And echo chambers of thought is the opposite of diversity, even if the echo chamber of thought is like about diversity.
Smokey 24:16 Yeah, I mean, it's set up again, almost as if it were to kind of naturally organically grow, we would probably have just as chaotic and and people would still just be as angry at the Internet, but it probably would develop more resilience in people. Because it wouldn't be stunted by this need to attract attention. The easiest way to do that is through outrage. Easiest way to do that is quickly and fast, so it takes care of your processing time. And relative anonymity is the coin of these kinds of things, you know, that's why bots and things like that, you know, they're not even humans, right? You know, they're just...so all these kinds of things stunt and deform, what could potentially be useful, not a silver bullet, and certainly not necessary to develop resiliency, strong resiliency. You don't need the internet to do that. And there are certain...using the internet, you know, there's going to be certain serious limitations because of the design, how it's designed.
Margaret 25:42 Okay, well, so hear me out. If the internet really started coming in latter half of the 20th century, that kind of lines up to when cloaks went out of style....
Smokey 25:54 Absolutely, that's our big problem. And they haven't done any research on cloak and resiliency.
Margaret 26:00 I feel that everyone who wears a cloak either has a sense of belonging, or a distinct lack of a sense of belonging. Probably start off with a lack of sense of belonging, but you end up with a sense of belonging So, okay, okay.
Smokey 26:15 So I want to say that there's two things that people confuse and a very important. One, is how to prevent chronic effects from traumatic experiences. And then one is how to take care of, if you already have or you you develop a chronic effect of traumatic experiences. Nothing in the psychology literature, sociology literature, anthropology literature, obviously, keeps you from having traumatic experiences.
Margaret 26:52 Right.
Smokey 26:54 So one is how to prevent it from becoming chronic, and one is how to deal with chronic and they're not the same, they're quite, quite different. So you know, if you already have a chronic traumatic response of some sort, post traumatic stress syndrome, or any of the other related phenomena, you will approach that quite differently than building resilience, which doesn't protect you from having trauma, a traumatic experience. It just allows you to frame it, understand it, maybe if you're lucky, thrive and grow from it. But at worst, get you back on track in not having any chronic problems.
Margaret 27:48 Okay, so it seems like there's three things, there's the holistic, building a stronger base of having a community, being more resilient in general. And then there's the like direct first aid to crisis and trauma, and then there's the long term care for the impacts of trauma. Okay, so if so, we've talked a bit about the holistic part of it, you want to talk about the the crisis, the thing to do in the immediate sense as it's happening or whatever?
Smokey 28:15 For yourself or for somebody else?
Margaret 28:18 Let's start with self.
Smokey 28:20 So, self is go out and connect to your social network as much as you can, which is the opposite of what your mind and body is telling you. And that's why I think so much of the quote unquote, "self-care" movement is so wrong. You kind of retreat from your social network, things are too intense, I'm going to retreat from your social network. The research suggests that's the opposite of what you should be doing, you should connect. Now, if you find yourself in an unenviable situation where you don't have a social network, then you need to connect to professionals, because they, they can kind of fill in for that social Network. Therapists, social workers, peer groups, support groups, things like that they can kind of fill in for that. The problem is you don't have that sense of belonging. Well, with support groups, you might. You see this often in AA groups or other support groups. You don't really get that in therapy or or group therapy so much. But that is the first thing and so connect to your group. Obviously on the other side, if you're trying to help your community, your group, you need to actively engage that person who has been traumatized.
Margaret 29:33 Yeah, okay.
Smokey 29:35 And it's going to be hard. And you need to keep engaging them and engaging them in what? Not distractions: Let's go to a movie, get some ice cream, let's have a good time. And not going into the details of the traumatic experience so much as reconnecting them to the belonging, our friendship, if that. Our political movement, if that. Our religious movement, if that. Whatever that...whatever brought you two together. And that could be you being the community in this person, or could be you as Margaret in this person connecting on that, doubling down on that, and often I see people do things like, "Okay, let's do some self care, or let's, let's do the opposite of whatever the traumatic experience was," if it came from, say oppression, either vicarious or direct through political involvement let's, let's really connect on a non-political kind of way.
Margaret 31:19 Ah I see!
Smokey 31:21 And I'm saying, "No, you should double down on the politics," reminding them of right what you're doing. Not the trauma necessarily not like, "Oh, remember when you got beaten up, or your, your significant other got arrested or got killed by the police," but it's connecting to meaning, and bringing the community together. Showing the resiliency of the community will vicariously and contagiously affect the individual. And again, doesn't have to be political could be anything.
Margaret 32:01 Yeah. Is that? How does that that feels a little bit like the sort of 'get right back on the horse kind of thing.' But then like, in terms of like, socially, rather than, because we 'get back on the horse,' might mean might imply, "Oh, you got beat up at a riot. So go out to the next riot." And that's what you're saying instead is so "Involve you in the fundraising drive for the people who are dealing with this including you," or like...
Smokey 32:28 And allowing an expectation that the individual who's been traumatized, might be having a crisis of meaning. And allowing that conversation, to flow and helping that person reconnect to what they found meaningful to start with. So getting right back on the horse again, it's reminding them why they love horses.
Margaret 33:02 Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Okay, I have another question about the the crisis first aid thing, because there's something that, you know, something that you talked to me about a long time ago, when I was working on a lot of like reframing. I was working on coping with trauma. And so maybe this actually relates instead to long term care for trauma. And I, I thought of this as a crisis first aid kind of thing, is I'll use a like, low key example. When I was building my cabin, I'm slightly afraid of heights, not terribly, but slightly. And so I'm on a ladder in the middle of nowhere with no one around and I'm like climbing up the ladder, and I'm nailing in boards. And I found myself saying, "Oh, well, I only have three more boards. And then I'm done. I can get off the ladder. "And then I was like, "No, what I need to do is say, it's actually fine, I am fine. And I can do this," rather than like counting down until I can get off the ladder. And so this is like a way that I've been working on trying to build resiliency, you can apply this to lots of things like if I'm on an airplane, and I'm afraid of flying or something I can, instead of being like, "Five more hours and then we're there. Four more hours and then we're there," instead of being like, "It's actually totally chill that I'm on an airplane. This is fine." And basically like telling myself that to reframe that. Is this....Am I off base with this? Is this tie into this, there's just a different framework?
Smokey 34:27 That is what the individual should be trying to do is connect the three different things, keeping it simple. One, is to the community which gives them nourishment. On a plane or on your roof, that's not going to happen.
Margaret 34:44 Yeah.
Smokey 34:45 Though, actually, to be honest. If you're nervous and you have...go back to your roof example, which I think is a pretty good one. Let's say that you had more than three boards. Let's say it was gonna take you a couple hours to do that. But it's something you're nervous about, connecting to somebody in your social network, whether you, you have your earphones on, and you're just talking to them before or during...after doesn't help. That does one way. Or the other is connecting to what you were doing, which is connecting to kind of reframing or your own internal resilience. I've done something similar like this before. This is not something that is going to need to throw me, it is what's called pocketing the anxiety.
Margaret 35:45 Okay.
Smokey 35:45 Where you're other-izing it, being like, it's coming from you too, right? being like, "Hey, you could fall. This plane could go down," right? That that's still you, you're generating that. You're not hearing that over to, and you're saying, "Okay, but I'm going to try, you know, give primacy to this other voice in my head. That is saying, "You've got this, it's all right, you've done things like this before."" So that's the second thing. And that's what you were doing. So you could connect to your community, you could connect to kind of a reserve of resiliency. And to do that is allow that one to be pocketed. But be like, "Hey, I want to hear from what this core thing has to say. I want to hear from what the positive person on the front row has to say." You're not arguing with that one. You're just listening. You're changing your, your, what you're attuned to. And then the third one is, if you can, you connect to the meaning. What is the meaning of building the house for you? Where are you going on your flight? And why is it important?
Margaret 37:03 Yeah. Okay,
Smokey 37:05 And that anxiety and the fact that you're doing it, you want to give again, the primacy to the importance, that "Yeah, I'm really nervous, I'm really freaked out about this, but this thing is so important, or so good for me, or so healthy for me to do this. This must mean it's going to be really important. And I'm connecting to why it's important and focusing on that. So those are the three things that the individual can do. The helping person or community is engagement. The second one is the same, reconnecting to the meaning. Why did you love horses in the first place? Okay, don't have to get back on the horse. But let's not forget horses are awesome.
Margaret 37:58 Yeah.
Smokey 37:58 And Horseback riding is awesome.
Margaret 38:01 Yeah.
Smokey 38:01 And you were really good at it before you got thrown. But you know, you don't have to do it now, but let's, let's just let's just share our love of horses for a moment and see how that makes you feel. And then the third one is that kind of drawing upon, instead of drawing upon the individual resilience, which you were doing, like, "Hey, I got this," or the plane, you know, you were, you're hearing from other people, you're drawing upon their individual resilience. "Smokey, tell me about the time you did this thing that was hard." And I tell ya, you're like, "Well, Smokey can fucking do that I can do it. You don't even think...it doesn't even work necessarily consciously.
Margaret 38:50 Right.
Smokey 38:51 So you could see that what you're doing individually, the helper or the community is doing complementary.
Margaret 38:59 Yeah.
Smokey 39:00 And now you can see why a lot of self care narrative, a lot of taking a break a lot of burnout narrative, all these things, at best aren't going to help you and at worst, in my opinion, are kind of counterproductive.
Margaret 39:17 Well, and that's the, to go to the, you know, working on my roof thing I think about...because I've had some success with this. I've had some success where I....there's certain fears that I have, like, suppressed or something like I've stopped being as afraid of...the fear is no longer a deciding factor in my decision making, because of this kind of reframing this kind of like, yeah, pocketing like...And it's probably always useful to have the like, I don't want to reframe so completely that I just walk around on a roof all the time, without paying attention to what I'm doing, right?Because people do that and then they fall and the reason that there's a reason that roofing is one of the most dangerous jobs in America. So a, I don't know I yeah, I, I appreciate that, that you can do that. And then if it's a thing you're going to keep doing anyway, it becomes easier if you start handling it like, carefully, you know?
Smokey 40:17 Well, you don't want to give it too much. So why do we? Why is it natural for us to take anxiety or fear and focus on it? It's somewhat evolutionary, right? It's a threat, right? It's supposed to draw your attention, right? It's supposed to draw your attention. And if you're not careful, it will draw your attention away from other things that are quieter that like that resiliency in the front row you need to call on, because they're not as flashy, right? So I don't think you have to worry about threat....You're right. You don't want to get to the point where you and that's why I say 'pocket it,' as opposed to 'deny it, suppress it, argue with it. demolish it.' I think it's good to have that little, "Beep, beep, beep there's a threat," and then being like, "Okay, but I want to continue to do this. Let's hear from resiliency in the front row. What? What do you have to tell me too?" You have to not...what happens is we go into the weeds of the threat. Oh, so what? "Oh, I fall off and I compound fracture, and I'm way out here in the woods, and no one's going to get me. My phone isn't charged." That's not what the original beep was. Original beep like, "You're high up on a ladder, seems unstable. This seems sketchy," right? Okay. Got that. And then resilience is, "Yeah, you've done lots of sketchy stuff. You've written in the back of a pickup truck. That's sketchy, so seatbelt there, nothing, you know, let me remind you that that you can overcome." And, but by going into the anxiety, going into the fear, you're forcing yourself to justify the thing. And then it becomes more and more elaborate, and it gets crazier and crazier very quickly. You know, all of sudden, you're bleeding out and you're cutting your leg off with a pen knife. It's like, "Wow, how did all this happen?"
Margaret 42:38 Yeah, well, and that's actually something that comes up a lot in terms of people interacting with the show and about like preparedness in general. Because in my mind, the point of paying attention to how to deal with forest fire while I live in the woods, is not to then spend all of my time fantasizing and worrying about forest fire. But instead, to compare it to this ladder, if I get this "Beep, beep, the ladder is unstable." I climb down, I stabilize the ladder as best as I can. And then I climb back up and I do the thing. And then when I think about like, with fire, I'm like, "Okay, I have done the work to minimize the risk of fire. And so now I can stop thinking about it." Like, I can listen to the little beep, beep noise and do the thing. And now I can ignore the beep beep because just like literally, when you're backing up a truck and it goes beep, beep, you're like, yeah, no, I know, I'm backing up. Thanks. You know, like,
Smokey 43:35 Yeah, it's good to know, it's good to know, you're not going forward.
Margaret 43:39 Yeah, no. No, okay. That's interesting. And then the other thing that's really interesting about this, the thing that you're presenting, is it means that in some ways, work that we present as very individual in our society, even in radical society, is actually community based on this idea, like so conquering phobias is something that we help one another do, it seems like,
Smokey 44:02 Absolutely. I mean, the best stuff on all this stuff is that people reverse engineering it to make people do dangerous, bad things. The military.
Margaret 44:18 Yeah, they're probably pretty good at getting people to conquer phobias. Yep.
Smokey 44:21 They have a great sense of belonging. They have a great sense of pulling in internal resilient, group resilient, connecting to meaning even when it's absolutely meaningless what you're doing. It's all the dark side of what we're talking about, but it's quite effective and it literally wins wars.
Margaret 44:47 Yeah, that makes sense. Because you have this whole...
Smokey 44:50 Literally it changes history. And so, the good news is, we can kind of reclaim that for what I think it was originally purposed to do, which is to protect us from the traumas that we had to go through in our evolutionary existence. So we couldn't afford to have a whole bunch of us chronically disabled. Meaning unable to function, you know, they've just taken it and, and bent it a little bit, and learned very deeply about it, how to how to use it for the things that really cause, you know, physical death and injury. And, and, you know, obviously, they're not perfect, you have a lot of trauma, but not, not as much as you would expect for what they do. And every year they get better and better.
Margaret 45:51 Hooray.
Smokey 45:53 We have to get on top of our game.
Margaret 45:56 Yeah.
Smokey 45:57 And get people not to do what they do. I'm not suggesting reading...well maybe reading military, but not...you can't use those tools to make people truly free and resilient.
Margaret 46:17 Yeah.
Smokey 46:18 In the healthy kind of way. Yeah.
Margaret 46:22 Okay, so in our three things, there's the holistic, prepared resiliency thing, then there's the immediate, the bad thing is happening first aid. Should we talk about what to do when the thing has, when you have the like, the injury, the mental injury of the trauma?
Smokey 46:42 Like with most injuries, it's rehab, right?
Margaret 46:45 Yeah. No, no, you just keep doing the thing, and then hope it fixes itself. [laughs]
Smokey 46:53 My approach to most medical oddities that happen as I get older, it's like, "It'll fix itself, this tooth will grow back, right? The pain will go away, right?" Yeah, just like physical rehab, it does require two important aspects for all physical, what we think of when someone says I have to go to rehab, physical rehab, not not alcohol rehab, or psych rehab, is that there's two things that are happening. One, is a understanding, a deep understanding of the injury, often not by the person, but by the physical therapist. Right? That if they know, okay, this is torn meniscus, or this is this and I, okay, so I understand the anatomy, I understand the surgery that happened. Okay. And then the second is, short term, not lifelong therapy, not lifelong this or that. Short term techniques to usually strengthen muscles and other joints and things around the injury. Okay. And that's what, what I would call good recovery after you already have the injury. It's not after you've had the traumatic experience, because traumatic experience doesn't necessarily cause a chronic injury, and we're trying to reduce the number of chronic injuries, but chronic injuries are going to happen. chronic injuries already exist today. A lot of the people we know are walking around with chronic injuries that are impacting their ability to do what they want to do and what in my opinion, we need them to do, because there's so much change that needs to happen. We need everybody as much as possible to be working at their ability. So wherever we can fix injury, we should. So so one is where do I get an understanding of how this injury impacts my life? And I think different cognitive psychology, I think CBT, DBT, these things are very, very good in general.
Margaret 49:22 I know what those are, but can you explain.
Smokey 49:22 Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. These all come out of cognitive psychology from the 50s. Our techniques, but most therapists use versions of this anyway. So just going to therapy, what it is doing initially, is trying to, like the physical therapist, tell you, "This is the injury you have. This is why it's causing you to limp, or why you have weakness in your arm and wrist. And what we're going to do is we're going to give you some techniques to build up, usually the muscles, or whatever else needs to be built up around it so that you will be able to get more use out of your hand." And that is what we need to do with people that have this chronic injury. So, one, is you need to find out how the injury is impacting. So, I'm drinking more, I'm getting angry more, or I'm having trouble making relationships, or I'm having, and there's a series of, you know, 50 year old techniques to really kind of get down and see, okay, this injury is causing these things, that's how it's impacting me, and I don't want to drink more, or I want to be able to sleep better, or I want to be able to focus, or I want to be able to have meaningful relationship with my partner or my children or whatever, whatever that is, right? And then there are techniques, and they're developing new techniques, all the time, there's like EMDR, which is an eye thing that I don't fully understand. There DBT, dialectical behavioral therapy, has a lot of techniques that you kind of practice in groups. As you know, we have mutual aid cell therapy, MAST, which is also a group where you're sharing techniques to build up these different things and resilience. So, community, and meaning, and all those...reframing all those kinds of things. So, but they shouldn't, despite the length of the injury, how long you've been injured, how long you've been limping, and how much it's affected other parts of your psychic body in a way. These are things that still should be able to be remediated relatively quickly.
Smokey 49:31 That's exciting. Yeah.
Smokey 50:10 But this is not a lifelong thing. Now, that doesn't mean, if you're traumatized as a child for example, it's sort of like if you've completely shattered your wrist bone, and they've put in pins and things like that, that wrist, may never have the flexibility, it did, the actual wrist bone, you know, the bones in the wrist. But by building muscles, and other things around it, you could then theoretically have full flexibility that you had before, right? But it's not the actual wrist bone, but that that injury is still there. You've built up...Sometimes it's called strength-based approach or model where you're building up other strengths, you have to relieve the impact that that injury, so like, a common thing with with trauma is trust. My trust is very damaged. My ability to trust others, or trust certain environments, or maybe trust myself, right, is completely damaged. So if, if my...and that may never fully heal, that's like my shattered wrist bone. So then, by building up, let's say, I don't trust myself, I did something, really fucked up myself, you know, psychologically, traumatically, but by building up trust in others, and then in the environment, or other things, that can mediate that damage or vice versa.
Margaret 53:53 You mean vice versa, like if you?
Smokey 53:59 Like, if my problem is a trust of others, or trust with strangers, or trust with friends, you know, I've been betrayed in a really traumatic way by my mother, or my father or uncle or something like that then, you know, building up my friendships to a really strong degree will reduce and eventually eliminate, hopefully erase the impact of that injury on the rest of my life. I'm not doomed to have dysfunctional relationships, lack of sleep, alcoholism or whatever are the symptoms of that traumatic event, that chronic traumatic event.
Margaret 54:54 Okay, so my next question is, and it's sort of a leading question, you mentioned MAST earlier and I kind of want to ask, like, do we need specialists for all of this? Do we have people who both generalize and specialize in this kind of thing? Are there ways that, you know, we as a community can, like, get better at most of this stuff while then some of it like, you know, obviously people specialize in and this remains useful? Like...
Smokey 55:22 You need. I wouldn't say...You need, you do need specialists, not for their knowledge, per se so much as they're there for people that the injury has gone on so long that the resiliency, all those other things, they don't have a social network, they haven't had time, because the damage happened so early to build up those reserves, that that person in the front row, the front row, the seats are empty. That is, it's really great we live...Now, in other cultures, the specialists were probably shamans, religious people, mentors, things like that, that said, "Okay, my role is to," all therapy is self therapy. That was Carl Rogers, he was quite correct about that. The specialist you're talking about are the kind of stand in for people who don't have people to do that. I would argue all real therapy is probably community therapy. It's relational. So if you have friends, if you have community, if you have a place, or places you find belonging, then theoretically, no, I don't think you need....I think those groups, and I think most specialists would agree to actually, those groups, if they're doing this can actually do a much better job for that individual. They know that individual and there's a natural affinity. And there there are other non specifically therapeutic benefits for engaging in re engaging in these things that have nothing to do with the injury that are just healthy, and good to you. So sort of like taking Ensure, Ensure will keep you alive when you're you've had some surgery, you've had some really bad injury, or if you need saline solution, right? But we're not suggesting people walk around with saline bags. There are better ways to get that, more natural ways to get that. I'm not talking alternative, psychiatric or, you know, take herbs instead of psychiatric medication. But there are better ways to do that. And I think, but I'm glad we have saline.
Margaret 58:08 Yeah,
Smokey 58:08 I think it saves a lot of people's lives. But, we would never give up the other ways to get nutrients because of other benefits to it. You know, sharing a meal with people is also a really good thing.
Margaret 58:21 And then even like from a, you know, the advantages of community, etc. I'm guessing it's not something that's like magically imbued in community. It's like can be something that communities need to actually learn these skills and develop like, I mean, there's a reason that well, you know, I guess I'm reasonably open about this. I used to have like fairly paralyzing panic attacks, and then it started generalizing. And then, you know, a very good cognitive behavioral therapist gave me the tools with which to start addressing that. And that wasn't something I was getting from....I didn't get it from my community in the end, but I got it from a specific person in the community, rather than like, everyone already knows this or something.
Smokey 59:03 Well, I think what we're doing right here is, is....I mean, people don't know. So they read....People were trying to help you from your community. Undoubtedly, with the right. intentions, and the right motives, but without the information on what actually works.
Margaret 59:27 Yep.
Smokey 59:28 And that's all that was happening there.
Margaret 59:30 Yeah, totally.
Smokey 59:31 So, it's really, you know, as cliche as it sound. It's really about just giving people some basic tools that we already had at one time.
Margaret 59:44 Yeah.
Smokey 59:45 Forgot, became specialized. So you know, I'm throwing around CBT, DBT, EMDR. None of that people can keep in their head. They will....The audience listening today are not going to remember all those things. And nor do they have to. But they have to know that, you know, reconnecting to the horse, but not telling people to get back on the horse, that kind of tough love kind of thing isn't going to work, but neither is the self care, take a bubble bath...
Margaret 1:00:19 Never see a horse again, run from a horse.
Smokey 1:00:21 Never see a horse, again, we're not even going to talk about horses, let's go do something else, isn't going to work either. And I think once we...you know, it's not brain science...Though it is. [laughs] It is pretty, you know, these are, and you look at how religions do this, you know, you look at how the military does this, you look at how like, fascists do this, you know, all sorts of groups, communities can do this fairly effectively. And it doesn't cost money. It's not expensive. You don't have to be highly educated or read all the science to be able to do that. And people naturally try, but I think a lot of the self help kind of gets in the way. And some people think they know. "Okay, well, this is what needs to happen, because I saw on Oprah." That kind of thing. "
Margaret 1:01:26 Yeah, Well, I mean, actually, that's one of the main takeaways that's coming from me is I've been, I've been thinking a lot about my own mental health first aid on a fairly individual basis, right? You know, even though it was community, that helped me find the means by which to pull myself out of a very bad mental space in that I was in for a lot of years. But I still, in the end was kind of viewing it as, like, "Ah, someone else gave me the tools. And now it's on me." It's like this individual responsibility to take care of myself. And, and so that's like, one of the things that I'm taking as a takeaway from this is learning to be inter-reliant.
Smokey 1:02:06 There isn't enough research on it, again, because of our individualistic nature, and probably because of variables. But there's certainly tons of anecdotal evidence, and having done this for a long time talking to people and how the place I work is particularly set up, helping others is a really great way to help yourself.
Margaret 1:02:30 Yeah.
Smokey 1:02:31 it really works. It's very, I mean, obviously, in the Greeks, you know, you have the 'wounded healer,' kind of concept. Many indigenous traditions have said this much better than the Western. And I believe they have...and they needed to, but they had a much better kind of understanding of these things that we're we're talking about. You know, it. So, where people can...and I've heard this podcast, your podcast too, talking about this ability to be, you know, have self efficacy. But it's more than self efficacy. It's really helping others.
Margaret 1:03:22 Yeah.
Smokey 1:03:23 And that, that is really powerful. And there's not enough research on that. And I think that's why support groups, I think that's why, you know, AA, despite all its problems, has spread all over the world and has been around for, you know, 75 years, and is not going to go away anytime soon. Despite some obvious problems, is there's that there's that... they hit upon that they they re discovered something that we always kind of knew.
Margaret 1:03:59 Yeah. Okay, well, we're coming out of time. We're running out of time. Are there any last thoughts, things that I should have asked you? I mean, there's a ton we can talk about this, and I'll probably try and have you on to talk about more specifics in the near future. But, is there anything anything I'm missing?
Smokey 1:04:15 No, I think I think just re emphasizing the end piece that you know, for people that have resources, communities, meaning, social network, you know, that is worth investing your time and your energy into because that's going to build your...if you want to get psychologically strong, that is the easiest and the best investment, Put down the self help book. Call your friend. You know, don't search Google for the symptoms of this, that, or the other thing. Connect to what's important to you. And then lastly, try to help others or help the world in some way. And those are going to be profound and effective ways to build long lasting resilience as an individual. As a community, we should design our communities around that.
Margaret 1:05:35 Yeah. All right. Well, that seems like a good thing to end on. Do you have anything that you want to plug like, I don't know books about mutual aid self therapy or anything like that?
Smokey 1:05:46 I want to plug community. That's all I want to plug.
Margaret 1:05:50 Cool. All right. Well, it's nice talking to you, and I'll talk to you soon.
Smokey 1:05:54 Yep.
Margaret 1:06:00 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please tell people about it. Actually, I mean, honestly, if you enjoyed this episode, in particular, like think about it, and think about reaching out to people, and who needs to be reached out to and who you need to reach out to, and how to build stronger communities. But if you want to support this podcast, you can tell people about it. And you can tell the internet about it. And you can tell the algorithms about it. But, you can also tell people about it in person. And you can also support it by supporting the, by supporting Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness, which is the people who produce this podcast. It's an anarchist publishing collective that I'm part of, and you can support it on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And if you support at pretty much any level, you get access to some stuff, and if you support a $10 you'll get a zine in the mail. And if you support at $20, you'll get your name read at the end of episodes. Like for example, Hoss the dog, and Micahiah, and Chris, and Sam, and Kirk, Eleanor, Jennifer, Staro, Cat J, Chelsea, Dana, David, Nicole, Mikki, Paige, SJ, Shawn, Hunter, Theo, Boise Mutual Aid, Milica, and paparouna. And that's all, and we will talk to you soon, and I don't know, I hope you all are doing as well as you can.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Episode Summary For this episode of This Month in the Apocalypse, Brooke, Margaret, and Casandra chat about more horrible things and some ways to work through some of these problems. They talk about supply chain shortages, corn, ways to keep your house warmer without using a ton of energy or resources, dubious debunked how warming myths that also might burn it down, and a thorough introduction to hurricane preparedness.
Casandra can be found on Twitter @hey_casandra. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Brooke is just great and can be found at Strangers helping up keep our finances intact and on Twitter @ogemakweBrooke
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Hopefully will come out Friday, October 4th, and every two weeks there after.
An easier to read version is available on our website TangledWilderness.org.
This Month In the Apocalypse: October
Brooke Hello and welcome to Live Like The World Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm Brooke Jackson, one of your hosts today, along with the brilliant Margaret Killjoy and the iridescent Casandra. This is October 2022 installment of your most favorite Live Like The World Is Dying sub-segment, This Month In The Apocalypse. Today, we're going to talk about the latest shortages, the looming crisis in energy, fuel sources and what can be done about the crisis, war, climate disasters and probably some shit about the economy. But first, we'd like to celebrate being a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts by playing a little jingle from one of the other luminous podcasts on our network. Doo doo doo.
Jingle Speaker 1 Kiteline is a weekly 30 minute radio program focusing on issues in the prison system, you'll hear news along with stories from prisoners and former prisoners as well as their loved ones. You'll learn what prison is, how it functions and how it impacts all of us.
Margaret Behind the prison walls, a message is called a kite, whispered words, a note passed hand to hand, a request submitted the guards for medical care. Illicit or not, sending a kite means trusting that other people will bare it farther along until it reaches its destination. Here on Kiteline, we hope to share these words across the prison walls.
Jingle Speaker 1 You can hear us on the Channel Zero Network and find out more at Kiteline radio.no blogs.org.
Brooke And we're back. Quick introductions for those of you who might not remember each of us or might be listening for the first time. I'm Brooke an indigenous, baby anarchist woman who loves spreadsheets home remodeling and connecting with the land. And I'm going to toss to Margaret.
Margaret I'm Margaret, and I am someone who writes a lot and is on podcasts a lot. And does useful stuff too. But, those are some of the things I do. And I will pass it to Casandra.
Casandra I wasn't prepared for an introduction.
Margaret Neither was I.
Casandra My name is Cassandra. I garden and weave. Check!
Margaret Yay.
Brooke And do amazing art.
Casandra Yeah, I make books. And drink tea. Okay.
Margaret That's good tea.
Casandra Yeah.
Margaret Back to you, Brooke.
Casandra Oh, yeah, we're supposed to remember to plug things. Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness is putting out our...Well, it's not really technically our first book is it, Margaret?
Brooke Speaking of books, I feel like there's a book that you've been working on lately. I know we're supposed to plug things at the end. But this sounds great to mention it now.
Margaret No, but it's our first book is a new collective.
Casandra Okay, we're putting out our first book as the new collective. And also, first book in a long time, called "Try Anarchism For Life: The Beauty Of Our Circle" by Cindy Barukh Milstein. And I think I sent it to the printer yesterday. So fingers crossed.
Brooke If people want to preorder that, Casandra, where can they do that?
Casandra On the Stranger's site. And if you preorder it, you'll get some cute little book plates, which I didn't realize other people didn't know what book plates are. But, they're like the little stamps or stickers, you can put at the beginning of books. And it says "ex libris," which means 'from the library of,' and you can write your name so everyone knows it's your book.
Brooke Nice. So check out our website for that awesome book, which is beautifully designed, and actually a really, really good read. I really enjoyed it. All right, in our very first episode of This Month In The Apocalypse, one of the things we talked about was things that were in shortage, and surprise, surprise, we are continuing to have supply chain shortages. The thing that made me recall this and want to bring it up, again, is that I saw an NPR article in the last week about the fact that Adderall is facing a shortage, which is interesting, and did a little more digging on what's going on there. And part of it is that they had labor shortages. So, they fell behind in their production. And then the part that was super interesting to me that I've never thought about, Adderall is a highly controlled substance. It's probably a well known fact, part of the part of the highly controlled portion of it is that manufacturers are regulated in how much of it they can produce. So, if they fall behind their schedule, it's not as easy as just like, "Oh, we're gonna do a double shift and make extra this month," they have to get like, special dispensation to be able to make more. So they can make the amount that they're allowed to, but not more than that without special permission.
Margaret So they can't catch up?
Brooke They can if like they apply for FDA approval and get, you know, temporary approval or whatever to make extra, assuming they can get the ingredients they need and workers to actually make the extra. But yeah, it's not as easy as just like, "Oh, we need to make extra." There's a whole bunch of extra stuff going on that they have to do to do that.
Casandra Yay, bureaucracy.
Brooke Yeah, totally. So ration your Adderall? That's probably probably not how that works. There are other medical supplies that are still in shortage too. This, I also found interesting because we haven't seen it in the headlines as much, or at least I haven't, right.? Like, it hasn't been in the news. But, there have been things that have continued to be in short supply of the throughout the whole pandemic. One of the items is gloves. There's lots of different kinds of gloves that medical providers use, you know, you've got vinyl gloves, and nitrile gloves, and powdered, and non powdered, and the thicker and thinner, and all of that kind of stuff. And so there's like several different types of specific gloves that are in short supply that....
Casandra When you said gloves, I was picturing like knitted gloves. Like why?
Brooke Sorry, no, like medical gloves.
Casandra That makes much more sense.
Brooke Just get your grandma's to start knitting, and it'll be okay.
Casandra Yep.
Brooke Also, testing supplies are in short supply for medical providers. And specifically, it was like the equipment used to collect samples, store samples, transport samples, for medical tests, that portion of it. And then I guess, ventilator parts are still in short supply, as well.
Margaret I guess that makes sense, since everyone wants that.
Brooke Yeah. So that's the medical side of things. And then other things out in the real world, this is one I hadn't heard about, but tampons, I guess I've been in short supply. So it's good time to learn menstrual extraction. If you know somebody that can teach you that if you want to learn, or looking for other options, if you haven't previously been open to trying things like menstrual cups, might be a time to do that. Margaret, this is a fun throwback to our first one, there was this thing that was in short supply that you mentioned, and that each of us have two have on our respective homes.
Margaret Um, wind...I'm trying to come up with something clever, I know the actual answer, but trying to come up with something funny.
Casandra Garage doors?
Margaret Yeah, it's garage doors.
Brooke To the point where like, if you're a contractor, and you're going to build a house, they're recommending that before you start with anything related to the building of your house, the very first thing you do is order the garage doors, because it will take basically the whole time for them to get there. Like the last thing that will arrive and that you will install in the house is the garage door because of how long they taking.
Casandra I knew it!
Casandra Okay, I feel like every, like it's a running joke, and you all will always bring up garage doors. And every time I'm like, But, why is there a shortage? And then every time I forget, so I'm gonna ask again. Why?
Brooke I don't think we talked about why last time.
Margaret I don't think we have a 'why.' I think that there's just a lot of shit that is like, my guess is because it's so specialized that they make a certain amount. And then I don't know, but it might be something more about new homes? I don't know, The answer is I don't know,
Brooke Part of it is lumber. Because remember, lumber was in short supply, like lumber mills shut down early in the pandemic. And so there was like a lot of lumber that was not being produced. And then when they started up again, because the price of lumber has gone up the price of garage doors are like two or three times higher, depending on where you live than they were pre pandemic. And part of that's because the lumber is so much more expensive.
Margaret Okay, but hear me out. It'd be prettier anyway, it's instead of having the kind that rolls up above, just have like big old barn doors that swing open, and just make them out of two by fours. And it will totally work. And I'm sure there's no specific reason that people have developed a much more specialized solution.
Brooke Yeah, definitely not.
Casandra And there can just be like a rope from the door to your fence. So when you drive up to your fence, you can just grab the rope and pull it.
Margaret Yeah, totally.
Casandra And that will open the garage door.
Margaret Yeah, or some sort of like system where you like knock something over as you're driving up towards your house. It like knocks over the ball, that rolls down the hill and it hits the thing and then it does the thing. And then the garage door swings open and then hits something that it shouldn't have and then starts another chain reaction and then the whole neighborhoods on fire.
Casandra Yeah, totally secure
Brooke I was with you till the end. So a real nice Rube Goldberg type of garage door opening.
Margaret Yeah, I think that is the solution for most of these things that we're missing. Like for example, lack of gloves. Have doctors considered using knit gloves?
Brooke Really great point, Margaret. Really great point. Moving on. Computer chips continue to be in short supply.That was an issue like this time last year. It got a little better.
Casandra Wait, what news?
Brooke Computer chips,
Casandra Computer ships? I'm sorry, I...
Brooke The ones that go into like everything, like not just computers, but like they go into cars now, they go into your television, they go you know...
Casandra My contribution today is going to be to mishear everything.
Brooke That's alright, it's going to be way more fun that way.
Margaret Okay, so tortilla chips, also chips conduct electricity, probably if you put enough electricity into them.
Brooke I don't know if they have any conductive materials in them, Margaret. Maybe we need to add some metal to our tortilla chips.
Brooke And then they can do this.
Margaret Yeah.
Margaret It's good for everyone. And just mark it for anyone who has braces that they should avoid them.
Brooke Okay, yeah. Excellent. Renewable too because corn.
Margaret That's not something I'm going to talk about later about. Anyway.
Brooke Sadly, baby formula continues to be in shortage. Again, that's not making the headlines like it was when it first started. But, that is still a major issue. So, check on your people. Do what you can to help out there. Unfortunately, that's ongoing and doesn't still doesn't have a solution in sight right now. They've been...like they ramped up production on it and stuff, but it's just still not enough. And then the raw ingredients that go into make it too, of course, have continued to have problems. Here's a really sad one for you, Margaret. It's it's one of your favorite things. And the concept of this item tends to be a sponsor of one of those other podcasts.
Casandra Guns.
Margaret Oh no, smiling children?
Brooke No, there's plenty of them. You only really need one. So that's, that's okay.
Margaret Don't tell me that there's no potatoes.
Brooke Potatoes are in short supply.
Margaret This has gone historically badly for my people.
Brooke There was like a whole famine or something. Except there wasn't.
Casandra Something.
Brooke Yeah, sorry. potatoes, potatoes in short supply. Okay.
Casandra But it's like harvest potato season right now? Are they just already anticipating that there won't be enough potatoes?
Brooke Yeah, that's part of it. Again, we've talked about in previous episodes, how like, there have been really weird climate shit happening, especially like in the US that's affected the growth and production of things. Like here where we live, our Spring was way long and cold and wet. And it really fucked up the growing cycles of things. So, loss.
Casandra Yeah, my potatoes didn't do great.
Brooke Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So there were losses due to that early in the season of like potato plants. And then they're not anticipating, you know, what they are getting out of the ground to be, excuse me, as plentiful as it might otherwise be. Or normally be. Yeah, that's sad. Less sad, Christmas trees are probably going to be in short supply again, this year, they're not sure. But, they were last year, and the conditions that cause that are looking to be much the same. So yeah, living things that get chopped down in order to decorate your house for a month, fewer of those. Sorry?
Margaret Alternatives include decorating a living tree, or moving into a house that some old weird person left a fake Christmas tree in the attic. Or using last year's tree.
Casandra I'm a big fan of rosemary trees, and then you just plant it.
Brooke You can also paint a tree on your wall somewhere and then just set out presents. You can make out of cardboard with your children.
Margaret Or, you can realize its pagan idols idolatry and realize that a true Christian would never celebrate Christmas.
Casandra Or you can convert, and do Hanukkah, because they overlap this year.
Brooke Yes, I love it when they overlap.
Casandra Menorahs are pretty.
Margaret There's so many options. Yeah.
Brooke Okay, cool. And then our last supply chain thing, which will be a nice toss is that energy and fuel are in short supply and expected to be in even shorter supply, which means I can toss this to Margaret to talk more about that issue.
Margaret Yay, everything's doomed. I mean, everything's gonna be fine. Somewhere in between these two extremes is the truth. Okay, so Europe is having a power crisis. And not the old fashioned kind where people decide they don't want kings anymore, but kinda about natural gas mostly. And, it is the worst energy crisis since World War II. And, there's a lot of causes of it. The most immediate cause, that is absolutely the most immediate cause, and it's, it's not the straw that broke the camel's back, it's like the two by four that broke the camel's back, is the is that Russia has responded...Okay, so no, I'm gonna start at the beginning instead. Okay, so for 20 years or so...
Brooke No, start in the middle!
Margaret So for 20 years or so, Euroupe has been trying to use fossil fuels...If I was really starting at the beginning it would be like: the economic project that is Europe was caused by stripping all of the natural resources out of the developing world. But, for the last 26 years, Europe has been like, "We want to be the seen as the people who are really good. And so we're going to use fewer fossil fuels." And so, for about 20 years, they've been trying to work on that. However, this has basically increased their dependence on other places, like Russia, primarily Russia, in this case, where natural gas imports cheap, natural gas imports from Russia have been absolutely a mainstay. However, this has been crisis for the past two Winters too, even before the Ukrainian war, basically. Because, if you're going to have renewables as the way that you're trying to make a sustainable world, it has to be coupled with degrowth, instead of just like continuing to have a growing thing, because like, actually, renewables create less power overall at the moment, right. So, increased dependence on Russia, and then Russia has not officially cut off natural gas exports to Europe, what they did instead is they stopped 89% of their natural gas exports. And, they did it by saying, "Oh, we have a leak, and we can't fix it because of the sanctions. So, I guess you have to stop the economic sanctions against us, or you don't get any natural gas." And so they're blackmailing the West, and I don't know, whatever, I mean, I don't expect better of them. They're in the middle of fucking fading and genociding Ukraine, so whatever. But, this is a problem. And also increasing drought that's been hitting Europe really badly, it fucks up a bunch of other things, too. It fucks up their hydroelectric. And then, it even fucks up their coal, because coal is transported by river. And, they can't if the rivers are too low. And so the Right wing wants to blame a lot of this on Germany's shutdown of like the completely safe nuclear power plants or whatever. But, I think that that's worth contrasting with...France is actually at half nuclear power right now, because corrosion, lagging repairs, and general lack of safety have caused the nuclear power plants about to...to have to operate at about half capacity. So nucular, actually, sometimes complicated. And the heatwave has also meant that they can't use river water to cool the plants, because there's the nuclear power plants, and the other, I think other power plants too, because they use river water to cool it. But, I think it's a combination of the river water being much hotter than it usually is. And then also much less of it. Though, the one weird thing that people are like hoping will like pull it through at the last minute is there's now this new micro nucular reactor that's supposed to be safe, because it uses molten salts and fuel rods. And it fits onto a tractor trailer and powers 1000 homes, and is not yet being produced commercially. But, it's like a thing that people say that they've developed. So, the UK has seen energy prices, the energy price increase has doubled since last year's increase. So, it's not like...energy prices aren't double, but they have grown at double the rate, protests are breaking out, people are starting to burn their utility bills. And what's kind of cool is that you'd sort of expect this kind of protest to kind of go in a Right wing direction about like, you know, fuck you, let's go frack or whatever. But, actually, it's, at least what I've seen is that the protests are mostly coming out of a Left wing and a-political position. And, a lot of is like pushing to nationalize gas, and basically say like, "This is fucked up. This is affecting the poor people more than anyone else." Gas being, in this case used for heating, but also is used for power generation, and then a lot of industrial manufacturing. And, this is not just a matter of rising costs, it's literally a potential in the next couple of weeks, there might be blackouts and power rationing. Various places are limiting power use, like businesses are being encouraged to turn off their air conditioners, and all this kind of stuff. And of course, everything happens in a vacuum with this kind of thing. So, there's no way...wait, no, no, this will cause stagnation economically and could easily trigger a recession.
Margaret And the other thing that it does, is it creates this awful fucking feedback loop. We talked about last time where like the feedback loop of like, all this flooding, destroying Pakistan, causing them to get IMF loans, which cause more austerity, which cause more, you know, climate change or whatever, you have a very similar feedback cycle, in that it's the...because of this stuff that's happening, more fossil fuel production is happening, coal plants are coming back online. Fracking is no longer banned in the UK. And of course, the pipeline attack that didn't help any of this, that was probably Russia, but Russia blames it on the US, was the largest methane release in documented history. So, even though the pipes weren't even an active use, the fact that they were ruptured caused the largest methane release in documented history. And of course, it was the heatwave the summer that spiked power usage. And so, climate change causes people to get more desperate for power. So, we enter to a vicious cycle, which will definitely not have any effects anywhere but Europe, and we can probably be done with that issue unless someone else has something to say about it affecting elsewhere.
Casandra Yeah, I was reading about how the domino effect is impacting the US. It sort of seems self evident, but I'll talk about it anyway. So it looks like 40% of the US of our electricity is generated by natural gas, which I didn't realize. So, you know, in the US, we either heat our homes with natural gas or electric, but natural gas prices impact electricity prices, maybe someone else can explain that to me, because I don't quite get it. But, the moral of the story is that when natural gas prices go up, all of the other prices go up as well. Yeah, they're expecting anything from a 17% increase to a third increase? I don't understand. Yeah, thank you. 33%. So that sucks. It's not as bad as Europe, like I'm looking at...I was looking at Germany in the UK, and it sounds like their prices are way, way, way, way higher, but it's still not gonna be great here. So, I was hoping we could talk about things that people can do. Like ways they can keep their home warm, and insulated and stuff like that. Brooke and I are both in the Pacific Northwest, which is known for its mild winters, but we also get lots of rain and damp and then Margaret is on the East Coast and has much harsher winters. So maybe between the three of us, we can come up with some good ideas.
Brooke Let me start with what I tell my kid which is put on some socks and a goddamn sweater.
Casandra And a hat. Feet and head.
Margaret And then what I tell your kid which is, "If you if you make a...if you build a fire, if you build a man a fire, he's warm for a day, but if you set a man on fire, he's warm for the rest of his life.
Brooke Well we do like to set men on fire in this house, so that's that's perfectly acceptable here. If any men come in, you can be set on fire for our warmth.
Margaret Yeah, yeah, that's a renewable resource.
Casandra Because, I mean, we know that lumber and wood prices have gotten up and you got to use something in your fireplace,
Margaret And I hear that they're made out of wood. That's why we throw them in the lake to find out. Cause men are witches. Wait, hold on. Okay, so sweaters and hats, okay. Okay.
Casandra Some things I learned. So clothes dryers can be up to 20% of a home's energy bill. I had no idea. And in my head, a dry...like drying racks aren't good idea where we live because it's so damp here. But maybe that's not the case. So, I'm gonna try that this winter. Checking...I've always rented so the the idea of like checking the filters and shit on my whatever way your home is heated has never occurred to me, but apparently that's super important. Right, Brooke?
Brooke Absolutely. I'm gonna be totally honest, I don't know if that has anything to do with the, I guess it probably helps the efficiency of the device. Yeah, I do it every six months, because I know it helps the air quality in my house. And that's important.
Casandra I don't even know how to do that. So you should come over.
Margaret There's both filters in the HVAC. Sorry.
Casandra Let me know, tell me more, I don't understand.
Margaret As far as I understand, there's both the filters that are like the big screen filters that people are like run out and strap to their fans to do air filter cleaning, right? And then there's like, at least in my house has an oil heater and in an oil heater, there's a filter, an oil filter, and so my presumption is that it just takes more power to push things through a clogged up filter, both air filter and oil filter. That's my guess. The main thing I learned the hard way by moving somewhere with harsh winters and an oil furnace is that if you let your furnace run dry, it breaks. And so you actually have to keep it full, which is cool because my gauge is broken, so I just need to every now and then like call and be like, "Hey, can you fill it up?" And they're like, "How much do you need?" And I'm like, "I don't know. You fill it up." I did learn that heating oil and diesel are functionally the same thing, although you're not allowed to put heating oil in your car, because that they'd like stain it red so that you can get caught if you do that.
Casandra Weird.
Margaret Yeah, and there are some diff...please don't run out and put diesel in your home oil filter because you heard some girl who lives in the mountains tell you to. I haven't fucking done this. And but, some people I think sometimes like top off, like in a hurry. They'll do that if they keep diesel around for like their tractor or whatever the fuck.
Brooke I mean, it's probably better than...may be....I'm guessing, totally guessing, that it might be better than letting it run dry, because that can be an expensive fuckup.
Margaret Yeah, if you do that you have to change at very least the oil filter. And then if not the also the fucking spark plugs and all this shit and the parts are cheap, the capacity to do it without exploding things is harder. This is sort of beside the point that only applies to oil. Let's talk about other ways to heat homes.
Casandra So, yeah, other ways to heat your homes or more like how to keep heat in. I was researching this anyway, because my house has lots of windows like huge, like walls of windows, which is beautiful, but they're all single pane and none of them seal. Like literally, there's no, I don't even, I still haven't figured out what this type of window's called, but it's like slats of...horizontal slats of glass sort of layered on top of each other, and you can crank it so they tilt open or crank it so they tilt shut, but there's nothing actually...like air just you know, comes in. So using that fun, classy plastic stuff that's temporary to cover your windows. That's one of my plans this year, the few windows that don't have that tilty glass, that's an official term, I'm going around the edges and caulking them. I checked on my door seals. I learned that they're like energy efficient electric blankets.
Casandra I'm anticipating that if I set my set my thermostat a lot lower and like use those while I'm working during the day or even at night, maybe that will be helpful.
Margaret Oh, that's cool.
Brooke Heavy curtains can help too. With Windows.
Casandra Yeah! Inulated curtains!
Brooke That can be a real trade off if you have any like seasonal effective disorder, light issues, but like they can do a lot to keep the cold back if you have a heavy curtain that you hang over the window.
Casandra Totally, yeah, those are super effective.
Margaret And then you can play the fun game of opening them when the sun's out and then closing them when the sun's gone.
Casandra Though here when the sun's out, it's colder.
Margaret Oh, okay. Yeah.
Casandra So, that's why we're all sad all winter.
Margaret Yeah.
Casandra Let's see, did I find anything else exciting? People are on social media right now sharing all of these like wild ideas about how to heat your house. And, I haven't tried these. I'm not going to vouch for them. But some of them are really interesting. So, one is like, when you're baking, you put very, already dry, that's important, bricks in the bottom of your oven, because they hold in heat. So, when you're done baking, you can open your oven and turn your oven off and the bricks will keep your house apparently. People are making a little like tea light and flower pot heaters.
Margaret Can I talk shit on those really quick?
Casandra Yeah, please do.
Margaret They're bullshit. They're absolutely bullshit.
Casandra I kind of figured. Also, like open flames?
Margaret Yeah, no. And like actually, a lot of them the the actual clay pot can get hot enough to catch the candle wax on fire. And so, there's been like a bunch of houses, people have like burned down their houses trying to use these fucking things. And it would take like, I think it I looked this up the other day, it would take like hundreds of these to heat a small room. The time in which that this is a reasonably efficient thing to do is an emergency or survival situation. If you make...if you're in a fucking tent, if you're in, if you're in your house, you can do this, you can throw a blanket. If you're trying to heat up the space hidden under a blanket. A candle can be a meaningful part of that. But, if you're trying to heat up even a small room, they're not a meaningful part of it in terms of the trade off, but the stuff about thermal mass like these bricks, sorry, is it okay to just tangent on this?
Casandra No please do. These are my like things that people are talking about that kind of sketched me out.
Margaret Yeah, and so it's like in that I haven't specifically researched putting the bricks in the oven. What I would probably do, I mean, you want thermal mass thermal mass doesn't heat things. It's like a battery. It's a heat battery, right? And so like for example, what a lot of people do is if you put like...thermal mass is often like clay or something like that. Some people even historically use like stored jugs of water and stuff where the sun comes in and heats it up or wherever your passive heating comes from. Then it radiates out that heat once the heat sources gone. And so, you can keep your house cooler at night by having a lot of thermal mass. This is one reason why cob houses have some advantages in a lot of climates and adobe and all that stuff right. And concrete even, can actually act as thermal mass, although I don't know as much about the efficiency of that. Brick houses have an advantage for this. But yeah, like a lot of the hacks around like, "Oh, light a candle," are like just a really good way to burn your house down.
Casandra Well, it's not even just a candle. People are like building...like constructing these like...you take a flower pot. You know what I'm talking about?
Margaret Oh, yeah, totally. Yeah, so and that doesn't actually amplify...Okay, so this idea where you take the candle and you put the flower pot on top of it and the terracotta flower pot is amplifies the heat, it doesn't amplify shit, you can't amplify heat. That's like one of the laws of thermodynamics. But you can't store the heat and you can centralize the, so it doesn't get lost as much, right? So in some weird ways as maybe like a handwarmer, it would like be maybe a little bit more effective, right? Because
Casandra That's an expensive handwarmer. I'm gonna knit gloves.
Margaret Yeah, totally. And so it, the, the flower pot itself does get so hot, and especially if you put enough candles under it to make it useful. And you can see there's a bunch of like research that people have done, where they're like, "Oh, the flower pot gets up to 170 degrees with one candle or like 400 something degrees with four candles," or something roughly like that. I don't have the numbers in front of me. But, it doesn't make enough heat to fill a space. It instead is actually specifically preventing that heat from going out into the space, which is...
Casandra Which is why it gets so hot.
Margaret Yeah, totally. And again, like I mean, I don't know, and there's some advantages to it. But overall, however, I think the alcohol lamps that people make, the like DIY, there's like, like the heater block, and I think it's Philly, I can't remember.
Brooke Portland has one.
Margaret They like make...you can make alcohol lamps, as little portable heaters. And, and when you're talking about like a tent or something in a survival situation, they are fairly effective. I actually don't know enough about the BTUs that they put out to, to in terms of heating and other spaces. That that's beyond what I know. That what's my rant about candles, sorry.
Casandra No, I appreciate the rant. My contribution was gonna be like, people are talking about sketchy shit that I don't know about. So confirming that it's sketchy shit is great. Yeah, I don't know. Do y'all know any other fun ways? I'm trying to think about like, my grandparents live in a really old house, and they have a wood stove, which heats one room. And the house is very long and thin. So, it heats one room on one end of the house and their bedrooms on the other end. So, all of the weird shit I've seen them do over the years to stay warm, like the window plastic, or those like long sock things that you put at the bottom of doors, you know, I'm talking about?
Margaret Oh, yeah, totally. My house. I mean, I clearly bought my house with like 'prepper' in mind, but my house has the two different wood burning stoves, or one's a pellet stove, which are more like human energy efficient, but they require electricity, so a little bit more complicated. It's like a wood burning stove, but it's a little pellets of fuel that you can buy super cheap, but you have to buy them. You can make them yourself, but it's super labor intensive and complicated. I looked into it for a while. And then I have a regular wood burning stove in the basement and the wood burning stove is actually hooked into the HVAC like vent system in my house. And so that is something you can do is you can put a wood burning stove and hook it up to...this is not a simple retrofit. Installation in general, just fucking add insulation to your house however you can, which sometimes means like, you know, tearing open the walls and putting in more insulation or putting more insulation in your attic. If you have an attic or
Casandra Covering your fireplace when you're not using it, that's one I'm learning.
Margaret Oh, really? Oh, that makes sense. Because it just goes up out into the...Yeah,
Casandra Yeah, even when it's closed, it can still suck heat out. Not using fans for too long, which sucks. I'm thinking about like bathrooms. You know?
Margaret I see Yeah, yeah.
Casandra Like, above your kitchen stove.
Margaret Yeah, hmm, that makes sense.
Brooke One thing I've done for the last several years to conserve energy use is to consolidate where in the house I am located and or with my person, or people are located to a single room or a portion of the house and then closing up the rest of it and closing the vents that go there and all of that and just focusing the heat on wherever I am or I am with my kid or whatever it is.
Casandra Oh, closing the vents you're not using as a good idea.
Brooke Yeah, so like when she's off at school while I'm working, I close the door to my office, close most of the rest of the house. And then when it's like the two of us, we'll hang out in just her room with the vent open, or just our two bedrooms that are next to each other with vents open.
Margaret And it's it's another advantage of people who choose to live communally is that I mean more people in a house is just going to warm things up a lot, like putting a bunch of people into a room with closed...that's like closed off and insulated is a real good way to stay warm. So like, I don't know, use this as an opportunity to get close to someone, I mean, very consensually and stuff.
Brooke I was gonna say cuddling. Cuddling is a good way to provide heat.
Margaret Get a dog.
Brooke Or fucking
Margaret I take back the part about the dog. Okay.
Casandra They're also, both in Europe and I know state by state and the US, there're also energy and utility assistance programs and grants that have always been available, but it's seems like more are starting to become available. So, if you live somewhere colder than me, it's a good thing to look into.
Margaret Well, and then also in Oregon, starting in 2024, Medicaid is going to cover expenses related to climate change in terms of like, generators and air filters and shit like that.
Brooke That's amazing. I haven't heard that.
Margaret I just read about it while I was getting ready for this episode.
Brooke If you think you may qualify for one of the energy assistance programs, that's something to look into sooner rather than later, like, Now, instead of before the colds get real high, or the bills get real high. I know that one of the programs here in our town, for instance, only has a few days a month in which they accept applications. And we'll even close that, you know, for the next month if they got too many in the previous month kind of a thing.
Casandra Yeah. Yeah, then, yeah. The The only other thing I wanted to bring up with all of this is that, you know, we've talked in past episodes about how expensive food is getting and how expensive everything's getting, and with rising energy costs, that's just going to contribute to inflation more because of businesses are having to pay more money to stay open. You know?
Margaret Yeah.
Brooke But Biden just passed the Inflation Reduction Act, so everything's gonna be fine now.
Casandra Right?
Brooke He did it.
Casandra Okay?
Brooke He solved it.
Margaret Yeah, thanks, O-Biden.
Casandra 'O-Biden?' is that what you said?
Brooke Haven't you heard that joke?
Margaret Usually, it's because you want to complain about something. The gas prices are high, like, "Thanks, O-Biden," because people always said, "Thanks, Obama."
Casandra Okay. Yeah. Thanks for explaining jokes to me.
Brooke Well, Biden's just Obama's puppet. I mean, haven't you heard that he's old and senile, and it's actually just secretly Obama still running the country through Biden?
Margaret Who's totally not old and senile.
Casandra I mean, according to Tulsi this morning, it's it's actually the elite Cabal. So.
Brooke There's a whole other conversation I want to have with you about why everyone is so anti--fucking-semetic. But that's like not on our topic list.
Casandra Oh, gosh, the French Revolution.
Brooke If we want to do a segue I really really want to talk about it.
Casandra Now we're gonna segue to talk about the French Revolution.
Margaret Welcome to Mediocre People Who Made Lateral Moves, the new podcast about all the revolutions that have happened
Casandra and how people blamed it all on the Jews.
Margaret The only revolutions accepted are the Haitian Revolution, the Mexican Revolution kinda, yeah. Anyway,
Brooke This is the thing I don't understand. Like, why why is anti-semitism been such a global thing for fucking ever? Like, I can't think of another group of people that have had it quite like the Jews.
Casandra It's called the coldest hatred for a reason.
Margaret I mean, everyone has it different. I think anti-blackness is also real fucking old and anti-indigenous as soon as we find y'all.
Casandra There's these interesting accounts of of...We should not go on this tangent.
Brooke But it's interesting.
Casandra I could talk for too long.
Brooke It's topical.
Casandra It's always topical.
Brooke Exactly.
Casandra Oh, what were some of our other fun topics?
Margaret Okay, let's talk about hurricanes. Can I talk about hurricanes?
Casandra Hurray!
Margaret Oh, wait first I wanna talk about about corn really quickly. It's like a short note. Okay, so by 2053, the Corn Belt won't be able to grow corn.
Brooke What?
Casandra Wow.
Margaret Because there will be days 125 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. And of course, corn is already having trouble now. It's not like a switch that will be flipped in 30 years. And also, my cynical ass has been proven right every time someone's like, "All of the X will happen by 2080." I'm like, that's gonna be way sooner. And then like 2020 comes around, they're like, "Yeah, nevermind this is sooner." And then so some of the solutions that people are trying to come up with around this, some of them are like make a lot of sense about like, being a little less monocroppy and like, and people are like getting really into perennial grains. But, of course they're doing it in like weird capitalist ways. So there's like weird named ways to be less monocrappy. And there's also this perennial grain that's like trademarked called Kernza which is a plant name with a little reserved symbol after his name. So that's how you know, it's good. And basically, a lot of the existing perennial grains are actually more like hays and things are for foraging. And so intermediate wheat grass is Kernza. It's a type of intermediate wheat grass, which is not actually wheat, but has a similar grains. However, they're currently trying to hybridize it with wheat and it's hard to bake with because it's not as gluttony. Unfortunately, it still has some gluten, so it's not the solution for that problem, either. But, people are trying to do some weird shit. Then I could talk about hurricanes unless y'all wanna talk about corn.
Casandra Most grass seed is edible. That's my contribution.
Brooke Also tubers. So plant yourself some day-lilies, dahlias.
Casandra Turnips.
Brooke They're pretty and then you can eat them.
Casandra We should bring back neeps as a instead of mashed potatoes, mashed neeps.
Margaret Y'all are just making up things.
Casandra We're listening now.
Margaret Casandra's always making up plants that don't exist. There's only three plants: corn, potato, and grapes.
Casandra I thought it was wheat.
Margaret Oh, yeah, and wheat.
Brooke I know you've seen apples. And also, I've given you kale. So.
Margaret That's just fancy. It's just different forms of...okay to be fair, broccoli, kale...Can you help me list off all of these things that are the same plant?
Casandra Brassicas?
Margaret Yeah.
Brooke Cauliflower? Brussels sprouts, cabbage, mustard.
Margaret Everything is already secretly...the the secret cabal that we should be blaming is the brassicas.
Casandra Plant families?
Margaret No, just brassicas, because they're everything. Everywhere you look, it's brassicas.
Casandra Unless it's a nightshade.
Brooke I get what you're looking for. And I'm with you.
Margaret Okay, so hurricanes. So, there's two things about hurricane survival. And one is like this, like promising thing, although it ties into some bougie shit is that like....cause obviously, people who are listening this...a lot of people are listening to us have dealt with hurricanes more immediately and recently than any of the three of us have. And so I don't mean to be light hearted about like, you know, like, whatever I want to say that, like people are dealing with this shit...I, I'm not trying to...It's a big fucking deal. Okay. One thing is that communities absolutely can be built to survive hurricanes. And it isn't done because people aren't rich enough. And because doing so is incentivized, and because people don't value this, right. It's like a combination of these things. Have you heard of this small town called Babcock Ranch that survived Hurricane Ian?
Brooke Nope.
Margaret Okay, there's this. It was built in 2015 People started moving into in 2018. It's a 2000 home community. And it's, it's sort of like actually mixed class a little bit. The houses start at 200,000 and go up to a million dollars. And it's, and they're like working on building condos and stuff. And it is meant to survive hurricanes. This is in fucking Florida. And it got hit by Ian. And so it makes sense to build things are meant to survive hurricanes. The streets are designed to absorb water. I think that they're designed to absorb water into like, basically almost a French drain system that runs underneath where there's like pipes or whatever. I know that they are capable of making this like some kind of concrete that water can just like flow right through. And I think that's what's happening. Yeah,
Brooke Yeah, pervious concrete. yeah.
Casandra What is that not everywhere?
Brooke More expensive,
Margaret Because people don't value infrastructure in this country. And and then there's, they use native landscaping everywhere to like limit flooding. They do all this stuff to like, make sure that...because flooding kills more people in hurricanes than wind. And so they do all of this stuff with native landscaping to limit flooding. The power and all the communication lines are buried, which is another thing that should just be happening everywhere, but isn't. Like where I live, I lose power all the fucking time, because like, "Oh, sorry, a tree fell on a power plant. Power Pole."
Casandra Are you laughing at me Brooke?
Brooke I'm picturing your backyard right now where you could like, garrote yourself with your power lines in your back yard.
Casandra That my landlord is like, "This is not a problem." Yeah.
Margaret Yeah, no, totally. And like, every...where I live like a tree falls on...it's like, it's like once a month, I lose power for a day, because I'm in the fucking mountains with really shallow soil, and so the trees fall over every time there's a windstorm, but we're in the fucking mountain. So there's wind storms all the time. Anyway, so they bury their power and internet lines. And the whole town has it's own solar array that powers like all of it, and 8000 other nearby homes. And so, to that 2.6 million people lost power during Hurricane Ian but not Babcock Ranch. And this was its first like trial by fire. And to be and to be fair to them they weren't total assholes about it. It wasn't like "I've got mine fuck you." They turned their school into a shelter for all the nearby folks, because it still had power even though, it like I think I think it couldn't be registered as an official storm shelter because didn't have a generator. But, it didn't need one.
Casandra Cause it didn't need one?
Margaret Because it had its own fucking micro grid.
Casandra Wow, amazing. Bureaucracy.
Margaret Yeah. So that's like, what we could be doing, right? We could have a society that like, prepares for these things, you know, and like there are ways to build things if people are able, if people are able to have the resources or like institutions are willing to give resources to make things that are appropriate to their area you know, you can have fire resistant homes you can have...I mean everything would just be concrete domes if I had my way as of the past six months, but then I'm sure get over this particular infatuation with concrete domes, but they're like everything proof. Okay, anyway. Except aesthetic proof. Okay, so actually, okay, whatever. The other thing that's...
Brooke Also concrete is not great for the environment and climate change. It's really bad, actually.
Margaret Yeah, but it has actually weirdly, I haven't looked in this little while, there's the embedded greenhouse gases and in terms of how long it lasts are like, compare favorably in a lot of ways. And also in terms of its insulating...Well, its insulating properties because of thickness. The way it's constructed is...the way it's made is not nice. You can you can also disagree with me about this.
Brooke No, that's fair. And there's been recent research and work into putting cellulose into concrete mixtures that actually helps. I can't remember all the beneficial properties of it, but some really cool research that's out there about about mixing wood fibers.
Margaret That's cool. Plus brutalism is way cooler than...anyways Okay, whatever. Now everyone's gonna hate me if I start talking about liking brutalism. Alright, so hurricanes, I have never survived a hurricane, just to be really clear. And so I'm not trying to tell everyone....okay, but I it's my disclaimer, I researched...
Brooke You've also never not survived a hurricane.
Margaret That's true. Oh, I see what you're saying. Every time I'm in a hurricane, I die. I've been playing this...I want...this video game I've been playing called...Okay. So, God, what if I was...the ultimate prepper would be Groundhog Day guy. That's what he really should have done.
Margaret You ever seen that movie "Hurricane Day" where the person has no...groundhog, whatever, as a movie,...
Casandra What?
Casandra What does Groundhog Day have to do with hurricanes?
Margaret Okay, but if you died and came back every single day, you could do so much research. The ultimate scientist
Casandra No one can see me putting my head in my hands.
Brooke They just heard the thunk of your skull on the table there.
Margaret Alright, so what to do if you live in the path of a hurricane and you don't live in a little weird prepper neighborhood. First of all, if you live in a mobile home, I'm sure you already know that life sucks, because classism is real and awful, but mobile homes are in a really bad situation. And I'm sure you already know that. Hurricane timing is forcastable, but its course is less predictable. So, you can start knowing that a hurricane is possible, but you won't necessarily know where it exactly where it's going and exactly what kind of power it will have by the time it lands. Flooding kills more people than wind. And basically the best that I've been able to read and find different people have researched this is that like overall evacuating if the instructions say you should evacuate is probably the best move. And, voluntary evac happens before mandatory evac. Voluntary often comes earlier to basically give people to get a head start, because when everyone tries to leave an area all at once it fucking sucks. I'd love to at some point, talk to someone who has done more work into evac, and like talk about like what it means to transport oneself over a roads during those kinds of crises. But, and to be clear, mandatory evacuation doesn't mean they come around at gunpoint to force you out, it means that no one will help you while you stay. At least that's the official version of it. If you're going to stay or rather, if you like think that you might be stuck, consider being able to survive two weeks without outside help or without the grid. And the grid in this case means water. And it means probably the ability to heat food if you run on a municipal gas line or power, right. And that also means electricity. And so you want like for example 15 gallons of water per person in storage containers. You want two weeks of non refrigerated food that doesn't require utility cooking gas, because maybe you have a separate gas stove you know, or you're planning a cold cans of chili or whatever. You want a battery or hand crank radio, you want to get medical kit. If you're trained, you want a chainsaw, but one of the main ways that people kill themselves in the wake of disasters is using chainsaws incorrectly to try and like move down trees and stuff. One of the other main ways is like propane and propane accessories, and people trying to use like shit that you shouldn't use inside inside. Don't run a fucking generator in your house or your garage. Make sure everyone has a flashlight. When you're prepping your house. You want to bring in everything in your yard like furniture and tools. You want to get directions to local evacuation shelters and you want to have them printed out and or like saved offline in Google's maps. You want to prepare your house for internal flooding by moving shit up off the floor, and like getting everything that you don't want to get wet available. Make sure it's able to stay dry. You want to know how to shut off your utility gas, water and electric in your house. You do want to fill up your bathtubs for extra water, but don't fucking rely on this. This isn't the like "Haha," everyone's like , "Oh it's cool I got like you know this bathtub filled with water." You usually want to use bathtub water more for sanitation water. You want to turn your fridge and freezer to the coldest settings and make sure they're packed full of thermal mass like we were talking about. Thermal mass is also a battery for cold as well as heat. So for example, your freezer works way less hard if it's full of frozen bottles of water. And so, if you feel plastic water bottles like 90% full, and this is true generally speaking, right? A full fridge or freezer works way less hard. And, because you know it's not stuff that disappears every time you open the fucking door whatever. In general, your fridge or freezer can last about two days without power if they're like real packed full of thermal mass and set to the coldest. In terms of long term preparation for your house, if you live somewhere and you're trying to retrofit shit, you kind of want to go through and make sure that there's hurricane ties attaching your roof to your house. And do the same with your deck and shit, which are just basically these like metal straps that attach one piece of wood to another piece of wood. If you look up hurricane ties, you'll see pictures of them. And then you can go up to your attic or whatever and look to see if you have them. And you can you can retro actively add this, because what happens, the way that wind destroys a house, first, it like pulls off like shingles and siding and stuff that only sort of matter. And then it starts breaking out windows with debris, and doors flying open because of wind, and stuff like that. But then eventually you get to the point where the fucking roof rips off your house is like one of the main things, and then once the roof rips off your house, then the walls have nothing supporting them, so then they fall over. And so you can do a lot of stuff with your doors also to help protect them, especially if you have like double doors, you can add bolts to the inactive door, the door that doesn't open, or the door that doesn't have the handle or whatever, and you had bolts that go up into the ceiling and through the floor. It's also stuff that makes your house harder to break into, which is like cool bonus, right? And garage doors, our old friend garage doors.
Casandra Why we're really talking about this.
Margaret I know
Margaret They they can be storm proofed, but it means you buy a new one. And, I have a feeling that they are expensive and hard to get right now. Like old articles are like "Oh, they cost between $1,000 and $5,000 for a storm proof garage door and I assume that that is not easily the case right now. Okay, and in terms of covering your windows, you want to cover all the windows in your house, not just the ones facing the water. And ideally, if you live there like long term, you want to actually get storm shutters, but those can be expensive. Worst case scenario, you can screw plywood or metal roofing over the windows and glass doors. With plywood you want to aim for about a half inch thick at least, half inch to five eighths. And particle board, don't use particle board or MDF, because probably not strong enough. I don't know and there's just like other shit right like you keep your car packed and facing outward with gas in it. However also, you might want to keep it in a garage and or at least next to a solid building, so that it doesn't fucking blow away or get destroyed by things. Fill up an extra gas can or two because fuck it there's often gonna be gas shortages after these sorts of things. Don't fucking drive through floodwater, that is another way that people die all the fucking time. Like it's about a foot or something of flood that will move a car that will like take a car away. It's way less than you think. Don't fucking drink floodwater. Most of the ways that people water filter don't filter out like gasoline and all kinds of other shit. With a generator, don't fucking run it inside. During the storm, don't go outside during the Eye of the Storm, it'll come back suddenly. Stay away from your windows and glass doors and such. Don't take a shower or a bath because of electrical risk. Kill the power of the main breaker if flooding is coming. And that is what I learned not through direct experience, because again I've died every time I've tried these...I've never been in a hurricane. I've been on the coast rain some storms, right, some tropical storms and shit. But I've never personally been through a hurricane.
Brooke Full circle.
Casandra We should add like Hurricane Preparedness Guide to our list along with the First Aid Guide. That'd be cool. We should talk to like Mutual Aid Disaster Relief folks or someone.
Margaret Yeah. Agreed.
Casandra Cool. But this isn't a Strangers meeting, so...
Margaret No. Welcome to our Strangers meeting.
Brooke You hurri-'can' survive.
Margaret Hurri-'can't.' It's a hurri-'can', not a hurri-'can't.' But, that's...the hurricane itself can destroy houses. It can't...It's a hurri-'can' destroy houses not a hurric-'can't' destroy houses. Got it. You see what I'm getting at. It's a funny joke.
Brooke You're hurri-canceled. Love it.
Casandra When Margaret makes jokes...
Brooke Margaret makes great dad jokes and I love it. So does my kid.
Casandra It's us, not you.
Margaret I say a few short things with our last five minutes.
Margaret No, no, it's fine. It's fine. I mean, I'm trying to make you laugh, so you all laughing works. Okay, so I don't know, what other what other shit? I got. I got like some like little short things. Is anyone else have a major topic? We should talk about it? Should we go into short things?
Margaret Okay, here's the ones I've got. Other people add them at the end. Monkeypox transmission is slowing. There's a small chance it's gonna go endemic, but like overall. monkeypox transmission is slowing. And that's cool. You should still go get fucking vaccinated, though. I should go get vaccinated. LA is installing water restrictors in houses of people who break their water limit, including like including rich people, which is great. Like basically if anyone is using more than 150% of their limit like they're going around and just like literally being like, "You get less water now." The Mississippi River is currently so low that grain and fertilizer transports are halted.
Brooke And that's contributing to supply chain shortages in all kinds of ways, because they can't get stuff up here.
Margaret It also fucks up China. They apparently...a lot of them...They get a lot of soybeans from the US, and 40% of the US soybean export to China comes through the Mississippi River. The Army Corps of Engineers, don't worry as dredging the river to deepen it.
Brooke Great.
Margaret So that they can still ship things there.
Brooke I'm sure that no part of the Mississippi River is a Superfund site or anything like that, and highly toxic.
Margaret Nah, it's fine. I'm sure it's good. I bet everyone who's working that job will be treated well. And a British Columbia river has dried up, and I think a bunch of British Columbia rivers have dried up. They're facing like one of the worst fucking droughts ever, which has killed 65,000 salmon, and has cut spawning by 70%, at least in this area. Bird flu in California is killing a ton of birds. I saw this thing, I was like reading oh, it's like a bird flu again. Goddamnit. And then I'm like, Oh, it's just killing birds...Wait, no, birds are good.
Casandra Yeah, we need birds.
Margaret Yeah. Oil prices might go up again, because OPEC countries are cutting oil production more. Thanks. O-Biden. Inflation is causing manufacturers to start using cheaper ingredients. That's like one of the main ways that like manufacturers are getting around this. And so like a lot of shit they're used to using and trust might now be made like shit.
Casandra I've read about new homes they're building as well.
Margaret Oh, great, because that's what we need is cheaper designed homes.
Casandra Yeah, they're like, A) don't buy a home right now. But B) when you can buy a home in the future, maybe someday don't buy homes built right now.
Brooke I hear that.
Margaret That makes sense.
Brooke But Biden passed the inflation Reduction Act, you guys, so it's gonna be fine.
Margaret Yeah, the fine print is like, "Now use refined," I don't know, whatever, "corn syrup instead of..."
Brooke And the Federal Reserve is raising the target interest rate. So, it's gonna be fine.
Casandra Have you all seen the new like COVID antivax study that just came out?
Margaret No.
Brooke Nope. Oh, we were supposed to die yesterday.
Casandra Apparently, I'm using air quotes, a study came out linking the risk of like heart disease with COVID vaccines in 'men' in particular, something like that. And so, you know, anti vaxxers are like, "See!"
Margaret I wonder if it came out because...the the one that I had heard was that there was a study that came out and I don't have these numbers in front of me, and I'm sorry, audience. I think it's, I think that the the rate of death among Republicans is 18% higher than the rate of death among Democrats, with all other factors considered, as soon as the vaccine came out. And like, yeah, exactly just the vaccine came out people who didn't get it just fucking die more.
Brooke Comparative Study.
Margaret Conspiracy, to try and kill all the Republicans, by the Republican leaders. No, no, wait, go ahead, Brooke. Sorry.
Brooke No, I was gonna give more details on the study. But y'all can y'all can look it up. It was definitely aninteresting study. And it's not like 100% due to COVID for sure. At least they can't like rule out... because it was like measure of excess deaths. And they don't have all the specifics on that. But yeah, a large portion of that is due to vaccine versus not vaccine. Than also there was some tweet that made the rounds that that we were all going to die on October 10 because something was gonna get activated in the vaccine. Y'all see this on Twitter at all?
Margaret That explains why I died in the hurricane.
Casandra I want to back up to the study I mentioned because I didn't clarify that there were like major issues with it. That's all. I didn't want. I didn't want to bring up like this study antivaxxers are using without saying like there were major issues with the study.
Margaret Yeah. That makes sense.
Casandra Yeah, that tracks.
Margaret Well, does that do it for us this month?
Casandra That was a lot. It really was a lot of bad things.
Margaret Oh, one good final thing. Tankers that go around with like, all the stuff that they ship around, are starting to add sails back, and it saves about 10% of their fuel. This is a really minor thing.
Brooke Sailing sails?
Margaret Yeah, yeah.
Brooke Math. Nice.
Margaret Like all the container ships and shit. Not all of them, but they're starting to add sails to container ships to help alleviate the cost of fuel to move everything around. Whatever it is a really minor thing. I just thought was neat. This is my final note.
Casandra Yay, sailboats.
Margaret Yeah. The global economy that got us into this mess in the first place trudging along.
Casandra Ohhhh. Well, stay warm out there, everyone.
Margaret Brooke, you want to lead us out?
Brooke Yeah, I do. So, I took your outro from from the last episode and transcribed it. I'm just gonna I'm gonna read it word for word, Margaret.
Margaret Oh, God.
Brooke Are you ready for how great this is gonna be?
Margaret Yeah, let me hold on to something. Alright.
Brooke And then maybe I'll do a real one after I do this. Thanks so much for listening. Algorithms suck, but if you like this podcast, please like comment, review, blah, blah, blah. It makes the algorithms give our show to more people. It's kind of the only way people end up hearing about our shows is word of mouth. All of that stuff's true. I'm not just saying it cynically, it's just that I have said it, like, whatever, I'm on Episode 50, or whatever. So I've said it like 50 times, and you can support us on Patreon by supporting our publisher, our publisher is Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. The three of us are collective members of a collectively run publisher called Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. It's been around for like 20 years, but it's like getting new mega forces Voltron combines version of itself lately, and it's primarily supported by Patreon.
Brooke I think that was perfect. Flawless. And also, that means that Inmn doesn't have to transcribe it again.
Margaret Yeah.
Brooke You're welcome, Inmn. Just copy/paste. But more seriously, this podcast is produced by the anarchist publishing collective Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. And you can connect with us on Twitter at Tangledwild. And I think we have like Instagram and stuff too. But I don't do Instagram and I think Instagram's evil. So I don't know how to plug that. But it's fine. We're probably there, you can find us places.
Casandra How do you think Instagram's evil but not Twittter?
Brooke That study that came out about teenage girls and like, I don't know, image issues and suicide rates and stuff. The work that we do as a publishing collective is made possible by our Patreon supporters. You can check that out patreon.com/strangersInatangledwilderness. And we really appreciate that support that is right now, again our primary source of funding that's helping out the six of us that are that are running this collective. And then we also have our first book of this new iteration of Strangers coming out, written by Cindy Milstein, the book is "Try Anarchism For Life." You can preorder that a Tangled wilderness.org. That's our website. We've also got some cool T-shirts there. And there's a free skill zine that you can download that we're pretty happy about. And you can learn about upcoming book releases because we do have more in the works. There's a really cool author who's got one coming out in February. And you can check out our sister podcast of...I can't remember who do we call it "Strangers In a Tangled Wilderness?
Margaret Yeah.
Brooke The other Yeah, yeah. And then we want to give a special thanks to some of our Patreon supporters. Hoss, the dog. Micaiah, Chris, Sam, Kirk, Natalie, Eleanor, Jenipher, Staro. Kat J. Chelsea, Danna, David Nicole, Mikki, Oxalis, Paige, SJ, Shawn, Hunter, and Theo.
Margaret Thank you, those people and also other people, but especially those people, everyone else is dead to me.
Brooke So until next time.
Casandra Goodbye.
Margaret Bye
Brooke Bye
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Episode Summary For this This Month in the Apocalypse episode Brooke, Margaret, and Casandra all researched different topics and discuss them. Margaret talks about climate collapse, droughts, floods, wildfires, the cost of wheat, and the dangers of rising humidity for wet bulb temperatures. Casandra talks about Monkey Pox, rises in other viral and vector borne illness, and discovers why rain might actually be a bad thing for your food. Brooke talks about student loan forgiveness and things you, brave listener, might not be aware you are forgiven for. Everyone attempts to get us sponsored by 'Big' Rain Barrel. If you're out there 'Big' Rain Barrel. Please sponsor us.
Host Info Casandra can be found on Twitter @hey_casandra. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Brooke is just great and can be found at Strangers helping up keep our finances intact and on Twitter @ogemakweBrooke
Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Next Episode Come out Friday, September 23rd, and every two weeks there after. Might be about thru-hiking, Parenting, or Archiving.
An easier to read version is available on our website TangledWilderness.org.
Margaret 00:16 Hello, and welcome to Live Like The World Is Dying, your podcasts for what feels like the end times. I'm one of your hosts, Margaret killjoy. I have Brooke and Casandra with me as well as cohosts today, because today, you will be very excited to know that the world's still ending...that we are doing our second monthly This Month in the Apocalypse and we're going to be talking about basically the last month and the I guess that's in the name. Okay. So, Brooke, Casandra, do you want to introduce yourselves? Possibly with Brooke going first.
Casandra 00:52 Your name was first.
Brooke 00:53 Yeah. Okay, alphabetically. Hi, everybody, it's Brooke Jackson again, coming to you live? Oh, wait, no, this will be recorded by the time you hear it. From the sunny lands of the Willamette Valley in Oregon.
Casandra Johns 01:11 We're all in the Willamette Valley right now.
Margaret 01:14 It's true.
Casandra 01:15 It's true. This is Casandra. That's me.
Margaret 01:19 Okay, and so this will be a very short episode, because actually, nothing bad has happened in the world, certainly not nything that feels end times ish, nothing out of the ordinary. I'm under the impression we have reversed most of the major...I mean, I think Biden passed a bill. So, I'm pretty sure climate change is over. And COVID is over. I learned that just the other day walking into a place where I thought everyone would be wearing masks, but it's over. So that's cool. Or, alternatively, let's talk about how China's in the worst heatwave in human history...in recorded history. We're gonna cut it up into segments. And I'm gonna go first with my segment.
Casandra Johns 02:06 Do we need to say "Du duh duh duhh, Channel Zero? As part of the intro?
Brooke 02:13 Do a Jingle?
Margaret 02:16 Yes. Okay. You want to do it?
Brooke 02:20 She just did.
Casandra 02:21 Oh, yeah, I did. Duh duh duh duh!
Margaret 03:19 Okay, and we're back. Okay, so, China...70 Day heatwave as of several days ago, now. And by the time you all are hearing this, I believe we're recording this about five days before this episode comes out. So, who knows what will have happened? There has been a lot of heat waves and floods all over the world this summer. And so China's in the middle of a 70 day heatwave. The drought has reduced hydroelectric output, which huge areas were reliant on the electricity because the water levels are so far down. And of course the electricity is what powers the AC. So no air conditioning is really fun as things get really hot. AC has been turned off in a lot of office buildings. It's cut power to tons of industry, including a bunch of car manufacturers where I'm a little bit like "Eh, whatever. Cars are bad." I mean, I drive cars so I'm kind of an asshole and hypocrite. Anyway. But also solar panel output and EV battery plants and like lots of stuff that's like being pitched as the alternative to things...y'all can feel free to cut me off too as I talk about these things. I'm just like going through my notes. And I don't know, it's breaking records all over the place by like four degrees in a lot of places. It's four degrees Fahrenheit.
Brooke 04:44 What is heatwave in this context? Like are they having like, you know, 115 degree temperatures, are they just?
Margaret 04:53 I mean, so. I mean, I believe in localized places. It's getting like crazy hot but what's interesting about this is that it's it's more the length of it and the abnormality to its usual that is, like, it's a lot of this stuff is like 106 degrees Fahrenheit and things like that. You know, things that are very not nice, but are...well, human survivable. Although we should probably at some point talk about wet bulb temperatures and how dry places are survivable at substantially higher temperatures than humid places. But yeah, so it's it's, it's an it's an abnormality causing problems as far as I understand, rather than like, just specifically, if you step outside, you will be scorched by the heatray that is the sun. It's affecting over a billion people, which is a lot of people. The area of the heatwave is 530,000 square miles, which for context is Texas, Colorado and California combined.
Casandra Johns 05:57 Does that overlap with the area...like, isn't there like a massive wildfire happening in China right now?
Margaret 06:04 I think you know, more about the wildfires than I do.
Casandra Johns 06:07 I don't know what region it was in.
Margaret 06:09 Okay.
Casandra 06:09 I guess I'm curious. Of course, they're related because everything climate-y is related, ultimately.
Margaret 06:16 Yeah.
Casandra 06:19 Yeah, I'm curious how closely they're tied together. But, if you don't know, and I don't know, that's fine. Because there's also a massive wildfire. And that sucks.
Margaret 06:27 Yeah. There's a massive wildfire.
Brooke 06:31 Is that a continuous area, Margaret? That five? Whatever, something miles?
Margaret 06:37 You all are exceeding my level of research that I did, because I did research about the entire world. So I don't know.
Brooke 06:44 Okay, fair.
Casandra 06:45 Oh, yeah. You have more. This is just like heat waves everywhere. Okay.
Margaret 06:48 Yeah. Okay. And also joining us today on playing the squeaky toy in the background is Rintrah, the best dog in the world.
Brooke 06:59 Can confirm.
Margaret 07:00 The best dog in the world. No complaints? Okay. Yeah, I, you know, there's a lot more I don't know about this, right? But this was one that I haven't even seen really cropping up much in the media at all. And actually, one of the things that's sort of interesting and terrible and telling is that a lot of the information that I've been able to find about climate change disasters comes from the business media, like, a lot of this is about how it will affect stock prices, how it will affect, you know...300 Mines are shut down right now in China, or as of you know, two days ago when I did most of the research for this recording. And so it talks more about the 300 mines that have been shut down instead of the 119,000 people who have been evacuated from their homes. And it's just, it's a real problem. There's a lot of photos of like, low reservoirs that are like 20 meters below what they're supposed to be and things like that. And, of course, to tie everything into everything else, you know, things that happen in one place don't only effect that region. The drought is fucking up their harvest, and fertilizer for export has been affected, which will probably fuck up the world's food supply, which was otherwise very stable. So, I don't think that's gonna be a problem.
Casandra Johns 08:16 The world's been chaos, but at least we know, food is cheap and available.
Margaret 08:20 And will stay that way.
Margaret 08:22 Okay, so then the one that I'm finally starting to see more get talked about in the media, thankfully, although it's annoying, because it's only been talked about because now there's like dramatic photos. But whatever. I mean, I'm not blaming people for not paying attention to everything that's happening in the world. Pakistan is having flooding, like just absolutely massive flooding. I've read reports saying that there's a half a million people living in refugee camps. It's taken at least 1000 lives, it's fucking up food production. Over a million homes have been destroyed. A third of the country is underwater. Have y'all seen the satellite image photos?
Casandra 08:22 Yep
Casandra Johns 08:59 Yeah, and they're referring to it as a 'lake.' Which makes me wonder like, are they anticipating at least some portion of it to remain? Like, "And look at our new lake!"
Margaret 09:10 Yeah.
Casandra 09:12 I heard I heard someone else I heard someone referred to it as a 'small ocean.'
Margaret 09:18 Yeah.
Margaret 09:19 Yeah. And, and Pakistan is the the fifth most populous country in the world after China, India, U.S., Indonesia, I think. Yeah. And so it's like, it's a big fucking deal and a big fucking problem. And one of the other problems because capitalism solves...makes everything worse. Pakistan has taken out a $1.1 billion dollar loan from the IMF, which for anyone following at home, the IMF is a predatory lending organization called the International Monetary Fund, that actually a lot of modern leftist politics, at least in the Western world and actually a lot of the developing world kind of cut its teeth in the...during the, the turn of the millennium fighting against the IMF and the World Bank, specifically because of the stuff that they do, which is that they loan predatory. It's like a payday loan. You know, it's like a paycheck loan place, but for entire countries, they loan you $1.1 billion, and then you're going to be paying off the interest for the rest of your life as a country. And of course, a lot of what's happening right now is that developing nations as they take out these loans are therefore forced to extract more fossil fuels from their own countries, in order to pay off the interest of their loan, not even touching the principal, trapping us further and further in the cycle of what's destroying everything. So that's all really fun. Okay, then, East Africa, particularly Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia, are also facing prolonged drought, rising food prices. A lot of this is because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This is projected to leave 20 million people hungry with an estimated 3 million potential deaths if aid isn't delivered, and these three countries represent 2% of the world's population, but 70% of the extreme food insecurity. And most of...about 90% of the wheat imported by East Africa comes from Russia and Ukraine, which are of course, having some issues right now. They're not famously friends. But you're thinking to yourself, "Well, I'm a wheat farmer in the US, and the high prices are good for me." They are not. Things are not good with domestic wheat production here in the United States, either, which, of course, affects large quantities of the world. Also, the US is a major grain exporter. And so this is things that affect the US do affect everyone else. And not just because we're the center of Empire. Drought is affecting wheat fields in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. Kansas is estimating a 30% drop in their harvest. Oklahoma is estimating a 50% drop, in its harvest. And so even though you have these, like record high prices for wheat, farmers are expecting to lose money, because they're not able to grow enough. You look like you have a question.
Brooke 09:19 Oh wow.
Casandra Johns 12:24 And yeah, so we talked about this a little bit the other day, I think, like I'm not sure if people realize what it means when the wheat crop is devastated. You know, it's not just like, "Maybe I can't eat bread."
Brooke 12:43 There's more to it than that?
Casandra Johns 12:45 Right! I mean, the next thing I think of is like, who eats the wheat? Not just humans. You know, like, I can't eat wheat, but like, I eat beef.
Margaret 12:58 Yeah.
Casandra 12:58 And chicken.
Margaret 13:00 Yeah.
Brooke 13:00 Was does that matter, Casandra?
Casandra 13:03 Maybe they eat wheat. Just the like domino effect.
Margaret 13:07 Yeah.
Casandra 13:08 Yeah. When we talk about rising food prices and rising fuel prices, and how those are connected to like rising everything prices.
Margaret 13:15 Yeah. And book prices most famously.
Brooke 13:16 Okay, well, like, I have a solution.
Casandra 13:19 Okay, what's your solution? Is it Communism?
Brooke 13:19 Cause, we're all about solutions here. Well, you started talking about Pakistan being all flooded like the country's a giant lake. And then you said drought in the US and I'm like, "Let's just pick up some water over there and just put it over here." And then there won't be a drought or flood.
Margaret 13:36 So what's so great and I'm gonna get to in a moment is that drought and flood are entirely related. I think you knew this, and we're just setting me up to say this, but they're absolutely related. The more drought you have, the worse flooding you have, which of course, like boggles my immediate science, right? My non science brain is like, "But water is the opposite of drought," you know, and we're gonna get to them second. Okay, so also in the US, Lake Mead is drying up. It's the largest reservoir in the United States, it provides water to 25 million people. It's possible that soon it won't have enough water to feed the Hoover Dam, which provides electricity to about a million people. And the one upside of all of this drought..this is really selfish. It's kind of like interesting the stuff they keep finding in the water. They keep find...
Margaret 14:26 Yeah. They're like finding like some guys like "Oh, look a barrel," and he like pops open some barrel from the 1920s. And just like a dead guy with a bullet in his skull, and they're like, "Oh, the mafia really did just drop people off in barrels," which led me to the conclusion that apparently leaving dead bodies in large body in large bodies of water is more effective of a strategy than I've been led to believe.
Casandra 14:27 Well, they haven't they also...hasn't also revealed like Nazi...like sunken Nazi ships and shit. And then they're like the....
Casandra 14:27 Crime?
Margaret 15:01 Yeah, not in Lake Mead, though.
Casandra Johns 15:04 Right. But then..No, but I'm just saying like everywhere it's revealing interesting things like in Europe the...what are the stones called?
Margaret 15:12 The Hunger Stones.
Casandra 15:13 Hunger Stones?
Margaret 15:15 Yeah.
Casandra 15:15 So apparently, what's the context for this? Previously, in history when there were massive droughts and like rivers dwindled down to nothing, people made carvings in the stones at particular water levels with these like really epic, maybe Margaret's looking at some examples, of these really epic miserable statements about like, "Fear ye, fear ye, if the water gets this low..."
Margaret 15:40 You're dead.
Casandra 15:40 Yeah, but people are seeing those now, which is terrifying and interesting.
Margaret 15:47 Yeah. Terrified and interesting is a good way to describe the current epoch.
Brooke 15:52 Cool. That's the silverling, the mud caked lining.
Brooke 15:52 Yeah. There was. It's not happening right at this moment. But here locally, when the Detroit reservoir got real low a couple of years ago, there was a town that had been flooded when they built the dam there and it was low enough that like, remnants of this town were visible, including like an old wagon, like covered wagon base kind of wagon and other cool artifacts.
Brooke 16:27 See some history before we all die.
Margaret 16:30 Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Brooke 16:31 Great.
Margaret 16:32 So, in California, heat and drought are also combining as power usages reaches a five year high power use, because people are running more and more air conditions. I didn't quite realize exactly how...I don't I don't have a percentage in front of me...But like, air conditioning is a really, really big use of electricity. And so in California, the grid is estimated...is expected to become unstable, although that might have already happened. It was supposed to happen like this week. So that might happen by the time y'all hear this. Or maybe it didn't happen. And I'm here I am chicken littling, all day long. And, of course, Jackson, Mississippi flooding. The capital of Mississippi, which is primarily black city has left 150,000 people without drinking water. Sooo...
Brooke 17:18 I haven't heard about this at all?
Margaret 17:20 Oh, yeah. And there's some mutual aid groups on the ground. Cooperation. Jackson is a long standing organization that works to sort of build dual power and do all kinds of awesome stuff in terms of cooperative economics and things like that. And they are doing a lot of mutual aid work. I believe there's also a group and maybe this is actually not maybe they're not directly related. I'm not sure there's a group called Hillbillies Helping Hillbillies that I've at least seen talk a lot about this issue. I don't know if they do most of their work down there or if they've been more focused on the Tennessee floods.
Casandra Johns 17:54 I know Mutual Aid Disaster Relief is also doing work there.
Margaret 17:59 Yeah. So "Why does all this stuff happen, Margaret?" you might ask.
Brooke 18:07 Why does all this stuff happen, Margaret?
Margaret 18:09 Well, I am an expert named Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodward Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts, and my quote, that is definitely me is, "As the air and oceans warm under a thicker blanket of greenhouse gases, more water vapor evaporates into the air providing more moisture to fuel thunderstorms, hurricanes, nor'easters and monsoons." Basically, as the temperature rise of the Earth, the warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor, every degree of...every increase of one degree Celsius can boost the capacity for holding water vapor by about 7%. So that's fun. And also as things get more humid, you're like, "Okay, well, that's cool. It's like more tropical and stuff, right?" Higher humidity is substantially more dangerous, like heat and humidity is what kills people, because of the way that our bodies thermo regulate basically, like, if you're at 100% humidity, and the temperature goes above your body temperature, you die. Not like instantly, right? But your body loses its ability to thermo regulate. And so that is the wet bulb temperature is the temperature at 100% humidity, and that can be calculated out from there. So, for example, 105 degrees Fahrenheit at 5%. humidity is not that bad. It's like 61 degrees wet bulb, right? You're not in danger, I mean, you can be in danger zone from other parts of it, you need to get in shade, right? But like, whereas 105 degrees at 95% humidity is 103 degrees wet bulb. So, and for context, you know, it's like I used to never really think about the level of humidity that I lived in until I moved to the South and I had to worry about mold and all kinds of other shit. But, much of the South, and San Francisco and also I believe much of Alaska sit at around 80 to 90% humidity, whereas the Southwest might be at around 30% humidity. So, when you hear about temperatures at different levels in different parts of the country, the humidity that they're facing, like matters in terms of how catastrophic this type of thing is likely to be. And then the "What to do about it section!" Don't worry, we're almost done with the terrible climate shit part.
Casandra Johns 20:20 I feel like earlier, you mentioned something about the relationship between flooding and drought. I was hoping you were gonna circle back to that.
Margaret 20:28 Okay. Oh, yeah. So. So basically, the...some atmosphere shit I only half understand. But, as everything gets hotter, more of the air like sits...and more of the water sits in the air and that...it just fucks everything up. So, like, the rain falls off fucked up. I, I kind of like, wrap my head around it. And then I, it unraveled, you ever, like study things that are completely outside your thing? And then you like, you get your takeaway, and then the details like dissolve? That's what happened to me while I was researching this?
Casandra Johns 21:00 No, that's I didn't realize it had I, I thought my assumption was it was going to be that, you know, you can look up videos of this where like, people put a cup of water upside down on like dry soil, you know, partially damp soil and like saturated wet soil. And the cup of water immediately, like seeps into the ground in the saturated soil, but it takes a really long time for the dry soil to absorb the water.
Margaret 21:25 Yeah.
Casandra 21:25 And so my assumption was like, "Oh, if there's a drought and the soil is bone dry, it can't absorb moisture very effectively."
Margaret 21:33 Yeah.
Casandra 21:33 Which is counterintuitive, maybe? But...then it floods.
Margaret 21:36 I think that is a big part of it. Yeah.
Casandra 21:38 Okay.
Margaret 21:39 And then also, I was even just like...go ahead.
Brooke 21:43 I was thinking about how matter can't be created or destroyed. And so the water still exist somewhere, even though it got sucked up from the dry places. And that might be why it ended up flooding in other places because the water still exists.
Margaret 21:58 Well, a lot of places it's literally the same place will have droughts and floods. I think Texas was dealing with that I think it was Dallas, was having a record drought and might still be in a record drought and then had like, really fuck off flooding. I think it was about a week or two ago. That was like destroying everything. And, you know, because if the rain patterns are just completely different than Yeah, what the ground is used to absorbing and like, and which ties into what to do about it. A lot of what to do about it needs to happen at the scale that we're not necessarily going to talk about right now. But, rainwater catchment and drought areas is super important. And, you know, I was looking it up because there's this like. I'd always been sort of told that rainwater catchment like fucks up the water system of that area, you know, because Colorado has, they have re-legalized it a little bit in 2016. But it's been illegal for a very long time to catch rainwater in Colorado because they're like, "Oh, it's so dry here. We need all the groundwater." That was what I had always got told. The real reason's that Colorado made rainwater catchment illegal have a lot more to do with...capitalism, and the way that water rights are, you're basically stealing from people in entirely different areas if you catch the rainwater at the source or whatever. And, it it can affect things,right, if you like take water that could otherwise have ended up groundwater, but you're mostly it's mostly like shit that would have run off anyway. And so rainwater catchment increasingly in a lot of places, I believe Arizona has like new laws that like require new buildings to include rainwater catchment. There's entire countries who I didn't write down the names of that require rainwater catchment in all new buildings, especially island nations, I'm under the impression and so rainwater catchment is cool. And then, Arizona you can get rebates if you install rainwater catchment. In Colorado, it is now legal again for like home level and there's like all these like rules and shit. And you're, you're only allowed to store two barrels for a total of 110 gallons and you can only do it at like, home, or whatever. I'm sure there's ways that people could imagine catching rain water without getting caught. The CDC points out that rainwater is generally not safe to drink without treatment. You can use it to water non food plants without treatment. I say this, I showered with rainwater for the past three years and don't give a shit. But, maybe I shouldn't recommend that to other people. But, also filtering rainwater is like not the biggest deal in the world. And then...
Casandra Johns 24:39 Also like, the idea of only using it on non food plants is really funny to me, because like it just rains on my plants, you know? And then I eat them.
Margaret 24:51 Yeah.
Brooke 24:52 You shouldn't let rain land of your plants.
Margaret 24:54 You shouldn't be eating food from plants. Plants comes from stores, Casandra.
Casandra Johns 24:59 Uh oh. Okay. And if they get rained on specifically then they're like poison.
Margaret 25:06 Yeah, me, okay. Like, you walk out of a food store, the main place that people get food, like McDonald's, and you have your chicken nuggets, or...
Casandra 25:14 And then they get rained on?
Margaret 25:16 You wouldn't want to eat them now, would you?
Casandra 25:18 Okay, I see what you mean.
Margaret 25:20 Yeah, no, I like that part about the like non food plants or whatever is like to me is like that's what the CDC says. The CDC has lost a lot of...I don't trust it as much as I might have used to.
Casandra 25:36 Interesting segue to...
Margaret 25:39 Yeah. Well, there is one more part though that I believe one have you added to the notes about soil remediation and dry gardening? I'm wondering if you want to talk about some of that.
Brooke 25:52 That has to be Casandra, cause it wasn't me.
Casandra Johns 25:54 Oh, I mean, that was me thinking about like, how the what I was saying before how bone dry soil...the best place to store water is in the soil. Right?
Margaret 26:04 Yeah.
Casandra 26:06 Just like the best place to store nitrogen is in the soil. But, you know, if I lived in a super dry area, and this is only so effective for like the home gardener, this like ideally would happen on a large scale. But, if I lived in a really dry area, I'd be working really hard to like improve my soil health so that it can store more water. So that things like dry gardening are possible. So I can you know, have food even in a drought.
Margaret 26:32 What is dry gardening?
Casandra Johns 26:36 Dry gardening is gardening with little to no, like, manually added water.
Margaret 26:43 Is that where you like mulch the shit out of it all to prevent evaporation?
Casandra Johns 26:46 Yeah, you can do it that way. You can also...there. There's a...well, it's on my bookshelf, so I'm not gonna mention it because I can't remember the title right now. But yeah, mulching, spacing your plants a lot farther out, making sure that your soil can store water so that if you know we live, where I live, it rains a lot in the spring. And if the plants I plant have a room, and the soil is fluffy enough that they can send the roots really deep, then in the summer, when it's dry, they can still access the water that's stored in the soil. Does that make sense?
Margaret 27:19 Cool, and then they grow chicken nuggets?
Casandra 27:22 Yep.
Margaret 27:23 Cool. Okay, so back to the clever segue that I broke about not trusting the CDC....
Casandra Johns 27:36 Yeah, yeah, I Okay. So, we realized we should probably say at least something about monkey pox. Because it's the thing that exists. My notes are titled monkey pox sucks. And...
Brooke 27:52 Correct.
Casandra Johns 27:53 Correct. Yeah. And I realized in researching this that I knew very little, I think I was just like, "We live in a time where there will be epidemic after epidemic," and I'm, you know, mentally overloaded on this topic. And had a lot of assumptions that were wrong. But, one interesting thing I found out is that the CDC is saying it's not transmitted....It's not airborne. Which, you know, they've kind of gone back and forth about whether masks are going to help...masks. I can't enunciate....whether masks are going to help prevent the spread.
Brooke 28:37 If the mask prevents you from licking someone's open wounds, then then I say that would be helpful. Put your mask on.
Casandra Johns 28:44 But, then there's there are other recommendations around like, avoiding close face to face contact with people. So that's all. I think I'm just affirming that I am also skeptical of CDC guidelines at this point, which is a bummer.
Margaret 28:59 Yeah.
Casandra 29:01 Anyway, do you want to hear all about monkeypox?
Margaret 29:04 Yeah. Yay.
Casandra 29:06 Yay.
Margaret 29:06 What a fun show we make.
Brooke 29:10 That's like a game, right? It's a children's game that you play. It's fun. Spread all over? Isn't it great?
Casandra 29:18 No.
Margaret 29:19 It's one of those games with a 1-3% death.... Okay, please continue.
Brooke 29:24 That's pretty low. It's fine.
Casandra Johns 29:26 Oh, my God, what a world that we live in. So apparently was discovered in 1958 in laboratory monkeys. So, you know, you can insert something here about blaming capitalism for everything. Because maybe it wouldn't have been a thing if monkeys were not in laboratories? Anyway, it's a cousin of smallpox in the first human case was recorded in 1970. When I first heard about monkey pox in May or whatever I was like, "Oh, cool and new disease." It's not new. It's been around for decades. So, it's really interesting that like, we don't have a vaccine that can quickly be rolled out. Do you want to guess why that is?
Margaret 30:14 Is it Capitalsim?
Brooke 30:14 I guess 'racism.'
Casandra 30:15 Racism. Brooke wins with 'racism.'
Brooke 30:23 Yay?
Casandra 30:26 Yeah, so it was that to be uncommon in humans, but cases started increasing around 1980. And most of the cases have been documented in central and western Africa. That correct? In Africa.
Margaret 30:41 Yeah, you said Nigeria is like one of the main spots of it?
Casandra 30:45 For this outbreak.
Margaret 30:46 Okay.
Casandra 30:48 Yeah. So, and they think that one of the reasons....so there have been multiple outbreaks since it was first recorded in humans in 1970, which I didn't realize, because we don't hear about them, because mostly they've taken place in Africa. Which is just depressing. And I'll come back around to that in a minute. But, they think that that the increase in cases might be connected to the fact that it is related to smallpox. The smallpox vaccine, they think gives like, 85% that it is like, 85% effective against monkey pox. But most people don't get the smallpox vaccine anymore.
Brooke 31:27 Yeah.
Casandra 31:28 And I think that's related to the increase in monkey pox cases.
Margaret 31:33 People don't get the smallpox vaccine anymore, because smallpox kind of went away because of vaccines?
Casandra 31:40 Yeah,
Brooke 31:41 No, it just stop being trendy. People were like, "That is not cool anymore. I'm not gonna take that one."
Casandra Johns 31:48 Yeah, yeah. Which then is like, there's a whole tangent in here about who and how they decide a disease has been 'eradicated.' I'm doing air quotes that you can't see has been, 'eradicated.' Especially when something like monkey pox is trance was initially transmitted from animals to humans. And so, yeah, I don't know, is smallpox eradicated? I don't know. I'm not an epidemiologist. But I'm curious. So, let's see. Okay, so the current outbreak grew from one case in Massachusetts in the US, I'm talking about the US now, May 17. And at this point, you know, however many days it's been since May, there are almost 20,000 cases in the US, which is a lot of cases.
Brooke 32:40 I mean, it sounds like a big number. But, also I know, there's a lot of people in the US, but also, I don't know how much cases of other things that we know about are common. So I don't have any frame of reference.
Margaret 32:51 Yeah same.
Casandra 32:53 Yeah.
Brooke 32:54 Well, it's way smaller than Covid.
Casandra Johns 32:57 Right. It is way smaller than Covid. But, you know, and it's, it's sort of like Covid, you're probably not going to die from it. But then there's the asterisk, 'unless you're immunocompromised already,' you know. So like, who are we? Who are we willing to throw under the bus for this?
Brooke 33:13 So just Casandra.
Casandra 33:13 Yeah, just me. Yeah. But then there's also public health experts are apparently warning that the virus is on the verge of becoming permanently entrenched here.
Margaret 33:24 Cool.
Casandra 33:25 So maybe 20,000 isn't, you know, a big chunk of the population, but in terms of like, a virus, it's bad news, because we don't really want it to become entrenched here, right?
Brooke 33:38 Yeah, viruses, bad.
Casandra 33:41 Virus equals bad. Okay. Okay, so, so there's been a lot of criticism about Biden's administration and their sluggish response to the outbreak. I read a really interesting report. I think WaPo [Washington Post] was the first place to report on this, but they said that, on August 4, US Health and Human Services officials plan to stretch the country's limited supply, or they announced, that they plan to stretch the country's limited supply of vaccines by splitting doses to cover five times as many people. This is after saying that they had plenty of doses. So, already sketchy. Yeah, cool, cool. And then the chief executive of Bavarian Nordic who's the vaccine manufacturer responded by accusing the Biden admin of breaching contract by planning to use them in this like inappropriate way by splitting the doses and then apparently threatened to cancel all future vaccine orders so that....Yeah, I'm not sure how that was resolved.
Brooke 34:45 Capitalism. The other 'ism' now at play.
Margaret 34:50 I was right. I was late.
Casandra Johns 34:57 So the big concern for me in researching this was how it spreads, because I have a child who's about to go back to public school, so apparently animal to human transmission, it's spread by direct contact with blood, bodily fluids or cutaneous or mucosal lesions of infected animals. And then human to human transmission is close contact with respiratory secretions, which to me says airborne, right, right? Is that not what that means? Anyway, respiratory secretions, skin lesions of an infected person, or recently contaminated objects. So things like bedding, clothing, stuff like that. Um, but the CDC says it's not airborne. So, take that, as you will. I don't know. How are you gonna take that, Brooke?
Brooke 35:41 Right. Well, I mean, respiratory secretions that does sound more significant than just like, you know, air droplets, like we talked about with covid, like, more moist, kind of things coming out of you, like sneezes and coughs and stuff that actually sprays more liquid matter?
Casandra 36:07 So, use your imagination with that.
Margaret 36:08 We could just go through and describe every act that could...
Casandra 36:10 Don't spit in people's mouths.
Brooke 36:14 Damn it, there goes half of my kink play.
Margaret 36:18 I mean, it does seem like it's less contagious than like, because like, okay, right, like, because they said originally COVID wasn't airborne. And they weren't always wrong about that, right? But, the fact that it's been here for months, and is at 20,000 cases, is like, 'promising,' in that it seems less contagious than COVID? But that's, I guess I'm talking about like, the first or second most contagious virus that the world's ever faced. So, I guess it's a terrible benchmark to compare it to.
Casandra Johns 36:49 Yeah, I think comparing everything to covid is probably not in our best interest, especially because a lot more people are comparing this to AIDS, in terms of the communities it's impacting, and how it's spreading. So it's, it's okay, let me go back to my list. Alright, so the incubation period is usually six to thirteen days, it's thought to be mainly spread through sexual activity, specifically, men who have sex with men and have multiple partners, though now they've sort of expanded that to include like queer and trans people, which is good. Not that it's spreading in queer and trans communities, but that they're changing language. So then I was like, "Well, is it an STI, right?" And I Googled "Is Monkey pox and STI? And the first two articles that came up, were: Number one, "Monkey pox is an STI and knowing that can help." And then number two is, "Monkey pox is spreading through sex, but it's not an STI." So you know, I'm not a doctor.
Casandra Johns 37:02 It's not an STI.
Casandra 37:29 Okay.
Brooke 37:31 Because it's not it's, yeah, go ahead.
Casandra Johns 37:52 But it seems to mainly be spreading through sex, probably because of the close contact involved.
Margaret 38:02 Yeah, I mean, like, like, scabies is...
Brooke 38:04 Yeah, like not through the sex itself.
Casandra 38:06 Right.
Brooke 38:07 But through the close physical contact of you know, that happens during sex.
Casandra Johns 38:12 I think. I also saw a list. I think it's LA County. I was reading their like, list of eligibility criteria, and maybe risky behavior to avoid...'in void.' Would that even? Yeah, thank you. I was just trying to figure out what my made up word means. Risky behavior to avoid and they listed that, like, we're still learning about how it's transmitted, right, which is wild for a disease that's been around since the 70s. But, they listed that it could possibly be transmitted through semen. Like not solely but that could be another way that it's transmitted.
Brooke 38:53 Sure, transmitted through bodily fluids, but the distinction when it when it's an STI is something that's sort of limited to being transmissible through kind of the genital region.
Casandra Johns 39:10 Is that why one type of herpes is considered an STI, and the other isn't?
Brooke 39:14 Yeah, so you can like can get both of them in both places because of oral sex.
Casandra 39:21 Huh, that's interesting.
Brooke 39:23 But yeah, technically. That's why.
Casandra Johns 39:25 Thanks for knowing more about STI classification than me. I appreciate it.
Brooke 39:29 Well, I fuck a lot. So I got to know these kinds of things.
Casandra 39:35 All right, moving on with my notes. My next...
Brooke 39:40 I just made everyone turn a scarlet blushing red color because I have non prude among this collective.
Casandra Johns 39:48 I'm not blushing. I'm not prudish. I'm just Demi. Okay, so my next section is titled "Racism," which, yeah, so the virus isn't spreading in this specific outbreak of monkey pox is been spreading in Nigeria since 2017. Yet, somehow there are no clinical...there's no clinical trial data of the effectiveness of the vaccine or T pox, which is the antiviral they've developed. No human studies. I wonder why. Um, well, I as I said it's understudied because up until now, it's been isolated to central and west Africa. Yeah. What would have happened if we were vaccinating on a large scale in Nigeria? Would it have spread?
Margaret 40:31 Yeah, I mean, that's like such a thing that I keep thinking about all this shit, where it's like, it's just seemed so obvious to me that, like the solutions to all the major things that we're dealing with right now, like don't make any sense in a world full of borders. You know? Being like, like, "We got ours. Fuck you," doesn't make any fucking it never made any fucking sense. But, it really doesn't make any fucking sense now, or it's like, yeah, if we had, like, I don't understand, even if I'm like a self interested, rich white American. I don't understand how I can be like, "Oh, new new disease just dropped and it's in another country." Let's go get rid of it in another country. That makes sense from...it's cheaper than building spaceships to Mars.
Brooke 41:16 I think it's people still just not fundamentally understanding how deeply integrated we are now as a global society. Yeah. I mean, we shouldn't have figured especially in the last couple of years, if you haven't figured it out before, then like, you should understand that now. I feel like...
Margaret 41:32 Yeah, acids been around for a long time.
Casandra 41:39 Don't understand the reference?
Margaret 41:43 Just like, oh, no, like, we're all one consciousness? Whatever.
Casandra 41:52 Okay, my next subsection of notes is titled "Homophobia."
Margaret 41:55 Hurray.
Casandra 41:56 This is...I'm announcing these by way of a content warning. So yeah, so I read a few different, you know, I've seen like on Twitter and stuff, people talking about how homophobia relates to the way the language the government has been using and media outlets have been using around monkeypox, and also the government response to it and didn't fully understand that other than that it's mainly spreading in queer networks right now. But, I read an article that talked about how the homophobia they were seeing was mainly around the language that gay sex is quote, unquote, 'driving' the epidemic. Yeah, and just like really sex negative advice around how to keep from getting monkey pox. But, in reality, the drivers of the epidemic are the structures globally that have led to like vaccines and tests and treatments all existing for this virus, but not being accessible.
Margaret 42:57 Yeah.
Casandra 42:58 Yeah, I don't know if y'all have read any of the first person accounts of people trying to find access even to a test. Like I read an account of someone who went to their doctor was like, "I think a monkey pox." and the doctor, like, had to jump through all of these hoops just to access a test
Margaret 43:14 Fucking hell.
Margaret 43:16 So that's cool. Let's see, before I talk about the 'What we can do,' I want to circle back to climate change really quickly. Because, I think that in my brain, I know that epidemics and climate change are related, but I hadn't thought much about how in the particular mechanisms, but I read an interview that, that interested in me a lot. And they talked about how climate change is driving the risk of infectious diseases. I saw a report that 58% of the 375 infectious diseases they examined, have...this is a quote, "have been at some point aggravated by 'climatic hazards.'" So that's cool.
Brooke 44:03 I...but how? I don't understand the connection.
Casandra 44:06 Yeah. So. So one way is that climate change, they were talking about how it brings humans closer to animals, not in the sense that like "We are closer to nature," but just like, as we encroach on...
Brooke 44:17 oh, sure.
Casandra 44:20 And so, animal to human transmission is a thing. But, also if we're talking about like climate change and natural disasters, people get very sick of diseases and die after natural disasters. So, I'm sure that's part of what they mean by 'aggravated,' being 'aggravated by climatic hazards.' Warmer temperatures also attract insects and carriers of disease to parts of the world that they didn't used to exist in. Margaret. I feel like you were talking about...we were talking the other night and you mentioned like...no was it you? Maybe I was reading something? I've been reading too much lately. I was reading about a type of mosquito that is like, more likely to carry things like Dengue fever, and is now in the US, is now in the northern hemisphere. And.
Margaret 45:08 Oh, that's exciting.
Casandra 45:10 Yeah, and it has to do with warmer water temperatures where they can hatch their eggs and also with capitalism, because apparently they were transported here in 'tires.'
Margaret 45:22 Huh?
Casandra 45:23 Like when tires sit, you know outside in a wash, tje water pools? Yeah. Wild.
Margaret 45:33 Which ties back to rain catchment and how don't do lazy rain catchment where you just put your downspout into the barrel, you should filter it, and you should prevent mosquitoes from breeding in there. Also algae, and all kinds of other stuff.
Casandra 45:47 Yeah, it's true.
Brooke 45:49 So today's episode is brought to you by capitalism and racism.
Margaret 45:54 And I was thinking rain barrels. But Sure.
Brooke 45:59 Well, the reason we have to talk about these horrible things is the 'isms.'
Margaret 46:04 Right? Where as I was thinking about sponsors, Big Rain Barrel. The big sponsor of the show.
Brooke 46:11 That'd be a great sponsor. I hope we get a free barrel.
Casandra 46:14 Yeah.
Brooke 46:14 Free barrel with every Ep [episode]
Margaret 46:16 Yeah. I want to be able to talk about them personally. So, please contact us through the site. The advertisers. I want the I want Big Rain Barrel to...I just want a rain barrel. That's all. Please continue.
Casandra 46:31 So in 2022, we're still experiencing the COVID outbreak, right? And now my monkey pox. And also polio.
Margaret 46:40 Cool.
Casandra 46:42 Yeah. Yeah, yes. Polio. Someone Someone got polio. For the second time since they declared polio like a...they don't use the word eradicated. But they were basically like, "Humans don't get this anymore." But two have since then. One was this summer. So that's...okay.
Brooke 47:06 That's neat.
Casandra 47:07 Yeah, what can we do about it? We can wash our hands a lot. I'm still gonna wear a mask, even though the CDC says it's not airborne, because I don't understand the difference. And also Covid's still a thing. We can research testing and vaccination in our areas, because it seems to be vastly different in different cities and counties and really confusing. So you can do the research ahead of time and share it through your network so people know where to access information and help. You can also get vaccinated if you qualify. However, I let's see, I looked at a few different counties and their eligibility criteria. And they all seem to have a few things in common. You have to be gay or bisexual men, or a transgender person who has had either 1) Multiple or anonymous sex partners in the last 14 days or 2) Skin to skin, skin to skin or intimate contact with people at large venues or events in the last 14 days. And then they're also starting to include people of any gender or sexual orientation who have engaged in commercial or [cuts out], so sex workers in the last 14 days. So yeah, if any of those are you, and you have a vaccination place near you, why not get it?
Margaret 48:32 Because Bill Gates will be able to track all the sex you have?
Brooke 48:38 Yeah,
Casandra 48:39 The reason I agreed to research monkey pox for this episode is because, like I said, my kids about to go back to school. And I was really nervous. And I'm feeling a little bit less nervous for the moment about school because of the cases documented in children so far areextremely low. So, that's some good news for all of the other parents out there.
Margaret 49:02 And the children listening
Casandra 49:05 For any of the children listening.
Margaret 49:06 It just occurred to me that children might listen to this podcast. I'm so sorry, children, about the world. Not about the cussing. I'm sorry about the world.
Casandra 49:18 Speaking of school,
Brooke 49:20 Hey, yo, student loan forgiveness that's been in the news. Right? And as the person with the background in economics, I feel like I have to talk about that. So, student loans, I'm fairly certain that of the two of you one of you has student loans and one of you does not. And I'm I'm curious how each of you feel about student loan forgiveness without...you can go ahead and not reveal which one of you it is and isn't for the moment. Just tell me if you like it? Is it good? Or bad?
Casandra 49:56 Fucking-tastic I mean, not this version, this version is just like so. So, but like, should they forgive all of our student loans? Fuck yes, they should.
Margaret 50:04 I agree.
Brooke 50:05 Casandra says yes. Oh, and Margaret agrees Wait, but only one of you has student loans?
Margaret 50:11 So, I don't have student loans. And...I can't imagine, I can't imagine anyone who doesn't have student loans giving a shit. Like I just like, I struggle so hard. Like, every time someone's like, "They did this with our taxpayer money," and I'm like, "Motherfucker, they invaded half the world with our tax money." Like...
Casandra 50:35 There there other things you should be frustrated about being done with your tax dollars.
Casandra 50:40 And this is not one of them.
Margaret 50:40 Yeah!
Margaret 50:42 Yeah. And then even with my like, even if I was like a self interest capitalist shit, it's like, I don't know, healthy economy is not one built on fucking debt. And I don't know, whatever. I'm just like...
Brooke 51:00 Don't spoil my ending, Margaret.
Margaret 51:02 Oh, sorry. Right.
Casandra 51:04 But capitalism means that there have to be people who are suffering and poor so that I can feel superior and be stable and have more money.
Margaret 51:13 Oh, that's a good point.
Casandra 51:14 Yeah.
Margaret 51:15 No, I take it back actually, Brooke. I'd like to change my answer. No one should.
Casandra 51:21 Fuck Casandra.
Margaret 51:26 No one should have the right to have debt forgiven. It should probably be transmitted to children and children's children. Oh, wait, that already happens. Just okay. Anyway.
Casandra 51:36 What about corporations? Shouldn't they be able to get their debt forgiven, Margaret?
Margaret 51:40 Oh, yeah. I mean, corporations, obviously should have their debt forgiven. I mean, otherwise, we wouldn't have an economy.
Brooke 51:46 Like, God. Okay. You two know everything. My work is done here. Throw the topic and walk away. Excellent.
Casandra 51:55 Sorry, Brooke.
Brooke 51:56 No, I'm loving it.
Casandra 51:58 This is how we cope with talking about money.
Margaret 52:01 Yeah.
Brooke 52:04 Oh, it's so good. No, I have you know, I have a couple of, of friends and or relations that are both on the against it side. Well, neither of whom went to college or have any students debt.
Casandra 52:21 Why are they still your friends?
Brooke 52:22 Well, Facebook friends, let's say that.
Casandra 52:25 That's fair.
Brooke 52:25 I think it's important to listen to what people say on the other side. So, I try and understand the arguments and can have a conversation back and hopefully bring them into the light.
Margaret 52:34 Yeah, that's legit. But wait, what if we instead created an increasingly more insular and pure subculture?
Brooke 52:44 It seems problematic I'm gonna say, but...
Margaret 52:47 What?
Brooke 52:47 That's probably for another episode. Okay.
Margaret 52:50 Okay, I'll stop derailing you,
Casandra Johns 52:52 it would only be the three of us. Everyone else is wrong in some way.
Margaret 52:56 I think that that's probably true. I'm sorry Bursts, who's doing our editing, I'm sorry Inmn, who produce the podcast.
Brooke 53:06 You better apologize to all the patrons right now too.
Margaret 53:10 Yeah, if you want to be pure and join our pure culture. A $20 a month level.
Brooke 53:19 No. No cults. No cults.
Margaret 53:22 Everyone keeps saying that to me. Okay.
Brooke 53:26 That's why I took away that book on cults that I showed you the other day, you don't need the help.
Margaret 53:32 Please continue.
Brooke 53:33 Oh, God. Right. So so the arguments against it. Like you were saying, you know, one of them's about the, "I don't want my tax dollars going to that," which, like you said, is a pretty wild argument, because we don't get to decide directly where our tax dollars go. There's plenty of things that I'm in...None of us like taxes...And amongst us, especially like, abolish the government abolish the taxes, but even people who are okay with taxes as a functioning society, we still, you know, you don't get to decide where each dollar goes. What's your question face?
Casandra 54:10 You mean when I vote, it doesn't directly change things?
Brooke 54:14 Oh, God, another topic for another whole podcast episode about how about how it actually works out there in the world. Yeah, so that argument is kind of wild. And then the other one that I that I have seen is the, you know, "Why should anyone else pay for their choices?" especially if it's their...other people's bad choices or whatever. Which again, is wild to me.
Margaret 54:42 You mean the bad choice to loan $60,000 to a 17 year old?
Brooke 54:47 Yeah, seems like maybe that should be not a not a thing.
Margaret 54:51 Well, I just but it's a bad financial like, like come on. That's that's a that's part of loaning money is you take into account like, there's risk involved. It is a risky loan to loan a 17 year old money. Anyway, yep. Sorry.
Brooke 55:07 Yeah, I saw one of my, you know, probably Gen X or Boomer aged relatives saying, "Hey, I signed up for the loans at 18. And I read the document, and I knew what I was getting myself into. And it was a choice. And it's everybody's choice." And it's so many bad takes so many bad takes...
Casandra 55:24 I wonder how much their loan was compared to mine?
Brooke 55:27 Yeah, and there's that.
Casandra 55:28 I'm gonna guess significantly less.
Brooke 55:30 Yeah, so let me get into a little bit of data here, because I love data. Let's talk also about what the loans are and aren't, because if you're only looking at the headlines there's a lot that's not captured in there. The number we see tossed around is the $10,000 of forgiveness. And that's up to $10,000 of forgiveness. So there's caveats on that, because there's a income limitation as to when you can get it. And it decreases a little bit based on what your income is. But also, if you were awarded a Pell Grant, at any point in your college education, you can actually get up to $20,000 in forgiveness, and Pell Grants are a federal grant, not a loan, but a grant, i.e. a gift, basically, that only go out to the lowest income kind of folks. So, if you qualified for a Pell Grant at the time that you also took out loans, then you can get a higher amount of loan forgiveness. And then it also only is it takes effect for people who had taken out a loan prior to June 30th of this year 2020. So if you're in school, right now, if you're just starting this fall, it doesn't apply to you. You had to have taken out a loan prior to that to qualify. Some of the cool things about it, though, are that it helps kind of all kinds of federal loans, which 95% of student loan debt is a federal loan. Only about 5% is private loans. So that's most people with loans, although it's only again, those income requirements, but that's still a large portion of folks. Where's the other one I was looking at? Oh, there's a type of loans that parents can take out to help their kids. So most of the federal loans that folks sign up for, they are signing up themselves, right, you're putting yourself in debt for it, even though you're only 18, or whatever. But parents can also get a loan, there's a federal loan called Parent PLUS, that you can take out to help your kids and those loans also qualify for forgiveness. And that is different than the student's loan. So if you're a parent who took out one of those loans for your kid, and your kid also took out loans, you both separately qualify for forgiveness.
Casandra 57:48 Is this...Sorry, is this...I hadn't heard of those parent loans. Is the thought that they're taking out a loan to help pay for their kids college?
Brooke 57:56 Yeah.
Casandra 57:57 Okay. So, just like, "Look, another loan we can give to someone."
Brooke 58:02 Yeah. And it's a federal federal one again, and you know, federal loans overall are, at least compared with like private student loans you can get they're way more reasonable, super low interest rates, longer repayment periods, you can get restructuring, if you're having financial issues or get a pause on it, there's more ways to get them forgiven, like working for a nonprofit or in the private sector, stuff like that. So, these are sort of nicer loans, which is one of the faults that people point out with it is that the the private loans that are the more of the predatory style loans, like we talked about with the IMF earlier, you know, higher interest rates, they don't care about how much you are or aren't making necessarily, they just say you have to start paying it at this point, and you have to pay this much and they'll come after your car or your dog or your firstborn child or whatever in order to get their repayments. And this federal forgiveness doesn't affect those folks.
Margaret 58:59 Would you say that our listeners should take out predatory loans from payday loan places in order to buy rain barrels?
Brooke 59:08 No. Because you should never support predatory loan places. You can steall from those places.
Margaret 59:16 What if we, what if we start a rain barrel loan fund that offers predatory rates?
Brooke 59:28 Then I would no longer call you an anarchist. You'd be an An-Cap [Anarcho-capitalist] and out of the club.
Casandra 59:33 Is this you? Is this you segwaying into an ad break for our sponsors?
Margaret 59:41 No, i was my brain's poisoned by how the fact that my other podcast is...has actual ad breaks.
Casandra 59:48 Duh Duh duh duuuuh! I'm rain barrels!
Brooke 59:49 Hey, if rain barrels would give away some, loan some rain barrels, I would let them plug a little ad on this ad-free anarchist podcast network. Yeah.
Margaret 1:00:01 Yeah. Although, I'm holding out for big IBC tote.
Brooke 1:00:05 Yes.
Margaret 1:00:05 Cause IBC totes are 275 gallons, sort of 55 gallons. And that's what I showered with for the past three years, an IBC tote available from wherever you're willing to go get a really cheap thing that used to be full of detergent and wash it out vaguely.
Margaret 1:00:11 Half an hour's drive, we can go grab some.
Casandra 1:00:25 Wait, really?
Margaret 1:00:26 Yeah, yeah.
Casandra 1:00:28 We should talk about that after we're done doing a podcast which we are in fact doing right now.
Margaret 1:00:32 Oh right, okay.
Brooke 1:00:33 Okay, one of the other things that comes up when folks talk about student loans is you get like the the Boomer types that will say, you know, "I worked a part time job when I was in school and paid off my...paid for my school while I was going to school." And I think we all know that that's just not possible to do anymore. And that's because of the cost of education and how it has skyrocketed. So, if you look at the difference from 70s, 80s, or so, of like median income in the US with the average household makes, versus the average cost of college, the average income has gone up like half again as much since the 80s or so, whereas the cost of college is four times more expensive than it was. And then the other argument that comes up that people make is, well, "Everybody thinks they have to go to college. Now, you know, everybody's trying to enroll in college, not everyone needs to go to college. But everyone tries to." And when you look at the numbers of like, the portion of the population that has that's going to college and how that's changed in the last like 50 years, it's been pretty much steady for the last 25 years. It rose in the 60s, late 60s was kind of flat in the 70s then started to rise again through the 80s and the mid 90s. Probably because of the series of recessions that we had that were really severe in some places, like Oregon had a really severe recession. And when there was a recession, more people go back to school, but it hit a peak in the mid 90s And then dropped for a while and then has kind of been staying around that peak, on average, over the last 25 years. That and that's the number of people has gone up, but the portion of the population, right, so as a percent of the total population has actually been quite stable for a while now.
Margaret 1:02:30 And like, I'm a big fan of having not gotten a degree, right? But, I even had a dream again last night where I like dropped out of school again. And I was like, "Fuck you, I quit." And it was really, but, but it's something that I think that a lot of people don't talk about when they talk about being like, "Oh, well, not everyone needs a college degree," or whatever it is they they don't understand that like how important upper higher education is to upward mobility and upward class mobility, especially for like people who are like, marginalized among other identities besides class, like specifically around race, you know, like, there's...so I think that...I think it's something that we can accidentally get a little to like, "Yeah!" like, you know, people get very, like "I'm so blue collar, everyone should drive forklifts," instead of going and studying gender studies or whatever, right? And just like not fucking getting how important class mobility can be for people and how that functions most of the time. And so I get really annoyed when people are like, "No one should ever go to college," or whatever, because I'm like, that is a really that is a position that comes from a specific place for some people, you know?
Casandra 1:03:44 Yeah.
Brooke 1:03:46 I think people also forget in that the fact that college classes can include courses for some of those types of jobs. So,talking about like the other four year degree, an apprenticeship. You know, if you're an electrician or a sheetmetal worker, you're probably you're going to take some classes and probably through a community college as part of your education to get those kinds of jobs. If you're doing a forklift or CNC, you have to take a course and they can be three months, six months, twelve months courses, and often again, through community college. So even though you're not getting a degree, you're still doing some post secondary education.
Margaret 1:04:29 Yeah.
Casandra 1:04:30 Do you want to know how much debt I have for my community college?
Brooke 1:04:34 Oh, this is gonna hurt.
Casandra 1:04:36 Forty Grand.
Brooke 1:04:38 Shut the front door.
Casandra 1:04:41 And that's like with grants and shit because like I good grades and all that. I was on the 'President's list.'
Brooke 1:04:45 For a frame of reference, listeners, Casandra graduated more recently, like last couple years, or three or whatever it was, but fairly recently. Yeah. When I was looking at the numbers, here's my personal anecdote. The cost have the four year degree that I got 15 years ago. I'm taking some community college classes now. And if I did an associate's degree, it would cost me as much for two years of community college today as it did for a four year degree with two majors 15 years ago. Yeah, the cost has has exponentially risen again. Four times. It's it's four times higher than it was like 40 years ago. It's risen more than anything, any other good or commodity. The cost of college has increased.
Margaret 1:05:40 I will say, my, like optimistic, putting on my optimism hat. I don't like hats. That's probably why I'm not great. Okay. When I think about like some of the most...the strongest that leftist movements, anarchist movements, I know more about anarchist movements, I do other movements. The strongest they've been is like often, while popular education, or the existing educational infrastructure is failing everyone. And, you know, like a lot of work around reframing education in both France and Spain was coming out of anarchists in the late 19th and early 20th century in the modern school movement, all this stuff, and people were getting, like, literally murdered for advocating for things like "What if boys and girls are taught in the same classrooms and shit," and it's like awild idea that anarchists came up with. And like not talking about God in the classroom. Oh, my god, we're actually losing on all of these. Okay, anyway. It's like, "Remember the fight for an eight hour workday?" And I'm like, "Man, I wish I had eight hour workday right now." Okay, and but, but so that's like, my like, my, like, optimism is that like, in a burned for us new weeds grow? You know, I think that there's a lot of opportunity for alternative educational systems, but not in a way where they could like, immediately step in and be like an accredited university that allows the sort of class mobility that we're talking about, or whatever, right, but like, it does seem like mutual aid schooling and education are like, probably in a better position to take a foothold than they used to be. I hadn't really...I'd only previously thought about this more for like, grade school type stuff, especially for the whole, like how public school is like also kind of like low key just like childcare. And like, hadn't quite thought about this in terms of like, how it ties into, you know, continuing education, but it could, we could have Anarchy University, and then everyone could have degrees and okay, I don't know where I'm going with this.
Brooke 1:07:45 Anarcho-U.
Casandra 1:07:45 You need another project, Margaret. So...
Margaret 1:07:51 No, dear listener, you need a project. At Projects-R-Us, we will give you a project.
Brooke 1:08:00 Wrong podcast. Wrong, wrong podcast.
Margaret 1:08:02 Replace the continuing education system!.
Brooke 1:08:04 Nope, wrong podcast.
Margaret 1:08:04 Okay, fine.
Brooke 1:08:06 Yeah, so,
Casandra 1:08:07 That'd be like your ideal job, I think.
Margaret 1:08:09 it really would be, yes, I have way better at coming up with things that I can dedicate my entire life to than dedicating my entire life to any of the individual things.
Brooke 1:08:22 Oh, maybe, maybe you didn't need to start the cult just to find leaders for all of these ideas. So students loan forgivness..
Margaret 1:08:27 No, someone else's to start it. You out there, you can be the one start the cu--... like, okay, sorry. Please continue. I'm sorry.
Brooke 1:08:36 Okay, I'll try and stay off a tangent because I want to. Student loan forgiveness, generally good. Why? Because college is super expensive. And college is not just going out and getting a four year degree or even a two year degree. It's, you know, taking some amount of classes. Education is good. And it's expensive to do so. And we need to make that easier for people and the student loan forgiveness we have will alleviate some pain and suffering. It doesn't deal with some of the fundamental issues that we have of the fact that college is too expensive right now. So, it's not, it's not perfect. Maybe it's not even great, but it is net good and movement in the right direction of things. One more fun note on it in case this affects anybody listening and they don't know about this. Student loan payments have been on pause since March, 2020, the start of the pandemic. They're going to end December 31, 2022. So they'll resume.
Brooke 1:09:36 The pause is going to end. Yeah, thank you. So repayments will resume January. Now, some people may have chosen to still make payments during the pause and those payments that you made, you'll be eligible, If you meet the other criteria for loan forgiveness, you'll be eligible for reimbursement. So, let's say that you made a $100 payment every month for about 30 months now. So, that's about three grand. So, you can get a reimbursement of, out of your 10, you get three grand reimbursement for payments that you made during the pause, and then you could have the other seven applied to loans that are still outstanding. So, that's a cool thing to know. And something to watch out for. If you're someone who's going to be applying for the loan forgiveness.
Casandra 1:09:36 The pause is going to end?
Casandra Johns 1:10:29 Imagine if they had just forgiven student loans like actually, and fully.
Brooke 1:10:36 Yeah, that would have been a nice thing.
Casandra 1:10:39 It was really hard to be on on social media for a few days with a bunch of people being like, "This is great. Biden has done it." Like, really?
Margaret 1:10:49 Yeah, no,
Casandra 1:10:50 I mean, am I happier that potentially maybe if I'm lucky, I doubt this will happen. Like I'm still skeptical of the whole thing, but because I had Pell grants and maybe 20 grand will like, be forgiven. I still owe 20 grand.
Brooke 1:11:05 Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Casandra 1:11:06 Cuz I don't even have that many loans compared to most people because I went to community college. Yep.
Brooke 1:11:18 Okay, anything else?
Casandra 1:11:20 That's a depressing note to end on.
Margaret 1:11:21 That's what I was trying to say like Anarchy-U, my positive...We have a whole degree in rainwater catchment.
Brooke 1:11:33 A degree in it or just how about a certification? You can be a certified rainwater catcher?
Margaret 1:11:39 Okay. Yes. I don't want to micromanage, so whatever you decide since you're now opening this university.
Brooke 1:11:49 No, no, no, I wasn't volunterring to take it over!
Margaret 1:11:52 Nose goes. Last listener to touch their nose has to start Anarchist University.
Casandra 1:12:02 But then, but then you could sponsor us and we could promote you.
Margaret 1:12:06 Yeah.
Casandra 1:12:08 Yep.
Margaret 1:12:09 For free.
Brooke 1:12:09 Great.
Casandra 1:12:11 For free? I don't think that's how sponsoring works, Margaret.
Margaret 1:12:15 That's how the Channel Zero sponsor thing works.
Casandra 1:12:17 Oh, that's true. Okay.
Margaret 1:12:19 Mutual aid networks.
Brooke 1:12:22 Or they could support us on Patreon.
Casandra 1:12:24 Uh, huh.
Margaret 1:12:25 Are you doing an outro?
Casandra 1:12:26 At the university?
Brooke 1:12:28 I was trying to, but I don't actually know all the words that go before thanking our patrons. So you might, you might need to do that.
Margaret 1:12:39 Thanks so much for listening. Here's okay. That since since Brooke is going to be coming on as a host, you say "Thanks so much for listening." You say, "Algorithms suck. But if you like, comment, reviews, blah, blah blah, makes algorithms give our show to more people. It's kind of the only way that people end up hearing about our show is word of mouth." All that stuff's true. I'm not just saying it cynically, it's just that I have said it like whatever we're on like episode like 50 or something so so like 50 times, and, "That you can support us on Patreon by supporting our publisher, our publisher is Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. The three of us are collective members of a collectively run publisher called Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. It's been around for about 20 years. But it's like getting new mega forces Voltron combined version of itself lately, and it is primarily supported by Patreon. And if you support us at $1 a month, you have access to all of our content, although also if you just go to "Tangledwilderness.org" you have access to basically all of our content. But it's still cool to support us. The supporters at $5, you get a discount on everything that we are ever going to make, which is starting to exist. We have t-shirts now including for the show. And then if you support us at $10 you get a zine mailed out to you every single month different fiction, nonfiction....There's probably other types of things in the world besides fiction and nonfiction..."
Casandra 1:14:04 Poetry!
Margaret 1:14:05 Yeah. And if you support us at $20 a month, I pass it over to Brooke...
Brooke 1:14:13 You get a shout out here on our podcasts and special thanks. In particular we would like to thank Hoss the dog, Micaiah, Chris, Sam, Kirk, Natalie, Eleanor, Jennipher, Staro, Kat J, Chelsea, Dana, David, Nicole, Mikki, Oxalis, Paige, SJ, and Shawn. Thanks for listening. Bye. Yeah,
Margaret 1:14:38 Okay, we did it!
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Episode summary Andre and Margaret talk about a lot of things. They talk about recycling/reusing/remelting plastics, turning them into fuel, setting up solar power systems, setting up DIY internet, intranets and mesh networks as well as some concepts dealing with solar punk and hydroponics, and of course how most things can be easily analogized to baking a cake.
Guest Info Andre can be found at www.anarchosolarpunk.substack.com, or on Twitter @HydroponicTrash or on TikTok @HydroponicTrash.
Host Info Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Andre on Solar Power, DIY Internet, Mesh Networks, and Solar Punk
Margaret 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret killjoy. And I use 'she' and 'they' pronouns. And I am very excited about this week's episode, which I guess I probably say, most weeks. But, I'm excited to be talking to Andre, who is someone I first ran across his work because someone was just I think someone sent it to me or was showing me these, these pictures of someone who had 'hydroponic trash' as the user name, and was talking about making off grid internet through mesh networking. And I was like, "Yeah, this is up my alley," but not my alley that I've actually explored. It's a alley that I'm interested in. So I'm very excited. I think you all will be very excited. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show in the network.
01:45 Jingle
Margaret 02:23 Okay, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then maybe kind of a little bit about yourself about the kind of stuff that we're going to be talking about today. Like how you got into it or what you do?
Andre 02:34 Yeah, for sure. My name is Andre, my pronouns are he/him. I go by Hydroponic Trash on Twitter and Tik Tok. I focus a lot on upcycling things that people would normally kind of regard as like trash, like recycling plastic containers to make indoor vertical hydroponic gardens. I'm a hacker, a gardener, a woodworker, I kind of tend to do a lot of random shit. So. I also write speculative solar punk fiction on combining technology, both low and high tech, with social change, and balancing that with the ecosystem. With that being said, I've been also kind of focusing in on infrastructure, and how people can build passive and active systems to meet their basic needs like food, water, shelter, communications, electricity. Right now, what that kind of looks like is making off grid intranet networks, off grid solar power, and some other passive projects that kind of deal with DIY off grid stuff.
Margaret 03:47 Yeah! You basically just listed all of my interests. This very exciting to me. I'm going to ask at the end of the episode as well, but do you want to say where people can find like, say, for example, your speculative fiction, like, I know that you write about a lot of the stuff that you do, and you also write fiction. Where can people find that?
Andre 04:03 Yeah, so mainly, I post my long form stuff on anarchosolarpunk.substack.com. So mainly post my like, long form writing on Substack. But, I post a lot of written form content and other stuff to my Twitter, HydroponicTrash and Tik Tok, I posted videos whenever I can make videos about a whole bunch of various different topics or projects that I'm working on.
Margaret 04:29 That's cool. Okay, so I was gonna start with off grid internet. But first, I want to ask you about recycling plastic trash, because I'm really excited about ways to...recycling is like fake, right, these days, you know, like market based recycling? It seems like most, I don't have the numbers in front of me or whatever. But it seems like more and more if you put something in the recycling bin, it just gets thrown in the landfill. And so I'm really excited about ways that people can directly recycle. So, what does that look like that you're recycling plastic trash. Is this like melting it down? Or are you just like repurposing it or what's happening?
Andre 05:03 So, at the moment, it's mostly repurposing, but I am going to start doing actual plastic recycling by melting it down and making it into other objects. But um, so right now repurposing plastic, it really started when I, like, just saw how many plastic containers there were just out in the world, I've been picking up trash in like my local park for a little bit. So, while picking up trash, it was like, it makes you really, really aware of the type of pollution that's out there in the world, because you're picking it up out of like waterways and in parks and stuff. So. it got me thinking of like, okay, well, plastic to-go containers, for instance, how do we actually like reuse these types of things. So, what I started doing was taking old Tupperware, that was just kind of sitting in my cabinet, sitting in my kitchen. And I drilled holes for it to put in net cups, which are usually used for hydroponics, and I just started growing plants in it. So trying to find some creative and different ways to not only like reuse plastic in a safe manner, but not only to reuse the plastic, but to find a new use for it. So that way, it didn't just end up going into the landfill. And it was also kind of doing something productive as well.
Margaret 06:24 Yeah. Yeah, I, I got really excited when I, I people think people might have already heard me talk about this, but I'm really excited about the idea of basically like, setting up mutual aid recycling in the same way that I think that neighborhoods can compost with each other. Like, some of the infrastructure, it seems like is better put at a neighborhood level, like a small community level than like a, you know, an individual level. But I'm curious when you start repurposing it....Okay, so the things that I've come up with for plastic--I haven't done any of these things.This is all just me falling down rabbit holes on YouTube and stuff.--The main things is people taking certain kinds and making DIY 3D printable plastic. Other ones are like literally just melting it down and putting it into forms and molds. And then the one that I'm like, kind of the most excited about, although it's sort of terrible is that apparently you can make diesel fuel out of plastic DIY? I don't know, like, what do you? What are your aspirations? Or what are you thinking on for your DIY recycling?
Andre 07:22 So, all of that pretty much entire, all the stuff that you just said, is pretty much what I want to do. So I'll go into some more repurposing stuff and talking about specifically about additive manufacturing and recycling inputs into stuff. So yeah, like, recycling, plastics is a really big thing. So recycling PLA plastic or recycling...there's a whole bunch of plastics that will melt and be able to remelt that you can make in certain different things. And I think that recycling plastics specifically for 3d printing is going to be kind of like the next frontier of additive manufacturing, because not only are you taking plastics...so say, for instance...it's a full cycle...So, we could be not only cleaning up the environment of plastic waste, but using that plastic and re-melting it down and making it into new objects, when otherwise that plastic would have just been floating in some water in a creek or sitting, you know, not deteriorating in a landfill.
Margaret 08:29 Yeah.
Andre 08:30 And so from there, it kind of opens up a whole new space of thinking about the things that we use and thinking about manufacturing in general, because we're moving away from mining the earth and using natural resources and exploiting the natural resources to make the inputs for the stuff. And instead, mining the trash and mining the stuff that we've that we've thrown away and regarded as trash and mining that. So, I kind of think of it as like a closed loop, circular ecosystem of removing trash from the environment, repurposing it. And then not only that, kind of changing our social relations when it comes to how we deal with objects, changing our conceptions of things of like disposability, changing our conceptions of how we treat objects, and moving away from disposal into like modularity or repurposing stuff. So yeah, I think it's really interesting to think of it in that way of like, instead of making these new things, taking what we've already polluted the earth with and making things out of that.
Margaret 09:45 Yeah, no, this is...I'm just gonna basically over and over be like, "Yeah, this is this is my alley. This is the shit that I love." Yeah, one of the things that I notice is that, you know, from living off--I don't currently live off grid, but I've spent a lot of my time living off grid--is you start noticing every single object that comes into your purview, right? Because 'what are you going to do with it at the end?' becomes this very important thing. If you don't have trash pickup, if you don't have a way to just easily make the thing go away, then you have to be like, "Okay, I'm going to compost this, I'm going to, you know, compost that." I was just thinking of cardboard. And I was like, "Oh, I used to burn all my cardboard, but I'm gonna try and move to composting it," you know. And, you know, just like thinking, "Okay, I'm responsible for all of these objects, I've chosen to caretake." And this isn't me trying to be like, "Oh, recycling is gonna save the world," or whatever, because it's like, but for me, it's more about when we think about when we start thinking of small scale systems, based on all of the things involved, I think that puts us in a better position to imagine better futures. Because we actually have to think to ourselves like, "Well, if I don't want, if I want to use plastic, what the fuck am I going to do with it afterwards?" And I mean, I don't actually particularly, I used to sort of hate plastic. And now I'm kind of like now that I think of mining the trash for plastic. I sort of like it, you know?
Andre 11:05 Yeah, I could talk more about turning plastic into fuel.
Margaret 11:09 Yeah, please, do I only know the like YouTube level of it.
Andre 11:15 Yeah, so another part of that is...okay, so, even if we were to say, for instance, like in the future, get everything that we wanted, have the big 'R' Revolution, you know, have the utopic vision that we have come to fruition, there's still going to be the problem of trash, there's still going to be the problem of yeah, like, what do we do with plastic, even after it's like, use has kind of gone through, and we can't reuse anymore? Like, what do we do with it?Like, another option of that, too, is using the plastic as a fuel source. So you can do stuff like pyrolysis, where basically, you're heating up plastic, condensing that, and basically making it back into a form of burnable fuel. And like, you know, personally, I absolutely hate combustible fuels, obviously, for their, for their, their impact to the environment. But then again, there are a lot of things that are absolutely necessary to run. So say for instance, you know, if we are using renewables only to power things, one issue is, say, for instance, solar, if you don't get a lot of sunlight, you don't get power, pretty much. And you could supplement that with other, you know, renewable energies. But there might be times especially in say, like a natural disaster, when like, you absolutely need power to power like medical equipment to power to power hospitals, or to power equipment that we need up and running. And so that would be a time when, like, using these fuels would really make a lot of sense. On the flip side of that, too, talking about like fuel and stuff like that, there's also making hydrogen fuel using electrolysis. So, using electricity, to basically separate the hydrogen from water, and then using that hydrogen as a fuel. So, that's another, you know, way of approaching it and way of approaching energy, not thinking of extracting it from the earth, but trying to figure out new ways and different ways of finding energy that's really all around us.
Margaret 13:34 Yeah, my, my favorite, I looked into it at the last place I lived because was on enough of a hill, I got really into storing electrical power through gravity. You know, like, you could do this thing where I've seen people do it where you like, you set up...okay, you set up a water...a rain barrel at the bottom of your house. And then you also set up a rain barrel at the top of your house. And you use your solar while it's running, instead of to power a lithium battery, which is obviously not a renewable resource, you know, which is the thing that people often forget. Well, I mean, whatever, it's better than some things. But, you know, the battery storage is one of the weakest parts of off-grid power, right? And so you put your rain barrel at the top of your house, and then while there's power, you pump the water up to the roof. And then when there's not power coming through the solar, then the, the rainwater comes back down and it charges...like I mean this charges like a cell phone, this is not a you know, but people are talking about doing it on these industrial scales where you can do it like water towers, you can do it, you know, dammed areas, whatever.. I'm not presenting it as like the perfect solution, but just like interesting to me that there's all of these different ways that we can store power that we don't traditionally think of. I don't know.
Andre 14:54 Yeah, exactly. And it's one of those things where like, it isn't necessarily profitable too, to do stuff like that. So it just isn't being done right now. But if we were to look at living in a post capitalist world, obviously, we want to pick solutions and pick things that not only like are detrimental socially, but not detrimental ecologically as well. So like stuff like that is just so perfect in taking the energy that we have just all around us and using it in responsible ways. So yeah,
Margaret 15:29 Okay, so this isn't even what we were going to talk about today. I just got really excited about that. The the main thing I wanted to talk to you about today is, is off-grid internet is mesh networking is DIY internet. And I'm wondering if you could explain what that kind of concept is?
Andre 15:45 Yeah, for sure. So I'll kind of go into a little bit of background on like, why, or what really got me started in thinking on this train of thought. So like, I live in Texas. And living in Texas has made me very aware of kind of the crumbling infrastructure in this country.
Margaret 16:06 Whaaat?! [Sarcastically]
Andre 16:07 Yeah, I know, "What?" a private grid run by a corporation that seems to fail, even though there's no regulation, "What?Oh." And a big wake up call was winter storm Yuri, which like completely, absolutely fucked up Texas. It was a week long ice storm with snow. And, it just like completely destroyed the homes of just thousands of people. Thousands of people lost their lives because of the storm. And it just kind of pointed out the fact that ERCOT's mismanagement of the power grid and the effects of that were just like, really big. So, it kind of got me thinking of ways to do communication and electricity, that didn't rely on the crumbling infrastructure around me. So, after thinking about that kind of got me thinking about emergencies and building resilient systems, and communication was like really, really up there. Especially when it comes to communications during natural disasters. There's, you know, there's obviously Ham radio and handheld radios that people use during natural disasters. But, when it comes to actually sharing information, say, for instance, sharing books, sharing videos, communicating with a massive amount of people that doesn't require specialized equipment, like radios, that's a whole nother realm, you know. So, that's what kind of got me thinking about making an emergency like community internet was so that way people in my neighborhood could have access to like, a chat server ebooks with like info on surviving different natural disasters, a media server to stream videos, either for educational content, or for just like, if the power's out, you're bred you know, you have nothing to do, sooo. And music is another big thing.
Margaret 18:08 That was one of the things that before, before Covid, I was like, running around doing all my preparedness stuff. And I went out and got a hard drive and filled it with movies that I obtained legally. And I was kind of even as I was doing it. I was like, "What the hell disaster am I going to be in? What version of the apocalypse has me like bored watching movies?" And then COVID hit. And I like, and I was off grid, and I like, didn't have good internet, you know? And I was like, "Oh, this, this is the crisis for which I prepared." And, you know, whatever public domain television shows got me through, got me through the worst of it. Anyway, I didn't mean to completely derail you, please continue.
Andre 18:54 No, no, no, that's completely on topic, you know, especially because like, these kinds of systems allow people to communicate without needing to be face to face. And so what a lot of people don't like think about are people who are immunodeficient who can't like, go face to face in front of people or people with disabilities who it would be harder for them to physically go out and get a radio from somebody and start using it. So, you know, resilient systems that like keep everybody in mind that can access it like really big. But yeah, like COVID was a perfect...not really perfect, but you know, it definitely pointed out some some, some stuff that maybe we were all thinking about, but didn't really want to think about, but...So, from thinking about all this stuff, what I kind of landed on was making a solar powered internet with like a Raspberry Pi as the server that ran all the services and a Raspberry Pi is a single board, like small computer that runs off of USB power. So it requires really, very little power. But, from there, you know, it's fine to have your own small kind of like local network. But, I really wanted to come up with ways to try and expand that network. So, basically make like beacons to connect back to the main network to spread out the signal.
Margaret 20:25 Cool.
Andre 20:27 So, in a way, this kind of started off as just like a small off-grid, solar powered system. But, now it's kind of grown out to be more of almost like a community wide Internet where like, we can add more routers to the network and spread the connections out from there.
Margaret 20:44 How...How do? [Pause] How does that happen? Like, like are thre resources that, you know...how complicated is it? How expensive? Is it? How...it seems like it's scalable, so you can kind of up the complexity and the expense as you want? But yeah, what's involved?
Andre 21:04 So I, when I wrote the article, and like, was thinking about this, I really wanted to start from like the bare minimum, and try and convey the bare minimum of information that somebody would need to do this. So, starting off, I wanted to make sure to use things that were first of all easy to find, second of all, easy to work on, like the average person with some technical skills could pick it up and like, know what to do with it, and wasn't something super proprietary, where maybe only a handful of people in a city would even know how to work it. So, it has to be, you know, easily picked up by your average person. So, that's kind of where I wanted to start from was using the most basic hardware, the most basic software, and from there, you can build up to it. So, for example, like in the article that I wrote, that kind of goes by like step by step on how to make it, it's more of like a recipe book almost. So, breaking it down into like, its fundamental parts, with core ingredients to make it what it is. So like, you know, a cake has core ingredients that you know, make it a cake, but you can add and subtract on top of it to make it work for whatever you need it to work for.
Margaret 22:34 Well other people can.
Andre 22:35 True
Margaret 22:38 Whenever I try to make a cake...I can make muffins and brownies. Anyways I'm that useful wit cakes yet.
Andre 22:49 Well, yeah, as long as you can find somebody to make it. That's the biggest thing. Yeah.
Margaret 22:54 Okay, what are some of those core ingredients?
Andre 22:57 So, the core ingredients are basically a client, a router, and a server. So, that's pretty much it, which sounds really really reductive. But, when you boil it down, and kind of like, look at the core concept, that's the three things you have. So, a client is a computer. Really, any computer. A router determines like what addresses computers in the network have, and it directs traffic. And a server is basically another computer that hosts the data for your clients to access. So. I'll kind of walk through some of that stuff, too. So, like I said, A client can be really like literally any computer, it could be like a brand new MacBook, it could be a single board computer, like a Raspberry Pi, you could even use like a smart fridge to do this. It can literally be anything that...it can literally be any computer that can access the internet, you can use as a client to go onto the network, right? Yeah. And so next you have routers, which are basically like little boxes that can direct traffic and determine like, what addresses computers on the network have. So think of it as like mailing addresses almost. So, if I wanted to send information to somebody down the street, I would have an address and they would have an address, and the router is basically like a mailman who delivers that information from me to the address that I wanted to send it off to. And I'm obviously kind of like making this way more simpler than what it is, because in reality there's like so many networking things in the middle that makes this happen but routers basically do that.
Margaret 24:44 Okay, can this router in this case be like, like I have a router right now I believe that is connecting between my modem and my computer or something, right? Can Can. It sounds like this router is the most custom piece of this whole puzzle or is it something that you can also repurpose out of an existing like Wi-Fi router or something?
Andre 25:06 You can repurpose it out of any Wi-Fi router, which is awesome.
Margaret 25:10 Hell yeah, cause it's in every house.
Andre 25:12 It's in every house. Every house has internet access, you have a router. All you have to do is change the networking settings to be able to basically connect back to whatever network you make. So, it doesn't require you to go out and buy something. You probably already have it in your house already.
Margaret 25:29 Yeah. Okay. I mean, you probably have to destroy the one you have, or you have to reprogram the one you're having you have so you wouldn't be able to use it and your regular internet?
Andre 25:42 Excatly.
Margaret 25:43 Yeah, you would need to go find one in an abandoned house.
Andre 25:45 Yeah.
Margaret 25:45 Okay. Cool.
Andre 25:49 You could, you could. Yeah, I mean, like internet squatting is a, I guess, a new thing now so.... But the last kind of part of that is the server. And that's like, again, really any computer that's running software to share data. So, with those three pieces, a client, a router, and server, if you scale that up like a million times and add in fiber optic cables from the bottom of the ocean to connect routers and to data centers together, and then boom, you have the 'Internet,' right? So, like network engineers are probably going to be listening to this and be really mad about what I'm saying. But, the internet is basically just a giant combination of intranets. It's a big intranet that's been connected to other intranets, through a bunch of other networking equipment, protocols, datacenters, all that kind of stuff.
Margaret 26:43 An an intranet is a is an internet, but a local one, a one that exists within like a building or a neighborhood or something is an intranet. It's a network that is not part of the larger internet. I mean, it can be part of that. You can access it from the larger internet, but it's sort of walled off. Is that a decent way to explain intranet?
Andre 27:03 Yeah, exactly. So, if you add your client, a router and a server, you basically made an intranet right there because it isn't connected back to the major, actual internet. But, that's what the Internet is. It's this gigantic intranet. So, it kind of takes a lot of the black box magic out of the Internet, because really, you're just distilling it down to these core pieces and understanding, "Okay, well, if I can do this at like a super small level, and I spread this out, we really could create, you know, a local, a regional, or even a gigantic people own Internet with our own hardware."
Margaret 27:48 So, basically, if we build this entire shadow internet...Are there other people who have done this? Are there already existing like large networked intranets all networked together? Do they control like, the giant space laser or whatever? Like? I mean, what are the? Yeah, how much is this already done?
Andre 28:08 Yeah, so not exactly when it comes to like making it almost like an alternative internet, it's mainly done to actually provide internet access to people who can get it. So, a good example of that is NYC Mesh. And they're are a group in New York City who basically are doing this exact same thing. They're making an a mesh network to broadcast out a Wi Fi signal. And then they have nodes that pick up that Wi Fi signal and keep basically building out the range that the network can can hit. So, what they're doing is finding areas that internet service providers won't bring in the necessary equipment to give people internet access, or people who can't afford internet access. And so, they're basically making these mesh networks to get the Wi Fi coverage over to the people who need it. So, we can do basically the same thing with a system like this. So, you can make a network like this that works in tandem with the Internet. So say for instance, if power or Internet access gets shut off, for whatever reason, you have a backup, basically like community internet. But, you can also connect, say, for instance, like your main router that you're kind of using to run the network or just any router on the network, connect that to the internet, and then you can share Internet access across the secondary internet. So, basically, you can make a mesh intranet network, and you can have it walled off from the wider internet and still have it work without electricity. grid electricity and without internet access, but when you have electricity and internet access, you can actually supply Internet access to the network and give other people access to the internet. So, it kind of serves two purposes too so that way, it's not just like, "Oh, this is only in an emergency network." But also, you know, there's some resilience resiliency built into it.
Margaret 30:25 That's cool. I like that it has a purpose, sort of during crisis, and also even just like during the crisis that is, you know, poverty and lack of access and stuff like that. The other thing that I like about this, I mean, it's funny, I don't like it personally, because I live rurally, but, but one of the things that comes up is that so much of the prepping stuff that gets talked about, especially under the name 'prepping,' rather than 'preparedness' focuses on rural folks, right? It focuses on access to, if not financial resources, it often focuses on access to space, like physical space to store things, or even kind of what you can do with low population density. Right? It's a lot easier for someone to have five acres here in West Virginia than it is for some of the five acres in the Bay Area or something, right. And the thing, that's kind of interesting, because you're pointed out that the you know, a lot of this work, people have been doing it New York City, and I'm like, h, it the higher population density you have like, the more bang for your buck, it seems like this kind of thing would have. And that's cool, because I think that we way too often think of high population density as like, 'bad.' Whereas actually, in terms of like, efficiency of living, in terms of even like small ecological footprint, higher population densities can be really fucking good. So, I like that. For my for myself, I'm like, oh, well if I set it up, it would just be on my like, you know, like, where I live with some people or whatever and it would just be the like, "Well, if the power goes down, you can access the the movie server and the off-grid, Wikipedia," or the, you know, I do a download of Wikipedia every, whenever I remember, it's usually about once a year as like part of my preping is I do the download of Wikipedia or whatever. Without the images. I don't have enough money to pay for that kind of terabytes of data for the images. But yeah, I don't know, the larger. I don't know, I'm just getting lost thinking about the possibilities of something like this. What distinguishes a mesh network from just a simple intranet? Is a mesh network, because it's all wireless. Like what what makes it a mesh network?
Andre 32:32 Yeah, so mesh network differentiates itself because you're basically able to connect networking equipment back to each other. So, you can do a mesh network, a quote unquote, 'mesh network' with like, hard wired Ethernet cable, but really what network mesh networks do is use certain protocols to connect routers or network equipment together. So, in this case, what we're doing connecting our main router to our beacon that will, you know, propagate that network is using a protocol called WDS, which is called 'wireless distribution system.' And basically, what that lets you do is it lets you connect other routers, as if they were connected with an ethernet cord together, but it's completely wireless. So, you can get another router, turn on WDS, join in the network, and then this new router that joins in becomes a beacon and extends the range of the network.
Margaret 33:37 Okay. So, you don't have to, you don't have to as the alternative internet engineer, you don't have to walk around and physically set up each and every beacon. It's a it's a thing where basically people by joining are making the network better?
Andre 33:53 Exactly.. As long as they can get power. Anybody can turn their home router, and either use WDS to connect their routers together, or basically putting the routers into what's called AP mode or basically making it an--
34:12 An 'access point.' [Not getting the joke] Yeah.
Margaret 34:12 [Interuptting] Advance Placement.
Margaret 34:15 No, I was lying. Sorry, I was trying to make a bad joke.
Andre 34:21 See, I'm not smart enough to have taken an AP classses High School. Yeah, I my terrible ADHD like stopped me from going into AP classes. So.
Margaret 34:32 Yeah, fair enough. I took AP English. Did not did not pass it to the college level. In my defense, the only they only taught, they only taught books written by men in my AP English class. I think all white men. Now there might have been I feel like....
Andre 34:54 Yeah, what English class isn't just full of just like old white dudes?
Margaret 34:58 Yeah. Although actually, it was before....This is just completely tangential. English class is how I like learned about like Langston Hughes and stuff in 10th grade and like, so that was good. That's all I remember.
Andre 35:14 My introduction to de-schooling was actually through an English teacher. So I guess, yeah, English teachers, English classes, thumbs up, you know?
Margaret 35:25 Yeah, Totally. Many of them, many of them. Okay, so before we started thinking about our English teachers, okay, you mentioned that if you have power, right? But and I'm I'm under the impression, a lot of what you've also done is work on trying to figure out how to make sure that people within this network would have access to power during a crisis or whatever. What does that look like?
Andre 35:54 Yeah, so I mean, obviously, we can't run electronics without power. So trying to think about, what are some ways that we can generate power locally, and be able to supply power to people who need it. So, getting into talking about power kind of connects it to other areas of infrastructure to, and all those other areas of infrastructure connect into building mutual aid networks, but so we'll start with power first. So, with powering nodes, basically, what we're talking about here is creating almost like micro, community micro grids using solar. So, basically making like small power stations that use solar energy to charge batteries and supply power to your neighbors. And so, this can turn into a form of mutual aid, right? So if we're making these small scale solar power stations that we can attach to like dollies, or attach to wood and like, roll them out when need be. Now we're talking about giving people the autonomy and giving people the tools to make their own power and help each other survive in a way that's beneficial to everybody in the community. But also is helping to power, you know, the devices that will connect back to the network, the network itself, but also help power medical devices and stuff like that, that you know, people need to survive and live off of. So, talking about making community micro grids, we'll start from like, the small scale and then start building up, because again, like, all of this is modular and able to scale with however many resources you have, or however big you need it to be. But, the key part is to understand that like at every level, it's the same idea, just with, you know, some parts switched out. So. And there's also two, there's also different kinds of solar power, too. There's solar photovoltaics using like traditional solar panels is what we think of, but also passive solar as well, because there's energy, you know, the sun is fucking hot. The sun rays have a lot of energy. So, there's other ways to produce energy and talk about that sort of stuff. So, there's high tech and low tech, solar, but we'll start in and start small with small scale, kind of micro community micro grids. Right? So by solar in this case, I'm talking about photovoltaic cells to generate electricity from the sun. So you can make stuff like this, or you can buy like premade systems to kind of cut down on the amount of work that you need to do, but there are some like major downsides to getting like a premade solar system kind of like an all in one package, because most of the parts are proprietary. So, in the middle of an emergency, you're not going to be able to like mail your solar charge station if the power plug breaks. So, a DIY method allows you to kind of have modular off the shelf parts that if something breaks, you can easily fix it. And all of these parts are easy to find too. So once I start talking about the parts that are involved with it, you can think of a whole bunch of places where you can find this stuff that's just sitting out there.
Margaret 39:32 Just by the side of the road.
Andre 39:35 Yeah, honestly Like literally, I found solar panels in the middle of forests, just kind of like smashed solar panels in the middle of a forest before so like yes search on the side of the roads. You could find some cool shit.
Margaret 39:52 Yeah.
Andre 39:53 But yeah, so like when you start talking about solar power and solar power generation it's really daunting, because like what we're used to is seeing solar panels on roofs, or electricians installing this stuff. But, really, it's really simple once you break it down into the core ingredients, just like before, just like making a cake, once you know the core ingredients, you can scale things up, add, subtract to whatever you need, to whatever scale you need. So.
Margaret 40:21 Yeah, that you have to like...you do when you scale solar power...I don't know that much about mesh networking. But I've installed a bunch of different solar systems and lived off solar systems of different types. And, it's a really good point about the modularity that can pull pieces out and put them back in. But, it's annoying that every time you're like, Oh, I'm going to go from 400 watts of solar power to 800 watts of solar power. Now, I need to change out every piece of the entire thing. Because it's, it's like baking, if in order to double the ingredients. You also had to like, buy a different bowl and spoons, you know?
Andre 40:58 Exactly, exactly. You're like these look exactly the same, but like I have to pay like an extra $500 For this one that can handle like, oh, a little bit more power. What the hell?
Margaret 41:07 Yeah. Yeah. And it is it is more like baking than than cooking. You know? it's...because it is very like, "Okay, do this. Exactly. And it'll be great and safe and right."
Andre 41:24 Yeah, add these ingredients in together in a safe way, and you'll be good.
Margaret 41:30 Yeah, exactly. Which is not to try and scare people off of it, it really can be done safely. Like, I didn't know shit about electricity when I first started doing this, I, when I first installed my first 12 volt battery, I was like terrified of it. You know, I was like putting the cables on it. And I was afraid it was gonna like shock me and my friend just like went up and grabbed both terminals and was like, "It's fine. It's 12 volts." And like, and then he was immediately like, "But if you dropped a wrench and connected the two poles, then you might die. But..." Most use case scenario....anyway. Sorry, I have a lot of I have a lot of thoughts about solar. But please, please continue. I'm sorry.
Andre 42:13 No, no, no, no. But like, yeah, like you just said, with anything to do with solar power, obviously, there's gonna be some safety things to keep in mind. But, you know, if you practice basic electrical safety, you can make these systems pretty well, at least at a small scale. Once you're talking about like, multiple megawatts of power generation, then we're talking about kind of things that are kind of outside of this. But, for small scale, like, say, for instance, right now I have 400 watt solar panels charging a battery bank right now, like that's easy to handle for most people. And for producing power for, say, for instance, like a couple of different families at different houses or different apartments, that, that that'll work. It sounds small, but like 400 watts of solar power, and like a decent amount of storage will get you really far, especially in emergencies when you're only powering a couple things at a time, but.
Margaret 43:15 It's not going to run your AC. And it's not going to run your electric heater. And it probably it's not gonna run your fridge. But, it'll run a tiny electric cooler, it'll keep your phone's charged, it'll keep the lights on, it'll keep a fan going. Especially if it's not...box fans use an ungodly amount of power. I mean, that said, I did keep a fan going on 400 Watts, 24 hours a day for like a year once. So, you know,
Andre 43:41 Yeah, I can't be done. But like, okay, so in terms of like the core ingredients of a solar system, you've got really basically four parts, you've got your solar panels, a charge controller, batteries for storage, and an inverter if you're going to be doing specific stuff. So, adding those four things together, you can make either like a super small system more, say for instance, like you're talking about earlier, running some pretty basic household appliances. But you can also change all this stuff to fit the needs that you have. So, using this as an example, for like a really, really micro community micro grid, we could basically take like furniture dollies, tie some wood to it, put a charge controller, a battery, or two, strap it on to that, and an inverter, and then attach those to a solar panel, and then basically what you're doing is just generating power on a really small scale. And then, say for instance, you want to make a bigger one well, get more solar panels, add a different charge controller, add more batteries in series to your battery bank, and add a bigger inverter, and then you could power refrigerators and AC units and stuff like that at a bigger scale. But, the key is just knowing kind of the core parts to it. I go through step-by-step on an article on my Substack called "DIY Off Grid Solar Primer." And it kind of walks through like all of the steps that you go through to make either a really small solar system or a pretty big one, that'll power a lot of things. And so it's kind of like, it's one of those things where it's, it's like a black box, and not a lot of people really, like understand the stuff that goes behind it. And not a lot of people understand that it's not that crazy to do this type of stuff.
Margaret 45:53 Yeah, I guess that is the...you know, when I, I don't know, the fact that this is actually doable, like, from, you know, I won't do...I'm not going to do a house level install. I'm not going to do grid tied solar myself. I feel like, that reaches a level where, I mean, you're actually putting the safety of the like, the electrical workers at risk if you do grid tie stuff, right? So, I understand the need for people with specialty training for that. But yeah, the the actually doable part, I think, is just what people...what I want more people to understand.
Andre 46:34 Yeah, because there's so much information out there that just seems so out of reach for most people. But it's really enriched, it's just the fact of like, knowing what to do, knowing, even knowing what you don't know, is like the key to really getting started with it.
Margaret 46:49 Yeah, but I will say though, in defense of the, the all-in-one boxes, I've used both, and I've like talked with a lot of people who are living off grid about which is better in which circumstance. And for people who are like, "I live in this cabin, I want my life in here to be good," Build it yourself, or work with a friend who knows what they're doing, but get the actual pieces and build it modularly. But, for people who are kind of like, "This is my truck camper, I sleep in two months of the year," and like, or, "This is my cabin for now. But I kind of don't really see myself being living here in a year," you know, or "I have a really limited budget, and I just need to get my cell phone charged." There's like, there's, I think there's purposes for the all-in-one boxes there in that you just don't have to fuck with it. It's like it takes less specialization, like one of the one of the infrastructures I've lived with...sorry, there's very few topics I get to like be I get to be really excited about and have like more like some experience on compared to, you know, when I talk to someone about. But, one of the ways that I had it going at one point was like I built a solar power setup, and I built it modularly partly actually, because I didn't have enough money to go out and get the size of box I wanted. On the other hand, in the end, I probably paid more for my system,because I kept upgrading it, because I kept being like...but you can kind of you can kind of do it. 100 bucks here, 100 bucks there as compared to going out and buying this $1,200 all-in-one box or $400 all-in-one box. They come in all different sizes. And, what I found that most people didn't bother with was using the all-in-one boxes hooked up to solar panels. What I found, what we ended up doing was, you know, the the barn on the property with the solar setup that I built, everyone would just bring their boxes over and charge them. You know, and so it's not a very proper way to do a grid. But, in some ways, that's how we did our grid is that there was like a central charging station and everyone would bring their boxes and then go plug their boxes back into their shacks or whatever, you know,
Andre 48:58 That's really cool. Because like, I mean, that technically is a grid, because I mean, you're transferring power from one generation into, you know, a place where you're actually going to use it. So like, but people don't consider that a grid only because, you know, it's just kind of so used to just like, oh, the grid is just the shit on the lines that just exists. Yeah, but like there's so many other ways to think about it.
Margaret 49:23 Yeah, I had another friend who, another off grid project I know of, a friend of mine has a cart, a trailer pulled behind a car, very light, one very small, one size of a teardrop or smaller and it's just full of old iron, lithium, whatever the cheap old batteries, the car batteries. And well they're AGM. They're just not lithium ion. And we just drive them into town like once a week. Just attach it to the car, drive it into town. Charge it at the Anarchist social center in town. And then drive it back out. And then power everything on the land project for like a week or whatever with these, you know, big battery banks.
Andre 50:10 Yeah, I mean, that's that's definitely one way to do it. Like I did the same kind of thing where like, I was running a whole bunch of stuff off of this, like little RYOBI portable inverter thing for like my power tools, and like just charge the, the, the batteries and then just like take the batteries with me and then use it like that. So like yeah, it's same concept.
Margaret 50:37 Yeah, I use my battery tool batteries as my cell phone charger for a long time before I got all the solar stuff set up. Yeah.
Andre 50:45 It works. You have power. So, that like ultimately, that's what it comes down to is like figuring out ways to take energy, store it and then transport it somewhere else where somebody else can use it. So like, who cares if you're using like, a drill battery attached to a little inverter to power the router for the network? It's still powering it. So there you go.
Margaret 51:08 That's cool. That just makes it cooler. Because then also anyone could just take it and charge it on it. You know, like everyone has a charger for that thing. Well, then you can have the Ryobi versus DeWalt class war, but the person with the Makita will chime in and be like, "No!"
Andre 51:31 But yes, so I mean, like, so we've gone from making like small internets into making a larger mesh network. I also want to like, I also wanted to run back and talk about what you brought up earlier, when it came to the differences between kind of urban and suburban areas and doing this in rural areas, or areas that might not like be as accessible. So, when it comes to rural areas, you can do the same thing. So making this mesh network. The biggest thing is going to be actually getting that signal out. So, then we're talking about like, kind of more high powered antennas, and talking about, like, how to broadcast signals, like a far distance. And there's some interesting stuff out there. So, I saw this guy on YouTube who made a giant parabola, and made it out of wood and chicken wire, and then put a Wi-Fi card in the middle of that parabola. So, you know, like the curve, almost like a satellite dish, but made out of chicken wire. And, he was able to broadcast Wi-Fi through the jungle for about six miles, just just using chicken wire in a parabola shape. And, you know, a simple like off the shelf network card. So like, line of sight, with some really simple DIY shit like that, like making parabolas out of chicken wire, or even using old satellite dishes to bounce that signal off, And at least get it over to maybe if you, you know, have a neighbor six miles away from you, then they could be the next node in the network. And they could just bounce signal around there. So like, in mountainous regions, it's really hard to get internet access.
Margaret 53:37 I'm Aware.
Andre 53:42 Mainly because, you know, internet service providers are, you know, they don't think it's profitable to spend the money for the infrastructure to bring it out there. But, it's also really hard to do it period. So, in that case, you know, you could set up a mesh network with your own DIY antennas to basically like bounce up and down mountainsides to supply internet access to other people. So, it works not just from like urban suburban areas, but also rural areas, but it just requires a, again, like a different, like thought process behind it.
Margaret 54:17 Right, but out here, it would be more possible for me to like, you know, talk to the person who does own the next ridge over and be like, "Hey, can I put up like this old satellite dish and some solar panels on your property, you get free internet, and so does everyone on the other side of the hill," you know? I mean, presuming the friendliness of the person who has the...owns the top of the mountain or whatever, but no, that's okay. Yeah.
Andre 54:48 And that can be a really good intro point to establish a mutual aid networks in rural areas, because it's really hard especially like in In rural areas to like, talk to your neighbors if your neighbors are like six miles away, but if you come to the people and say like, "Hey, we can mutually benefit each other," in a way that like, you know, they can completely understand and like be on board with, then you have, then you're talking to your neighbors, even though your neighbors live like super far away from you. So yeah, it's a really good in to like starting to build relationships locally.
Margaret 55:29 Yeah. No, that's interesting. So one of the things that you talked about, you mentioned earlier about how this all ties into general infrastructure and how infrastructure as a way to build mutual aid networks, is that something that, you know, basically, because most of what I've talked to people about mutual aid networks, which is incredibly valuable, but a lot of mutual aid networks are around community health, or food access, or, you know, defense against sweeps of encampments of people who are living out. And, you know, the idea of like, providing internet and power it obviously makes sense, as part of it, it's just part that doesn't get talked about as much because I think it probably more of my friends know how to cook than know how to program routers, you know, although then again, 10 years ago, it was probably the opposite. Well, when I was a teenager was definitely the opposite. But yeah, so I'm curious if you have thoughts about sort of general infrastructure, how this ties into infrastructure, mutual aid networks.
Andre 56:32 Yeah. So, when we were talking about like, hierarchical, well, we talked about like, systems like capitalism, hierarchical systems, states, the way that they cement power is basically by controlling our access to like our basic needs. So, if we can build our own infrastructures, either both like within the system, but also alongside and out of the system, then we can much more easily separate from capitalist and hierarchical systems, and create our own networks, and our own infrastructure in our own worlds alongside of things. So, that kind of touches into, you know, ideas of building dual power of like building the systems that we want to use and building the world that we want to see now, not just working within capitalism, sometimes you'll have to say for like legal issues and stuff like that, but building systems that work outside of capitalist and hierarchical systems. So, taking back control of the infrastructures that really rule our lives. So like, the infrastructures that can underlie everything that we do, you know, we kind of have the main, the big three, food, water shelter. But, I'd include a couple more things in there just because like, you know, our modern times things have like changed, technology has changed. On top of that, I put communications, so that would include like stuff like radio and Internet, electricity, which includes things like air conditioning and a lot of regions that like you will literally die without air conditioning, and care work as the kind of like main parts of infrastructure
Margaret 58:38 That, that tracks. And those do seem to be...I mean, those are the things that we kind of focus on with mutual aid with this special edition of communication and power. I'm into it.
Andre 58:58 But like, so, I'll go into a scenario of how building community micro grids and building communication networks can like, tie back into mutual aid efforts and like other revolutionary things, so you know, starting out, you decided to do this, you get a foldable solar panel, you use that to make your own small network with your server, you get a Raspberry Pi or like an old laptop and use that as a server. And then use an old router that you have or your the router that you have in your house right now. To just start, to start the network. And from there, you're like, Okay, well, let me you know, if I want to build this network out, then I'll start making small micro community micro grids to share with my neighbors. So, let's say if you live in an apartment building, then you're like, Okay, I'll go to the people in my apartment building, make one of these things, you know, make one of these, like solar power carts or something. And then just like talk to my neighbors and say like, "Hey, would this be valuable to us?" And so then like, you're starting to provide, basically free electricity to your neighbors. And by doing that, you know, you're starting to build relationships, starting to talk to people, and with talking to people, and kind of showing people what can be done with just like solidarity and working together, then, you know, you start talking some more and some more. And let's say like, you, through these relationships that you have with the people in your apartment building, you're like, "Okay, well, what if we like formed a tenant's union? I don't know, that might be a good idea?" And in trying to form that, you'll need some ways of communicating that's going to be secure. So, you can either meet in person, but not everybody is going to be able to meet in person. So, how do we make secure communications with each other to do stuff like organizing tenant unions are organizing unions within our workplaces. And so, you can do stuff like this, where you're making the services, the infrastructure available to people to be able to talk to each other in secure ways. So you could on your server, put up like encrypted messaging, and then use that as a method of organizing the tenants union or whatever, you know, use that as a method of organizing. So, you're going from like, starting out with just kind of like wanting to build your own solar power stuff into now you're talking to your neighbors, and now you're organizing stuff. And this kind of snowballs. As you add on to it, as you talk to more people as things kind of, like, move along, there's a snowball effect and to just like, being able to make the infrastructure for things to happen. And like that's the big thing.
Margaret 1:02:09 I like it. I am sold. I...there's that joke, "I would like to subscribe to your newsletter..." But in this case, people should subscribe to your newsletter, or Substack or whatever. Okay, well, we're kind of coming up on time. There's a lot of stuff that I want to talk to you about that we didn't even get into about you know hydroponics. It's what's in your username, and I want to turn my basement into a place that produces food, 24 hours, or 12 months, a year, whatever. You know, I live in a climate with a real winter. And I'd like to be able to still have fresh vegetables and hydroponics seem cool. But that's not what we're going to talk about today. But, that might be what I bug you about sometime in the near future. Is there any kind of final thoughts on the stuff that we've been talking about today that you want to bring up?
Andre 1:02:50 Yeah, I mean, I guess ultimately, it just comes down to if there are things out there that you want to do, try and figure out like, the core concepts and build on that. And just like just fucking try it. Like there's, there's so many things like all this, like building this off grid, internet building, off grid power systems was all just kind of like, I want to do it. I'll try and find the information and condense it for other people to use and they can build it themselves too. But like, that was the key was just like, fuck it. Let me just get started and try it. So, it's the same thing with like mutual aid networks. It's like if there isn't one around you, fuck it, try building it.
Margaret 1:03:31 Yeah, totally. No, that's so good. That is...Yeah. The secret is to really begin. I can't remember what this from, some insurrectionist tract, but I really like it. You know, just the like, well we actually just got to do it. We you know, like, I don't know, I feel like I would have more clever way to say that, but I don't
Andre 1:03:54 No. That was good.
Margaret 1:03:57 All right. Well, if people want to subscribe to your newsletter, or follow you on the internet, how should they go about it?
Andre 1:04:03 Yeah, you can find me on Substack. It's anarchosolarpunk.substack.com. And then I'm active also on Twitter and Tik Tok at 'hydroponictrash.'
Margaret 1:04:18 Cool. Yeah, we didn't even talk about solar punk. That was like on the list of things that we should talk about. We will talk again soon, I assume and people will get to hear from you again. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on.
Andre 1:04:30 Awesome. Thanks for having me.
Inmn 1:04:37 Hi, I am not Margaret. But, I am here to thank you for listening, because Margaret forgot to record an outro, which is short for our introduction, in case anyone was wondering. Okay, I stole that joke from Margaret. Sort of. So now it's kind of like you're getting her. I'm Inmn, and I do some of the behind the scenes work for Live Like The World is Dying, to make sure that it comes out every two weeks. If you enjoyed this podcast, please go tell someone about it and rate and review and like and subscribe or, you know, whatever the algorithm calls for, feed it like a hungry God. You could also post about it or tell people in person. It's the main way that people hear about the show and honestly one of the best ways to support it. However, if you want to support us in other sillier ways that don't involve feeding a nameless and mysterious entity, consider supporting our publisher, Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness, of which I am also a member of. Strangers is a publishing collective committed to producing inclusive and anarchistic radical culture. We currently have one other podcast called simply "Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness," where you can hear me talk about our monthly featured zine, along with narrated audio versions, the monthly feature and an interview with the author. Speaking of the monthly featured zine, if you subscribe to our Patreon at $10 a month, we will mail to you a zine version of our monthly feature every month, anywhere in the world. But, also you can read it for free on our website. Our monthly feature ranges from fiction to poetry to zines about plants and hopefully soon history and folklore. These features are submitted by listeners like you and we are always looking for more submissions. We're looking for stories that don't know where they fit in, for people that don't know where they fit in. So, if you'd like to write and think your story would find a home in this tangled wilderness, consider submitting it and perhaps we'll buy it. You can support us for now at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness and find more submission info at tangledwilderness.org. Just to plug some other things that Strangers and our members have going on since no one is here to stop me: Margaret's new short story collection is currently on preorder from AK press. "We Won't Be Here Tomorrow" comes out September 20th. So, check it out and look for her soon on her book tour. Our first book as the new version of the Strangers Collective will be available for preorder on September 1st. Try anarchism for life by Cindy Barukh Milstein, a thrilling exploration of art and social relationships and worlds soon to emerge, featuring amazing art by 25 incredible artists. Look for it on our website, and also look for Milstein on the Strangers podcast as the September featured zine. A dear friend of the Strangers Collective also has a book out for preorder right now. Nourishing Resistance: stories of food, protest, and mutual aid, edited by Wren Awry along with a foreword by Cindy Milstein. The preorder is currently live at PMpress.org. So please go check it out. Wrenis an incredible writer, editor and archivist. As you heard on our last episode of Live Like The World Is Dying, we are about to start playtesting or TTRPG. Penumbra City. Listen to the last episode on composting to hear more. And check out the next episode of the Strangers podcast where I talk to Margaret and Robin about the game after we listen to Margaret's new short story, "Welcome to Penumbra City: part one." Find it wherever you get podcasts on August 31st. One last shameless plug: By the time this episode airs, we should have t shirts live on the Strangers website. You can get both a Strangers' t shirt and a Live Like The World Is Dying shirt. Both have art created by our art director Robin Savage, and we're printed by the CREAM print shop and our seriously soft, cozy, and beautiful. That's all my plugs. Except for a very special plug. A shout out to these wonderful people who have helped make this podcast as well as so many other projects possible. Shawn, SJ, Paige, Oxalis, Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Eleanor, Natalie, Kirk, Michaiah, Sam, Chris, and Hoss the dog. And here's a special thank you to Bursts, our audio editor who has an incredible anarchist new show called The Final Straw, which is also on the Channel Zero Network. Thanks so much for your support. It means so much to us and us has allowed us to get so much done as a collective. See you next time on August 9th for another roundtable segment of "This Month In The Apocalypse" with Margaret, Casandra and Brooke. Let us know if there's anything you want them to talk about.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Episode summary Margaret talks with Paige, who works in composting and humanure systems, about how to set up systems for disposing of food and human waste, different kinds of systems that can be used including worm composting, and the importance of thinking about the scale and purpose of your system.
Guest Info Paige can be found on Twitter @badcompost
Host Info Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Penumbra City Spot If you would like to play test our Penumbra City TTRPG with your friends, contact us at Penumbra.City.Playtest@gmail.com
Paige on Composting
Margaret 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like The World Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. Well, I'm one of the hosts, but I'm your host today. But, now there's new hosts for the show, which is very exciting to me. As much as I love listening to the sound of my own voice all the time, sometimes I like listening to other people talk. And, today we are going to be talking to Paige about composting, we're going to be talking about what to do with stuff that rots and why it's so important. And I don't know, lots of stuff around shit and things like that. I'm really excited about this kind of selfishly, because I have a lot of questions that are for my own personal use as someone who composts, and you know, has lived off grid a lot and stuff like that. So I think, I hope that you will get a lot out of it, and this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network.
JINGLE
Margaret 01:49 Okay, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then I guess kind of why people should listen to you about compost.
Paige 01:58 Thank you so much for having me. My name is Paige. I use she/her pronouns. I guess I started composting at a pretty young age. We had a pile at my parents house growing up and then more recently, actually worked for Tucson's city composting program when it was run through their university, so was on like an industrial scale operation for a couple of months. I currently work at the food bank in their farm and garden program. And I have helped them redesign their worm composting system as well as their just general composting system as well as installed composting toilets on site. I've also worked with friends of a land project and help them set up a composting system for humanure as well as just like food waste.
Margaret 02:51 Cool. For anyone who's listening, if you can hear a squeaking in the background is because I gave my dog a toy that I thought didn't have a squeaker in it. And I was proven mistaken. So, I apologize for that. But okay, so composting, what is composting, that's where things where you just like throw an apple into the woods, and hope for the best.
Paige 03:12 So composting isn't just kind of throwing stuff and hoping for the best. It's usually just taking, like organic material. And there's different types of composting, there's different systems, but it's kind of creating in a controlled environment to process what would be waste products into something that you can use more as a soil amendment, maybe for your garden, and maybe for fruit trees. But it's just yeah, processing waste into something really valuable and useful.
Margaret 03:40 I get really excited about it. I have this kind of like scavenger mindset leftover from when I was more of like a squatter and traveler. But, I feel like food waste is like the main way I can still really feel that, like scratch that itch, you know? I mean, I guess I do it sometimes with other stuff where I try and scavenge. But like, I get really excited by the idea that you can like not have food waste be waste. And so I don't know, I'm very excited about this. Okay, so what are some of the basics of you know, okay, so, I mean, I guess the 'why' someone would compost is probably sort of implied, like not letting things go to waste. And then also like, not needing to, you know, go and purchase fertilizer and things like that for your garden. But, what are some of the basic 'Hows' like, I guess starting at a smaller scale, you know, if someone wants to set up compost at their apartment or at their house or wherever they are.
Paige 04:35 Yeah, so I think it's really going to depend on like what you have available to you. So, like a backyard system. You could do an outdoor, like hot or thermophilic pile, which I've seen systems built out of pallets where you just kind of set up like a three or four sided bin, and then you just throw your food scraps in there along with some sort of cover material which will generally be like a dry carbon based thing, maybe leaves, maybe sawdust. In my house, I use manure I like go pick it up every couple of months if you're an apartment and don't....
Margaret 05:09 Manure is the cover?
Paige 05:10 Yeah, I use like, well, so the manure that I find it's like it's manure mixed with straw. So it's like pretty dry.
Margaret 05:18 Oh, okay.
Paige 05:18 And bulky. And I think the thing that I see people doing wrong is just not having enough material to do like a hot compost pile. So, they're just kind of throwing stuff in a pile, and I live in the desert, so it just kind of dries out. I think it's probably different and more humid wet places. But yeah, to get like, kind of your traditional hot compost pile, I feel like would be kind of more on the scale of like, a pallet bin at the smallest, like three feet by three feet. Ish.
Margaret 05:48 Okay.
Paige 05:49 But, there's also you know, there's other options for like apartments and indoor use, such as like a worm bin, or there's, there's also a style of composting called Bokashi. That's actually more of like a fermentation that people do in buckets that you can also use to process your waste. I'm not as familiar with that. But, you know, not everybody has outdoor space to have a big pile that might be kind of gnarly sometimes.
Margaret 06:14 Yeah. So, you keep talking about hot composting. Is that like, in contrast to cold composting. Is there cold composting that we could be doing? Or? No?
Paige 06:22 There is. Yeah, I mean, if you if you're just adding material really slowly over time, or you don't have a lot of material, you'll probably have like kind of a colder compost and stuff won't break down as quickly. Generally, like a big hot compost pile is also going to result in like an end product like your compost will be more like bacterially dominant versus like, a long to cold compost where you're like not trying to get the temperature up, is going to be more conducive to like a fungally based compost. So, there are like there are kind of different end, end goals based on maybe what they use is going to be. A veggie garden that's going to prefer like a bacterial heavy...a bacteria heavy compost, and like trees are going to prefer like a fungally based, but if you kind of mix and match, like, it kind of doesn't matter. There's like, yeah, I feel like you can go really deep into all the science behind it, or you can just kind of like not and still make good compost and like, deal with your food waste accordingly. But, there are like different methods you can do, depending on on what your end goal is if you wanna goo deep into it.
Margaret 07:35 Yeah, I guess that's something that's always sort of intimidated me about it is that, you know, before I started composting, I had always been sort of, I'd read all this stuff about it. And it was very, like, "This is the perfect ratio of nitrogen versus carbon material to add," or I guess, greens versus browns, I think is the way it's like often phrased or something. "And if you get it wrong, like all hell will break loose and demons will come forth from the seventh seal," and all of that and, and so it like kind of like, I think it scares a lot of people off, but you're sort of implying and my understanding is that you can kind of just do it and then like fuck with it to fix it as you go? Is that is that fairly accurate?
Paige 08:13 Yeah, I would definitely say that's accurate. Yeah, I think like...yeah, definitely people kind of stick to like the greens and browns, but I don't know, I think it's kind of tricky. Sometimes if you have material that's like, drying out or really not drying out, depending on your climate. So, like here out in Tucson, where I live, it's like you have to water your compost. Otherwise, it just, it's just a pile of like dried old vegetables or whatever you're throwing into it so. And yeah. So I mean, it's like the greens and browns, which are your carbon to nitrogen, but then it's also you're looking at like moisture and porosity. So, if you think of like a pile of sticks, like that's like too porous, there's too much airflow that's not going to break down. But if you have like a mucky swamp that's also not going to have airflow. it's gonna it's gonna be really anaerobic and smelly. So yeah, I mean, I think like you kind of just have to see what works for your climate, and I think trial and errors the best way to go and err on the side of maybe a little more of like the browns, the carbon, stuff and add water if need be. And if it's not breaking down, then you'd want to add more of like the green nitrogen rich stuff, but I don't know. Yeah, I feel like in the current moments, I've tried to like come up with the perfect recipe and it's just not...it's just not necessary for like a backyard system.
Margaret 09:41 Yeah. So it's more cooking than baking?
Paige 09:44 Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like throwing in the spices....
Margaret 09:48 It gets presented as baking.
Paige 09:49 Yeah, Nah. It's I mean, yeah, If you're doing it on like an industrial scale where there's like regulations and all of these different things that could really go wrong and you're dealing with like, tons and tons of material I think it's a bit more of an issue, but for like your average backyard person, I think like, just try to start and see what happens and adjust from there.
Margaret 10:10 Yeah. What about those like roller...I feel like when you look for like compost, backyard composting like products, you have these...And I actually have one in my side yard, but it has yet to produce useful compost, but I think that's not not the fault of the product. But like, yeah, what do you what do you make of these, you know, it's like, I have this thing that looks a little bit like a five gallon of sorry, a 50 gallon drum but on a spindle where it can spin and there's like a...mine has like two compartments. And, I don't know, I've got it a Tractor Supply.
Paige 10:46 Yeah, I've never had luck with those. But, I think it's just being in the desert. I think here inthe desert they just dry out. So, I've I've never tried those. I kind of tend to think that a lot of I mean, there's there's so many like compost products out there that are like try to make it easier. And I...to me, they all feel a little gimmicky. It's like, okay, you need like, you need to put stuff somewhere. It needs water, air, carbon, nitrogen. And that's it. And so having all of these like, additional, like tools, I yeah, I haven't had luck with them. I think the idea is that it gives you more airflow and allows you to like turn and mix the material, which probably helps it break down faster. But, it's also they're so small, like 50 gallons...I just, I usually try to start a pile that's bigger than that if I'm trying to get it hot.
Margaret 11:35 Okay.
Paige 11:35 And then. Yeah, I mean, I try to like I just put stuff in a pile, have enough material, and then I kind of like turn it sometimes. But, I try to kind of more just like let it sit and let like all the microbes and like fungus like do their job because it's just less work for me to deal with. But, I think they probably worked for some people. I don't know.
Margaret 11:57 So we shouldn't do the Live Like The World Is Dying branded backyard compost tumblers? We should find a different gimmick product to sell?
Paige 12:04 Probably. But you know, also if you're trying to do a brand deal, I think I'm open to discussing it.
Margaret 12:10 I know I was gonna say like what did you get a cut? Does it suddenly...is it a better product at that point?
Paige 12:14 Yeah, well at that point.
Margaret 12:15 Okay. Yeah. Okay, I mean, I, the times I've seen them I think that the the primary appeal is almost like the...well it's like the like, my dogs not gonna get into it because it's in this thing, you know? It's like it's like pre contained, right. But, but yeah, I also have had it for nine months and it is still just sort of full of old leaves rather than full of like good useful dirt, so I can't really like speak to its efficacy.
Paige 12:47 Yeah.
Margaret 12:49 And I'm, I'm trying to build a system now that is like three bins that are four foot by four foot each each bin with the idea that one bin per year, and then by the time I fill up the third bin the first bend has been sitting for two years is my like, maybe overkill. I have all these like plans to make it rat proof and stuff too. I guess Okay, so I want to talk about some of the like downsides of composting or these sorts of compost like the things that I've heard about and worry about, 1) is you know, my dog has gotten into compost before and gotten really sick, right? So, keeping specifically Rintrah, my dog, out of compost is the first most important thing, and then also rats, and then smell, and then okay, what's the other one? Murdering yourself by putting it on plants, and having the plants that you grow murder you instead of feed you. Those are the four things that I've heard as potential downsides.
Paige 13:47 Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think all of those can be concerns. I definitely have like my friends dogs come over, and they hop in the compost. We kind of joke that like our house is the fun house for all the dogs, because they get to come and like play in like rotting stuff. But, you know sometimes that's maybe not ideal for them just because of, yeah, I put chicken bones and stuff in there, which you definitely don't want dogs getting into. But yeah, I think for to kind of control for for small animals and pets. I think doing pallet bins and then lining that with hardware cloth, kind of like what you were saying or honestly even lining it with cardboard would probably be effective at keeping them out. And not the rats, but at least like dogs. If there's like wood and then a couple other layers of stuff. As far as the smell, that's often an indicator of too much nitrogen and too much humidity and liquid. So, to kind of mitigate that you'd want to add more like dry carbon based stuff. And yeah, it's interesting because it sounds like your pile on the ground might be kind of smelly, but then you're like tumbler pile might just be dry leaves, so maybe if you just like threw the dry leaves in with the pile thatmight kind of address that. Working with what we got.
Margaret 15:03 Oh, the tumbler pile. The tumbler pile is gross as Hell. That's why it's full of dry leaves now.
Paige 15:07 Oh, Okay.
Margaret 15:09 It used to be. There is no ground pile yet. The ground pile is a dream. It's a 2x4 frame that is currently sitting in the space that used to be a garden from the last person who lived here.
Paige 15:21 Oh okay.
Margaret 15:22 Tut I haven't...I haven't done the lining it with hardware cloth and all that stuff yet.
Paige 15:26 Cool. Yeah, yeah. But, I...you know, composting in the desert we're trying to keep out pets and javalinas, and also squirrels. And yeah, I feel like doing it out of pallets, and then hardware cloth has...I've seen be pretty effective in keeping that stuff out. And then yeah, smell is usually it's too wet. As far as like creating like a dangerous end product, I think for that you can really just think about the time that...how long it takes as well as like the heat of the pile. So if you're able to get enough material and get it to heat up, it's gonna kill almost anything that is harmful to humans. The kind of industry standard is getting piles up to 130 degrees for about 15 days. And that's considered like sufficient to, like, kill pretty much anything like even like human waste. So, you know, and I think letting it sit for longer periods of time is the way to kind of guarantee that, that it's going to be alright for for food production.
Margaret 16:24 That was kind of my thinking behind the the setup that I'm going to do with the two years instead of like one year is just out of like, well, what if I'm really lazy and do it badly then I'll just have it have set for two years instead of one year.
Paige 16:33 Totally.
Margaret 16:33 I don't know. What shouldn't people compost? I have a feeling that the answer to this is, 'It depends.' It depends on like the scale of the compost and things like that. But, to maybe like, I feel like kind of at this beginning, we're sort of talking about like backyard level compost, like vegetable garden level compost, and then I'd love to from there move into humanure and also like doing it at scale. But, in terms of like a backyard compost. What are things that are like good or bad for compost?
Paige 17:10 Yeah, generally, most like vegetable and like fruit scraps are super great. Some people have trouble with like citrus peels, like they'll just kind of dry out. People tend to recommend against dairy, meat, and bones as well as really fatty things. If you have something it's really oily, as well as like often cooked food. But, a lot of that is mostly because of the salt content in the cooked food. Like adding a bunch of salt to your compost isn't ideal, because you don't want to be putting like salty, just salty compost on your vegetable garden. That's going to kind of suck the water away from from the roots of the plants. But, honestly, if you're doing like even like a four by four backyard, like I put meat, I put cooked food, I put pretty much anything in there, and just kind of...as long as it's getting hot enough and it's big enough, it's probably going to be okay. But, if you're doing smaller scale, you might want to be a little more choosy. And then if you're doing like an indoor worm bin, if you don't have an outdoor space, then you have to be a lot more choosy because you're not, you're not just putting stuff together and hoping it works out. You're kind of like feeding worms and they're they're a little pickier than some of the microbes that will be in your big outdoor pile.
Margaret 18:25 Yeah, that makes sense to me. How long does it take to like, if you're throwing like chicken bones and stuff in that, like, how long is that taking to break down?
Paige 18:33 Um, I feel like it takes like three to six months generally, but that's if it's..if you keep the pile hot and big, and there's like a lot of like, if it's moist enough, then like stuff will break down pretty quickly.
Margaret 18:45 Okay.
Paige 18:46 The bokashi method I was mentioning earlier, too, that can be used to kind of like ferment and like break stuff down. And, that's like a couple of weeks, but I haven't I haven't actually tried that method. But, I've heard that it can be really good for like animal bones.
Margaret 19:00 Yeah, I watched one video. I probably a lot of people listen to this also do the thing where they're suddenly interested in something to watch all the YouTube videos and listen to all the podcasts about it. That might be why you're listening to this very podcast right now. Maybe you don't listen to the show. Maybe you just googled or searched 'compost.' One of the things that I watched was just like, "And then you kill the rats, and then you throw the rats in the compost pile." It was just sort of the the compost pile is like the 'all devour,' and it was like clearly he was doing it in this very like, "See. Look. The compost pile is not so fragile as people claim." I don't know that kind of impressed me, the idea that you can just throw the rats into...the dead ones into the compost pile. I don't know.
Paige 19:43 Yeah, totally. No, it's it's kind of wild like what a pile will just like totally consume. Yeah, I think also like speaking about rats, like rats aren't gonna go into a pile if it's 140 degrees. Like that's too warm for them. They're like not gonna fuck with it.
Margaret 19:58 Oh Huh, okay.
Paige 19:59 Yeah. I just like it's just not...Yeah, if you if you're keeping it hot, it's like not a very like, comfortable environment for a lot of like the rodents and things like that. They'll kind of keep away from from at least the hot parts of it. Yeah, it's also cool. Like the the heating aspect of it, I've seen systems where, you know, it's like, you're using the heat to kind of generate all these microbes and break down all the material, but I've also seen systems where people are using it to heat water. If you like coil like pipes through it, you can even kind of get a couple of different uses out of that heat, which is pretty cool.
Margaret 20:35 And compost piles generate this heat on their own from like, it's like a byproduct of the process of breaking down?
Paige 20:42 Yeah, basically, it creates like, it'll just kind of breed all these microbes. And as these micro populations multiply, they yeah, and they consume food, they just create an like an immense amount of heat. I've seen piles that got up to like 160 degrees Fahrenheit. When I was working at the city's composting site, there was one winter where it snowed in Tucson, which was kind of scary, but there were two inches of snow on the ground everywhere, except for on top of...a lot of industrial scale areas, we'll use what's called wind row, which is like a pile, it's maybe five to six feet tall, and then it's just elongated it across whatever area they have. And so everywhere there was snow, except for on top of these wind rows that were just steaming and just melting everything that fell on them, which was really cool.
Margaret 21:29 Yeah. Okay, so can you heat a house? By setting up a compost bin in your basement?
Paige 21:36 Oh, I wonder. I mean, I think you could, if you put a compost pile in your basement, and then ran pipes through the pile, and then through your floor, I feel like you could gett some good like, floor warming action. Yeah, or like, some people will pile.. they'll put their pile against a greenhouse to kind of like, passively have a little like heat source near their greenhouse. But, if you're trying to...
Margaret 22:01 Oh, that's interesting.
Paige 22:02 Yeah, if you're trying to maintain like a pretty consistent amount of heat, though, you kind of need to constantly be adding a good amount of material and turning it because it'll, it'll kind of like it'll get really hot initially, when there's all this like new new material, microbes, air, water, and then it'll cool off. And then if you add more, or turn it and add more air, it'll heat up again, and it kind of will go through these cycles. But, eventually, what you want is an end product that's not going to reheat. And that's kind of a sign that the compost is like aged well and is a stable thing that you can put into your garden.
Margaret 22:36 Oh, okay.
Paige 22:36 Yeah, I've put in compost to my garden, like mixed it in when it wasn't fully done. And then like my garden bed, like, reheated and like was up at like 120 degrees, which is like not, yeah, not ideal and not good for growing plants. But if you have like unfinished compost, you can like, put a couple inches on top of your plants. And that's often going to be all right. But if you're like really doing like a first amendment of your...of a new garden plot, you want to make sure that you're working with something that's not going to reheat.
Margaret 23:10 Okay. So, you know, you kind of know compost is done when it looks like dirt and isn't hot anymore? Do you like? Do you build up a pile and then just move on to the next pile? Are you kind of always adding to the original pile? Like, what what is to be done? How do you? How do?
Paige 23:27 So there's a lot of different systems you can do. So there's, if you start a pile and then move on to the next one, that's kind of what's considered a batch system. So, you're building something up and adding to it and then you're letting it sit for an amount of time to make sure that stuffs broken down. There's other systems that are more designed as like a flow through system. So you're maybe adding to the top of the pile but you're able to pull stuff off the bottom, a lot of worm composting systems are flow through because you kind of have to, when you're putting new material and then harvesting old material, you're also trying to not like remove all the worms from the system. So you're trying to kind of add often, add material to the top and harvest from the bottom. So there's, there's different like commercial or DIY systems that that can be made to accommodate that. So, you can do either. And I think it really depends on like, what your timeline is and what your end goal is. Like, are you just trying to get rid of the waste that you have? And not have it be in your trash? Are you trying to make a soil amendment that's as good as possible as fast as possible? And so there's kind of different systems that that make the most sense based on just like what you have on site, what kind of energy you want to put in, and what your goal is. Yeah, but either are options.
Margaret 24:44 Okay. So this kind of brings me...Well, I don't know if it logically brings me to but the thing that it makes me think of is that okay, so if you're in an apartment, right, and like I guess you could kind of tiny scale compost and on your porch or something, but it seems like it It makes more sense to have sometimes composting be a sort of shared thing between houses or within a community. Right? Like, you know, I know a lot of cities, and it sounds like this is something that you have been involved with at a municipal level, have like composting where people were able to set aside their food and the city goes and composts it because it's not trash, right? It should never have been trash, so the idea that we live in a society that's all organic matters is trash is very bizarre. But, it seems like you could also set that up kind of like smaller scale, right? Like, you know, within any given community, if you don't live somewhere with municipal composting, or, or is it better to just let it be at municipal level? Like what are the advantages of doing compost at scale, whether it's a community wide scale or municipal wide scale?
Paige 25:45 Yeah, so I think doing it at a community or at a municipal scale and having it be really official, I think it makes it easier to divert stuff from the landfill. So, when food waste goes into the landfill, it creates methane, which is, you know, more potent than than co2. And, so it's actually interesting here, and here in southern Arizona, a lot of food comes through the port, that's like two...an hour south of Tucson through Nogales, and they have...the landfill there is like one of the most methane rich ones in the country, because they don't have a composting program down there, or like a way to divert food waste besides through like their food bank. And so when trucks come across the border, and food doesn't pass inspection, it just goes and the semi trucks are just dumping food waste into the landfill. And then it's creating like methane.
Margaret 25:45 Oh, god.
Paige 25:47 And so, you know, that's like a huge problem. It probably like deserves like a pretty big solution as far as like, what a system to address that would be. But, I think when I was working at the at Tucson's program, we had a lot of problems of people putting just garbage and trash into like the food waste bins at different restaurants. And, so it creates this really big problem of contamination, like when you're doing it on a large scale, like we...I remember seeing like freon tanks and just like constant plastic bags. Yeah. And so we were, it'd be like a huge part of what we did is we would just like kind of like tromp around in these massive piles of rotting food like pulling out plastic and even like the quote unquote, like compostable bags don't actually break down in some systems, and they would, they would clog up some of our machinery. And so yeah, I think I think large scale, you just have issues of contamination. And you also need a bunch of heavy machinery. Like we were operating, like a water truck and front loaders, we had like this machine that was specifically like a compost turner. It was, it was just like a lot of...it was pretty energy intensive process. It was fun. It was cool. I like you know, got to drive a tractor around. That was fun. But yeah, I think I think having it more be like the community scale where it's like, either backyard based or neighborhood based, or like community garden based, I think is is a better way to do it and just kind of cutting out like the transportation time and just having it at that scale. But, but again, that's not going to it's not going to address, you know, the semi trucks full of rotting food. But right, yeah, so. So there's, yeah, there's benefits and drawbacks, but I think I think, you know, with almost anything usually, like a lot of small, decentralized solutions are usually better than the large centralized ones.
Margaret 28:27 I've I've based most of my political beliefs on this concept. But yeah, but I also believe that sometimes certain things need to be structured at larger levels in order to be effective, you know, or like, I don't know, accomplish what they need, like what you're talking about with like the, you know, the trucks or whatever. Well, okay, so then if you do it at the community level, it seems like another advantage right is you probably get less contamination literally because people could be like, "Joe, you can't keep throwing your Freon tanks in with your compost." You know, like Joe keeps doing that and, and probably gets shamed enough about it, right.
Paige 29:07 Yeah, definitely.
Margaret 29:09 I literally can't even imagine what a Freon tank is. I mean, I'm aware that there's a liquid called Freon...
Paige 29:13 It kind of looked like a propane tank, but it was like blue and like, I was just like, In what world do we think this is gonna break down? Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was just, it was a bit of a mess. But yeah, so I mean, you know, when you're doing large scale, yeah, it's like you need to also figure out like how to like educate people versus Yeah, like, the just like community shaming of Joe for his Freon tank is is maybe a little more effective than like a massive scale like, program. Yeah. But yeah, and also, I mean, I think when you're doing smaller scale it also...people end up talking to each other and, you know, building community Yeah, that they do if they just aren't interacting. Yeah,
Margaret 29:55 That makes sense. Okay, so But then, in terms of the stuff that...one of the things I got kind of excited about when I started doing...looking more into compost, because I've lived in situations that have required relied upon compost at various points in my life, a fair amount, but I've never been personally like, directing it the way that I am currently. And one of the things that kind of surprised me to learn about is that, like cardboard and paper and stuff can be composted, but maybe not easily, or it needs to be shredded or like, like it, there were a couple things that in my mind were marked trash, or fake recycling, because one of the biggest problems I think we have in this world is that recycling is a scam, or at least the version of--not the concept of recycling, right--but yeah, you know, the current industrial infrastructure of recycling seems to be largely smoke and mirrors. So, I'm excited by the idea of like, the more DIY recycling type stuff we can do, the more repurposing we can do. So, paper, cardboard: Yes? No? Maybe?
Paige 31:03 Paper, cardboard, yes, under certain circumstances. So yeah, you're totally right about the shredding. So a lot of what that has to do with is like the surface area to like mass of the item. And so if you think about, like your compost pile is all these little particles, and then the microbes that are breaking stuff down, kind of live on like, the slime level surrounding each little particle. And so all these little microbes are going to have a lot easier time breaking down a bunch of shredded tiny bits of paper than like a full sheet or like a full chunk of cardboard that you're just creating more areas for them...
Margaret 31:37 Or like an entire Ayn Rand book.
Paige 31:39 Yeah, I mean, that's a good yeah. Yeah, you might need to rip that up first, which I think people would not be opposed to.
Margaret 31:46 Okay.
Paige 31:47 Might have fun with.
Margaret 31:48 Okay, cool. Yeah.
Paige 31:50 Yeah, I think that would be the ideal. I think also, cardboard and paper, worms really love it. So, you know, you could also set up multiple systems where you put something somewhere in some in another. The system that I have at the food bank demo garden here in Tucson, we have like a hot compost area, but then we also have a big worm area. And what we feed them is we feed them shredded paper, and then unfinished compost. And so we we put like a layer of paper and then we on top of it, we put a bunch of hot compost essentially but because we're only putting like an inch or two, it's not gonna stay hot. But we that's what we feed our worms. And they they love it. And so yeah, cardboard and paper, I would think more of as worm food than then putting it in my in my pile, although you can. But as the more you're able to break it down, the better.
Margaret 32:44 Are there like--speaking of products and gimmicks--I can imagine a paper shredder, and I can imagine a wood chipper. But, can you just put cardboard into a wood chipper? Or like, like, is there a way to, you know, because I think that a lot of people during the pandemic probably receive more and more things in cardboard boxes at their front porch. And, like, you know, having ways to dispose of that as like bonus besides of course just using it as like sheet mulch or I don't know if that's what you call it, but like the gardening purpose of laying out cardboard, you know, any any tips on on breaking down cardboard?
Paige 33:24 Umm, getting it wet and ripping it? But it's Yeah, I don't I don't think you could put it into a shredder. I think it would maybe gum it up. You also have to kind of take off like the plastic tape of that stuff. Because that won't break down. Some people get really specific and focused on like, "Oh, this is with a like plastic based ink. Like we're gonna be putting microplastics in like the soil." And like, there might be some truth to that. And I'm just like, we just live in like an industrial world where there's microplastics everywhere. And like, you can not put the like plastic based ink into your compost, because of the micro plastics or you can just be like, shrug and throw it in.
Margaret 34:07 We're all gonna die one day. And yeah, we did this to ourselves. Yeah.
Paige 34:10 I live in a city and I breathed the air here. Like, I think some microplastics in my garden is...we're already full of microplastics. I think it's fine. We're just like, you know, we're all connected.
Margaret 34:21 I mean, it's either fine or it's not right. But it's like, I don't think I'm going to dramatically improve my quality of life by avoiding that additional little bit in my cherry tomatoes or whatever.
Paige 34:30 Yeah, totally. Yeah, I guess it's actually deeply deeply not fine. And we don't have control over it may be my actual belief but...
Margaret 34:38 Yeah, totally. Okay, well, speaking of the ruins of industrial society, can you can you put ash in compost? Is it depend on what the ash is of
Paige 34:46 No ash and compost. No, don't do that.
Margaret 34:50 Fuck.
Paige 34:50 Yeah. Well, I mean, like...
Margaret 34:51 What am I supposed to do with ash then?
Paige 34:53 I don't know. People ask me that sometimes. And people were putting it into like a composting system and like using it in the humanure system, and I was Like, I mean, it's kind of just like, it's almost like really fine sand like it's just not alive. It's, it's maybe gonna bulk it and not harm it. It's not you're not adding anything that the pile needs. It's just kind of like fluff and like very dense fluff.
Margaret 35:14 You're just putting it there to get rid of it.
Paige 35:15 Yeah. And just like based on how dense ash is, especially when it's wet, you're probably limiting some of the airflow which is not good. So I yeah, I don't have a good use for ash besides, I've mixed it into like concrete before like when I needed to buy like sand and mix up like Portland cement. I've just like thrown ash in and that was fine. But I don't know how many how many concrete projects you have in your life right now, that might not be a reasonable solution.
Margaret 35:43 I actually have more experience building than growing food so...I'm growing food as the unexplored terrain. Although I kind of hate working with concrete and I'm not very good at it. And I'm terrified of breathing it in. But well, yeah. Okay. Cement, I guess is what I'm terrified of breathing in concrete itself. I'm not particularly worried about chunks of gravel or whatever. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So no ash. Okay. But you mentioned these compostable plastics, aren't they gonna save us all? And isn't everything fine and plastic is great now because it's all compostable? Basically. Okay. So like, I've heard this before, right? That you need that, like your plastic spoon that you get at the hippie diner doesn't actually break down in a home compost. It would only break down on like, municipal level compost. Is that true? Is it like does it just take a lot longer? Or is it about a heat difference? Or is it all scam?
Paige 36:37 Um, it's yeah, it's a heat and time thing, but it's really just a scam. I mean, I just don't...In what world is a single use item good for the environment at all. Like it's just greenwashing bullshit scam. Yeah, it's also there's interesting things about like what's biodegradable versus compostable? Like biodegradable just means it's gonna break down into way smaller pieces and compostable means it's like made out of a carbon or like quote unquote, natural thing that will eventually become dirt. But,we yeah, even at like an industrial scale, like we would constantly just be pulling plastic out. And so you know, it's kind of a thing that, you know, people do where it's like, 'wish cycling,' where you like, you're like, Oh, I'm gonna put this in the recycling bin because I like hope it's recyclable, but it's really not.
Margaret 37:27 I did as a kid. Yeah.
Paige 37:29 Yeah. And it's like, ultimately, proud. Totally. It's like a weird Yeah, you're like, you're like hoping something will break down. But, you're ultimately like, making it so like, some like worker or machine is gonna have to, like deal with it later down the line. And, you know, it's like, maybe you feel a little better about yourself, but it's, it's ultimately not not making a difference.
Margaret 37:48 It's like calling the cops instead of handling the problem directly. You're just putting it on someone else.
Paige 37:53 Yeah, it's like, yeah, It's kind of some weird like, Nimmy Nimmy thing. Maybe it would be a way to think about it. But yeah, yeah.
Margaret 38:01 Yeah. Okay, fine.
Paige 38:06 Sorry.
Margaret 38:07 Okay, so I can't put ash in. All the plastic stuff is a scam. Yeah. I mean, neither of these thing surprise me. The ash thing I'm sad about. It makes a lot of sense. The way you described it makes perfect sense. Basically, because burning cardboard when when recycling is fake is something that people sometimes do.
Paige 38:26 Yeah, totally.
Margaret 38:27 Okay, so let's talk about...you've been bringing up worms a couple of times. My conception of worm composting is fairly simple. It's like, instead of the food is digested by random bacteria from the air/becomes sort of soil in the classic rot way. Instead, like worms, eat it and then poop it out. And then the worm poop, which we call castings to not sound gross is the like, some of like, the best, most nutrient dense compost in the world or something?
Paige 39:02 Yeah, that's right. Yeah, worms are a little pickier eaters than the microbes. But yeah, they'll break stuff down really well. It's not all types of worms. There's like some specific worms that are better for composting. They have different names. Often people call them Red Wigglers but they're like scientific name is Eisenia Fetida and that those are yeah they're good worms for composting.
Margaret 39:23 It's a prettier word.
Paige 39:23 Yeah, it's a little prettier. Or fetid, you know, working with rotten stuff, but they, yeah, they're not good for fishing. They like kind of create like a weird smell that fish don't like so they're, they're very specific for for compost and they kind of only live in like the top three inches of soil, usually like rotting leaves and stuff. Yeah, and so you can you have to, you have to have a little more control over a worm pile because you're not you're not it's not just kind of like set it and leave it. You need to make sure that they have water, that they have fresh food, that they don't get too hot or too cold. Like there's a little more care that goes into that.
Margaret 39:58 That they don't get bored.
Paige 39:59 Yeah. You got it? Yeah. Totally gotta...
Margaret 40:01 Like little worm toys or yeah?
Paige 40:03 Yeah, exactly. Definitely add adding a few toys I haven't I feel it's a good idea to see how that affects our our system at the food bank, do some trials see if they're more productive if we give them some, you know, we give them bread, but not circuses. So we'll see if they're a little more productive if we meet their needs.
Margaret 40:24 Flea circuses are the worms.
Paige 40:26 Yeah, we'll figure it out.
Margaret 40:28 Okay.
Paige 40:30 But yeah, what else can I say about worms? Oh, it's interesting, because a lot of worms like for compost, as well as worms that like live in our soil are mostly invasive in North America. So kind of similar to honey bees or a lot of honeybees in North America. And they've Yeah, they've really, you have to actually be kind of careful with what types of worms you're working with, and where you're putting the material in certain parts of the country, because there's been really big problems of invasive earthworms. And they're, they're really impacting forest ecology, actually, you know, a lot of forests, maybe had a certain type of worm there, or maybe it didn't have worms. And so part of the forest ecology is that all of these, like leaves fall on the ground and take a long time to rot. But if you add a bunch of worms to that system, they end up eating all the all the leaves, which it just changes the soil makeup. And and it's, it's kind of a big problem. Yeah,
Margaret 41:23 It gets rid of the mulch or whatever, right?
Paige 41:26 Yeah.
Margaret 41:26 Hmm. Okay. And so when you when you do worm composting, and you have a worm bin, you're basically breeding worms at the same time, right? Like, do you end up with more worms than you started? And you therefore can like, go and start your new worm bin? Because you have like, twice as many worms, or...
Paige 41:46 Yeah.
Margaret 41:46 Like, do...You don't have to like keep going by and buying worms at the worm store? The wormery?
Paige 41:54 Yeah, ideally, you would not have to make too many trips to the wormery kind of like a one and done scenario would be ideal. But yeah, they'll double in population every three to six months under ideal conditions. They...eah, it was interesting. Like, you can get worms as like bait worms, where you buy them like 12, in a little cup, but those often aren't actually composting rooms. And the way that you generally buy composting worms is by the pound. And so when we started our system at the food bank, I bought 25 pounds of worms, which was about 25,000 worms. And the way you kind of calculate how many worms you need is actually based on the surface area of how big your system is. So every square foot, you can do a pound of worms, but....
Margaret 42:38 Cause they only hang out the top three inches?
Paige 42:40 Yeah, yeah, totally. So if you have like, a super deep system, like they're just not going to go that deep. But yeah, there's a lot of...Yeah, worms are fun. And again, they they're creating like, super high quality material. Part of that is because when they, you know, part of what's good about compost and worm castings is like they will they add a lot of like microbes and bacteria to your soil and kind of help build up your like soil food web. And there's a lot of like microbes and bacteria that actually breed and reproduce like within the digestive tract of a worm. And so they'll like they're basically eating microbes and bacteria, and then shitting out like, way more microbes and bacteria. And that's like, kind of the thing that you want in your garden. So yeah, worms are fun. They're cool. And they Yeah, they'll any worm can like mate with any other worm. And then they they lay like an egg that has like, two to four baby worms in it, and then they hatch.
Margaret 43:34 Okay, because they're not individually sexed or something like...
Paige 43:37 Yeah, they don't. Everybody's got all the junk. Yeah.
Margaret 43:41 Okay, cool. So The Left Hand of Darkness is the worms existence. Can you use other creepy crawlies? Like if you want to have your like goth garden where you only grow black eggplant, and black tomatoes, and black roses, and stuff, can you get like nightcrawlers or like, centipede or something?
Paige 44:01 You can do you can do like nightcrawlers. Yeah, I mean, same as worms, but you can also do people will do black soldier fly larva to break down food and it's like, they just look like little weird grubs. And you can use those not to I guess that's not really composting at all. I mean, it's it's getting rid of like a waste material and like feeding it to like, little little bugs. But then you would just use those to like feed your chickens or something. So...not really compost, but a way to....
Margaret 44:28 So there's more steps involved?
Paige 44:29 Yeah, probably. Yeah, yeah.
Margaret 44:32 Okay, so speaking of worm casings, and poop, the--not the final question, but the final like category--we'll be talking about human casings as part of composting, like, I know that this, you know, one of the reason want to save it for last is almost like the escalating level of like perceived grossness, right? Like I, I think people are like, "Oh, food rots. I understand that. Vegetables and rot. That's cool." And then you're like, "Yeah, but what if there's a bunch of worms," and then people get a little bit weird. And then you're like, "Okay, but what if you do with human shit?"
Paige 45:04 Yeah.
Margaret 45:05 And then that's where people say that they don't want to come over anymore. And that they don't want to eat your vegetables.
Paige 45:11 Yep.
Margaret 45:12 But it's actually completely fine. Well, it just takes additional safety precautions? I'm asking this is like, it's funny because I'm like, I try to self insert as the person who doesn't know anything about this, but I've like also lived on in places with humanure systems for a number of years. But,I'm curious your experience or like, how you sell people on humanure, or? I don't know, can you give an introduction to human casings? Yeah,
Paige 45:38 Totally. Um, yeah, so you a lot of like, what to compost on what not to compost will be like, definitely not human, like poop or pee. And yeah, that's just totally not true. You can, you know, we're an animal like any other creating manure, and you can definitely use it. The yeah, there's a lot of different systems. I mean, there's commercial composting toilets that you can buy for your home that are like in the 1000s of dollars, but you can also make like DIY systems for like, under $50. Yeah, I've, I've seen a couple of different systems, I've helped set some up. At the garden that I work at, we have like a fully permitted humanure system that I built. And yeah, I've helped set up some different ones on like a land project. But yeah, you can definitely do it, the, the differences are, you just want to be really certain that you're hitting high temperatures, because that's what's really going to address like kind of the pathogen problem. But if you're if you're getting like a big hot pile of compost, and you're putting like human waste in it, like it's, it's gonna break it down, and it's going to be safe to use. Yeah, I'm trying to think of the I think the big questions are like, at what scale are you trying to do it? And do you care if it's like permitted or not? In some states, you can legally compost human waste at your home and some places you can't. It's also interesting, the like, a lot of sewage treatment plants end up composting, like their final product, and they refer to it as bio solids. And so actually, a lot of cities are composting human waste, they're just doing it after it's gone through like...
Margaret 47:13 That's good.
Paige 47:14 Yeah, it's like it's after it's gone through like a really like chemical heavy process to like, really ensure that there's nothing like bad in it. But yeah, 'bio solids,' is kind of like the, like industry term that, that they've adopted to not say like 'human shit,' which, you know is a little more off putting. But ultimately, yeah, yeah.
Margaret 47:34 I mean, it's interesting to me, right? Because like, I think that this, to me is an example of where sometimes people...I read a book by a purported environmentalist once that was like, "We're animals, we should just poop on the ground." It was this big name, author that...whatever it was Derek Jensen, I fucking hate him. I don't care about name droping him. Fucking transphobe piece of shit. But anyway, you know, he wrote this book called "What We Leave Behind," that I just like, even back, this is like, back when I like before I learned...I'm not a particular fan of this particular author, but I was when I was younger. And one of the first things that talks about is basically being like, "I just go poop on the ground, because that's we're animals and it's fine." And I'm like, I also believe that the idea of like, taking our nutrients or whatever, and flushing them into the ocean is a bad idea, right? But, I also believe that we develop that system for a reason, which was that before we used to just poop in the streets, and everyone would get sick and die.
Paige 48:31 Yes.
Margaret 48:32 And so, so something like this is actually really interesting to me, because it seems to be this...you know, both sides are just full of shit...I didn't even mean to make that pun. Yeah. We'll be here all day. Okay, and I don't know. So it's just like, it's particular interesting. It's particularly interesting to me that it's like, "Okay, well, we actually can just do it right." We can actually...and it's not incredibly hard. You just actually have to do it. You just actually have to make sure that your compost pile sits for a really long time and or gets up to the right temperature if you're not going to be you know, I don't know. I don't know where I'm going with that rant. But...
Paige 49:18 Derek Jensen sucks. Conclusion.
Margaret 49:20 Yeah, yeah, totally. Don't just go poop on the ground next to your dog's shit.
Paige 49:26 Yeah. I yeah, I think it feels really absurd to poop in drinking water, especially in the desert. A lot of like municipal sewage systems were not built to the scale that they're now operating at. A lot of them were like built to just totally overflow into like, whatever local water source there is. So yeah, I think like not shitting in drinking water and like having smaller scale ways to address like human waste I think is like a way better option and, you know, kind of similar to your other compost pile where you add like your greens and browns. In this case, the poop is actually a green, it's more of a nitrogen rich thing. It's not a brown, ironically. But yeah, you can I mean, I think the simplest system is like, it's called like a 'bucket to barrel' system or a 'bucket to bin.' And you would just have like a five gallon bucket with a toilet seat and like kind of a bin built around it so it's comfortable to sit on, and then you just like, go to the bathroom in it, and then cover whatever you leave behind with your dump, I guess, with wood shavings or some kind of carbon source. And then basically like, when that's filled, you just transfer it out to your bin system or wherever you're, you're kind of doing the the secondary processing. And yeah, just like make sure that pile gets hot. The systems that I've helped install, and we're actually trying to get one installed in my house in Tucson right now are either like barrel systems or like larger, I guess, bin or like a tote system. But you. Yeah, so there's the barrel, the bucket system, or you can also build toilets out of like 55 gallon barrels where you just like put build a toilet seat for the top of it. And then just like use, use that for your waste, and you're adding sawdust and things. And you just want to make sure that that system has like some ventilation as well as like an insect trap. And...
Margaret 51:28 I was just going to ask, yeah, if you're doing it. Is that where you like? I've seen people do it where they like, take a...I completely cut you off. I'm sorry.
Paige 51:36 Oh, you're good, go ahead.
Margaret 51:38 People take a tube and like drill holes in it, and then stick it in the middle of the whole thing. So that way, like, even as the compost builds up, there's always like, a way for air to get in and throughout it all.
Paige 51:48 Yeah, totally. Yeah, that's, that's....
Margaret 51:50 I think sometimes people over design these things, too.
Paige 51:53 Yeah, totally. I think that's, that's definitely true, I think. I mean, I think it's helpful to have like more airflow, especially in like a composting toilet scenario. You also like, if you have like that 55 gallon barrel, like you do need to like turn it, which you do with a compost crank, which is kind of like a long, stick with like a coil at the end. And you just kind of like you put that stick in and kind of like crank it down and pull up and just try to get like some some like mixing in there. And that'll help the material breakdown better.
Margaret 52:22 Oh, I see.
Paige 52:24 Yeah, and then usually those are, those are kind of more of a batch system. So you would have a certain number of barrels, depending on how many people you had using it. And you would essentially use one and once it's filled, you would cap it, and then like wait four to six months and then empty it eventually. In that four to six month time period, you do want to make sure that you are turning it, and making sure that it's getting up to temperature to kind of guarantee that any any pathogens are dying in there. Yeah, and the other system that I've built is like more of like a larger tote system. So it was built out of cinder blocks. And it was like a two two section toilet. And so it's a bigger space is going to take longer to fill. But it's by having kind of like multiple of the same thing, then you have one that's like aging and resting and one that's actively being used. The other factor to consider is urine diversion. Different people have different take on it. I think if you're doing a bigger system, like with barrels or like the bigger bins, it's helpful to try to divert urine. So having like...
Margaret 53:27 Oh, interesting.
Paige 53:28 Yeah, it kind of depends on where you are and how heavy of use it is. But a system that I helped work on was one that like often would have like a lot of people using it really quickly. And so kind of keeping urine diverted was helpful because otherwise it would just get too moist and bulky. And like in that sense, and in those moments like it actually does get smelly and gross often. If you're maintaining it well it's actually not smelly or gross at all. But yeah, if it's heavier use it's helpful to like have a urinal or like there's like urine diverters or funnels that like you can have like in the toilet seat that kind of helps like if people are like sitting and peeing it all kind of separate from the solids. Yeah, so there's there's there's different ways to do it. But I mean, urine also can be composted. So.
Margaret 54:16 Right, yeah. Well, and a lot of people will put it--please don't listen to me as the expert gardener anyone who's listening to this--I'm under the impression is about 10 to 1 water to urine and then like apply as fertilizer directly once it's like watered down that heavily. That's something that you've heard ever?
Paige 54:37 I've heard people do that. I feel like I I've kind of tended to more just do like, compost everything first and then use it. Yeah, just because yeah, I mean, I think for me, too. It's just like not It's not easy for me to like, harvest my own urine. It's not a thing. I feel super....Like. Yeah, I but I have heard of people doing that.
Margaret 55:00 Yeah, yeah, it just seems like the process of combining the two. 10 to 1 or whatever it just involves, like lots of...I don't know, stagnant urine is one of the worst punk house smells that's ever been smelled.
Paige 55:16 Yeah.
Margaret 55:17 And that's not something that I would try to sell someone on. But, then that is the reason...As I've been researching hypothetical humanure systems....I have been interested to see the different ways that people take the different takes that people have on it. It seems like if you're not diverting it, you're just you're ending up with a lot watery buckets, right. And so you just have a lot more. You're saying it's bulkier, because you're just adding so much more sawdust or hay or whatever your carbon is, in order to start absorbing all that?
Paige 55:49 Yeah, you can, you can run through your carbon source a lot faster if you're trying to add that. I think also like, especially with bucket systems, like if you're peeing in the buckets, and just like, I've carried some buckets that were just like, I was like, This is disgusting. Like, this is just like, piss and shit and like a little bit of sawdust. And I'm not happy about this. I've also like, yeah, you know, trained people to use a bucket system and like, don't ever pee in the bucket. And then the next morning, I'm like, sitting there, and I'm like, Oh, God, I'm peeing. I'm letting everyone down. I'm such a hypocrite. Oh, no. It happens. It's a shameful thing to do I guess but. But yeah, if you're, if you're, especially with a bucket system, if you have to, like move it, I feel like if there's a lot of people using it, it's nice to maybe divert the urine just for like it weighs less, it just is less smelly. But you can also just add a lot more carbon. So like, when I've done systems that weren't going to have urine diversion, I've actually started whatever like receptacle or container with like, a third full of whatever carbon material I'm going to be using, just to really make sure that there's like, kind of like just a bunch of dry material that can soak up that excess liquid. And yeah, and I think it's, you know, a, I've worked with systems that are I've gotten systems permitted. And I've also been around systems that were not permitted. And a lot of like, the permit stuff, like will require urine diversion, just for, like, pathogens and smells and things like that. Yeah. So I think it's just a thing to consider of how you're, how you're gonna manage that, that added, like, moisture and, like, just like dense material.
Margaret 57:33 So what do you...so in terms of carbon to add, I think that this is also another thing that holds people up, right is because, you know, there's like, oh, just add a lot of sawdust. And most people, I think, think to themselves, I don't have a lot of sawdust. I don't produce much sawdust in my life. Even I as someone who like makes her own furniture, sometimes and shit. I don't produce that much sawdust compared to like what is necessary, right. And, you know, some of the places I've lived before will make deals with sawmills where they just basically show up with a truck and are like, "Hey, can I have your sawdust?" And the place is like, "Yeah, whatever, just get rid of the sawdust for me, I don't care." But it seems like everyone has different tactics on getting carbon material. And it's like, it seems like it's the it's the one that a lot of people aren't producing themselves enough and therefore go and get. And that was actually why I was so excited about like cardboard and paper as possible carbon sources. I know that for myself, I fortunately, live somewhere where there's a lot of land and I can just like, run a push mower with a bag on the back and fill out the bag. And then this is literally my hypothesis. It's green when it first gets cut, but later it's brown, and it seems like it when it's dried out. It's more of a carbon for compost.
Paige 58:49 Yep.
Margaret 58:51 Okay, so how would you recommend 1) Am I doing it right? And 2) that other people go and find a carbon source?
Paige 58:56 Yeah, I mean, I think the sawmill thing is a great thing to do. That's what we're doing. Like with the garden and other projects, like we just have agreements with sawmills, and like, cabinetry places and the only thing we have to keep an eye out for is if they're working with walnut. That's a word that has a lot of like antibiotic, antibacterial properties and will like kind of halt the process. And so you don't want to be adding walnut and I think there's maybe a few other types of wood that that you wouldn't want to use.
Margaret 59:24 Like Cedar, maybe?
Paige 59:25 Potentially I'm not, yeah, I'm not totally sure. But yeah, I think dried grass clippings would work great as a cover material. The other thing that we will sometimes do out here in the desert is like sweep under like mesquite trees because there's just these really fine little leaves that when they're dried out work really well. But yeah, the other thing is just getting...if it's like just a system for yourself, and you're not having to source that much you can also just buy like wood shavings at like a pet store, which is annoying. It's like annoying to have to buy, buy something that you have to put into your system, but I think it's better than shiting in water, personally. But...
Margaret 1:00:01 Yeah, well especially in Tucson or something.
Paige 1:00:04 Yeah, totally. Yeah. But it's, you know, I think it's up to what you have on site. I don't know that shredded paper would be...because part of what you want to do is you want to kind of cover your poop so that it's like not smelly and not like easily accessible to flies and different insects--and so like I'm thinking if you just did like shredded paper, I think it would just be kind of like some fluff on top but still like a lot of access for like smells to pop up and for like insects to get in. That might not work super well, unless it's like that really finely shredded paper, but I'm not sure.
Margaret 1:00:43 But it'd be really fun for whoever's job it is to, to steal your shredded paper in order to like, re put together your files and try and prove that you did this or that, you know, yeah, if they had to, like literally go into the compost bin.
Paige 1:00:58 Yeah, that's a good way. Yeah. Some good security culture, maybe to compost your, your paper and I support that.
Margaret 1:01:10 Okay, well, that's, that's the majority of my questions. I was wondering if you had any final words about why this is like, great? And matters? And it's so interesting? You know, you've, you've talked about, like, for example, like, like shitting in drinking water is like, not the coolest thing that's ever happened. But, but yeah, do you have like, or any other final thoughts are things that I should have asked you that I didn't, or?
Paige 1:01:35 I can't think of anything right now. But yeah, I mean, I think composting is just like, it's a way to just like address waste problems on site. It's like small scale, it's a way to build up soil and not use fertilizers and inputs. So, I think it's just a really good thing to do if you're able, and it's fun. I think it's fun.
Margaret 1:01:55 Yeah, I think it'd be a cool way to like, you know, one of the questions I get asked a lot is, like how people can can meet their neighbors? And I mean, obviously, sometimes it's a very complicated question, you know, if you're, like, I'm not in a, I'm not in a blue state, let's say. And, you know, like, like, there's a lot of like, complications and safety questions about, like, you know, just telling everyone to, like, run out, become friends with everyone who's physically around them. But, it still seems like kind of an interesting thing that if, because it, it's like me setting up a compost bin, I could easily also be composting, the five neighbors, the five closest houses, and it wouldn't, all it would do is give me more fertilizer, it wouldn't actually add that much more work for me, right, because it's like one of those systems that...it's like cooking dinner, like cooking dinner for five people is about as much work as cooking dinner for one person, and it's just so much more rewarding. And so I'm just like, kind of interested in these these sorts of things. The other thing I want to is not what I want to pick your brain about specifically, but I also want to see more people set up like actual recycling. Like cuz I feel like that's kind of what composting is on the neighborhood level. It's like being like, okay, the the infrastructure that we were promised is not working. How can we actually do this? And so it's like, what would be involved in actually, you know, taking plastics and turning them into 3D printable filament or diesel fuel, or there's all kinds of ways that you can turn plastic into or plastic. You can make fucking Legos out of them, you know? No, no, this is just, I'm just dreaming of the day that eventually I have enough infrastructure to go run and get all the punk houses bottles and then put them on a conveyor belt and have them pulverized into sand and use that in concrete. Because that's the only thing I only recycling I've come up with. Okay, this is completely tangential. Alright, well...
Paige 1:03:39 Sounds like you have to use up all of your ash first.
Margaret 1:03:43 Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Well, I won't make as much of it once I shred the cardboard.
Paige 1:03:48 Oh, that's true. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think composting is a great thing. I think it is like, Yeah, I think what you're saying about you know, market based recycling is like very clearly failed. And yeah, breaking down, like, organic matter at local levels is like a really good solution to dealing with less waste, and yeah I just building backup soils, because our, our like, you know, agriculture and food production has become like such an extractive industry, like we're just like pulling stuff out of the earth and like putting fertilizer and all these chemical inputs and then even like, the final product of that, like our waste, like then also just doesn't get treated as like a resource. And so trying to like, kind of fix that nutrient cycle and just have it be a lot more integrated for like food production. waste diversion. I think there's a lot of opportunities for it. Yeah, yeah. I think the community scale is like where it needs to happen at because I think the operating...burning a bunch of diesel and operating a massive scale thing that's just full of trash is i i feel skeptical about about how those systems are gonna are gonna function well. Oh, but you know, there's maybe a place for them.
Margaret 1:05:03 Yeah. Yeah. And if you're listening and your name is Joe, we aren't trying to call you out specifically unless you are the one who keeps adding the nitrogen, nitrous, fluoride, what was the?
Paige 1:05:18 Freon.
Margaret 1:05:18 Freon to the compost. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming and talking to me about all this stuff.
Paige 1:05:24 Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Margaret 1:05:30 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, you should go compost, or just throw rotten things into the woods. Don't do that one as much. That one's not good. I mean, but go compost or find someone else to do the composting and then give them your organic matter. Maybe don't show up at your friend's house with a five gallon bucket of shit. Unless you're like that kind of friend. In which case, congratulations. Okay, so you can also tell people about the show is a really good thing that you can do. That is the main that way that people hear about, Live Like The World is Dying. You can tell people about it on the internet, and you can tell people by rating and reviewing and liking and subscribing and doing all those things that feed the algorithms, and tell people in person. And you can also support us by supporting our publisher. The publisher is Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness and Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness is a collectively run publisher of anarchist culture. Basically, at the moment, we have one other podcast which is called Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. And we have every month a new feature that gets mailed out as a zine to our Patreon backers, and made available on our website for free to anybody. You can support us at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness and you can listen to that other podcast the same way that you listen to this podcast. And in particular, I would love to thank Shawn and SJ, Paige, Oxalis, Mickki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Kat J, Staro, Jennipher, Eleanor, Natalie, Kirk, MIchaiah, Sam, Chris and Hoss the dog. Thank you all so much for your support. It means a lot. It means a lot to you know, there's a whole team of people who have produced this podcast. There's no...I actually didn't ask ahead of time about who wants to be named. But there's a whole bunch of people work on it, including Bursts, who is our audio editor, who has a different podcast that you should check out that's also on the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts. That's called the Final Straw Radio and it's basically the best news, Anarchist news podcast that exists. No offense to the other ones. If you're listening you run another one, I love yours too. But, the Final Straw Radio is my go to and has been my go to for a very long time. And I don't have any closing words. So I guess I'm done. Take care.
Margaret 00:00 Hi, Margaret here, popping back in to say, we are looking--by we I mean Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. We are looking for gaming groups, tabletop gaming groups, who would like to help us beta test a tabletop role playing game that we're developing called Penumbra City, which is a secondary world fantasy tabletop role playing game set and kind of a turn of the century jazz and radio and an evil god king who is sending people off to war against giant beasts and all of that kind of stuff. You know, the classic tropes, like people who eat fungus and talk to rats and anarchist paladins and nihilist ex Marines who are trying to blow everything up. And slumming Lordling's, who come down from the floating city and like basically flash their dad's name around to hang out with cool adventures and everyone secretly begrudges. It is a class based game, not in the Marxist sense, but in the Dungeons and Dragons sense. And that there are different classes that are more important than any other decision that you make about your character. And it's fun, I really liked playing this game, I helped design it. And I've been playing it in some incarnation or whatever, for fucking 10 years now or something. But it's finally getting ready to go out into the world. And we just need some help. We need you, not just you alone, unfortunately, we need you and your gaming group who wants to run this game. It is a simplified rules system, but a lore rich world. So, we would send you a rule set and a pre written adventure, you would run that adventure with your gaming group. You could also come up with your own adventure. And then you would participate in a feedback session, which might include a survey or a conversation one on one with game developers. So yeah, please, please reach out to us. How can they do that, Inmn. You're secretly on the line, you should chime in?
Inmn 02:04 Well, Margaret, they can reach out to us by email at Penumbra.City.playtest@gmail.com. Just shoot us an email and tell us about your gaming group a little bit and we will send you some information and see if it works out for you to help us play test. Thank you so much.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Episode summary In this new monthly segment, members of the Strangers Collective discuss current events as they relate to community preparedness. If you're watching the news and wondering what's going on with inflation, supply chain shortages, the heat "wave", or Q'anon talking about space lasers and the black holes that are causing all of this, tune in. The group breaks down the mechanics of inflation, why prices are what they are, why we're seeing shortages, and ways you can prepare now for when things get worse.
Host Info Casandra can be found on Twitter @hey_casandra. Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Brooke is just great and can be found at Strangers helping up keep our finances intact and on Twitter @ogemakweBrooke
Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
This Month In The Apocalypse
Margaret 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like The World Is Dying, your podcast for feels like the times. I'm one of your hosts, Margaret killjoy, because joining me today are two other co-hosts if y'all want to introduce yourself.
Casandra 00:28 I'm Cassandra.
Brooke 00:30 I'm Brooke.
Margaret 00:32 And today, we are starting a new, a new fun series talking about all the fun stuff that's going to be coming your way soon. It's called This Month In The Apocalypse, because we've realized that on this podcast, we talk a lot with different people about how to do different skills, about different specific issues, but there's so much happening these days that it seems worthwhile to kind of keep track of this as it happens, all the different things that are happening, I don't know, does that decent description of what the hell we're trying to do?
Casandra 01:09 Yeah.
Margaret 01:11 And you will be excited to know that this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts, and here's a jingle from another show on the network.
Jingle song 01:24 It's going down, and you're invited for what they sell it. We buy in, there is no running. There is no hiding. There's only fighting or dying. It's going down, and you're invited for what they're selling, we aint buying. There is no running. There is no hiding. There's only fighting or dying.
Jingle Host 01:53 It's going down is a digital Community Center from anarchists, Anti-Fascist, autonomous, anti-capitalist and anti-colonial movements. Our mission is to provide an autonomous and resilient platform to publicize and promote revolutionary theory and action.
Jingle Host 2 02:10 Go to itsgoingdown.org for daily updates, check out our online store for ways to donate and rate and follow us on iTunes if you like this podcast
Margaret 02:27 We're back from the jingle. I'm used to having another podcast where there's actual ads, which sucks. And so I don't know how to talk anymore. So, nothing really happened this month and everything is continuing as it should. I believe there's no major supply chain interruptions nothing forecasted bad to happen. Does that that match with the yall's understanding?
Brooke 02:54 Yeah, good done, end of pod. Move on with our lives.
Margaret 03:01 What do we want to talk about first? Want to talk about shortages? All the stuff there's shortages of?
Brooke 03:09 Sure.
Casandra 03:10 Yeah, I was looking at a list. And it's it's just everything. They're shortages in everything.
Margaret 03:16 Give me some example.
Casandra 03:17 It started out like meat, dairy, eggs. And then it was like produce, aluminum for packaging things, plastic packaging things, fuel to get things to places.
Margaret 03:27 Yeah, one of the things I was trying to think about was like, you know, when I was looking through, it seems like some of the things that they're shortages of there's shortages of from a supply chain point of view, sort of a temporary point of view, right? Like, like one of them is like pet food. I saw that one and I like freaked out. It's like I have a pet. You know, do I need to fill my basement with like a like a ball pit, but just full of kibble?
Brooke 03:52 Ongoing forumla shortage issues.
Margaret 03:55 Yeah. Well, but and what's interesting is to try and figure out which of these things are....the pet food issue, at least as I saw was a little bit different than some of the other ones. It actually more is about there's increased demand, because locked down got more people to decide to become closer buds with different creatures that aren't human that eat pet food. And, I guess there's a word for those. And so... it'sprobably in the word pet food. Food. People decided to become friends with different food. Shit, I'm supposed to be the vegan on this podcast. Okay, so....
Brooke 04:30 We're off to a banging start.
Margaret 04:34 Hell yeah. So pet food, it seems like the shortage is, at least at the moment more just that like there's a lot more demand for pet food. And, so therefore, like people are rushing to keep up. Kind of like the mask shortage at the beginning of the pandemic wasn't like, "Oh God, we're out of the capacity to produce masks." They just were like, "Oh, we need to like ramp up our infrastructure." And so there's like some of it like that. But, then it seems like some of the other shortages are a little bit more because there's not the capacity to either create the thing, or distribute the thing. I don't know, you all know more about this.
Casandra 05:09 Or even there's...I think about crops, like there's the ability to create the thing, but not to actually harvest and process the thing. It's seems like every step along the way, is having issues.
Brooke 05:23 Right. And if you've got issues with plastic and aluminum, then you can't package the thing. So, maybe you could make it and maybe you even can ship it, but you pack it up. But, there's also then lots of problems with actually transporting it from place A to B.
Margaret 05:40 One of the things...Okay, I was reading a list too. And I came up with this clever segue. So I'll just draw too much attention to the fact that I planned this ahead of time. One of the things that there's a supply chain shortages of, I was like, looking through this list, and one of them was garage doors. And that's not something that I think about on a regular basis. I just don't think about whether or not I could go down to the store and buy a garage door today. Right? But it has all of these like, cascading effects. And like, I don't know, you all were having this interesting conversation that I'm trying to trick you into having, again, about housing and the ability to construct homes and all that shit.
Casandra 06:21 Oh, I thought you were referencing the conversation about how I actually need a new garage door. And I was like, "Oh, I don't think that's useful. I don't think that's useful on this podcast, Margaret."
Margaret 06:30 I was just gonna embarrassingly admit that I have two garage doors, because I live rurally and there's multiple garages on the property. So, I just feel like I'm kind of like, you know, I'm stealing doors.
Casandra 06:44 Rich in doors!
Brooke 06:46 Well, I mean, technically, Cassandra and I also both have two garage doors, because we have two car bays in our garage and each has a separate door. So we are all two garage door people.
Casandra 06:57 Door Priviliege. Door Privilege. Yeah, no, what you actually asked me about was much more useful.
Margaret 07:02 Okay.
Casandra 07:06 Brooke, please help.
Brooke 07:09 Yeah, well, I feel like it came up, because you know Cassandra, you are renting your current house and would love to buy it and have wanted to buy it for a while. And so, you and I keep having these conversations about everything going on with the housing market.
Margaret 07:27 So let's talk about that.
Casandra 07:28 Right before Covid, it seemed like a good time to buy a house. And then six months later, it seemed awful. And it seems like it's just getting worse.
Brooke 07:38 Yeah, that's super accurate. And for just a whole bunch of different reasons. I mean, housing has been overpriced for a while and has gotten just exponentially more so. The cost of housing is outrageous. But then the bigger kicker in the last year is interest rates on mortgages have doubled. So you know, they went from a place where they were at like 3 or 4%, which is actually really pretty reasonable. And now they're up between, like closer to 6%, on average, most of the time, which is not a good interest rate. And one of the things that we saw before the fall of the housing market back in '08, was these super high interest rates, you know, 7-8%, or some of the really predatory lending stuff, people will have them at 10-12%. And we're not quite seeing that. But we are seeing with things like the 6,7,8% interest rates right now, which is not good.
Margaret 08:33 Does that mean we're heading for similar places as 2008? Like, how does the how do these compare? I feel like you know, a little bit more about this.
Brooke 08:39 Yeah, the the underlying factors that are causing our current bubble, are very different from what we saw in 2008. The ultimate outcome will be a lot the same in a housing crash, and people not being able to afford their mortgages and all the ripples through the economy and whatnot. But, the underlying causes are different. One of them is that the inflation has been on the rise. And so mortgages, you know, we tend to think of a mortgage as a thing that we have in order to buy our house. But from a bank's perspective, a mortgage is a commodity, it's a product that they're buying and selling. So anytime you see prices for products on the rise, mortgages are going to be one of those products that become more expensive.
Margaret 09:24 How does this affect renters? Like I would guess, sort of maybe rudely that most of our listeners are renters, and, you know, is it like is that just kind of cause rents to go up if the fact that like if if mortgages are getting harder and harder for landlords like...
Casandra 09:40 Well, rents are already going up, at least here. I guess I wonder how much that's related, though.
Margaret 09:47 No, I don't know. Is it just going up because of inflation?
Casandra 09:49 Yeah, i think it's just general inflation. Yeah.
Margaret 09:51 Which is interesting, though, right? Because one of the advantages of homeownership, it seems to me is that it's slightly more inflation resistant, because If your interest stays the same as locked in of whatever you bought it at, you know, and so...and the amount you owe, the bank doesn't go up to match interest. So the landlords have any excuse at all for jacking up rents? Because it's not like they're not like their mortgages have gone up, you know, the same amount is as interest.
Brooke 10:21 Well, if they're requiring, if they're using the mortgage payment that you're making in order to fund their life that's their source of income is the profit, you renting the house. Then their costs for all of their other goods in life are going up, so they need to make more money off of the thing that pays them, i.e. the renter,
Margaret 10:42 It doesn't seem like a good system, the idea that someone can just make money off of someone else's work instead of their own work. That doesn't that doesn't sound right. That sounds like Communism. It doesn't actually sound like Communism. But that is what people claim.
Brooke 11:01 It's incredibly problematic.
Margaret 11:04 So landlordism, not not a good...
Casandra 11:07 Not great.
Margaret 11:09 Hot take.
Brooke 11:10 I do not stand. I do not stand the landlords.
Casandra 11:13 I hope my landlord doesn't listen to this podcast.
Brooke 11:17 If he's the kind of person who listens to this podcast, he should just give you your house.
Casandra 11:21 It's true. Shout out to my landlord.
Margaret 11:23 And if you're a landlord listening to this, sell your houses to your renters at reasonable rates.
Casandra 11:32 Right?
Margaret 11:32 Or just give them if you can afford it.
Brooke 11:35 Yeah, we were talking about the interest rate the other day, Cas, I think you had some good questions about...you had a bunch of good questions the other day that I would love to talk about here on the pod to if you want.
Casandra 11:47 Oh shit, I wonder if I can remember what my questions were. The other day, it was a long time ago.
Brooke 11:54 Understood. And also, you know the answers, so you're not wondering anymore.
Casandra 11:59 Yeah. Or I just got confused and forgot, which is also possible.
Margaret 12:05 That's what I would have done if someone explained many things to me.
Casandra 12:08 Yeah, that's generally what my brain does as well. That's why Brooke's here. Thank you, Brooke!
Brooke 12:13 Sorry, I guess we should have done in the introduction why I'm relevant too.
Margaret 12:19 Yeah, okay. Well, so like, so folks who've listened, if you've listened before, you've probably met me. You might have met Casandra. Casandra has been on a few more times recently. Brooke, who are you?
Brooke 12:35 I am a baby anarchist with the pronouns "she" and "her", living in Oregon, relatively near to Casandra. And I have a background in economics and accounting, because before I was an anarchist, I was a capitalist. I'm sorry. And I thought that capitalism was good and fine. And I did a whole lot of time studying and learning about it. And now I like to use all of that knowledge and understanding to talk about how bad capitalism is.
Margaret 13:09 I mean, the person who did the most work researching capitalism was Karl Marx. Like, as far as I understand, like, a lot of capitalists were like, "Ah, yeah, that that's what we're doing," you know, after he like, actually wrote down how capitalism works. Just had different takes about whether it was good or bad. So, you know, I dunno. Yeah, so, so we've been talking about...and Brooke is part of Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness, the publishing collective that puts out this podcast as well as other good things, like a podcast with it's the name Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness that you can listen to also. And so we just, we've been having a lot of conversations amongst ourselves about like, "Well, what the fuck we going to do as people as all this crisis happens?" And then we were like, "Oh, right, we should, we should talk about this stuff more." So...
Casandra 14:02 l remember.
Margaret 14:04 Great.
Casandra 14:06 Thanks for that, giving me time to remember. So, I asked about your interest rates. The last time they were this high was 1984. And theoretically they're hiking up interest rates to help deal with inflation, which doesn't make sense to me. But Brooke, you had you understood that?
Brooke 14:33 Yeah, because when you mentioned the thing about the interest rates, I was like, "Wellllll, not actually." Because the interest rate that we hear about a lot in the news is the Federal Funds rate, which is set by the Federal Reserve, which is the National Bank that we have in our system. It's basically the bank that our banks use, so all of your US banks and Chases and all of that, they bank at the Federal Reserve. And that's the interest rate that we're talking about is the Federal Reserve's rate that they pay to banks to store money with them. So you're a bank, and you are legally required to have a certain amount of your cash saved at the Federal Bank. It's like 10% of your holdings have to be there. And then the government says, "Thanks for letting us sit around and hold on your money, here's some interest." And to incentivize banks to save more of their money, they've raised that interest rate. So that's the one that you've heard about that's higher than it's been since 1984.
Margaret 15:39 Oh, interesting.
Brooke 15:40 And it's not directly tied to the other types of interest rates, like loan interest rates, you know, mortgages and credit cards and cars and stuff. But it definitely influences them, because when you look at it from a bank's perspective, like you walk down to your neighborhood bank, and you want to take out a loan from them, they have the choice to get a certain guaranteed interest rate from the Federal government, which is super secure, they're gonna get their money back, they're gonna get their interest, you know, think safe over there, or to loan you a consumer money and gain interest from you. And they only want to give you money, if they can make more on it than they would by loaning it to the Federal government, especially because you as a consumer might be taking it out for like, a mortgage loan, which is going to be 30 years, let's say, so the banks not going to get their money back for a much longer period of time. Whereas with the Federal government, they can go anytime and say, "Hey, I need some of my money," and get it right then. But you as the consumer, they can't. So, they charge you the consumer higher level of interest. So, whatever the federal interest rate is, the bank is going to then want to set its interest rates that it charges to people higher, so it can make more money. And if you can't afford to pay that higher interest, the bank is like, "Fine, I can load my money to the government, and still make still make money off it."
Margaret 17:05 So how does this relate to inflation? How does this relate to everything costing more money now and like, you know, you're saying that they were like, they're doing this to solve it, it sounds like it would make it worse to me, I don't know shit about shit. But...
Brooke 17:20 Yeah, so they're trying to make money more valuable. So right now, because inflation is high....Let's say you have $1 in your pocket, and you go buy a banana today, and that banana costs $1. So your dollar equals a banana. Let's say you decide to buy a banana tomorrow, and you still only have $1, but the price of the banana has gone up to $1.10. You no longer have one bananas worth of money, in this situation,
Margaret 17:51 92% of a banana or something.
Brooke 17:55 It's too high for a banana, but that was the first thing that came to mind. Anyway, so they want to curb that inflation so that tomorrow you can still buy your banana for $1. But in order to do that, they have to make your money more valuable, in a sense. And they do that by removing some of the money that's out there in the world.
Casandra 18:18 It's...is it possible I'm an anti-capitalist just because the shit can....
Brooke 18:21 Doesn't make sense?
Casandra 18:22 Yeah.
Brooke 18:23 Yeah, you have to stop thinking about money, the way that we as normal human beings think about it as like, "I give you this stupid thing and you give me something good and useful." And think about it in terms of a bank that thinks of it as a product. So their money is a product that they can buy and sell and get value for. So when you decrease the amount of a product that's available, what's left becomes more valuable.
Casandra 18:48 I'm glad this isn't a visual recording so people can't see my like trying to grasp face.
Brooke 18:53 This is very helpful to me to know whether or not I am making any fucking sense at all.
Casandra 18:59 I'm sure you're making sense. I just...yeah, my brain shuts down when I think of all this stuff, which is why I'm glad you're here.
Margaret 19:07 Yeah, and it's like, I want to understand this stuff, but I've also have a little bit of a like, yeah, part of why I'm anti capitalist is I'm like, "This just seems needlessly complicated." And then I'm like, but then I turned around, and I'm like, "Okay, so a federated model, where you have all of these different autonomous groups, and the spokes go to this other thing. And then those make decisions by consensus, except in some cases where they use majority vote, except people have a block, but then as it goes to this other level, and then this is the way they communicate." And so then I'm like, okay, I'm not actually afraid of complicated organizational structures.
Casandra 19:45 But that's...Complicated is different than bureaucratic, you know?
Margaret 19:49 Okay. Okay.
Brooke 19:50 Yeah. I find myself living in this weird place of like, all of this is just ridiculous and unnecessary and most really bad. But also, this is how the thing works, and I'm a pretty big opponent and like, understanding how the thing works, especially when you want to dismantle the system,
Margaret 20:11 Yeah. No, and like, I actually just want to appreciate you and people like you, you know, I remember I had a conversation with someone once recently, or they're like, "Oh, I don't think the anarchists would like me. I like spreadsheets too much." And I'm like, "No, we need you....
Casandra 20:25 We love you!
Casandra 20:25 We need you more than we need other people."
Brooke 20:28 Yeah. For the listeners at home, every time the word "spreadsheet" comes up in the Strangers' group discussions for work, I'm always like, "Me! Me?, do I get to do it? Can I have a spreadsheet?"
Margaret 20:39 Whereas I'm like, I've been doing it? And I'm like, I don't know, I'm just beating my head against these things.
Casandra 20:47 Well Brooke, you mentioned wanting to understand like, how, how things work. And I'm wondering, so we talked about that the fact that there is inflation, but I'm wondering what the factors are contributing to that, like, why it's continuing to go up at such a rapid rate, because we haven't really...
Brooke 21:08 inflation?
Casandra 21:09 Yeah.
Brooke 21:09 Why it's gone up so much?
Casandra 21:11 Yeah.
Brooke 21:11 Inflation is a complicated beast. We know that a portion of it is just straight up corporate greed and fucking capitalism being capitalism, you know, of companies saying, "Oh, we can, we can raise prices and have great profits. And people will just like, do that, and we get more money? Yay!" So, and because it's happening in real time, there's not like great data to say, "Oh, half of the reason of inflation..." or whatever, like, we don't know exactly how much that specific action is contributing to it. But it's some large portion of inflation is just because companies are awful greedy, terrible. But, a couple of other factors that are leading into it are fuel prices, like everything in the world is basically affected by fuel prices to move things from A to B, and the creation of so many things, you know, incorporate some amount of petroleum. And...there was a third thing that just fell in my brain. But that actual cost is on the rise. So like it is more expensive to create products. So, that's contributing to it. And then also, the shortages in the supply chain, like we were just talking about that anytime there's less of something, it becomes more valuable. So like, how you see price gouging, when there's an emergency, you know, like, like, if the city's water shuts off, suddenly bottled water becomes more expensive. It's because there's less of it, then they can start to charge more, because people who will afford it can still buy it, and people who can't, then too bad for that. And again, it's all just because capitalism is evil and bad.
Margaret 22:57 So, in terms of like solutions, one of the things we talk about when wee want to talk about all the bad stuff and then we want to talk about what people can do, at least as individuals and communities to combat it. Right? And like, and I'll say that for my own sake, and I don't know that this is actually a you know, I actually, I've talked to some of my friends who actually work in finance, and they're a little bit like, "That's not what I would have first thought of," but that's...I guess that makes some sense. You know, one of the things I've been thinking about, right is like, I don't know, like, if you can get in things that hold value, right? You know, this is in the sort of traditional prepper sense, this is where you like run out and buy gold, right? Not because gold is an investment, it doesn't become necessarily more valuable, but it because it like, is more likely to hold its value as inflation goes up. But I would argue the same is true of hard liquor, which does not go bad. I don't even drink hard liquor, but I have a bunch of it.Ammunition. Eh Eh? Okay, this is gonna be where everyone's giving me the "We let this wingnut prepper on." But ammunition does go up and down in value. But overall, I will argue that it will stay valuable and therefore continue to hold its value against inflation. And then also like, this is where my financial friends get really mad at me. I'm like, "Basically like spend it if you've got it," because like, because money is becoming less and less valuable. So like, cash in your pocket is just losing money when it stays in your pocket. Its value goes down every day, you get fewer and fewer bananas.
Brooke 24:32 Bananas.
Margaret 24:32 Yeah, you have fewer bananas every day. The longer that you hold on to it.
Casandra 24:36 This is making me hungry.
Margaret 24:38 Yeah, I kind of want a banana. I need to go to the grocery store. But okay, so this is like for example, this is like why I'm like, "Alright, well fuck it," like, get tools. Get stuff if you can, right? Obviously, this is like kind of annoying advice for anyone who I mean like right now I think most of the money issue that people have right now is not having enough money for their basic necessities that they meet on a regular basis. But even like, like I was like, I don't know, as I try to explain someone to be like, Alright, look, if you're going to go out if you're going to spend X amount of money on canned chili over the next three months, buying it now, instead of later, if you can afford it will literally get you more chili, because the prices of everything are just going to go up. And so as you're able to fucking cans of chili are better than cash right now is my my claim, especially the good vegan chili with the little TVP in it.
Brooke 25:39 Yeah, if you've got a spare dollar in your pocket today, it's going to be less valuable tomorrow. It's going to be less valuable the day after that. It's just going to keep getting less valuable as long as we're in this cycle of this high inflation. So as much as I tend to be like a saver, it does make more sense at the moment to go buy things preferably things that are like durable, useful, and will last then to...
Casandra 26:08 That's still saving.
Brooke 26:10 Yeah
Margaret 26:11 Yeah, you're just transferring the value into a different form.
Brooke 26:14 Yeah, buy some seeds.
Casandra 26:15 [At the same time] My favorite form is seeds. Yeah, that's my preferred one.
Margaret 26:19 Yeah.
Brooke 26:20 How To books.
Casandra 26:22 Like oh, I just got I got all my spring seeds for next year.
Brooke 26:25 Oh, wow.
Casandra 26:25 Well, yeah, just last week, because I knew they'd be way more expensive next year, and they're just in the fridge in plastic bags. Waiting.
Brooke 26:34 Very smart. That's a genuinely a good investment, especially given the food supply shortages that we've got going on right now.
Casandra 26:43 Yeah, what a good segue
Margaret 26:44 [At that same time] What a good segue.[Everyone laughing] Hope you all like this new format of friends chatting. We'll work on it.
Casandra 26:56 We're doing great!
Brooke 26:57 Yeah, no, it's gonna be exactly this great every time.
Margaret 27:02 Food shortages. What do you mean food shortages? That sounds like a bunch of wing nut talk.
Casandra 27:11 There are no food shortages.
Brooke 27:13 There's no such thing as food. Buy guns.
Casandra 27:20 Eat ammo.
Brooke 27:22 That's exactly what I was thinking when you said ammo and gold and I was like that's good. Those are things you can eat. We'll be fine.
Margaret 27:29 Yeah, yeah. [Everyone laughing]
Casandra 27:30 I think there's something to be said about the fact that you and I both have kids, Brooke. So, when I'm like oh...You know if I have 20 extra bucks, what am I putting it into? It's like it's food.
Margaret 27:41 It's not whiskey?
Brooke 27:45 Pretty much all the time or the next size of clothing for my child that doesn't stop growing. But But yeah, food shortages. So, that's like a really interesting and again very complicated topic. So, I work part time for a local farm as well. And here in Oregon, our spring was especially wet like it's it's...Oregeon is a fairly wet place and we get a fair amount of rain in the spring, but it was like a lot more than usual. And it stayed cold for longer. So this farm, which usually opens up the first week of June and starts selling produce had to delay by a week its start date, because there just was there weren't crops and then they're battling larger infestations of problems and new and different ones so they've had funguses, and mold, and bugs, different kinds of bugs, and greater quantity of bugs attacking their crops, and they've been sending like...
Margaret 28:44 Larger bugs.
Brooke 28:44 Yeah.
Casandra 28:45 Yeah, the pest have gone wild up here.
Margaret 28:46 Like bugs the size of cars.
Brooke 28:48 Yes. Yeah, they've been sending almost weekly samples to the state, the Oregon State Extension office which is our...they do a bunch of farming program things anyway they...
Casandra 29:01 OSU?
Brooke 29:02 Yeah, OSU. A lot of states have extension services from their state university, anyway that that analyze like "What is this blight? What is this fungus? Why is this thing turning yellow? Why...what is causing this?" So they...
Margaret 29:17 What is this language it's speaking to me and why are its eyes rotating sideways from its head.
Brooke 29:22 Yeah, they test for that kind of thing too. E.T. For sure. You know, they would usually send maybe a couple of samples in a season and they've had to send like almost weekly samples for two or three months and then you know devising on the fly--because organic farm, you know, safe organic practices to combat these things. And it's, you know, required a lot of extra time and investment and attention to the farm and the crops that are going in it just to to get a healthy crop out of it.
Casandra 29:56 And we're not even experiencing you know, the heat wave here that they're experiencing what, like Western Europe right now.
Margaret 30:05 Yeah. And parts of the southern and central United States also. But like.
Casandra 30:10 Yeah, and North Africa.
Margaret 30:12 Yeah.
Casandra 30:13 I was reading that in Portugal. It's so hot that farm equipment is setting dried crops on fire as they're like trying to harvest things.
Brooke 30:25 Oh, wow.
Casandra 30:26 Like things are that hot and dry. Growing food is becoming more difficult. That seems to be the moral of the story.
Margaret 30:36 Well fortunately, I believe the biggest breadbasket of the world, or at least of Europe, is doing just fine and isn't currently being invaded by a megalomaniac, and certainly huge chunks of what's left aren't supporting someone who would invade such a place, so....Or, as I doubt this is news to anyone who is listening, but maybe it is, you know, the the war in Ukraine is fucking up well will fuck up remarkably, the harvest in Ukraine of wheat, and I believe, like it's them in the US maybe are the biggest exporters of wheat in the world. I should have looked up my actual.. I'm learning so much about how I'm gonna do this next time.
Casandra 31:22 I was just reading percentages, and they fell out of my brain, but it's big.
Brooke 31:27 The combination of Ukraine and Russia and it's mostly Ukraine on this, they provide 12% of the world's wheat supply. Or to put it in other terms, Ukraine's wheat feeds 400 million people a year. So like, the for scale, the population of the US, like one year's worth of wheat. So yeah, it's, it's a lot. And they're basically going to have essentially zero harvest coming out of Ukraine this year in terms of wheat.
Casandra 32:01 And it's not just like not having flour on the shelf, but if you're a meat eater, you know, grain fed, grain finished...My brain just died.
Brooke 32:15 Animal feed.
Casandra 32:16 Thank you. Fuel and animal feed.
Brooke 32:20 Cows in particular, yeah, all the little things that the grain goes into, yeah, it's very bad. And, you know, we in the US might not experience as much of that being a wealthy country that's more insulated. Like one of the readings I was doing was talking about how, of course, Africa will be one of the most impacted continents by all of this because it has the highest rate of imports of food from other places, because so much of its inhospitable to growing or growing large quantities of food. And they often get the short end of the stick when there's global supply chain issues.
Margaret 32:56 And it's not just the US' position as wealthy. It's that we grow...I think I, I think we're the largest exporter of food in the world, I again, really have learned so much about the kind of stuff I'm going to look up before I start recording next time.
Brooke 33:12 Yeah, California, grows like some percentage of the entire world's...just California State of California alone grows an appreciable percent of the world's food supply.
Margaret 33:25 Not to just drive home the animal agriculture point, but wow, it sure takes so much more grain to feed a cow to then turn around to feed a person than to just feed the grain to the person. Whooa! Anyway, if I'm gonna get accused of propaganda.
Casandra 33:44 But Margaret, I can't eat grain.
Margaret 33:46 Yeah, no, I know. That's actually why I don't believe in, everyone should do X. There's very few things I would say everyone should do, and that certainly, certainly applies to diet more than almost anything else. People should do, what they need and what their bodies want. And also what their, you know, local environment sustains most effectively and all those things.
Casandra 34:14 I was listening to a podcast yesterday about food shortages that I'm going to forget the name of now.
Brooke 34:19 There are other podcasts?
Casandra 34:21 There are other podcasts like this? Wild.
Margaret 34:24 Cool People Who Do Cool Stuff?
Casandra 34:26 No, it wasn't that one, I'm sorry, Margaret.
Margaret 34:28 Wait, there's a third podcast? Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness?
Casandra 34:33 Is it Behind The Bastards? Is that the?
Margaret 34:35 Oh, yeah, I guess they do technically...
Brooke 34:37 Are they still allowed to have a podcast? I thought we shut that down.
Casandra 34:42 Anyway,
Margaret 34:44 So you can't start with another podcast because it takes too much grain.
Casandra 34:49 Noooo!
Brooke 34:52 That's the title of this episode now.
Margaret 34:57 It's called interrupting Casandra. That's the name of the podcast.
Brooke 35:01 I love you, Casandra. I'm sorry.
Casandra 35:03 You guys, my brain can't hold a thought for that long.
Brooke 35:06 Understood.
Casandra 35:08 Okay, so I was listening to this, what I would call like a progressive podcast. And I'm usually really annoyed with the like, "We can solve climate change and world hunger by eating locally." But when we're talking about, you know, International food shortage crises, that does seem like one of the more manageable solutions. And we were talking in the chat prior to this episode noticing that I feel really grateful for my CSA share this summer. Because I paid for it, you know, months ago, which means that, you know, if we're going back to the banana analogy,
Margaret 35:52 The value hold on.
Brooke 35:53 I mean, that is very accurate. You know, we've got, we've got eggs included in the CSA that I work on. And, you know, we do a small markup on that just to cover all the logistics of getting the eggs from the egg supplier. But she had to raise prices at the start of the season. And we'll probably have to raise them again, like in the fall. But if you signed up for the CSA, and that included eggs in your particular box, your price gets to be set, right where it is.
Casandra 36:26 Yeah, it's hard, though, right, because especially when we're talking about prepping like one of...I get annoyed with prepping conversations, because oftentimes, people either don't have the space to store large quantities of things or the money to buy things in bulk. And I would consider paying for a CSA ahead of time buying a thing in bulk, or similar, you know, similar impact. And it's hard because a lot of people can't do that. Like, I was hurting for a few months, because the payment came out. I was like, "Oh, yeah, that thing I said I'd pay for." I'm glad I did it. But...
Margaret 37:06 Okay, but. [Brooke interupts] Go ahead....Okay, so there is a community solution to this, though. So you can't eat ammunition. But if you have enough ammunition and friends....This thing that happened in history, that should never happen again, because it was violent, during the Spanish Civil War, people collectivized all the farms.
Brooke 37:32 Wrong podcast. Wrong podcast.
Margaret 37:34 No, but see, see, this is...
Casandra 37:36 Did they do it with dinosaurs?
Margaret 37:39 I've heard that dinosaurs were involved. They...I at least read one story about that. But, you know, it...I means it's funny to me, right? Because it's like, on some level, okay, so individual solutions are complicated, because they involve certain types of resources. A lot of community solutions are good. And they're working to set up different kinds of like small scale agriculture that you can do within a community and mutual aid organizations that can take care of people and help fill in some holes and different people's, like, dietary needs and stuff like that. But it's like, it's so frustrating, because honestly, like, like, a lot of the solutions to these problems are destroy the existing infrastructure and build an infrastructure, well, not even the infrastructure, the systems that control the current infrastructure, and enter them into a more reasonable and equitable method of distribution. But obviously that has some risks associated with it. So I don't know, I guess, I guess sometimes I get like, frustrated, because it's like, you know, we're all like, kind of trying to be like, "Okay, how do we deal with these issues in this issue," and it's like, and we should figure out how to do it on these, like, smaller scales, but it's like, so frustrating because I think so many people like, kind of have a sense of like, what the grander solution is, and just don't know how to fucking do it.
Casandra 39:01 Yep.
Margaret 39:01 Including me, I don't know how to do it. Although in 1936...Anyway.
Casandra 39:07 Were you gonna say something, Brooke?
Brooke 39:10 One way to help solve the problem of food supplies in a very small way, amongst you and your friends: We grow things more efficiently when we focus on growing one thing at a time. So we've talked about on the pod growing, starting a garden, even a single container on your balcony kind of thing. But ,if you have a friend or a couple of friends that can also do a little gardening, maybe talking amongst yourselves and have each of you grow a specific thing or a couple of specific things. And they have each of the three of you be different. And that way you can focus on doing a good job of growing a couple of things. And they can do a good job growing their couple of things and then you can exchange the produce as it starts to ripen because it'll be more than you want.
Casandra 40:01 I like that. When you said one thing my brain was like, "But polyculture!?"
Brooke 40:06 Yeah, sorry, I'm thinking of like, if I can get everyone on my street to, you know, grow something in their backyard, and we all had one different crop, you know, just this whole weird place that my brain goes to that would be beautiful. But the other thing about the the food shortages, the crop growing problems, and all of that that I wanted to point out is how much this is an immediate future problem. Like, right now we're having all of these problems growing things and creating the food. And what we're eating for a lot of the part is if you're eating dry foods, packaged foods and stuff that was grown maybe last year in a previous growing season. So where we're going to start to see this pinch, even worse is going to be later this year and into next year, when we're going to buy things that were grown in a previous season. Except they weren't, because Ukraine didn't export any grain or because all of the black bean crops failed, or what have you. So it's going to get worse very soon, because of that kind of problem.
Margaret 41:15 Yay. Yeah.
Brooke 41:20 Thinking about growing a thing, like right now before that problem really hits home, and then you'll suddenly have some food growing on your back porch, or whatever.
Casandra 41:29 That also makes me grateful for...this is probably an option in other areas, not just where we are, but Brooke and I are part of a co op. And we can purchase things through companies at wholesale prices. So like, I just put in an order for like 10 pounds of salt and 25 pounds of beans and, you know, makes me grateful for options like that.
Brooke 41:59 Yeah, bulk buying.
Margaret 42:02 And that's like, kind of the origins of food co ops, as far as I understand it is that, you know, now we have this conception. And I feel like most people are like, "Why would a food co-op be cheaper food co-ops are more expensive, because like food co-op is like practically just like, a way of saying super bougie independent grocery store with natural food. And the origin of food cooperatives is basically people pulling together and saying like, well, "We want to buy a bunch of food. So let's act like we're a store and go to the distributor, and put in orders together." And those do still exist in various places. And also, not everything that call itself a food Co-Op is just bougie and shitty and like, some of them are very good.
Brooke 42:44 I would say ours isnt...wasn't. At least that's from my very biased perspective.
Margaret 42:50 Wasn't good or wasn't bad?
Brooke 42:52 Wasn't bougie wasn't bougie.
Margaret 42:54 Ah.Yeah.
Brooke 42:56 Can I go back to Casandra, you mentioned, the heatwave stuff happening in Europe and crops catching on fire. I had read last week about this heatwave that was coming in Europe and some of the problems they anticipated having but I have not had time this week to like catch up on what actually happened. And I think both of you guys have been paying more attention to that news. And I'm curious if you want to enlighten me and perhaps our listeners about the actual effects of that heatwave in addition to farming equipment catching crops on fire. Which is bad.
Casandra 43:29 Part of a glacier collapsed in Italy.
Margaret 43:34 They still have glaciers there?
Casandra 43:36 Apparently.
Margaret 43:38 You ever get depressed, you ever go to Glacier National Park and just been sad, because you're like, it's just full of signs that are like, "There used to be a glacier here." and you're like, "This sucks."
Brooke 43:48 That would be depressing.
Margaret 43:49 It's really beautiful. Anyways.
Brooke 43:51 What is what does it mean, the glacier collapsed, like a portion fell over?
Casandra 43:55 Like an avalanche, like a portion of this glacier collapsed and it killed 11 people, but it's just also a testament to how hot it was. Iran was like 126 degrees.
Casandra 43:59 There was something about the railways, the rail lines that so was having problems.
Margaret 44:17 Yeah. So, TERF Island is this island off of the coast of Europe. That is ruled by, it's still a monarchy, and it's ruled by J.K. Rowling, Queen of the TERFS. But unfortunately, most of her subjects actually wish they didn't live on a place called TERF Island, and wish that they could go back to just being embarrassed about having colonized most of the world. That's also worth being embarrassed about anyway, yeah, England, TERF Island, is pretty fuck right now, and I mean, the same as the rest of Europe, right. But, England is normally a dreary, overcast place and that's why everyone has turned their head against so many people. And so they are...And so their their rail infrastructure is designed, you can build railways for cold, and you can build railways for heat, but it's like actually kind of hard to build railways for both. Because you have these, like, long chunks of steel, these rails, right, and they warp. And as people want to go faster and quieter, they are now continuous rails that are welded into like one continuous thing. Which means that when they distort in the heat or contract in the cold or whatever, it's a bigger issue, right? So, their rail system, at least as we record right now is just like fucked. And like, a lot of the rails aren't running or if they are running, they're running really slowly to not, like, I believe, cause additional heat and cause additional problems. I actually don't remember exactly why going slowly is the solution to this. But it's like such as like a clear example....And then they're having this thing where, and I'm sure this happens everywhere. But they're particularly good at being like, cozy during crisis that's like part of the national character as far as I can tell. And so they're like, "Oh, this isn't a big deal." And like, they had this heatwave in 1976. And so they're all like, "Oh, this is just like 1976." But and 1976 was bad, right? But there hasn't been like more and more heat more and more times, right? That was a little bit of an outlier year. Whereas they're constantly breaking all these records. And it's just, it's fucking everything up. And I hate...I want...I sort of hate that I know more about this than I know about some of the stuff that's going on in Iran, or I know that very recently, India has had really massive heat waves that have caused a lot of problems. I know...
Casandra 46:35 China.
Margaret 46:36 Yeah. Yeah. And, but there's this sort of like, I don't know, at least by the way, people are talking about it who are not in England. I almost feel like there's this like, Oh, thank god if this happens to the English and to the white Americans, like maybe something will start happening. And because like just seen as like these like centers of power or whatever, but people are very resistant to actually believing anything's wrong. But it's really obviously something wrong.
Casandra 47:06 Oh my gosh. But, you know what people are willing to believe is wrong?
Margaret 47:12 What?
Casandra 47:14 People are willing to believe that our globalist overlords at CERN have shifted our dimension multiple times and opened a gateway to Hell, and summonned Satan. And that's why everything's bad.
Margaret 47:33 Please Explain.
Casandra 47:34 It can't be climate change, it has to be a Stranger Things portal...run by the Jews.
Margaret 47:43 I was about to ask if the Jews were involved. I thought you all were busy with the space laser.
Casandra 47:48 Always. God, if only we had an actualy space laser.
Margaret 47:53 I know! You all multitask so well, like you're busy running the space laser. I mean, I guess thats..
Casandra 47:59 It's because we rest one whole day a week that we have all this energy.
Brooke 48:02 Hey, wait a minute, Mormons do too, but we do not have space lasers. So....
Casandra 48:07 You have like alien and tablets and shit.
Margaret 48:08 Yeah, Catholics don't rest. Wait, so please explain more. So there. Okay. So CERN is the the miniature black hole creator, right. [Brooke and Casandra laugh skeptically] Wait, at that point. I thought I wasn't even lying. I thought that was what it does. Like it investigates...Am I wrong?
Casandra 48:29 It's, it's....
Brooke 48:31 It's a particle accelerator.
Margaret 48:32 Yeeah
Casandra 48:33 No, it's not. It's a group. It's a group. CERN isn't even the thing itself. CERN is the like group that does the research.
Margaret 48:39 Oh, like the Zionist Cabal or whatever.
Casandra 48:44 Yeah, and it's been around since the 50s and they do like particle physics shit that I don't understand. You know, finding new particles, researching antimatter, potentially creating mini black holes, apparently.
Margaret 49:00 Do you think antimatter gets mad at regular matter? Like kind of like an Antifa versus FA kind of thing?
Brooke 49:08 Well, matter wins over antimatter. So I mean, it can get mad all it wants. It loses the battle.
Casandra 49:13 So they're trying to find, you know, proof of like the Big Bang and doing all these....But then, so it's been around for a long time. It's been around since the 50s I think. But, I want to say the facility, the particle collider...this is gonna be the funniest explanation because none of us understand it fully. But, apparently the facility is like 17 miles wide, and most of its underground and it looks very like you know, Stranger Things, Sci Fi, space AG.
Brooke 49:52 It's that wide because it's a giant metal circle. So it's not actually like taking up 17 miles, but like you're able to go from one end of this metal tube to the other like it is that far apart.
Margaret 50:03 Yeah, it's like a roller derby rink.
Brooke 50:07 Yeah, more or less.
Margaret 50:10 Or it will be.
Casandra 50:10 Yeah, so all these conspiracy theorists for years now I think particularly since 2012, have decided that the reason things continue to be bad is that...there are multiple theories, but one is that the world actually ended in 2012. Another is that each time they turn on this particle collider, we like shift timelines. So that's happened in like, 2012, 2016. And then just this last July 5, apparently. It's just fascinating to me, the lengths people will go to to explain bad shit happening rather than just like, accepting climate change.
Margaret 50:53 Yeah.
Casandra 50:54 Or like, pausing to understand capitalism and its function. And it's like, "Nope, it's gotta be a black hole to Satan."
Brooke 51:03 This is especially funny to me, because the, the collider literally takes like, the like, the tiniest little bits of matter. Like it tries to get down to like a single atom, and then sends it through this giant tube to smash into each other. And I'm like, Yeah, so you're telling me that like, two oxygen molecules smashing into each other, is what's opening multiple timelines?
Casandra 51:29 And it's stuff that's like, only comprehensible and interesting to physicists, as far as I can understand. Like, if you look at their list of achievements, none of that makes sense to a normal human being. You know?
Margaret 51:45 I kind of like some of that stuff. But I read a lot of science fiction.
Casandra 51:49 Yeah, I have an ex who's like, really into both space and physics, and is really fascinated by some of the work they've done. But yeah, it doesn't make sense to me at all. And it doesn't make sense to the conspiracy theorists either.
Brooke 52:07 Okay, so we're running out of food. Europe's on fire.
Casandra 52:13 Not just Europe, apparently North Africa, China, India, the southern United States,
Brooke 52:18 Most of the world in the last two years has burned down in one way or another. We're opening black hole portals. No one can buy a house.
Casandra 52:27 What's that, Margaret?
Margaret 52:29 Oh, just always the wrong parts of it are burning down.
Casandra 52:32 Right
Margaret 52:33 I mean, well with the exception of the Third Precinct.
Brooke 52:35 Yes.
Margaret 52:36 Notable. Notable Exception.
Casandra 52:39 We're still figuring out how to aim the space laser.
Margaret 52:44 Okay, okay. So it was actually you all. It wasn't actually Dark Biden.
Casandra 52:48 Oh, no. Marjorie Taylor Greene blamed the wildfires.
Margaret 52:52 On the space lasers?
Casandra 52:53 That's how the spacel laser thing started.
Margaret 52:55 Oh, my God. Really? Why would you burn down the forest? Is her claim that you all don't know how to aim it?
Casandra 53:06 Let me find this was...
Margaret 53:08 What is your [Marjorie's] rationale for why the Jews have decided to start forest fires? It it seems to me that even if I....There are other targets that I could imagine, as an anti-semitic conspiracy theorist that I would imagine that the Jews would point the space laser at.
Casandra 53:26 Right? Let me try to...let me see if I can find the exact tweet because it was really funny. Oh, all I can find is spoof tweets in my quick search.
Brooke 53:35 I feel bad for you having to read through Marjorie Taylor Green's tweets right now. That's a punishment you do not deserve.
Casandra 53:42 The like wingnut anti-Semites kind of crack me up. I don't know why she would blame it on that. I have no idea. It's...
Casandra 53:49 I mean, Q'anon ties into the whole thing.
Margaret 53:50 Well, let's come up with it.
Margaret 53:51 Oh, yeah.
Brooke 53:53 Casandra, do your people hate forests?
Casandra 53:57 Forests?
Brooke 53:58 Yes.
Casandra 53:59 No, of course not. We actually have a whole holiday dedicated to trees.
Margaret 54:05 Whoa, that's cool.
Casandra 54:06 Tu BiShvat. We liked the trees.
Margaret 54:15 Well, maybe you are trying to....No, I don't even want to. I'm trying to come up with anti-semetic conspiracy theorists. But I don't want to do it. I can't do it.
Brooke 54:25 Here's a news thing that we didn't talk about in our briefing. And I don't know if we care to right now. But, are y'all paying any attention to the whole January 6th committee things? They just had one last night.
Margaret 54:36 Yeah, a little bit.
Casandra 54:37 No, I didn't read about last night.
Brooke 54:40 I am mostly not paying attention as well, except that I see these tweets of people being like, "Oh my gosh, did you know blah, blah, blah." And most of it's like all along I feel like yeah, that's been reported on already. We already knew about that. Why is this news?
Margaret 54:54 That's kind of how I feel about it. I like maybe maybe it's not fair. Bu,t I kind of just say this political theater at this point like we we all know what they did. We watched it. And we all know what their organizations look like. Anti-fascists have done the infiltration work and released all of the...like everything anyone has ever said to each other that's a fascist in the United States has been released by anti-fascists, not the government. And so in some ways, I'm a little bit like...and maybe it's not right, maybe, maybe I should care more about it. But in my mind, I'm a little bit like, I've moved on to the next news cycle issue in my head, and it feels like kind of like...remember how we were like waiting forever for them to impeach Trump? And they're like, "We swear we're going to impeach Trump soon." And I'm like, is this whole thing just a way for The Washington Post to sell newspapers? And that's more...again, more than is fair, how I how I feel a little bit about January, 6th, it's just like, Okay, y'all found something that you can milk for? I don't know....
Casandra 56:05 I mean the too little too late sort of encapsulates our response to most things, right.
Margaret 56:12 Yeah.
Casandra 56:12 Whether it's climate change or insurrection.
Brooke 56:15 Now the one good thing that did that did come out of last night's was little video of Senator Josh Hawley running away from the rioters. And then all the people on Twitter who use that little video and set it to various pieces of music.
Casandra 56:33 Finding moments of joy.
Margaret 56:35 He's the guy who supported....he's the guy who was supporting them beforehand, right?
Brooke 56:40 Yeah, he's the one with like the really well known fist raised in support picture rightbefore they started destroying everything.
Margaret 56:47 I never thought that the leopards eating people's faces party would eat my face...Well, does that seem like a decent spot to end it for July? Nothing bad can happen in the next week.There's gonna be like at least a....
Casandra 57:06 I think we wanted to give people more hope you know, like more tools, or ideas? Or even just like...
Margaret 57:16 Oh, right. Buy whiskey. Build a bunker. Hole up
Brooke 57:19 Tanks are bad.
Casandra 57:20 If you live in wildfire country like we do those plastic windows...
Brooke 57:26 Blame the Jews.
Casandra 57:27 Blame the Jews. We can say that because I'm a Jew. I want to make that really clear. Before we put this podcast out. No, buy those plastic windows sealer kits and fresh filters for your air filters.
Margaret 57:45 Yeah, do it before they're needed. That's part of the supply chain stuff.
Brooke 57:50 Plant a zucchini,
Casandra 57:51 Planted zucchini with your neighbors and trade them with each other.
Margaret 57:57 What if everyone just grows zucchini?
Casandra 58:00 Zucchini's really versatile. You know.
Brooke 58:01 Zucchini and potatoes.
Margaret 58:02 That was the main thing that my mom grew. My mom grew mostly zucchini. And so it was just like nothing, nothing, nothing and then everything is made out of zucchini for like two weeks. And I actually loved it because we ate so much zucchini bread and it was so good.
Casandra 58:17 Yeah.
Brooke 58:18 They're relatively easy, like if you haven't gardened before and you need something to garden that'll make you feel really good and successful. Like they're easier to grow you know a little harder to kill than, and then when they start producing like you get these big zucchinis and like if you completely ignore them, you can get these like just monstrous beasts and it's just really satisfying to grow zucchini.
Casandra 58:41 I never grow zucchini because I always have friends who grow zucchini and have too much.
Brooke 58:45 Yes. As zucchini does.
Casandra 58:49 Anyway.
Brooke 58:50 Grow zucchini.
Margaret 58:52 This podcast is brought to you by zucchini. Okay, what's another hopeful? Don't rush out and buy a garage door right now if you can avoid it. Turn your basement fear into a kiddie pool full of kibble.
Casandra 59:15 If your garage door privileged you can just like revel in that.
Margaret 59:18 Yeah.
Brooke 59:20 Genuinely you know, pet food is an example of a thing where if you're gonna go if you have some extra money and you're gonna go invest it quote unquote, in something pet food will hold up and your pet will need food. So instead of bananas buy pet food.
Margaret 59:34 If you do buy bananas, you have to put them in you have to peel them and put them in the freezer if you want them to last and then you've turned them into smoothies.
Casandra 59:43 That's the only good way to eat a banana anyway. Controversial take
Brooke 59:48 I do not agree.
Margaret 59:50 Yeah, I just...Huh, I thought we I thought we were friends.
Casandra 59:58 I just lost to friends.
Brooke 1:00:05 I just know not to bring bananas over your house. They won't be safe.
Margaret 1:00:09 Well they are safe.
Casandra 1:00:09 You can use them perfectly for smoothies and banana bread. How do we end this?
Margaret 1:00:21 We we like can do this, right? Like all this like bad shits happening, but like the reason to talk about all this bad shit that's happening is to stare soberly into the face of what's coming. Not so that we like, give up and like, it's not the part in the movie where the "Run there's a monster," and then the monster eats everyone. It's the part where you're standing on the bulwark of the--I watch love fantasy movies--the bulwark of the castle and you look out and there's the gathering storm and the hordes of usually poorly racially designed enemies...is coming...now I just feel bad about using this analogy. I love Lord of the Rings, but i was not...
Casandra 1:01:03 The new Lord of the Rings is about to come out.
Margaret 1:01:05 Yeah.
Casandra 1:01:05 Apparently it's more racially fair and equitable and diverse.
Margaret 1:01:09 Yeah. That's good. And I personally more than I probably should think Tolkien would have listened to some of this criticisms since he like, like, when the Nazis came to Tolkien, and were like, "Hey, we love your story, are you Aryan?" and he got really fucking mad. And he was like, they like he was like, "If you're asking if I'm Jewish, I am sad to say that I am not, but fuck all of you forever." So anyway. he's not a perfect man.
Casandra 1:01:43 Comrade Tolkien.
Margaret 1:01:45 But I think he, I think he meant, well, we all know that intentions are what matters. Okay. So but this is the part of the movie where you're staring out at the, you know, the bad thing is coming, right? And it is a big, bad thing. And we can't just all go back to bed and be like, "Oh, the government will take care of this for us, right?" Because the government is one of the things that's out there gathering and the big fucking mass. Well parts of it, because governments are made out of people. And some parts of it will probably stop being part of the government when bad things happen. But... well like the National Guard like gives food to the like mutual aid groups and like that they're supposed to give to Red Cross, like this has happened sometimes. They're like, "Oh, shit, y'all actually put things where they're supposed to go." And they like help the anarchists instead of the bureaucracies, because they're people. But, we can do this. We can look, we can see what's happening, we can face it, we can communicate with other people about what we're facing. We can work together to get through this. And, and I genuinely believe that and that's why I do this podcast. And that's why my basement is full of kibble. And um...
Casandra 1:02:54 We're all gonna come swim in it.
Margaret 1:02:55 Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's probably gonna be full of rats by that time, but you know.
Margaret 1:03:01 Yeah!
Brooke 1:03:01 Rats are food...too.
Margaret 1:03:01 I'm like a rat farmer in my basement. That's a turn you never expected from Ol' Margaret.
Brooke 1:03:01 Rats need food too.
Casandra 1:03:14 Vegan turned rat farmer.
Margaret 1:03:17 That's still vegan.
Brooke 1:03:21 Okay, so this segment is...
Casandra 1:03:24 Devolving.
Margaret 1:03:25 Alright. And, so thank you all so much for listening. If you enjoy this podcast, please tell people about it. You can tell people about it on the internet. And you can tell people about it not on the internet. And both of those things are good, because not in person. Because on the internet is good because of algorithms and in person is good because that's a better way to live your life. She said while living alone and on the top of a mountain. And also, if you want to support us more directly, you can do so by sponsoring our Patreon. We are published by Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness, which is a anarchists collective that is dedicated to creating culture and good stuff. Sometimes we do theory, but that's like not our thing. It's like almost like we try and kind of do the other stuff around. And you can support us by following us on Patreon or by supporting us on Patreon patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. If you sponsor us at $10 or more a month, we will send you a zine anywhere in the world for free every month. If you sponsors at all, you'll get access to the digital copy, even before other people get access. I think usually we're good at that. Sometimes. Most of the time. We're still getting our shit together. But there's lots of good content. We have bunch of books coming out. We have another podcast you can check out called Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness, which is the monthly zine, but it is available to everyone and then it also follows with an interview with the Creator talking about their process. It's really good. You should check it out. Do either of you to have anything to plug before I?
Casandra 1:04:58 I just got this book in the mail that I did the art for that you might know about.
Margaret 1:05:03 Yeah, what is it?
Casandra 1:05:06 It's your book. Margaret.
Margaret 1:05:07 I have a book?
Casandra 1:05:08 Yeah. You have a book coming out.
Margaret 1:05:09 Is it called "We Won't Be Here Tomorrow. I have a book of short stories that's coming out called "We Won't Be Here Tomorrow." It comes out September 20. From AK Press, which is a collectively run anarchist publisher, which rules and if you order it now you get art print made by Casandra. Well, drawn by Cassandra. It's probably made by a printer somewhere. The prints part of it anyway, and it illustrates one of my stories and also Casandra did the cover art, and it's really beautiful. So, you should check it out. And in particular, we want to thank some of our Patreon backers. We want to thank Hoss the dog, Chris, Sam, Micaiah, Kirk, Natalie, Eleanor, Jenipher, Staro, Cat J, Chelsea, Dana, David, Nicole, Mikki, Oxalis, Paige, and SJ. Thank you so much for for making this possible. And yeah, I hope you all are doing as well as you can with everything that's going on.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Episode summary: Margaret talks with Mixael from the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective about access to different medical technologies, biohacking access, and how the medical industrial complex complicates that. They talk about the importance of being able to audit medical access and ways you can build medical infrastructure in your own communities. They talk about old projects like the DIY Epi Pencil as well as new projects they are revealing, which include new ways to access medicines for abortion, regimens forpairing emergency contraception with PReP, and potential medicines for the treatment of Long Covid.
About the Guest: The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective is an anarchist collective dedicated to bringing access medicines and medical technologies to those who need them but don’t have them. This is done primarily by publishing DIY methodologies for taking responsibility for one’s own health by building your own medical devices, manufacturing your own ingredients, or compounding medications yourself.
They can be found at https://fourthievesvinegar.org/ or on Twitter @4ThievesVinegar
Host Info: Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
Publisher Info: This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Four Thieves Vinegar Collective on The Promise of DIY Pharmaceutical Abortions
Margaret 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like The World Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. And this week, we've got a special treat for you or i dunno if it's a treat. But, it's a really interesting episode. And, I think you might get as much out of it as I do. On this episode, I'll be talking with Four Thieves Vinegar Collective, who we've talked to before. They're basically people who do DIY wet chemistry and teach people how to make their own medications. And this time, they're going to be talking about how people could choose to make their own abortion medications, and also even some Long Covid drugs that have some promising successes and many other things besides, so a lot to dig into. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network da da ba da buh baa!
Jingle 01:12 What's up, y'all? I'm Pierson host of coffee with comrades. Coffee with comrades is rooted in militant joy. Our hope is to cultivate a warm and inviting atmosphere, like walking into your favorite coffee shop to sit down with some of your close friends and share a heart to heart conversation. New episodes premiere every Tuesday, so be sure to smash that subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss an episode. We are proud to be a part of the Channel Zero network.
Margaret 02:06 Okay, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns and then I guess a little bit about Four Thieves Vinegar Collective and what it is you all do?
Mixael 02:19 Yeah, my name is Mixael Laufer, I prefer to take whatever pronouns the person addressing me seems are appropriate of the moment. And the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective is an anarchist collective devoted to bringing access to medicines and medical technologies to people who need them, but don't have them. And we're fairly agnostic about the methodologies that we use to try to bring that into being. So, we do a lot of different things, and including trying to find ways to build DIY medical devices. We do a lot with chemistry, and devising ways that people can build the active pharmaceutical ingredients of drugs that they might need. And we also look at methodologies and strategies by which people can acquire the things they need through non traditional channels. So, either looking for drugs that are packaged for other purposes, or looking for things that are closely related, that you might be able to get and convert into what you need. And that's what I spend most of my time doing, I'm the chief spokesperson for the collective. And, I do a lot of work in logistics. So, mostly I take people who are subject matter experts of different types and I try to make sure they have the tools and materials that they need, and that the information they need and the information that they have gets shuttled to the other subject matter experts with whom they work so that we can eventually release literature and guides for people to be able to take control of their own health and hopefully have a better quality of life.
Margaret 04:18 So, basically, what you all do is you're decentralized collective of people who've research ways to open source different medical technology, drugs and physical equipment, and then make that open source like show people how to make it and make the tools available for people to make it themselves?
Mixael 04:37 Yeah, so that is exactly correct. And to be a little more specific just for your listeners, we don't do any research of our own. We're not developing any new tools. We mostly are hijacking existing tools. We're looking for medical technologies that we already know work. We don't do things like clinical trials or try to develop new drugs that nobody's ever heard of. We look for things that are on the shelf, but inaccessible things that are perhaps not legal for various reasons, perhaps things that have merely not come into the marketplace because they weren't profitable, but still are effective, things that perhaps weren't approved because they were effective, but only in a small margin of the population, and, or in events where they're really inaccessible because the price has been jacked up too high. Or if you happen to be in a situation where the infrastructure just can't reach you, for whatever reason, either due to sclerotic bureaucracy, and you just can't get your insurance provider to give you what you need, or you might be in a rural place where there just isn't a pipeline to get such things. So yeah, we're, we look to take things that are already established that they work and try and get them to the people who need them.
Margaret 06:02 So what are some examples of the...I know, we're going to be talking about some of the new products that you all have been working on in a moment, but what are some of the examples of existing things that you all have done that you've released that people are on their own using and accessing right now, because of you all's work?
Mixael 06:20 Yeah. So the thing that we are ironically best known for was just a sort of side project that happened, but when, when Heather Bresch was lying in front of Congress about why she jacked up the prices of the epi pen, you had a lot of people knocking on our door, saying, "Why aren't you doing something about the epi pen?" So we put together a project that we lovingly and playfully called The Epi Pencil Project that allows you to make in an open source reloadable version that costs $30, to build and about $3, to reload. And that garnered a lot of attention just because it was very timely. And that was fun, and felt good. And, you know, I still get letters from people saying that they're using it. And it's it's good to know that that technology is out there and that people are benefiting from it. Our sort of flagship project that I believe you and I talked about last time is the Apothecary MicroLab, which is an open source, automated chemical reactor that helps you walk through the process of doing organic chemistry if you're trying to synthesize on active pharmaceutical ingredient of a particular drug, and it will help you through the things that are easy for a machine to do, but are easy for a human to mess up. And then it will ask you to sort of help it are the things that are difficult for machine to do but easy for human.
Margaret 07:46 What kind of successes have y'all had with getting this stuff out in the world? You're saying that you've you know, met people who use the Epi Pencil, like, have you? Have you seen widespread adoption? Is it mostly within the hacker community? Like what kind of reach do y'all currently have and what kind of reach are y'all working towards?
Mixael 08:04 Well, we don't really know. And I don't think we really have a goal as to reach. And this is a really sort of central tenet of our philosophy is that we're not looking to try to get what we have out there in a certain volume, because we don't want to be supplanting an infrastructure that we're trying to offer an alternative to. The idea is that we build some tools, and those tools are available. And ultimately, the decision as to whether somebody wants to use those tools or thinks it's necessary to use those tools, or even thinks it's a good idea, or wise or foolish to use those tools really lies with the end user. I mean, and this is really important, right? Because the thing is, is we're not saying "Hey, you should use our stuff instead of the regular stuff." Instead, what we're trying to say is, look, you shouldn't be stuck in the position where either the medical infrastructure serves you the way it's supposed to, or you shrug and just continue to suffer or wait to die. You should have the option of taking things into your own hands. And plenty of people don't want to do that for any number of reasons. And that's their personal decision. The goal here is to make it possible for people to have an alternative option where they previously didn't. And so, because of all of that, we work very, very hard to not try to push what we create as "Hey, you should use what we do." It's, "Here's what we did. We think it's kind of cool, and we hope you look at it carefully and make up your own mind thoughtfully." And at the same time, like, we don't go trying to chase down people who've used it to say, "Hey, you know, give us a good review on Yelp," or whatever. It's...the idea is that it's out there, right? The idea is that it's out there in terms of reach the...
Margaret 10:18 But how are you going to become a millionaire if you don't sell it? [laughing]
Mixael 10:22 Yeah, right? I get that question all the time. And. [both laughing] And, yes, that sort of giggle is typically what comes out of me.
Margaret 10:35 yeah, yeah.
Mixael 10:37 So, so it's...the one the one thing that I think about in terms of that sometimes is I think about people who might want to use what we've created, but don't know that it exists yet. I like to get the message out there a little bit. And it was interesting, too, because we're revamping the website currently. And the, in a group of, of people who are doing the redesign. One of them isn't from a really strong anarchists background, and was looking at this, this new look that we have, it's like, so pretty, and I'm so excited. It's got this like green neon noir look. And there's like splatters of ink and stuff. And he said to me, he's like, "I am concerned that this, this gritty look that you are pushing for is going to turn some people off." And I said, "Uh huh." And he said, "But don't we want to get as many people as possible to the website." And I said, "Absolutely not. What we'd like is we'd like to get as many people who like what we do and appreciate it to our website. And I promise you that if you try to polish this up, like some corpo thing all of our gutter punk friends are going to see that and run. But make it gritty, we're raising a flag saying "You're one of us. Welcome home."" And there was this long silence. And then finally he said, "Understood, thank you." So yeah, so in terms of like reach, I, I want to reach more of our people, you know, I want to reach more of the people who would use the sort of stuff that we do. And when we get these big splashes in mainstream media, it's very weird, because we get a lot of praise from people who kind of pay lip service to like the idea that they think they like what we do, but they don't [pause] like deep down. And it's so bizarre, because I remember, I remember I had been invited shortly after that project to speak at the Sloan School at MIT. And so I was with a bunch of kind of normies. So, after the after the epi pencil droped. And, and so we're having dinner, and like this woman, I think she was from NASA. And she's sitting next to me. And, and like, and just to be clear, like this conversation that I'm about to recount is typical. Like, I've had the same conversation with a lot of people like her. But, she was from NASA. And she said, "Oh, I heard about the Epi Pencil Project. It's really so great that you're making this accessible. My," I don't know, husband or niece or whatever, "has some sort of anaphylactic shock that she goes into when blah, blah, blah, happens. It's really so wonderful to see you do this." And I said, "Oh, thanks." And I said, "So did you build one?" And the inevitable response was, " Hahahaha, God no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I bought it. But, it's really great that you're doing that." And I was like, "Excuse me, I think I'm in the wrong seat."
Margaret 13:55 Yeah, I mean, I can, I can understand being like, "Well, I have the resources. So I'm gonna buy this one that's like, I expect to be dependable." In a weird way, though. It's almost like saying, "I want to trust an expert rather than trust my own expertise", right, like, because--
Mixael 14:17 It's even weirder than that. Yeah. But this is exactly the point. The the phenomenon that you point out is spot on. It's...because I've dug into this a lot, because I've come across it so much, but it's so bizarre. And the thing that's strange is that they want to put faith into an infrastructure that they can't audit. And it's so counterintuitive, because you think that will be the opposite of what you want. But the reason that they want it so badly is that when you do not have the power to check then you're absolved from the responsibility of checking.
Margaret 15:01 Ah, yeah, uh huh.
Mixael 15:01 And this offloading this outsourcing of responsibility is something that I find over and over and over again, is so very appealing to people. Where if you, if you take something on then if it goes wrong, it's your fault. While if you have an infrastructure supporting you, if something goes wrong, well, that's just bad luck, right? It's a nobody's fault. And there's this this bizarre, this bizarre sort of like blind eyed psychology that happens when you say, "Well, I trust that the infrastructure in place is going to take the best care of me that it can. And that is more comfortable, because I don't have to worry that if something goes wrong that I am blameworthy." And this is terribly ironic, on multiple levels. And it is the most ironic, especially with the Epi Pencil Project, and not to like harken back to this little little thing that we did. But, right after we did that, there was a recall of something like 65,000 epi pens, because they were failing.
Margaret 16:20 Huh, Yeah.
Mixael 16:21 And the number of tragic stories that came out were just innumerable, of, you know, some poor little girl had a airplane meal that like had a peanut in it or something, and her throat starts to swell shut, and her father hits her with the epi pen, and it fails, and he's got a second one, and that one fails, and he's 30,000 feet in the air somewhere over the ocean and just has to watch her die, because you can't take the thing apart and make it work unless you're trained in like how to break it properly. If instead, he'd made it himself, like, there'd be no way for it to fail. It's it's an auto injector. And if something went wrong with the mechanism, you just unscrew it and you use the syringe. There's there's...and it's just it's I don't know, it's it's maddening sometimes when you hear about these tragic stories where people either thoughtfully or thoughtlessly have put all of this trust in in an infrastructure which heartlessly fails them and feels no remorse when it does. It's just a matter of business. Like, that's what, that's the American Way.
Margaret 17:32 Yeah. I mean, that's the that's a an easy microcosm of a very large political truth. And that that's what people want. That's why people trust police. That's why they essentially give up their agency in order to...Well, I mean, in some ways, like, you know, I understand the desire to not have to think about everything I do, right? Like, it's nice, that some stuff...
Mixael 18:00 Sure.
Margaret 18:00 ...someone else takes care of, like, my friend Bursts is editing this audio. And it's nice to be able to be like, "Oh, he's going to edit the audio. And I don't have to think about it," you know, and, and so I understand why people want to do that. But, when you do it at the level of society, and you have everything turned into these black boxes, and you just sort of say, "Well, the black box never fails." And then when it fails, you're like, "Well, I guess there's nothing that could possibly have been done to solve this," you know? And then what you all do is you rip open these black boxes.
Mixael 18:35 That is the goal. That is definitely the goal. Yeah. And I think what you point out is really a critical thing. When you talk about this is why people trust police and trust government and trust, you know, infrastructure and roads and bridges, and like, whatever, you know, whatever you're looking at, in terms of systems, you know, trusting your internet service provider, trusting your phone company, trusting the water systems, like any number of things. And ideally, it would be really nice if all of these things worked, right?
Margaret 19:10 Yeah.
Mixael 19:11 You know, in, in a sort of a Hallmark card fairy tale world, we'd really like to think like, "Well, the water that comes out of the tap, won't catch fire or be full of lead. And the roads that are designed are designed to be safe. And I'm not being unduly spied on or abused or exploited." And unfortunately, we don't get those systems working that well most of the time.
Margaret 19:45 Yeah.
Mixael 19:46 Or enough of the time. And so, I harken back sometimes his memory I have of a friend of mine who went to business school and he's a really nice guy and has plenty of good qualities. But, in a moment of being rather misguided, he went to business school. And so he still has a little bit of that business mindedness sort of stuck in his consciousness. And he said to me, "How would you qualify success of Four Thieves?" And I kind of thought about it for a minute and I said, "Well, if we didn't have to exist anymore."
Margaret 20:20 Yeah.
Mixael 20:21 And he kind of looked at me quizzically, and I was like, "We're filling a gap that really shouldn't be needful. Either the infrastructure should function well enough that it takes care of everybody, or the idea of DIY medicine should be sufficiently normalized that like, we're not important anymore. And everybody's just doing it. Because that's a natural thing to think of."
Margaret 20:44 Yeah, I I like this idea of the ability to audit things mattering ,right? Like, I think of, because I think about how I want to offload certain responsibility. It's just part of my life, as I, you know, as I try to dive deeper into certain specializations, it's nice to free up mental space to not have to think about every system that I rely on. And, one of the things that I think scares people away from anarchism, even if they understand that anarchism is an organized thing, is that there's this assumption that everyone has to have a decision about everything, make a decision about everything. So you have like everyone in the city gets to decide how the water is filtered, or whatever. And, I'm much more into there being a working group of the people who filter water, who figured out the best way to do it and and present it. But, the difference that matters to me is that that would remain auditable, that would remain...I like that phraseing and that would be something that I could--
Mixael 21:41 Exactly.
Margaret 21:42 I don't want to think about how the water is filtered until I suddenly do, and then I want to be able to know, you know, I want to know, and have input if it's necessary.
Mixael 21:51 Yes. Exactly. And that's beautifully put, right? That's beautifully put, and that, and that sort of two tiered, I don't even mean to say it's a two tiered system, that sort of a dual structured system, where it operates independently, but is accessible is really ideal, you know, and people, often when people hear about Four Thieves, right, the first thing that they say is like, "How do you know it's safe?" And I always just have this quizzical moment where I say, "How do you know what you get from the drugstore is safe? You're not allowed to go behind the counter, and even see, if they got the right pills out of the right bin. You're not allowed to go right back there into the refrigerator and see if they stored it properly. You're not allowed to check the truck that it came in on and see if it was shipped properly. Furthermore, you're not even allowed to know what factory it came from. And you're certainly not allowed to go into that factory and see if it was manufactured properly. And yet, somehow that feels safe to you? But if you had your own eyes on everything from start to finish, that seems like a terrible risk. Why? Why do you feel that way?" And people don't tend to have a really good answer most of the time, but it's the same sort of thing. I mean, I think that...I think that there's something automatic about it, again, about wanting to trust structure. But, in the same way, you know, I think that the same thing happens when people who are like, I don't know, cooking their own psychedelics, I think a lot of people would be like, "Oh my God, how is that safe?" And you say, "You bought something from a stranger? How do you know what's even in that? That doesn't seem safe at all." Like where is your saftey versus...
Margaret 23:41 Yeah, I mean, the answer is that none of them are safe.
Mixael 23:46 Right, well, but in one case, you at least have complete surveillance over the entire process. And in the other. You have zero.
Margaret 23:55 Yeah.
Mixael 23:56 So, that seems like a better trade off in my mind.
Margaret 24:01 Yeah. I mean, part of it is that it's like, like I keep kind of harkening back to is that I don't want to be an expert on everything, right? Like, you know, I really like what you all do, and there's a version of the world where I would learn wet chemistry, but it is not particularly likely, right? Like I am, personally not incredibly likely to start manufacturing these things, and but in part because I don't personally physically require any of the things that you all make, to my knowledge, that exists so far, right? And so I'm kind of like, it's sort of easy to, to not think about, but it's...
Mixael 24:37 In the event that you have one that you needed.
Margaret 24:41 I also like am part of a community where I do know people who are smart enough to do these things and, and one of the reasons I like Four Thieves, one of the reasons I talk about you all a lot, is that one of the questions I get asked a lot by people was like, "Well, how do, you know in an anarchist society or after the apocalypse which people equate a little bit more than they should and I do sometimes too, but how would you create such and such drug? And the answer is always like, well, people do it. And there's still going to be people. So, people will do it.
Mixael 25:13 Right. Yeah.
Margaret 25:13 You know? And one of the things that I try and remind myself as a person is that I'm like, I generally believe that if people are capable of doing something, I am a people, and therefore I am capable of doing it. Not like, today, I could go and do open heart surgery. But...
Mixael 25:32 This is exactly my argument too. Yeah.
Margaret 25:34 But I like, I trust my friends that did learn how to do that.
Mixael 25:39 Right. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's absolutely astute.
Margaret 25:43 Well, you know, we're, we've been talking for a while already, but I wanted to kind of give this groundwork. But, I'm really excited about y'all have an announcement today, you have many announcements of a bunch of new products that you all are releasing. And when I say today, I mean, yeah, July 22, 2022. I have no idea when you're listening to this. But, let's, let's hear some of these things that you have to announce.
Mixael 26:09 Yeah, so we have a bunch of new projects, because we've been working through the pandemic. We decided to stop going to virtual conferences and just focus on projects. So, now that it's been almost two years, since we've made any announcements, we have a lot of new projects to drop. And as we were talking about before we went on the air, the sort of element du jour here is abortion drugs. And, this is such a...such a head shaker of an issue, to my mind, because this is a social problem that has a complete and perfect technical solution that there are all of these barriers to implementing that are entirely unnecessarily present. It's just so so so so bizarre. Because, when I think of abortion, I think, "Well, there are some drugs, you take the drugs, and your body is no longer pregnant. Why do we even have to discuss this anymore?" There are a few other pieces where things have--
Margaret 27:27 It seems like a solved problem is what you're saying?
Mixael 27:27 Right, it seems like a solved problem. And, and it's just maddening to me that the the technical part of it was solved decades upon decades ago. And still, it's not accessible, which is just the most bizarre thing ever. So, in looking at the decision that just came out of the so called Supreme Court, you see that the the adenda include this sort of roadmap for bringing this down to emergency contraception, eventually bring this down to contraception itself and, you know, re-criminalizing gay sex and like a million other things that just are kind of just incomprehensible that anybody would want to make that happen. Like, even from the most conservative standpoint, you think that the pragmatism of realizing that it's bad for business when you're horrifically bigoted like maybe he would count for something, but clearly, I am in error when I assume that because it just happened.
Margaret 28:50 Yeah, no. Hate is big business.
Mixael 28:53 Yeah, yeah. It really is. And, I think I need to learn more about why it is because it's, it's so...I don't know, I can't get it to gel in my head. It's It's really weird.
Margaret 29:10 It's a different reality.
Mixael 29:13 It is. It is. And, I think that yeah, I think that that's really it, right? Where if you if you want to really crank up your compassion and try to understand why these people might feel that they're doing the right thing, despite this just horrific acts that they're doing that somewhere in there, like they think that something is better by doing this and it's, I really need to unpack it. And maybe it's something more basic in human behavioral biology that I just don't have a good handle on. But, like you said, it's it is big business and it is definitely a thing So, that to say, regarding abortion, there are two major releases that we have around that that are pretty exciting. And the first one, a we call them, Plan B Plus. And, when you think about getting emergency contraception, as is you know typically termed Plan B, which interestingly enough, all Plan B, and even the off brands like My Way, and the others have in the last week, tripled in price.
Margaret 30:39 Holy shit, Uh huh
Mixael 30:40 It's I mean, not that that's still super expensive, but it's amazing that you used to be able to get My Way for $6. And now it's $16. Like, it's crazy. But you know, again, right? Money drives a lot of things bizarrely, and, you know, supply and demand and all that. But looking at that, you know, Plan B emergency contraception is very effective. But, when you think about the potential negative consequences that might happen from unprotected contact, you might also be thinking about contracting HIV. And we also have a good solution for that. There's post exposure prophylaxis. There's this good regimen for taking some anti-retrovirals. And in the event that you were exposed to HIV during the act, you can be pretty confident that you're going to be protected. And we were able to go through the literature and find what a good regimen for post exposure prophylaxis is. Now it's interesting. So if you look at what happens in a hospital, if somebody has a needle stick accident, the typical regimen for post exposure prophylaxis is a fairly aggressive multi-drug set of anti-retrovirals that you take over a period of a month, and they're pretty rough on your body, because you're taking them in fairly high dose, and you're taking them for a long time. However, the literature indicates that the first dose or two is really doing the heavy lifting. So, if after an event of unprotected contact, or exposure of whatever type, you get one dose of this, it can do 85-95% of the work in terms of protecting you against HIV, which is really great. And so, we had the idea of saying, Well, why not take this with emergency contraception? It seems like kind of a, you know, why not just do them together?
Margaret 32:54 Right.
Mixael 32:54 And, we were very deflated to find out that anti-retrovirals actually interfere with emergency contraception biochemically.
Margaret 33:05 Ah, okay.
Mixael 33:05 And we thought, "God, what a drag?" This...I mean, what a terrible, difficult decision that you'd have to make. Would you prefer to protect yourself?--
Margaret 33:14 Yeah. Which one do you want to deal with?
Mixael 33:15 Right? Would you rather deal with HIV or an unwanted pregnancy? That's a terrible decision to have to make. And one of our superstar researchers managed to find a research summit that was done on this very question just last year, and as it turns out, all you have to do is double the dose of the emergency contraception and that's enough that it's no longer being interfered with by the anti-retrovirals. So, there is a course of treatment that you can give yourself, that is both Plan B, emergency contraception, and post exposure prophylaxis with a multi-drug cocktail, and you will be able to be fairly certain that you will not have either an unwanted pregnancy or an HIV infection, which I'm pretty excited about. I think that's really great to be able to empower people with that, you know. You can just take some pills and that problem is, you know, 19 times out of 20 no longer gonna be a problem anymore.
Margaret 34:21 And so, if someone is interested in making this, it's y'all's system, the MicroLab that people could use to make Plan B Plus?
Mixael 34:34 That is possible, um, indeed, and the...and we are releasing version four of the Microlab as well. And there's a whole software suite with that. Not only is there the MicroLab itself, but there is a graphical user interface that's there to build programs to run on the MicroLab. We have open access our new supercomputer so that you can utilize it to figure out synthesis pathways for whatever drug you're trying to synthesize. And on top of that, also, there's a research assistant that will help you comb through the scientific literature. So you could do that. However, in this case, these are off the shelf drugs, and you can just take them.
Margaret 35:22 Oh, I see what you're saying, okay.
Mixael 35:24 So we'll be releasing a regimen. So, what you can do is merely you would, if you wanted to have this on hand for a rainy day, what you would do is you would buy two doses, so three milligrams, instead of a milligram and a half of the emergency contraception and then you would buy a, you know, a dose of a couple of different anti-retrovirals and you would just, you know, stash them away in the event that you will need them. And, and we'll be releasing that specifically as a, as a regimen, and there'll be documentation so that you can both read through what we have found and also, you will be able to read the original research and literature that this is based on. Again, like, we didn't come up with this.
Margaret 36:19 Yeah, yeah.
Mixael 36:20 This came from existing scientific research. So yes, all the all the primary source material is there, again, auditable, right? You should be making up your own mind. We, we've gone through and found the stuff and you can take a look at it and decide if it's something you want to do.
Margaret 36:38 Okay.
Mixael 36:40 So yes, we do have another technology in the abortion drugs realm that is extremely, extremely exciting. And so as you and most of your listeners, no doubt know, abortion medication is typically made up of Mifepristone and Misoprostol, and you take one dose of the Mife, and then you follow that up with three doses of Miso. And that is roughly 95% or more effective. And so that's kind of a slam dunk. However, in the world of underground abortion providers, it's very well known that if you have Miso only that you can take the three doses of Miso. And, it's roughly 85% effective. And of course, the earlier you take it, the more effective it is. And so most underground abortion providers do that. They work with Miso only. It's easier to get a hold of and it's it's easier to work with.
Margaret 37:48 Okay.
Mixael 37:48 However, there's still the problem of getting it from point A to point B. Typically, these days, it goes through the mail. And, one of the problems is it gets hung up, in the reason that it gets hung up is that it's a tablet. And there are these rigid object detectors that are in mail systems, and they get caught and they get pulled, especially through crossing international borders. It's very difficult. Same sort of thing. If you're in a some sort of oppressive environment, either like your home life or your small community if you have pills lying around, or if somebody spots you with pills, like a lot of question marks are going to come up. So when we released our video on how to make your own Miso tabs, the big thing is making the tablet. And the reason you have to make a tablet and this is really critical is that misoprostol is a very fragile molecule. If you just swallow it, your stomach acid will immediately destroy it and it's useless. You need to have it in a tablet so that you can put it in your cheek and let it dissolve and it will slowly soak in and be effective. That's also the reason why the alternate route of delivery is vaginal administration just of the tablets. You need it to dissolve in a place where there are a lot of capillaries. And apparently it's also fairly local. So there are some theories, that vaginal administration can be more effective. But, I think the literature is kind of split on that. But again, it can't be a capsul.
Margaret 39:35 People have talked about this idea. And I don't know. So, don't listen to me as saying absolutely the truth. But, I have heard people talk about how vaginal use of this is more traceable than oral use of it, in terms of possible prosecution.
Mixael 39:53 Right. So, there are documented cases of that. So, what can happen and what has what has happened in, I believe in number of Latin American countries, is that when things have not worked, and somebody's had to go in to a hospital, say, "I'm having a miscarriage, and it's going poorly, and I need medical attention," that after a pelvic exam, not the active ingredient, but some of the buffer and binder hasn't dissolved, and somebody says, "You have chunks of pills in you, we know what you did." And so, there are...sometimes say if you're in an extremely non permissive environment where you would go to jail for murder, if anybody knew that you tried to induce a miscarriage in your body, that taking it orally is safer in that regard. So again, again, the key thing here again, is thinking about it dissolving, that it has to be in a...you can't just put it in a capsule and swallow it, right, it has to be in a tablet form. And this is the difficult part. If you give somebody a bunch of raw active pharmaceutical ingredient, they can't just put it in gel caps they get from the health food store and make pills, you have to press it into a tablet. And while you can do that, and you know, we did release a video on how to do that, it's not that difficult, but it is a pain and putting through the mail is you know, they're fragile, and they break and what do you do with that? Is that okay? And people get nervous. So we were all sitting around trying to figure out what to do about this and one of our absolutely brilliant members just kinda looked up and said, "Why don't we just put it in blotter paper, like acid tabs?" And we all just had this moment of silence and said, "Oh, my God, that's brilliant." And again, scouring the literature, it turns out that this has been done. It's just nobody does it. There's a very effective way that you can put miso into paper with a binder so that it's less...so it's more stable, more shelf stable and less fragile. Misoprostol is shelf stable when stored properly.
Margaret 42:31 Do you have to keep it in a freezer?
Mixael 42:32 You don't have to keep it in the freezer. The thing apparently that it is most susceptible to is--
Margaret 42:38 I'm just thinking of Acid.
Margaret 42:39 Oh, right. Haha. Yeah, so the thing that the thing that misoprostol apparently is most susceptible to is moisture. And the interestingly, the buffer that comes with, when you put it into the paper makes it less susceptible to moisture. If you're planning on storing it for a long period of time, yeah, you can put in like a Ziploc bag or a little Mylar bag or whatever, that's fine. And it'll keep for longer. But, in the suspension that we've found, you can just have a little piece of card. And so what we are hoping to do is to have a whole bunch of little business cards that have six little squares that you can cut out, and you take two of them, and put them in your cheeks and you let them sit there for about an hour. And then you you wait the requisite number of hours and you do your second dose and then you'd wait the requisite number of hours and take your third dose and you're done. And the thing that's magical about this is that it removes a lot of the infrastructural problems. You can send this through the mail. It's totally undetectable. You can stick it into a copy of "The Left Hand of Darkness" in the public libraries and just tell somebody that they can go pick it up, if they need it. You can take this and stash it in any number of geocaches.
Margaret 44:11 I think that you should use "A Country of Ghosts."
Mixael 44:13 There we go. Yeah. So you know, they're...right or or or "The Mists of Avalon" or any number of appropriate works of literature that you can stash these in entirely appropriate.
Margaret 44:25 Yeah.
Mixael 44:26 And what we're hoping to have by the time this airs is to have a lot of these already out there and circulating. Not just that it's an idea, but that it's been manufactured by a bunch of affiliate cells, a number of other anarchist health activism groups, and that hopefully the opinion as it's called of the Supreme Court becomes just their opinion. And if there's so much out there that people can just get it for free whenever they want, because we've made so much of it, then maybe they just don't matter that much anymore.
Margaret 45:15 So, I'm laughing super hard, because it's fucking brilliant. And also, of course, because I really liked the idea of being able to say, "Yeah, well, that's just your opinion, man," to the Supreme Court's opinion.
Mixael 45:27 Yeah, I like that.
Margaret 45:28 But this, this does bring up a question. What's the legality of manufacturing and or, clearly, we would never advocate anyone break the law, because that's the, I mean, actually, literally, that's the kind of thing that people need to make their own decision. Oh, well,
Mixael 45:46 Oh, well you and I might differ on that.
Margaret 45:51 You live in a different country.
Mixael 45:51 I would certainly advocate for people to break the law. But yeah, details. Yes. Right.
Margaret 46:00 And also, I would say that I advocate for people to have knowledge with which they can make their own informed decisions about which laws they want to follow. But--
Mixael 46:08 That's a good way to phrase it.
Margaret 46:09 To what degree is there a concern around like, like, if I live in a state where Miso is legal, is it legal for me to make it myself?
Mixael 46:20 Oh probably not.
Margaret 46:20 Like, in general, what kind of legality will people be running into?
Mixael 46:26 All manner of weird things, and it does depend on the state that you're in. And the the legal team at Four Thieves basically put it to me like this. If they want to arrest you, they can find a way. And it was sort of it was kind of like it's a moot right. Are you distributing a dangerous drug? Are you distributing a dangerous drug with intent to defraud? Are you practicing medicine without a license? Are you...that there's so many weird laws that are so broadly written, that any number of things could be thrown at you, if you were making it, distributing it, sharing it, taking it, especially with all the new shifts in law. And again, it becomes, in, in my mind, with my understanding of the situation as it is now, the risk that you run is really measured in Is it going to be worth it for the law enforcement in question to try to chase you down? Or not? How possible and how plausible is that? Because if you think about the state of New York, you're in the northeast, some you're near New York, right?
Margaret 47:57 Sure, yeah.
Mixael 48:00 Okay, you might be in New York.
Margaret 48:02 I'm in Appalachia. I am closer to New York than I am to like San Francisco.
Mixael 48:09 Right, closer to New York than I am. So but, I happen to know that in the state of New York, if you were to say, "Hey, Mixael, you know, I have a headache?" And I say, "Oh, yeah, have you thought of taking an aspirin for that," that I am technically, committing a felony of practicing medicine without a license. That's how broadly the law is written. Now, nobody's ever gonna prosecute that of course. But, the law in many cases and in many places is written so broadly that anything will fall under its purview. And it becomes this weird question of is it worth the energy of a prosecutor? Is it worth the energy of the local police force? Is worth the energy of an investigator? And so in sort of a threat modeling sort of idea, the way the InfoSec people talk about it, you just want to make yourself just a little bit more of a pain in the ass to hunt down than anybody's willing to do. And you're probably safe. Now, this isn't like good advice from me, like go talk to a real security person, if you're thinking about doing this, and like, keep yourselves and keep each other safe. Please, please, please, please, if you're if you're one of us, we need you out here and safe. So that we can all keep doing stuff and helping each other. So, you take as...take more precautions than you think you need. Please. Try to be...try to err on the side of safety. However, I would say do not allow the the fear to paralyze you into inaction. There are ways that you can keep yourself relatively safe, and stay out of so called trouble and still do the things that you believe are right. And you will be able to continue to help other people and keep each other healthy and keep each other safe.
Margaret 50:25 Yeah. Yeah, no, I, I sometimes get sad because I'm like, "Well, I picked being very public as my role. So I guess I'm not doing anything really cool." But, I don't know. So. So what else you got? It's your big day of announcements. You've already offered the world ways to access reproductive, their own reproductive health. What about oh, I don't know this thing that's going around that's disabling a lot of people and causing a lot of problems and killing people called Covid. You got anything for that?
Mixael 51:05 Yeah. Well, we do, we do. And I'll give at least a little teaser.
Margaret 51:10 Yay!
Mixael 51:10 Now, this is an interesting thing. Because in Four Theives we we have a general policy of marching away from the sound of the guns. If there are a lot of people working on something, we tend to think, "Okay, well, then we're not needed there, we need to focus on the things that aren't being focused on." We did I construct a Covid survival guide. In the very early days. I think we released it in February of 2020. When people kind of weren't appreciating how scary it was going to be. And, we put together the information that we had access to at the time, and it's aged, okay. There are a number of things that are certainly outdated. And at least one thing that's not terribly correct. Or, it's miscontextualized. We have a thing where we're like, "You know, masks don't keep you safe very much," which is true. But masks are really important because they keep everybody else safe. So you know, don't be a jerk, wear a mask, keep everybody else safe. It wasn't clear at the time that it was going to be so pervasive that we were going to need to do that all the time. So, we did that when it seemed nobody else was. And then subsequently, when basically every scientific organization in the world suddenly turned their microscopes on this, we thought, well, okay, cool, we're not needed anymore, we're going to focus on other things. But, as the years have passed, there is one aspect of Covid that is getting all largely ignored by the mainstream medical infrastructure, which is Long Covid. I have spoken with a number of medical professionals who have a very dismissive attitude. And they say that they feel they think, Long Covid is largely psychosomatic. And I'm kind of disgusted.
Margaret 53:18 It's the same shit of every fucking viral. It's just the same thing as every viral long term thing, that people just like, like, like people have....there's other viruses that people get that cause long term symptoms that get called psychosomatic is what I'm saying.
Mixael 53:36 Sure and the thing that it, it sounds very...harkens back to a lot of the stuff that you typically hear mainstream doctors say about things like chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, things that definitely affect people with two X chromosomes. When you're looking at these things, it's like, "Oh, it's on your head, you need to exercise more, you should probably lose weight. You," you know, whatever. Just this very, very dismissive attitude that when I hear it, and when I sort of poke at these people and ask them to sort of unpack their reasoning for me, that when you get down to it, they're basically like, "Look, we don't know how to treat it. So essentially, in my reality, it doesn't exist." And I'm like, that's exactly the opposite of the attitude we should be having towards something that's crippling people. This is terrible. This is terrible.
Margaret 54:37 Yeah.
Mixael 54:37 And so as happens sometimes there are occasionally people that reach out to Four Thieves and have some information that's not in the public sphere or is not highlighted enough. And a guy that I worked with years and years ago said, "Hey, I know what you're doing and there's this thing that I have for Long Covid. And I can't get any traction on it. Maybe you can push it in through one of your backdoors." And I said, "I don't believe you. There's no way you have a cure for Long Covid. Long. Covid is so complicated. It's like this world. It's this giant umbrella of different symptoms and different mechanisms of action." And he was like, "Yeah, yeah, I know. It's only for one." And so I shut up. And I said, "Okay, I'm listening. What are we talking about?" He said, "Well, a lot of Long Covid cases seem to be autoimmune in nature." And I was like, "Yeah, I've read that. And he said, the very few doctors who are taking this seriously are treating it with immunosuppressants." And I said, "Okay, cool. What now?" And he said, "Well, the problem is, is immunosuppressants that are approved in the United States, are very, very hard in the system, and will often cause people's kidneys to fail before they do what they're supposed to do." And I said, "Yeah, so you got something better?" And he said, "Actually, yes, it's an old drug. It's FDA approved. It was originally designed for leprosy. And it's called Clofazimine." And I said, "This is ridiculous. You're talking about an antibiotic. That's not going to do anything," And he said, "Slow down." He said, "This modulates the calcium channels in your T cells, and it will bring your immune system down to chill out." And I said, "I don't believe you. This is ridiculous. This is this is this seems totally...There's no way you just have this in your backpack. How is this real?" And I said, "Wend...Do you have documentation?" And he said, "Yeah, of course. I have a truckload of documentation." "So we'll send it to me." He said "Well, I will." And he did and he was right. The weird thing that's, that's so difficult is that Clofazimine is almost impossible to find, because leprosy is seen as a poor people disease, a non-white people disease.
Margaret 57:19 Yeah.
Mixael 57:20 And, so despite the fact that Clofazamine was approved by the FDA, and is on the books, it's not manufactured by anybody in the United States. And it's not imported to the United States by anybody. So you really, really, really have to go looking for it. And, so the last thing where I'm still kind of totally incredulous with this guy, whereas I said, "So what? Somebody just takes this for the rest of their lives, and maybe they're okay? Like, and how long do they need to take it before they even know that it's working?" And he said, "They can take one or two doses, and it'll either work or it won't." And I said, "You've got to be joking." And he said, "No, I'm serious." I said, "Well, and then when they take it forever?" And he said, "No, then you can take it for about a month, and your immune system will settle out to a regular setpoint. And then you can stop taking it, and you can just go back to your regular life." And I was just absolutely floored. And so we continue to try and look for sources Clofazamine. They allegedly are available in places like Indian Bangladesh. Again, we're recording this in advance of when it's going to be released. So hopefully, we'll have a truckload full of it. And we'll be throwing it to people from the stage. But, again, it's been very hard to turn up. And again, I think just the fact that it's hard to get these sorts of things is so emblematic of all of the problems that you and I keep talking about in terms of the way that health running both worldwide, and especially in the US. So hopefully, we'll have some of this and hopefully, we'll be able to get it to the people who need it and help people who need it, get it themselves. And Long Covid can be something that isn't affecting so so so many people, and we'll be able to make at least some of them a little better.
Margaret 59:12 What...like what kind of...you're saying that it only works on certain, certain Long Covid symptoms or sufferers, like, is there a sort of like a rough idea of like, what percent you're talking about? Because also, there's I know that you expressed incredulity in the story, but it's like, it's so hard not to hear this and think this is horse paste again, you know, this is ivermectin.
Mixael 59:35 Right. So, so, so Long Covid again, is this it's this big umbrella term for something happened with Covid and you're experiencing things after you are quote unquote, "better." One of the ways that this manifests is people just get severe forms of Covid and get organ damage. And that's Long Covid Right. You have permanent effects from it, like no drug gonna to fix that, okay. You have organ damage, you have organ damage. That's very hard to reverse. There are manifestations where people kind of have chronic infection where especially in people who are immunocompromised, their viral load never really goes away. And, they just continue to suffer. Also, this is not going to help that at all. But what seems to happen in a, you know, maybe not the majority or even the plurality of cases, but a large chunk of cases is what happens is, people get a fairly severe Covid infection, and their immune system kicks into hyperdrive as it is designed to, but Covid can be sufficiently aggressive and hang around long enough that the immune system never modulates back down. And so what will happen is that people who have recovered from their Covid infection become hypersensitive to things again. They're totally fatigued all the time, because their immune system is taking up all of their resources. They don't tolerate things well. They get weird, like allergic reactions to things. All sorts of stuff that, again, is in this sort of autoimmune disease manifestation. And the thing that's really magical is that you take one or two doses of this, and it'll either work or it won't. If you if you start to feel better, you know, that you're in this particular category of this is what you needed. And then you can just take a course of treatment, and hopefully, you'd be better. And you so you don't have to, like tax your body for a long time trying to say, well, like maybe it'll work maybe won't, you'll know very quickly, which is such a blessing. And so my hope at the HOPE conference in New York, is that if I find people who say they have Long Covid, that I'll be able to give them one or two doses and say, "Take one today, take one tomorrow, and if on Sunday, you feel much better, I can give you a month's worth. And then you can just take it home with you and be better."
Margaret 1:02:20 Right.
Mixael 1:02:21 So that's my dream. And again, also that you proliferate it so that people know how they can access it on their own without having to need us as an intermediary. And have ways that people can, as you say, potentially manufacture it, if it's not accessible at all. Access is really the thing. There's so many, so many things that are on the shelf we can fix, but you can't get them legally. So, while you might not encourage people to break the law, I say, have at it. Have at it! If it's the difference between breaking the law and keeping your health, would you rather be the most law abiding citizen in the graveyard? Or would you like to maybe work circum-legally, or extra-legally and live to fight another day? I think it's a pretty easy decision
Margaret 1:03:16 That that I encourage everyone can make on their own. Yeah, no, totally. All right. And so I think you have one more announcement for today. And maybe we'll go over this one quickly. We're kind of running out of time. So, but, you have a defibrillator?
Mixael 1:03:33 Oh, so I'll give another teaser is that we have...yeah, the defibrillator. So we have an open source defibrillator that you can build for about $600 instead of the usual $6,000. And so we'll be giving details on all of these things at the talk at HOPE [conference]. And we'll be doing workshops at DEF CON a few weeks later. And I encourage you all to come out. And if you can't, I know that you can get a virtual ticket to HOPE so that you can not just stream all the talks, but also interact and ask questions in real time. And I believe that DEF CON will also be hybridized. So, if you go to the Biohacking Village Channel [On Youtube], you should be able to watch what we're doing. And yeah, I hope to see you all there. Or sooner or later somewhere.
Margaret 1:04:26 All right. There any last words, things that we forgot, things that need to get pointed out?
Mixael 1:04:37 Well, if you like what Four Thieves is doing and you want to support the mission, please go out and find somebody who needs your help and help them whether or not you think they deserve it.
Margaret 1:04:49 Yeah, fuck yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Again.
Mixael 1:04:55 Keep each other healthy, each other safe.
Margaret 1:04:58 Thanks so much for coming on again.
Mixael 1:04:59 Thank you so much. It's always great chatting with you. And I hope we can do it again.
Margaret 1:05:02 I look forward to it.
Mixael 1:05:03 Yeah, me too.
Margaret 1:05:11 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, you should tell people about it. You should tell people about it on the internet, and in person, and sky writing. I don't know if sky writing is ethical. If you all come up with a green version of sky writing, you should do it hot air balloons? I feel like hot air balloons. If you were to set up hot air balloons, and do banners from the hot air balloons, maybe that don't just say "Live Like The World is Dying" because that would be kind of a scary thing if you were just driving around and there was a hot air balloon up above you that said, "Live Like The World is Dying." Or maybe that would be good. I'm not the boss of you. You do whatever you want, including not tell people about this, whatever. You can also support us. You can support us by supporting our publisher. We are published by Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness, which is a publishing collective that's how you know, they publish things like podcasts. We. I'm part of it. We put out zines. And we put out podcasts, and we're going to be putting out books soon. We've been around for almost 20 years in various different incarnations, but this new version of it is new and exciting. And if you support us on Patreon, patreon.com/strangersInatangledwilderness, you can sign up there and you can get a zine sent to you every month. Not for free. It's like, you have to pay for it. But it's like once you sign up for the thing, then we send it to you and we'll send it to you anywhere in the world. And also all of our content is made available as best we can free on the internet as well. But, it's really cool to be supported and really grateful. I know that I like to say this every time but I'm really grateful for all the support that people have shown. Both the people who came over with me. It used to be a personal Patreon for me, and have come over to supporting the collective, and then also all of the new supporters. It it's like really good for morale. We're like trying to do this fairly ambitious project with all this stuff that we're trying to get done. And we haven't been able to get all of it done yet, right? And people being like, "No, we believe in you!" by supporting us has been really big, really great. So thanks. Thank you. And in particular, I would like to thank Hoss the Dog, who is a dog, not a person. I already made this joke. And now I'm stuck making the joke again. I'm sorry. If you missed the joke, Hoss the Dog is a dog but anyway, Hoss the Dog, Chris, Sam, Miciahah, Kirk, Natalie, Eleanor, Jennifer, Staro, Kat J, Chelsea, Dana, David, Nicole, Mikki, Oxalis, Paige, and SJ. Yeah. Thank you. And to everyone else, go out and don't commit crime unless you want to commit crime. Really, I guess that was the whole point of the whole thing you just listened to. Good luck! Weird shits happening? I don't know. We'll get through it. Yeah, it'll be good. Totally. See you all soon.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Margaret and Casandra talk about some of the basics of preparedness and how to get started even if you don't have a lot of money or skills. They go through their lists of things they always consider when preparing for crises, whether that be a natural disaster, "the bomb", food shortages, inflation, the further advancement of Fascism, or any of the other of the various multi-faceted horrors contributing to our slow apocalypse. They talk about community preparedness vs individual preparedness, 'stuff focused' preparedness vs response focused preparedness, bunker mentalities, and a lot of other great stuff, like how potatoes prove once again to the be the only wholesome thing, why you shouldn't trust rich people trying to sell you shit, and how again Hope is maybe the only real strategy we can count on. This is a new format for the show that we'll be exploring more soon!
Next Episode: We'll have a special episode coming out next week on July 22nd from the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective.
Host Info Casandra can be found on Twitter @hey_casandra. Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
How To Get Started
Margaret 00:14 Hello, and welcome to Live Like The World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm one of your hosts today, Margaret killjoy. And, left implicit in that statement is that I have another host today, because instead of doing a normal interview format, I'm going to have my friend Casandra, who also works on this podcast, usually more behind the scenes on to join me in conversation. How are you doing today? Casandra?
Casandra 00:41 I am okay. I think the day started out rough. But we've been chatting for a while and I'm feeling a lot better now.
Margaret 00:48 Yeah, we're recording this on the day that Roe v. Wade was officially overturned in the United States.
Casandra 00:56 Yep.
Margaret 00:57 Hooray. But that's not what we're talking about today. We have other content that more directly relates to that on this show. But today, we're talking about crises and how to prepare for crises. But, more importantly, today, we're telling you that Live Like The World Is Dying is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show in the network....[waiting expectantly for Casandra] You gonna make the noise?
Casandra 01:39 Ba ba da da daaa. [laughing] Okay, I did it.
Margaret 01:59 Yay!
Chanel Zero Network Jingle
Margaret 02:32 Okay, we're back. So, yeah, we're basically going to kind of ask ourselves as though we're a panel, we're both going to be interviewed by you in absentia. You the listener. Because we've been getting a lot of questions for this show. And so we're gonna kind of talk through some of them. And hopefully, it's going to turn into a very coherent and brilliant introduction to preparedness that will be useful for all people.
Casandra 03:01 Oh, that's my cue. Margaret, what, what are the first steps that you take in preparing for a crisis?
Margaret 03:11 It's funny, you should ask that. I wrote down a list. You told me you were going to ask me that. So I mean, the first and most important thing is you have to think about what the crises you're preparing for are right? We can't prepare for everything. Like you can slowly...you hit this point of diminishing returnsfor preparedness, but you're like, you know, where you live, maybe a tornado is more likely then a tsunami, right. And so you'll probably prepare more for tornado if you're in Tornado Alley, and less for tsunami. But at some point, once you're prepared for tornado, maybe you'll start preparing for [a tsunami].....don't prepare for tsunami, if you live in the middle of the country, that's pointless. But you know, like, theoretically, you could start focusing on the crises that are less likely, like nuclear disaster is substantially less likely than a large number of other crises. Right? So I wouldn't start there. And where I would start is with doing a sort of preparedness audit, figuring out what you need, or what you have, and what you would like to have in terms of preparedness, not necessarily items, but in terms of plans or access to resources or like relationships with people or skills necessary to confront these different things. And, you know, so, to just go through that list, I guess, I would say, you know, start with like, temperature, right? If there was an immediate, you know, you lose power and you suddenly lose your ability to...or you don't have air conditioning or you don't have heat, right, what are the sources of climate control that you rely on? As an individual like the clothes that you wear, as well as any structure that you you generally reside in. If you live in a tent, how do you heat and cool the tent? If you live in a truck? How do you heat and cool the truck? If you live in a house? How do you heat and cool the house? So that would be the first thing, right? Temperature. Just think about that. And the next is shelter, protection from elements. That kind of relates, you know, what systems do you have in place for shelter? And then what are your backup systems for shelter? Right? Like, you know, if you...do you have a vehicle you can take shelter in if your house is no longer accessible? Do you have a tent? Do you have, you know, tarps to put up if you....whatever, you just think about all the different things that protect you from the elements. This one is less likely to be like, directly...you're probably not going to be changing that much about your shelter, but it's just worth thinking about. Next is water. You know, we need water on a pretty regular basis, almost daily, in fact, do we require water. So. [Casandra laughs] Actually, I drink water every day. That's how on top of it, I am. [Casandra still laughing] So, water, okay, where does your water come from? What do you do when that water source stops? This is a really good example for me, because a lot of people that I know live in places where they rely on municipal water, and fairly regularly have boil advisories right. Fairly regularly, there's going to be some sort of contact, that's going to be like, "Hey, you have to boil your water, because there might be something nasty in it." And so if that's something that happens where you are, having some extra water around might mean you don't have to boil your water, you just go to the 10 gallons of water that you keep, or you make sure that you know you have a way to boil that water. And with any of these things, you want to think about it first in sort of the very immediate, like, what would you do if you suddenly, you know, were without water for five hours, and then go from there to like three days and go from there to like two weeks and you're slowly looking to build up. You know, I'm not necessarily recommending that everyone who's on municipal water like also dig a well or come up with some like solar distill thing where it automatically takes the moisture in the air and gives you drinking water. Like all that's just really cool, right? But it might not be your first step. Eventually, everyone who listens to this needs to have a personal water tower. [Casanda laughs] Okay, maybe not. Okay.
Casandra 07:34 I'm imagining a water tower on like an apartment balcony somehow.
Margaret 07:39 Yeeeeeeah, totally. And that way it's pressurized. You know, you can use it as a battery for power because gravity is its own battery. Okay, anyway. Oh, go ahead. Okay,
Casandra 07:53 I just breathed. That's all.
Margaret 07:56 We didn't actually talk about that one, air. [Casandra laughing] Let's somehow include that was shelter? I don't know. Think about your air filtration systems. Again, that's only...
Casandra 08:07 Oh I mean, I live in wildfires. Yeah, so we think about that a lot. [Margaret laughing]
Margaret 08:13 Yeah, fair enough. It's pretty clear I wrote this here in Appalachia where the air quality is like, "I dunno [made into a mumble sound] It's too humid." Okay, so then, from there food, right? You know, on the simplest level, keeping some fucking protein bars in your backpack or purse or whatever, right? And you can build up from there, you can build up. What would you do if suddenly, the way that you accessed food is no longer available? For a few hours? Or a few days? Or a few weeks? Or a few months? Or a few years? You know, start with the simplest ones. Health is after that, like stuff that affects your long term health. This gets into, you know, things like medications, whether over the counter or not. I don't know, whatever. Then go through community. Who are your neighbors? Do you know who your neighbors are? Do you know who you could trust? Or who you specifically need to avoid? Or have you started talking to them about like, figure out if you're on similar pages about having preparedness, you know, and you could do this with neighbors you don't even like friends with you know, you can still be like, "Hey, if something happens, I have your back," or whatever, right? And then of course, you could build out from community and to community mutual aid organizations, right? There's nothing so prepared as a resilient community. This is a very long winded first answer. Okay, so then there's a couple more. Getting there. Security is after that, right physical security. How do you defend yourself? How do you defend your communities? What weapons and or training do you want to have available to you? Transportation, more important in different places than other places, but in general, what are the systems by do you get around? Are there more that you can have as backup? Like, if you have a gas powered vehicle, that rules. What if gas is no longer available? What's your plan? You know, do you have a bicycle like, in some ways a bicycle is a better preparedness. I'm saying this as someone who does not have a bicycle. [Casandra laughs] I was actually better prepared when I lived in a van because I had a bicycle in my van. And that's what I have on my list of the things that you should audit. That is my first step and preparedness for people is audit yourself. What a good word "audit" and everyone's positive associations with the word "audit." Casandra, what do you think the first steps in preparedness are?
Casandra 10:42 Um, I love that you just broke that down into like, a list and steps because that's how my brain works. But that's not how I how I've taken my first steps, because I find it totally overwhelming, just like the scope of it is...my brain kind of shuts down. So, first steps for me have looked like doing something, anything, little things often. So, like, I saw some big five gallon water containers on sale at Walmart a few years ago was like, "Ah, a step I can take!"
Margaret 11:26 Yeah.
Casandra 11:27 And bought a few of them or like, each time I go shopping, I get a thing, that's shelf stable, that's extra, and put it in my cupboard. So, it's not systematic at all. But it's doing something. Does that make sense?
Margaret 11:45 I would like to change my answer. [Both laughing] Yours is a better first step. Do what Casandra's said first. And then later, if you decide this is something that you're going to like, step into more, that's maybe where the audits and stuff makes sense. No, I, that makes sense to me the like....go ahead.
Casandra 12:08 I just think it's a both, a both 'and', you know?
Margaret 12:12 Yeah.
Casandra 12:12 Like what you're describing is so important. But, I still haven't done that. Because I...my brain sort of shuts down--
Margaret 12:19 Yeah.
Casandra 12:20 ---when I try to.
Margaret 12:21 Yeah, and maybe just...
Casandra 12:23 I feel so unprepared.
Margaret 12:26 I know. Okay, so that is a big disadvantage. I mean, but it's like, you know, I look at this, and I'm like, "Well, I've been doing preparedness for a long time now." or whatever. And I don't know, there's a ton of this shit that I still don't have, right? Like, I feel like it's important to think about preparedness not as a...there's no perfect preparedness, you know, there's always just like, steps you can take to have a little bit more of this one thing in case this one thing happens. And then and then it's like really annoying, because like everyone thinks you're the prepared one. And then you're like, you don't have a flashlight on you. And people are like, "What the hell we've been relying on you to have a flashlight on you." This is clearly not a specific anecdote.
Casandra 13:07 There's also that like, I mean, we're we're experiencing constant catastrophes and crises, right. And so each time there's a crisis. And I you know, gather things together, I need to get through that crisis. I don't just like get rid of them afterward. That...those things become a part of my life and a part of my process. So we had like a massive freeze last year. Was that last year?
Margaret 13:37 I lost track of time a while ago, I don't know.
Casandra 13:40 Me too. What is time? Anyway, we had a massive freeze. And I was without power for I think, 10 days. And so, people were doing a lot of work like sharing firewood with each other and stuff like that. And I didn't just like, stop collecting firewood after that, you know, something like that's going to happen again. So that's become integrated in my like, process of preparing constantly.
Margaret 14:08 Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And leads me perfectly into my next question. What we get asked is we get asked, how to anticipate crises. How do you...how do you think about what you want to prepare for, Cassandra?
Casandra 14:27 Oh, I think I underestimated like how easily overwhelmed I'd feel in this conversation. I have a child. So, when I think about anticipating crises for myself, often it feels manageable. But, then when I think about how to anticipate crises in a way that would like make a child comfortable, I start to get super overwhelmed because it's a lot more. That's a lot more effort. But logically for me, I just look at the crises that I've experienced in my bio region in the last five or ten years. So, flooding, really intense freezes, really intense heat waves, algae blooms in our water supply is now like a constant issue.
Margaret 15:20 That sounds wild.
Casandra 15:21 And then wildfires. Right? Yeah. Yeah, so we can't even boil water. Like boiling doesn't get rid of the toxins.
Margaret 15:27 Oh, my God, what do you do? Do you have to filter it also, or?
Casandra 15:31 I just have 15 gallons of water stashed.
Margaret 15:35 What are people expected to do? That's...so you just don't have water for a while?
Casandra 15:40 Yeah. I mean, people are expected to go buy water by the gallon at the store. But then the stores get cleared out really fast.
Margaret 15:49 Ah, okay.
Casandra 15:49 So. We could go off on a whole tangent about like how few filters actually clear out cyanotoxins. It's pretty wild.
Margaret 15:58 Yeah, I've actually...I've I've heard people talking about that. I heard people talk....Like, one of those things that I'm like, as someone who lives off of well, water where I don't even know if it is an issue. Maybe it is an issue, and I just haven't paid enough attention to it. Are there filters that can get rid of cyanotoxins?
Casandra 16:18 When I was looking into after that happened, the filters I found that, at that time, maybe it's changed in the last few years. But the big like Berkey...is that the brand? The big giant expensive...
Margaret 16:29 Yeah, that's the one. Yep. Yeah.
Casandra 16:33 Which I just haven't been able to afford. So, that's why I, I use a basic filter and just keep 15 gallons of water.
Margaret 16:41 Yeah.
Casandra 16:43 On hand all the time.
Margaret 16:44 Yeah.
Casandra 16:45 [dispasstionatly] Whoo. I don't remember what I was saying. Oh! Yeah, I look at what tends to happen in my bio region and that's how I prepare. Yeah. And then there are things that people catastrophize about. I'm on the west coast, so earthquakes and tsunamis. Those seem like the main things I have to prepare for. How about you, Margaret? [Laughing]
Margaret 17:11 You know, not to jinx myself, but I live in a a more stable by region than most I believe. There's not a lot of...the non coastal Mid Atlantic does not have a ton of earthquakes does not have a ton of tornadoes. It has it has tornadoes, that's the thing. I'm not worried about tsunamis, I'm not worried about...we catch the tail end of hurricanes. But, I worry about...well, I worry about people deciding to murder all the trans people in mass. And, I worry about the, the need to confront people attempting to take the United States in a fascist direction. A more fascist...whatever, I'm not trying to throw that word around, like, super loose. But clearly, we're not necessarily headed in good directions right now. And, I worry a bit about forest fire. I think that a lot of the changing climate is changing what crises look like in different places. But I, I mostly worry...well, it's less about what I worry about, right? Because in some ways, I try to think of preparedness as a way to not worry about things. I remember, you know, my last house, I lived off grid, like really in the woods where far more likely of a problem than forest fire was like, the dead branch above my house falling on it or something, right? But overall, like if I was worried about forest fire in the, in the woods I lived in, I thought through what to do about it, which in this case, since I wasn't going to clear the forest, the best I could do was have a go bag, and make sure that my you know, truck has at least half a tank of gas at any given point. And make sure to not stay so completely isolated from communication channels that I wouldn't get an update from a weather update or something, right? And once I did that, I stopped worrying about forest fires, because I was able to sort of check it off in my head about being like, "Well, I've done what I can." Every now and then I might catastrophize about it and be like, spend the night looking into how to dig fire shelters and you know, things like that. But for the most part, I try to view this as a way to turn off anxiety, be like, you think about a crisis. You think, "What can I do about it?" You do those things. And then, and I know this doesn't work for everyone, but I'm actually a reasonably anxious person and this has helped a lot. I then stop worrying about those individual things because I fucking did what I could.
Casandra 19:57 What about...what about... I'm Just thinking about crises that aren't natural disasters, or like...I guess forest fires can last for a long time, but that aren't such a huge immediate impact, so like, rising food prices and food shortages.
Margaret 20:20 Yeah, no, that's a...fuck, that's such a good one. And I mean, one of the things that's kind of weird to say is that with with, with massive inflation, and everything, everything shelf stable is like a good investment. Right? Like, a jar of honey is cheaper today than it's going to be three weeks from now.
Casandra 20:42 Right!
Margaret 20:43 So, cash is less useful to me right now than a jar of honey is, you know, in terms of a thing that holds its value, not necessarily in terms of like, I'm not going to turn around and sell the honey at a profit. Both like, you know...
Casandra 21:02 But it's a worthwhile investment.
Margaret 21:05 Yeah, for me, I am less concerned about my retirement savings, and more concerned about my ability to have access to like... it's actually one of the reasons why I try and prioritize tools, right, so that I can like, make the things that I feel like I need, but that has to do with like, my own personal skill set. And, like, the place I live, you know, rurally having more access to like land and like, if need be, I could like cut down a tree to get the fucking wood or whatever. Although, I say that as if I had a sawmill and I don't, I don't even have a chainsaw mill, I really need a chainsaw mill. And then I need a covered place to store the wood for...it's a year per thickness...for a inch of thickness is how long you have to store wood to cure it before you can use it as lumber. Anyway, I've definitely looked into all that stuff. Sustainability, pushing towards sustainability with it without like being like, I guess I could say my, my personal goal is it would rule to like be like, I don't need to get anything from the store. I have everything I need or whatever, right? But that's nonsensical as an individual to desire. There's a reason we have societies. And, I would only want that in the context of a community that shares resources. But yeah, I don't know, I guess, figuring out as food prices rise and all that stuff, how to supplement my, my food buying with more gardening, how to supplement different things. I don't know, you're actually you're actually better at this question. So it was unfair that you asked me and so I will ask you instead.
Casandra 22:48 I could ask you a different question that you basically just let us into.
Margaret 22:52 No, well now I'm just asking you this question. What what foods? Should we, you know, how do you get started with with storing food or getting food? Food, question mark. That's my question.
Casandra 23:11 Well, I already talked about it a little bit, right? Like when...every time I go to the store, I get one thing, at least, that I don't need immediately that's shelf stable. So that can be like a can of beans, or a bag of rice, or a jar of peanut butter. We do this very differently. I think. So, I'm curious to hear what you have to say as well, because I don't do like, what's it called, deep storage?
Margaret 23:38 That's what I've been calling it, I don't know.
Casandra 23:40 I don't do deep storage. I get things that I'm going to actually eat and cycle through. So, instead of getting freeze dried food and putting it into deep storage or things like that, I'm getting like a 50 pound bag of black beans and actually working through it and eating it before I get a new one.
Margaret 24:02 Yeah.
Casandra 24:06 I feel like gardening is a whole other a whole other topic.
Margaret 24:11 Well, but that's actually one of the things that really interests me about. I think the way that you came to your system of preparedness is that you are creating, you are growing food, you are...anyone who's listened to previous episodes has heard Casandra talk about canning, and so you're, you're getting food and you're putting it in jars so that you can eat it later. You know, and I don't know, and so it seems like a very natural thing to combine gardening with with this style of, of cycling through different foods.
Casandra 24:42 Yeah, yeah, I think it is too, you're right. The way I do it is that...so I live close to an organic farm. And I have a CSA and so we haven't gotten to the what distinguishes community preparedness from individual preparedness question yet, but there are certain foods that I don't really ever have to worry about growing or, or buying from the store, like if it's a food that can be grown, if climate changes is, is it a point where if food can still be grown, I can I can get those certain foods pretty easily. So what I'm interested in is growing foods that I can store long term whether that's through, like curing, or drying, or canning. So like potatoes, beans, tomatoes, winter squash, onions, garlic, things like that. And also perennial perennial foods.
Margaret 25:41 So rather than things that grow once, things that just keep on giving. What are good examples of perennials?
Casandra 25:48 Depends where you live.
Margaret 25:49 What are some that you do?
Casandra 25:51 For my bio region, lots of berries, huckleberries, currants, things like that. I think root vegetables are really important for me and the way that I have to eat because I can't really have grains. So, I've done a lot of experimenting with, like, Ground Nut, Tiger Nut. Camus is a local perennial food crop. There are lots of ornamentals that you can eat the roots of, so Jerusalem artichoke, Day Lily...oh my gosh, my brain just went blank. My favorite one I can't remember the name of. Anyway. Learning which roots you can eat and planting a shitload of them, because if it's perennial, it will just be in the ground and grow until you need it.,right?
Casandra 25:52 Oh yeah. Okay, because it's no longer perennial. Once you dig it up and eat the root.
Casandra 26:48 Well, you can split...like for a lot of them, you can split it and replant part of it. So, think of like a potato. You plant a chunk of potato, which isn't perennial, but as an example you plant a chunk of the potato and get a whole ton of potatoes. At the end of the season all you have to do is replanted chunk.
Margaret 27:13 Yeah.
Casandra 27:14 Yeah.
Margaret 27:15 Okay. I'm not convinced that all of the plants that you just listed are real. [Laughing] For anyone listening, I am convinced that Casandra every now and then makes up a new plant to tell me about. Sure of course those are all real. [skeptically and slowly] "Potatoes."
Casandra 27:34 I can even send you pictures as proof. [Laughing]
Margaret 27:36 [Laughing] It could be any plant! What do i know of plants? And so...so which ties into...my ignorance about plants is actually how I ended up with my take on all of this stuff. I haven't had...no I haven't like lived in a rooted way, pun not intended, until more recently in my life and I guess it's so recent that I could not really claim to be rooted now either, because I haven't lived where I live for even a year, but so I've tended to be towards more packaged foods right and I've tended towards...in my mind I think a health the healthiest possible way of handling food for someone to be prepared would be a combination of these things where you cycle through them, right, you have your pantry, your pantry foods, your the canned stuff, the jars of peanut butter, all of that that have several years shelf life in general. And you know, yeah, you do the thing where you when you get the new one it goes to the back and then you take the oldest one out to eat, right? I have a little cool cheap plastic rack system where I dropped the cans in and it feeds me the oldest one so that...
Casandra 28:56 Oooooh, fancy!
Margaret 28:57 I call them "first in first outs"...I don't know, they have some fucking fancy word, but...
Casandra 29:03 Oh, it's for like a cans you buy at the store, not like canned jarred food?
Margaret 29:10 Yeah, although you could,,,no, I guess mason jars are a little bit not round enough to roll properly.
Casandra 29:15 Yeah, you probably don't want to store them on their side either.\
Margaret 29:18 Okay, it would work with wine and just...because you're supposed to store that on its side...no it would probably all break. Okay so...
Casandra 29:25 Wine for the apocalypse.
Margaret 29:27 I don't even drink on a regular basis, but I definitely have both hard alcohol and wine. But not beer because it goes bad sooner. I think I don't, I don't know that much about alcohol. I want to start making my own at some point. I just need to...what I do is when I want to learn how to do something is I have a guest on the show and have them explain it to me. And so I need to do an alcohol episode at some point. But....
Casandra 29:55 So we can like track Margaret's interest in projects based on who you have on the show.
Margaret 29:59 Yeah, totallly. At some point recently...yep, I don't know. Yep, I get too personal, okay, so. So what I've done more historically, is instead of focusing on like jars and things, but instead stuff with like 30 years shelf life, right, and you can, you can go out and buy it, you can go out and buy...different brands will sell you apocalypse food where it's dried beans that are stored in such a way usually basically stored in such a way where the, there's oxygen absorbers within that, in order to give it a shelf life of 30 years. And that leads to really weird things where like brown rice doesn't last as long as white rice, because it's almost impossible to store fats long, for long periods of time. And so there's like, it only provide certain amounts of good. And so, usually, people are storing dried beans, dried rice, lentils, sometimes like powdered peanut butter, and then freeze dried food. Freeze drying, much more technologically involved, but it has a very different texture that I actually don't like very much to be real. But, it can last substantially longer than like regular dried food, which regular dried food lasts long enough, right? Several years is long enough. You could...if you have food for several years, you would at that point, try and put food in the ground. But I really like shit that I can just like leave in the corner and forget about, just to be like, "Oh, well, there's a bucket." So in case of i'm ever fucked, I could go to the apocalypse bucket and get some food. So, that's why I like that whole thing. So, that's food. Now I'm supposed to ask a question. Okay, maybe the thing that...
Casandra 31:57 We just covered everything there is to cover about food.
Margaret 32:00 That's right.
Casandra 32:01 Sorry.
Margaret 32:01 All you need is potatoes. One potatoe becomes many potatoes. Freeze dry potatoes. Yeah. I don't even know if he can do that. It doesn't...I'm sure you can.
Casandra 32:11 Yep. Don't store jars on their side. Okay, we're good.
Margaret 32:18 Yep.
Casandra 32:18 Check.
Margaret 32:19 Yep, everything you need to know. Okay, so the question that comes up probably the most is, well, "What the fuck, I don't have a ton of money. How the hell am I going to be prepared?" And I think that this comes from how we keep seeing, like traditional, especially kind of Right-wing and even centrist preparedness stuff is so stuff focused. And this episode is a little bit stuff focused. But basically, people are like, "I can't afford to get into preparedness. What do I do?" Casandra, what should people do?
Casandra 32:53 I just realized this ties into the other question, which I'm also going to ask now, which is "What's the difference between community preparedness and individual preparedness?"
Margaret 33:01 Right. Well, I asked first, so you have to answer both of them first.
Casandra 33:06 Right. I mean, I think one of the best ways to prepare for different variables when you don't have...space is another issue, right? So, not having enough space or not having enough money, is to do it as a community. So, if Margaret has the sawmill.
Margaret 33:24 One day.
Casandra 33:25 And I have, right and I have the garden, then and we live close enough to each other, then I don't also have to have a sawmill. And maybe she doesn't have to have a garden, right?
Margaret 33:38 Yeah, besides some herbs.
Casandra 33:41 Right. Or maybe you do and it's just...
Margaret 33:43 Basil.
Casandra 33:44 Or maybe, you know, you don't like gardenin, so you like let me garden at your house or something. But...
Margaret 33:52 And then in exchange I have to do the sawing. Okay, yeah.
Casandra 33:55 Yeah. I said I would try to be more wordy. But that's that's, I mean, my other like, "If you don't have money thing," I've already said twice, which is just like, do a little bit of something.
Margaret 34:11 Yeah,
Casandra 34:12 Each month, or each time you go to the grocery store, or whatever, like chip away at it. There's so many variables, but I know and where I'm living, there are different options. So, there's a group in my area that's like a buying club. They call themselves a co-op, but we can do bulk orders through them so we can get bulk dried goods at wholesale prices. CSAs, or like preferred befriending farmers in your area, or befriending people who work at grocery stores so you can use their discount to get cases of things. Dumpster diving, and my brains obviously on food, but those are the things that come to mind. Check.
Margaret 35:01 I mean, so much of the immediate simple stuff around preparedness is food, right? I mean, some stuff is like cheap, right? Like a LifeStraw is cheap. It's not the best water filter, but it's a brand of water filter that's like regularly on sale for like $9. Where, and sometimes it's like a two pack. So that gets into community preparedness right there.
Casandra 35:25 That's what I have.
Margaret 35:27 Yeah, a Lifestraw is a brilliant, useful thing for not dying in certain situations and it is a terrible thing for maintaining any sort of access to water on a regular basis, because it's not particularly convenient. You literally use it like straw, like the name implies. But...but yeah, I guess Okay, so in terms of the difference between individual preparedness, community preparedness, you know, the, the traditional preparedness space is just flooded with individual preparedness stuff. And so sometimes it, it can be really overwhelming. And it's really easy to think of preparedness as guns, Faraday bags, bunkers, and wilderness survival skills, right? That's all there is to preparedness. And I'm a little bit more on this traditional preparedness side, because I do the like, fill my basement with dried beans and shit. And, you know, I've spent my time like, looking into how to bury ammunition and gold. But!
Casandra 36:33 But you do that because you want to share your beans with people, not because you want to use guns to keep people away from your beans.
Margaret 36:43 Right! Totally. No, and that is, that is the difference, right? Because even when I'm trying to do these sort of individual steps, I tend to do it because I have often sort of as an as an anarchist, whenever I work as an activist or whatever, I tend to personally do my own thing, and then plug it into larger frameworks. That is like how I've gone about, you know, a lot of my work has been as a writer, or even at demonstrations, and I do not recommend this, I tend to go alone, and I've been doing it for 20 years is why I feel comfortable going alone. But, I find ways to be useful to a larger crowd, as an individual, whether it's like maintaining exits, or scouting, or you know, whatever. And, and so I tend to view my own preparedness in a similar way, I tend to be like, alright, well, especially since when I first started, I couldn't convince anyone else to care about this shit, then for some reason, COVID and all kinds of other stuff happened, and few more people care about it. But yeah, I tend to see like, like, I used to live in a community environment where no one else wanted to do any preparedness in terms of what I was interested in. And so I was like, fuck it, I'm gonna have six months food for 10 people stored, because I can't afford to get a year's worth. And also, realistically, if something happened, it would suddenly be...it probably wouldn't be 10 people six months, it would probably be I can't do the math off the top my head, it would be 60 people's one month. That's probably not how math works. You know, because because I, because sharing is really useful. Sharing is not only caring, but it is like it's the most direct and useful fucking preparedness thing is this is how it ties into also being poor and doing this, right. It's like, like, people and access to people. That is the best resource, right? Because people are how things happen. I don't know. I never fucking understood it, where people would be like, "Oh, I have mine. So fuck you." and be like....
Casandra 38:43 I don't understand.
Margaret 38:45 No, go ahead.
Casandra 38:46 I think like, who would want to survive without...
Margaret 38:52 Live alone on a pile of beans?
Casandra 38:54 Right, like, why?
Margaret 38:57 Yeah, totally.
Casandra 38:57 What's the point then?
Margaret 39:00 Yeah.
Casandra 39:02 Aside from the fact that it's harder and less efficient, and you know, dangerous, and all these things like, why?
Margaret 39:09 Totally and, and I think, not to go grandiose, but I think that's one of the most important questions of our time, because I think crises are going to continue to happen and I think they're gonna get worse. And as they do, I think people are going to shake out polarizing on one of two sides, which I will call Nationalist and Internationalist, just for lack of a better immediate terminology. And one, if you imagine a walled off city an "I got mine, fuck you city," and then a like "Refugees Welcome city." The "Refugees Welcome City" is going to have some immediate problems as the immediate stockpiled resources are drained. But, like even from an economics point of view, even if I was a capitalist, it just makes more sense. People grow the economy, right? Like more gets done when there's more people doing it. I mean like have you ever tried to move on your own it's fucking pointless. Just get people to help like...[Casandra laughing]
Casandra 40:11 I want to know where this where the like hyper individualists bunker types get all their energy. Like I would just be too tired, you know, maybe because I have a chronic illness, but I would never survive [laughing] be like actually it's naptime.
Margaret 40:28 Yeah.
Casandra 40:29 Oh God.
Margaret 40:31 Spite alone, I think is how half of them are planning to get by,
Casandra 40:36 I think they envision themselves in like a movie. But, when they get...when they actually get to that, whoo, I almost threw my computer. When they actually get to that point and realized that no one's like watching them be their like ideal badass or whatever. It's gonna get really boring.
Margaret 40:52 Yeah, totally.
Casandra 40:53 Yeah.
Margaret 40:54 No, that makes it makes a lot of sense. And like. So, in terms of cheaper ways to prepare, you brought up dumpster diving and I think dumpster diving is it's fantastic, and what I would...okay, this is not actually cheap, but in a community sense, right? I'm always obsessed with these, like more technological solutions. It's sort of like, like, I like hydroponics as much as I like traditional gardening, especially once I found out you can make your own nutrients for hydroponics, you know, you don't just have to like buy store bought stuff. But, with compost. But we want resources. The trash is full of resources. So if you had a freeze dryer, and then dumpster dive, [interuptted by Casandra laughing] okay, so no, no, no, no, no. So the problem is freeze dryers...
Casandra 41:45 Margaret's on a mission.
Margaret 41:46 Yeah, I really want a freeze dryer and I can't afford one.
Casandra 41:49 You don't even like the texture of freeze dried food!
Margaret 41:54 Okay, but my plan is to just go around and be the like freeze dried food fairy where I show up in towns, in order to build mutual aid networks, or I show up and be like, "Look, I've been dumpster diving. Here is a god awful amount of strawberries, just a god awful amount, but they last for 10 years. So you can just fucking eat them if you liked the texture or wait for the apocalypse if you don't." Because a lot of people do like the texture, because they're wrong. And so. So I think I think dumpster diving, even without the freeze dryer, like regular drying is also very good. And also eating the food directly...
Casandra 42:34 Everyone loves strawberry jam.
Margaret 42:35 Yeah, totally.
Casandra 42:36 Make that shit into canned jam.
Margaret 42:38 Yeah. And so I think that, yeah, and I think that we people get lost in the and I do it too, right. And I'm like, "If only I had a $4,000 Freeze dryer." Like cans of beans are still at 89 cents or whatever, at the grocery store near me. And you know, you need a lot of them to survive a day. And you probably don't want to only canned beans, but I don't know, starting small, focusing more on relationships and skills, if that is like if you feel really not in a good place to get resources. There's also just other ways that people gather resources. Some of them are crime, which I would never advocate, because that's the...not because it's morally wrong, because I think legality and morality are entirely divorced as concepts. There's no correlation or negative correlation between the two. Plenty of cool shit is legal, plenty of uncool shit is illegal, but whatever. So, crime is a way that people gather resources, dumpster diving, which technically probably counts as crime, but in the "Who fucking cares level of it", depending on your...I mean, as long as you can afford to interact with police, you know, if you can't afford to interact with police, then dumpster diving is a much harder thing to do, right? But I don't know. Someone should write grants for this sort of shit. I don't know, create mutual aid organizations. And especially as you're doing things on a community level, I think people would come forward. I've seen it happen a lot, because I think there are people who do have resources, financial resources, who would like to be part of developing mutual aid organizations. And really, what is community preparedness, but mutual aid? That's my long winded answer. Casandra was like, "I don't talk long," and I was like, I don't talk short.
Casandra 44:40 But when you talk long, then it reminds me of other things. So...
Margaret 44:42 Oh, good.
Casandra 44:43 I'm thinking about how...I'm thinking about doing things on the cheap. And I know I've occasionally looked up like, "10 items, you must have to be prepared," or whatever. And I think those lists are really pointless and overly expensive if you follow them exactly, because like what I need to be comfortable is not the same as what other people need to be comfortable. And what I need to survive is not the same as what other people need to survive. Still using food as an example, like I'm not gonna...why would I spend money on a bunch of, I don't know, wheat products, which is what all of those like premade freeze dried buckets are like really high in like wheat and dairy and sugary things that I can't eat. Like, why would I spend money on that when I can put resources into other things? So just like not getting the gadgets and the shit that you don't need, which it feels...we talked about this at the very beginning. You mentioned something before we started recording about some YouTuber, it doesn't really matter who, but how it feels like they're trying to like sell the apocalypse.
Margaret 46:02 Yeah.
Casandra 46:05 And often also trying to sell like products along with it, which you didn't say, but I just inferred
Margaret 46:11 It's true. The one that I was talking shit on absolutely sells products. Yeah.
Casandra 46:14 Really?
Margaret 46:15 Yeah.
Casandra 46:15 [Mocking] "You need this product to survive?" [not mocking] Probably not. You know?
Margaret 46:19 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, one of the one of the best piece of advice is that I've ever heard is, don't ask for gear recommendations from rich people.
Casandra 46:33 Right!
Margaret 46:34 Just don't, because they will always have a reason they will be like, like, if you...firearms is a black hole of money, right? And people are like, "Oh, you need this gun belt. You will die if you don't have this $80 gun belt. And if you don't have this gun light that costs $350 You're basically already dead. I actually don't know how you made it this long, Casandra without a $350 gun light."
Casandra 47:06 For a gun I don't have...
Margaret 47:07 Although I will say from a self defense point of view, I would absolutely in most situations...well, I actually do on most situations have a tactical flashlight on me and not a gun, because I think in most situations, lethal force is not warranted. And if you shine a really bright light in people's eyes, it confuses them, and you can get away. The like tactical flashlight as the like "This is so you can fight with it," I'm like, "No, no, no, just a flashlight that clips into your pocket that's really bright. That's..."
Casandra 47:37 Yeah.
Margaret 47:38 Anyway. And yeah, and, like, if you want a $50 knife, you can go out and have a $50 knife. And if you use knives all the time, you might appreciate how it stays sharp and how you never need to tighten the little folding mechanism and shit. But you know what, have a $3 folding knife and like, a $3 folding knife is fine. It cuts things. It opens boxes, it kills ticks. Those are the only things I use my knife for.
Casandra 48:09 I have a $15 Mora knife that does not fold. But in my head, the boxes is it ticks are like "It splits weaving material."
Margaret 48:18 Yeah, exactly.
Casandra 48:19 "I can prune with it."
Margaret 48:21 Exactly. Like, yeah. So, don't take advice from rich people. That's my number one tip.
Casandra 48:31 Except your light sources.
Margaret 48:34 Yeah. Yeah, totally. And, and don't see it as a like, if you can't be fully prepared, there's no point. You know?
Casandra 48:45 Yeah.
Margaret 48:45 Because there's just times when you're like, like, most of the time I use my emergency kit it's because like someone's like, "Does anyone have any Advil?" And I'm like, "I do have Advil," you know, and like, I don't know. And so a little tiny emergency kit gets used a lot more than...and the first, the first five gallons of water that I store are the only ones that I've had to personally use now that I live on grid, right? Like when I lived off grid, I used all of my 150 gallons on a regular basis. But the first the first five gallons of water is the most important. The first extra jar of peanut butter is the most important. The first $3 knife is the most important. So all the expensive shit, whatever.
Casandra 49:39 Yeah. Yeah.
Margaret 49:45 Well, this ties into the question, "Why prepare rather than just deciding that the apocalypse is when you die?" Hey, hey this wasn't on the list. But I get asked this...
Casandra 50:03 Do I have to go first, or do you go first?
Margaret 50:07 If you are able to, you should go first. But if not, I can go first. I just get asked this a lot.
Casandra 50:15 I mean, I think two reasons. The short answer for me is that I have a child that I have to take care of. So, I can't just... like if it was just me, I might possibly say like, "Eeeeeh, I mean, maybe I'd rather go when the apocalypse happens." So that's reason number one. Number two is that I don't think the apocalypse is like a singular, like, quick event. I think we're in the midst of it. So you know, yeah. I'm here already doing it.
Margaret 50:43 Totally. Yeah. I was reading something. I read a lot of history now for my my other podcast, it's called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, if you want to hear about history. And, one of the things that's like, come up a couple of times is this idea that like, even during, like really wild shit, where tons of people are dying, they're still often singing and dancing, right? There's still often beauty. There's still often love. You know, there's all of these things. And so yeah, we're like, we're living in a slow apocalypse now, and I really, I don't like the slow apocalypse. I really like my life, you know. And then the other thing is that is a friend of mine who survived the fall of the Soviet Union as a teenager is the one who always reminds me that most people survive the end of their way of life. So there are apocalypses is that where most people don't survive, right? I live on territory in the United States, that is the result of such an apocalypse where I mean, it was not complete. And those people are... you know indigenous people are still here. And I'm not trying to erase that. But, I'm, it was a devastating apocalypse of conquest and murder. But, most ends of ways of life, people survive. Most people survive. We can get focused on all the people who died. And on some level we owe it to the people who died. But...
Casandra 52:30 Yeah, that, that made me think...if this is too grim, it can be cut, but that made me think of the story. I want to say it's from Poland during the Holocaust, a Jewish community was...the story is that a Jewish community was rounded up and they were, you know, lined up in a field to be shot. And the soldiers. were, like, taunting them. And and I believe the soldiers were like, "Dance for us," you know. And so the Jews started singing “Mir veln zey iberlebn, iberlebn, iberlebn” , which is "We will outlive them." They were like, "Alright, fuck you!" Yeah.
Margaret 53:13 Yeah, and you're still here.
Casandra 53:16 Right. Yeah.
Margaret 53:18 That's cool.
Casandra 53:18 They were shot. But...
Margaret 53:21 Right, but there's also kind of a...I don't know, maybe this is just also on this kind of grim page, but it's like, it was a quote, I think it's George Jackson, I think but I'm not entirely certain, that's basically like, "I don't care how much longer I live over this, I have no control." I'm completely paraphrasing really rudely. But, it's a quote I think about constantly, "I have no control over how much longer I live. I have control over how I live." You know, and I'm already...I'm already as old as like medieval peasants get, right? Or medieval royalty! Really kind of anyone before before fucking antibiotics. Like, I'm doing alright. And I don't know, i was like a 'no future' punk kid. And then after every birthday after 30 I'm kind of like, "Sweet borrowed time," you know, like, and so I kind of I don't know when I think of the like, alright, like, just to completely horribly paraphrase various quotes, I think this one actually comes from the Quran. It was a big part of activist culture when I first got involved, it was like, "If the world would end tomorrow I would still plant a tree today." And I believe that the original source of that is the Quran, I learned after writing an essay about this particular quote and how much it means to me. But, it just means a lot to me because it's just like, alright, well, we like do the things that we care about doing. And the reason I prepare is because I'm like, well, I'm hedging my bets. I still want to try and live long if I can, you know. This guy way darker than I originally...
Casandra 55:13 it's hard to talk about, like, climate collapse without a certain mix of like you know realistic grimness and also hope. I don't think there's really any other way to talk about it, personally.
Margaret 55:27 Yeah, maybe that's why I like hate the Doomer versus like Bloomer. Maybe I misunderstand this debate, but this kind of this like, idea that, you know, either everything's gonna be fine....Okay, I guess the bloomers aren't this, but like, people...I mostly run into people who are either like stick their heads in the sand because thinking about the apocalypse is too much, which is a completely understandable response. And people use the like, stick your head in the sand really pejoratively. And maybe I shouldn't so much, right? It's a very understandable response to just not pay attention to something until you have to, right. Or this, like doom and gloom, we're all going to die, so buy these products thing.
Casandra 56:11 Yeah.
Margaret 56:13 And I don't like either of them. I like looking as soberly as possible at what seems possible, and how we can best manage it? And then just do that? I don't know. That's, that's what being a responsible human looks like to me is you look at problems and then you try to solve them. I don't know, like, am I wrong?
Casandra 56:42 No, you're not wrong.
Margaret 56:44 Like if there's a problem, give up? Or there's a problem, don't look at it.
Casandra 56:49 Yeah, I don't even know if it's conscious for a lot of people. Like we're, I was talking with my therapist about this a few weeks ago, actually, not in terms of climate collapse, but just, you know, crisis in general, and how our nervous systems are, like not built to handle what we have to handle right now, just in terms of like, how much input we have constantly. Yeah. But you know, if my neighbor, if something were to happen, and my neighbor hasn't been in a place where they can process what's going on in the options, like, hopefully, I'll have some extra beans for them. So that's good.
Margaret 57:31 Totally, because I think a lot of those people, some people I love very dearly fall into this category, and I'm not going to name them because there's so many negative connotations here. Like, some of those people are some of the best people in crisis, right? So they're not necessarily good before the crisis, at anticipating the crisis and averting the crisis. But sometimes, the like weird, weird is not the right word, but this like mono focus on like, "Okay, now this thing is happening, and I'm going to deal with it. And then I'm not going to think about any other time." You know, maybe yeah, like, you've done a lot of prepared. You've done a lot of preparedness. And then as the thing happens, maybe your neighbor is like, not burned out. And is like, "Okay, what do we got to fucking do?" Maybe I'm giving too much credit to your neighbor. I don't know.
Casandra 58:24 No, even thinking about recent crises, like the the I won't be too specific, but like the Big Freeze. I was fine. Even though I didn't have power for 10 days, but my seven year old was not going to be fine.
Margaret 58:43 Yeah.
Casandra 58:44 And someone in my family who got power sooner than me...whatever, that. I'm not sure where I was going with that anecdote. I mentally froze not because I couldn't take care of myself, but because I couldn't figure out how to make it comfortable for my child and someone who doesn't think about preparedness as much as I do was able to be helpful.
Margaret 59:09 Yeah.
Casandra 59:10 Yeah.
Margaret 59:11 That makes sense to me. Okay, one of the other questions that we get asked a lot is kind of like, well, "How can I be useful? I am poor or I am a tech worker and I don't know shit about starting fires, or I have the following different types of disabilities or, you know, I'm old or I'm young or these things that society says you're outside the realm of like, the cool bearded guy who can live in the forest, eating squirrels with a hatchet?"
Casandra 59:47 Chops with a hand and videotapes it.
Margaret 59:49 Yeah, totally. Yeah. But literally with his with his hands, you know?
Casandra 59:54 Yeah.
Margaret 59:55 Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I get asked and Live Like The World Is Dying gets asked like, "What do we...or what do I do?" Or like...and I don't know, to me that's almost like, one of the most like, fun questions. I know it's kind of weird, say "fun," but...
Casandra 1:00:18 No, it's fun.
Margaret 1:00:19 There's just so many things.
Casandra 1:00:20 So many things.
Margaret 1:00:22 Yeah.
Casandra 1:00:24 Can you organize a buying group so people can get bulk goods? Do you have room in your house so someone else can store shit?
Margaret 1:00:31 Yeah, if you can, if you can throw a party, you can probably like, organize people to get something done. And if you hate parties, there's probably something else you focused on. You know? Even like, I don't wanna say even as if it's this like other, but I don't know, I think about my friends who are like, specifically really good at Magic the Gathering and video games...
Casandra 1:00:55 Oh, my God, they can watch people's kids while other people do stuff.
Margaret 1:00:59 Yeah totally!
Casandra 1:01:02 Perfect.
Margaret 1:01:04 Also, good at strategy. Yeah, if you feed them the right rules. Now I'm just I'm thinking about one of my specific friends. I'm not trying to make broad statements. But, I'm like, well, you're very good at taking this like systems and apply and figuring out how to like, maneuver through it in order to accomplish a goal. You know, whereas when I play games, I'm like, "I don't know, hit the button!" And then I die. And then I'm like this games awful.
Casandra 1:01:32 Also, like we need games in order to survive, right?
Margaret 1:01:36 Yeah.
Casandra 1:01:37 And stories and things like that. Otherwise, what's the point?
Margaret 1:01:40 Yeah, totally, totally. And like, folks who you know, are, like, older have a lot in terms of things that they've seen happen before and what's worked and what's not worked? And then people who are a lot younger, have energy unclouded by the knowledge of what has failed before. And both of these things are really useful.
Casandra 1:02:05 Yeah.
Margaret 1:02:06 But you're so right about childcare. And like, I don't know, it seems like when revolutionary movements start, they start like getting good once there's like mutual aid childcare.
Casandra 1:02:18 Yeah, that's like a whole other topic.
Margaret 1:02:25 Totally. I mean, honestly, it's one we should do on this show at some point is like, literally, like, I'm like, there's a lot of non kid having adults in this generation, I say, this generation, as if everyone listening to this generation, but I'm a millennial. And, you know, a lot of a lot fewer of us have children and don't know how to take care of children, and therefore sort of try to avoid taking care of other people's children, which is bullshit, because that should be a shared responsibility. So we should do an episode on how to take care of other people's kids. This is clearly just the like Margaret tries to find people to ask in order to answer questions that she has. Okay.
Casandra 1:03:16 Did you have any other secret questions you were hiding for me?
Margaret 1:03:20 Yeah, there's one final question.
Casandra 1:03:21 Okay.
Margaret 1:03:22 Final question is: Casandra, what gives you hope about all of this kind of stuff?
Casandra 1:03:27 Okay, I think the thing that gives me hope is that we know things are in the process of changing drastically. And with change is always the potential to like create a different, and who knows, maybe in some ways better future.
Margaret 1:03:43 Yeah, I think about how the good apocalypse books...or the ones that I like, and movies are basically stories of hope. Because people don't like the current society. There's a lot of reasons to dislike the current society. And so, I don't know, like one of the things that I think plagues the current society is loneliness and isolation. And I mean, frankly, it's a question we didn't get to. And hopefully, we'll get to, again, do a similar thing is like people ask all the time, like, "How do I get involved? How do I meet people? How do I make connections? How do I? How do I have a community?" You know, because most people don't beyond very limited contexts in the current world. And what gives me hope is that disaster disaster studies shows that time and time again, when disaster happens, people get their shit together and hang out with each other and do things together. That's what gives me hope. I hope that we pull through this and come out, come out in a better a better future. A bright future dawning over there.
Casandra 1:04:56 Here, here.
Margaret 1:04:57 Yeah. You Well, thanks for listening to our different style...It turned into more of a question and answer than a specific like, "How to begin preparedness," but I think it...I hope that this is a good style of podcast. And if you enjoyed listening, you should maybe tell us that this one was good and support our show.
Casandra 1:05:35 How can they support our show, Margaret?
Margaret 1:05:38 Well, that's a it's funny that you ask. They can support our show by supporting the publisher of this show, which both Casandra and I work with, called Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness, which is an anarchist collective, committed to the cultural side of resistance and basically trying to create things for people who didn't know where they fit in. And lots of other people too. But, we tried to make cultural things and we make this podcast and you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And that money will go to help produce this show. It'll go to help send out all kinds of content. If you back us at $10 a month you'll get a physical zine in the mail every month, anywhere in the world. And in particular, I want to thank some of our patrons, Hoss the dog, who is a dog. The rest of these are presumably people, but Hoss, the dog, is a dog who supports us. Very grateful. Hoss, the dog is maybe our longest running...Although some of these other people are also very long running. I'm not trying to disparage them. Hoss, the dog, Chris, Sam, Nora, Micaiah, Kirk, Natalie, Eleanor, Jennifer, Staro Chelsea, Dana, David, Nicole and Mikki. Thank you so much. And thanks everyone who doesn't support us financially, but just listens and does this stuff, because we do this not for the support, we do this because we want people to take care of each other and selfishly I do it so that other people take care of me in the apocalypse times. Any final final words?
Casandra 1:07:26 Oh, for me?
Margaret 1:07:26 Yeah, why not?
Casandra 1:07:26 No.
Margaret 1:07:28 Okay.
Casandra 1:07:30 I was trying to be very quiet so you could close.
Margaret 1:07:33 Oh, well, we ruined that. We will talk to you all very soon, because now we come out every two weeks.
Casandra 1:07:40 Whoo!
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Episode Summary: Mo, a criminal defense/movement lawyer with the National Lawyers Guild, talks about how Grand Juries are used by the State to destabilize communities, and what your options are for resisting them if you are issued a subpoena. Margaret and them talk about the importance of not cooperating with Grand Juries and how you can be an eternal badass...i mean protect yourself and your community by resisting them. They also talk about the most important legal strategy: Hope.
Guest Info:
Mo, Moira Meltzer-Cohen (they/them), is a Criminal Defense Lawyer who works at the intersection of Criminal Defense and struggles for social and economic justice. They work for the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) Federal Defense Hotline. You can find them on Twitter @ProbYrLawyer.
Show Links:
National Lawyers Guild Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811 IF YOU RECEIVE A SUBPOENA FOR A GRAND JURY CALL THEM. (If you call you might get Mo!)
NLG NYC_:_ On Instagram @NLG_NYC
Civil Liberties Defense Center: CLDC.org for legal primers, brochuers and information.
Grand Jury Resistance Project: GrandJuryResistance.org
SparrowMedia.net: Chelsea Manning Grand Jury Resitance info.
Host: The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
Publisher: This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Mo on Grand Juries
Margaret 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret killjoy. And this week I will be talking to my friend Mo, who is a lawyer. And not just any lawyer, but the lawyer I know who got one of my friends out of jail when he was in jail for Grand Jury resistance. "What is a Grand Jury?" you might ask, and "Why might we resist it?" Well, that's the topic of this week's episode. So if you stay tuned, you will hear all about Grand Juries and why they suck, and what we can do about them, and what you can do about them. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts. And here's the jingle from another show on the network.
Margaret 01:48 Okay, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then kind of what you do for work.
Mo 01:53 Hi, Margaret, I'm Mo. My name is Moira Meltzer-Cohen. My pronouns are they/them. I'm an attorney, and I work at the intersection of criminal defense and struggles for social and economic justice. So, I've probably represented a lot of your listeners.
Margaret 02:13 Hurray. Yeah, for context. I've literally had nightmares, where I get rounded up by cops, and I'm just like, "I need to call Mo!" And and then Mo comes and saves me.
Mo 02:26 I'll do my best.
Margaret 02:27 Yeah, I appreciate it. The only other phone number I've memorized besides like my immediate family. So speaking of friends of ours that Moira has gotten out of jail, I want to talk about something that happened a number of years ago to our mutual friend, Jerry Koch, which was that one time Jerry Koch was may may or may not have once been in a bar. And people in that bar may or may not have been talking about a crime that happened. I think, before Jerry even moved to New York City, but I'm not entirely certain. And that crime was that someone may or may not Well, clearly, someone did it. No one knows who did it. Someone bicycled past recruitment center and threw a box full of black powder at it, and it destroyed the door in the middle of the night, and no one was hurt. And because it was a federal crime, it became this huge deal. And so Jerry was subpoenaed to speak before a Grand Jury, and Jerry refused to do so. And as a result, he spent nine months in jail without being accused of any crime, and basically, like all of his rights were taken away. Like all of his, you know, First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights were not enough to say, well, basically, they can try and make you talk even though it's not illegal to not talk to them, and they can still throw you in jail. And I wanted to have Mo on one because Mo was the one who got Jerry out of jail. But also because I think that it's useful for people to know about the Grand Jury process, kind of what it is, what it can do to social movements, and how we can prevent it from doing those things to our social movements as we fight for a better world. So do you want to tell me like, What is a Grand Jury?
Mo 04:18 Right? So the Grand Jury is anomalous in the American legal system, and it's, as you will see, it's so anomalous, and it so disregards so many of the core assumptions that most people have about the Constitution and the American legal system that I have encountered many people, including many attorneys, who have a really hard time believing that Grand Juries exist and operate in the way that they do actually operate. So a federal Grand Jury is an investigation where 18 to 24 people are called together in the same way that, you know, you get called for, like jury duty. People get called for Grand Jury Duty. And they hang out and listen to prosecutors to federal prosecutors present evidence about various criminal offenses and determine whether or not a crime has actually occurred. And in doing these investigations, federal prosecutors can issue subpoenas, which say, to whoever they're issued to, you have to show up to this Grand Jury and answer my questions in front of these 18 to 24 people. And there's really...and you don't get an attorney in there with you. And there's no judge in there. There's just the prosecutor and these people who have been called to Grand Jury Duty. And they can tell you to come and give testimony and answer their questions. And they can also tell you to come and bring various kinds of documents. And this is compulsory, whereas usually, you would have the right to decline to participate in a police investigation, which is what I talked about last time I was on your show, which is that you really never have an obligation to talk to police. Unfortunately, this is sort of the opposite, where if you are issued a Grand Jury subpoena, and you declined to participate, you can be ordered by a judge to participate, sort of, in spite of all of the rights you think you have, like the First Amendment, right to Association and Speech and Belief, and your Fifth Amendment rights to remain silent. And your Sixth Amendment right to have a lawyer with you, if you're being questioned, all of those rights kind of fly out the window. And if you refuse to participate, a judge might order you to participate anyway. And if you continue to decline to participate, the judge will find you in Contempt of their Order To Participate, and they can throw you in prison. And so you can spend a pretty significant amount of time in federal prison, not because you have been accused of a crime, not because you have been convicted of a crime, but because you have declined to help the state make out their case against yourself or someone else.
Margaret 07:29 One of the things that really strikes me about Grand Juries is like when you first try to describe the process of someone, it sounds like a good thing, right? It's like set up to be this thing where you're like, oh, you can't just accuse people have crimes. And you actually have to have a meeting ahead of time to make sure there's enough evidence before you can accuse someone of a crime. And it just I feel like the state is really good at taking things that like ostensibly might possibly be designed to protect us from government overreach and turn them into over government overreach.
Mo 08:01 That's exactly right. So a Grand Jury is a it's a process that was invented in the 12th century. And the reason that it was invented is it was a group of sort of citizens, men, who would come together to privately investigate whether an offence had even been committed, because sometimes the Crown would just throw people in, in jail. And so this was... the Grand Jury was a step that was intended to make sure that there was some constraint on the unfettered power of the Crown. And unfortunately, the way that the Grand Jury has been adopted and used in the United States is not...it is an arm of state power, as opposed to a bulwark against it. Although, federal prosecutors get really butthurt if you say things like that, and they...they're constantly saying, we're a bulwark against unfettered power, but they're....
Margaret 09:07 And that's why we threw your friend in jail for nine months for not talking to us.
Mo 09:11 I can never tell if federal prosecutors actually believe the things that they're saying. They're very defensive about... they're very defensive about the Grand Jury process. And they seem genuinely to believe that it's protective, despite the fact that there, I think, is only one other nation in the world that still uses Grand Juries, because they have come to be understood as really damaging. They're not transparent. They're secret proceedings. They're frequently compared to Star Chamber Proceedings. But one of the things that is a big difference between a federal Grand Jury and the Star Chamber is that the Star Chamber Proceedings were public.
Margaret 09:54 What's a Star Chamber Proceeding?
09:57 The Star Chamber was this like, sort of secret authoritarian court.
Margaret 10:03 Cool.
Mo 10:04 So, yeah, so the thing about Grand Jury proceedings is the claim that's made is that they happen in secret so that they don't sort of destroy the reputations of people who the innocent accused, right? But there's actually ways of initiating a criminal prosecution that don't involve secrecy, right? You....people in countries all over the world managed to prosecute criminal offenses without using Grand Juries. And it involves sort of public cross examination and having sort of the trappings of due process that we would assume, obtain in the American legal system, and they typically do, but federal Grand Juries, you know, as I said, there, it's totally unnecessary. But, they're very useful. They're very useful for a number of reasons, because their critical attributes give tremendous power to prosecutors. Sorry, let me rephrase that they're very useful to prosecutors for a number of reasons. They're not particularly useful to anyone else? They're quite dangerous for exactly these reasons.
Margaret 11:18 Because they can like...they can use them to just fish information out of scenes, right? Because you can show up and say...
Mo 11:24 There's a bunch of things about them. One is that what a prosecutor can ask is almost unlimited. There's there's really... the rules of evidence that we would think about, like, you know, hearsay, being inadmissible various kinds of unlawfully collected evidence being admissible, relevance, right? If you're having a criminal trial or a civil trial, you can't just get any kind of...you can't start asking questions about unrelated things, right? Well, in a federal Grand Jury, you can, and there's...Furthermore, there's nobody there. There's no judge there, there's no defense attorney present. The only person who's present is the prosecutor. So the prosecutor gets to determine what evidence gets seen, and what evidence doesn't get seen, right? They're presenting their case to this Grand Jury, but they're not giving a complete picture, which is why we have Grand Juries where, you know, over 99%, of people accused of a federal offense get indicted by a Grand Jury. But are those people ever cops? I mean, almost never, right? And that's because the prosecutor controls how evidence is presented and what evidence is not presented, and how evidence gets placed before those grand jurors. And so they really control the narrative. And they basically determine what gets prosecuted and what doesn't. They can also use the federal Grand Jury, as you said, to go fishing, because they can basically issue as we saw with Jerry, they can issue a subpoena to just about anyone and ask them just about anything. So, you know, we have no idea whether they actually thought Jerry had any relevant information about that event, which they refer to as The Bicycle Bombing. Right? Who knows whether they actually thought that Jerry had any information about it, despite the fact that he told them publicly many times that he did not. And they don't seem to have had any real reason to think he did. But what they definitely thought he had information about was anarchist organizing in New York City. And that's clearly what they were interested in asking him about. And so maybe they weren't necessarily going to get information about the Bicycle Bombing from subpoenaing him to come and give testimony. And maybe they weren't gonna even get information about any kind of Federal offense from his testimony, but they sure we're gonna get some social mapping. They sure we're gonna get some information about, you know, potentially about like, internecine quarrels in the anarchist community. So, you know, a lot of, a lot of this is a fishing expedition. And I think that sort of brings us to the next thing that you and I were discussing, which is, Grand Juries are these really complicated, really anomalous legal proceedings. They're sort of quasi criminal. They involve a lot of different really technical elements. But at bottom, they're sort of anathema to anarchists. And there's a few reasons for that. And I think, you know, this is sort of the thing that I guess we wanted to talk about, which is that,
Margaret 14:55 Yeah, why don't anarchists talk to Grand Juries?
Mo 14:58 Well, this is yeah, I mean, this is the thing, right, is that there's sort of three things going on. One thing is anarchists pretty much don't talk to Grand Juries, on principle, because fuck the state. But there's also materially, it's very dangerous to give testimony to a Grand Jury, because you're essentially, even if you're not giving them information about any unlawful activity, any information that you give to the state, can and very much will be used against you and your community. And anytime you're talking to a federal Grand Jury, or a federal investigator, law enforcement of any kind, anything that you say, can be used to get more information can be used to cause trouble in your community, and can be used to prosecute, prosecute you or the people in your community. And then the third even more technical reason is that strategically, legally, there are a whole slew of reasons and legal arguments that you can bring to bear against cooperating with a federal Grand Jury. And, in fact, you know, I would say, as a legal matter, you know, I can't...whether or not to cooperate with a federal Grand Jury is not a decision that an attorney can make for another person.
Margaret 16:25 Right.
Mo 16:26 But there are a number of legal advantages to litigating questions around the enforceability of a Grand Jury subpoena.
Margaret 16:39 Well does this tie into, like, how how you got Jerry out?
Mo 16:44 Yes. Well, there's sort of there's phases, right, because the first thing that I would say, the first thing that would happen in Grand Jury litigation, is developing arguments or or seeing if there are arguments against the enforceability of the Grand Jury subpoena. And these range from things like: "Is the subpoena properly issued and enforceable?"to "Can you enforce this Grand Jury subpoena against this particular individual?" Does this Grand Jury subpoena impermissibly intrude into First Amendment protections? Does it impermissibly intrude into Fifth Amendment protections? Can you demonstrate that this particular subpoena was issued on the basis of illegally collected evidence? There's things like that, that certainly you would want to litigate before just rolling over and cooperating with a Grand Jury. Again, from the legal point of view, quite apart from the issues of principle, you know, if you don't, if there's a way to avoid incriminating yourself, you, you know, I would advise you to do it. So, there's a whole kind of litigation to...that happens sort of up front, to try to do what's called "quash the subpoena", right, to nullify the subpoena. That almost universally fails. We are not successful with that litigation that happens early on in the process. And then what what typically happens? Well, sometimes what happens is that the prosecutor gives up, but that's, that's not typical. Although it happens occasionally.
Margaret 18:39 We could hope we could pin all of our hopes on that.
Mo 18:43 Yes. I wouldn't expect it.
Margaret 18:47 No, we should pin all of our hopes on it. That's what'll happen. You heard it here first, there's nothing to worry about.
Mo 18:55 Please call my office. If you get a Grand Jury subpoena. Do not lay awake in bed hoping for the prosecutor to let it go.
Margaret 19:03 Interesting. Okay. Okay.
Mo 19:05 You know, we even have a hotline.
Margaret 19:07 Yeah?
Mo 19:08 Which I can tell you about later. But yes, we...you can call the office, you can call the hotline. You can call your local chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
Margaret 19:19 Okay.
Mo 19:20 Hire a lawyer instead of hoping.
Margaret 19:22 Okay.
Mo 19:23 Okay.
Margaret 19:24 And probably a movement lawyer rather than like one that's just looking out for...
Mo 19:28 For sure. Yes. Hope is not a great legal strategy, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Margaret 19:36 It's almost like we should be prepared as individuals and communities for bad things that might happen.
Mo 19:42 It's almost like that.
Margaret 19:43 Yeah, but that would be crazy. Anyway. Okay.
Mo 19:46 Typically, what happens is that you litigate the validity or the enforceability of the subpoena. And then the judge typically says, "The justice demands that we do unfettered investigations, and be allowed to ask whatever questions we want. And, if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn't be worried, just go talk to the federal Grand Jury." And they will, the judge, will order the witness to give testimony. But of course, the judge can order you to do something all they want. That doesn't mean you actually have to do it. And so, if you continue to refuse to give testimony before the federal Grand Jury, the way the judge will enforce their order, is to say, "Well, if you won't give testimony, I'm going to hold you in Contempt of Court. And the sanction for being in Contempt of Court is that I will put you in federal prison until you agree to give testimony. And if you don't agree to give testimony, then you are going to stay in federal prison until the Grand Jury expires (Grand Jury is typically at last 18 months). So, I'll keep you in federal prison until the Grand Jury expires." And then the other way that you can sometimes get out without giving testimony is to just demonstrate that you will not be convinced by your confinement to give testimony, right, because the the only permissible reason to put somebody in prison for civil Contempt is to convince them to change their mind. Right?
Margaret 21:40 Cause that's coercive instead of punitive. Is that the idea?
Mo 21:42 That's right. That's right. So there's...
Margaret 21:44 What a weird dumb distinction that the law wants to make.
Mo 21:49 There's a distincation that...I would say it's a distinction without a difference, except it does have this very significant meaningful difference...
Margaret 21:57 Right, legally.
Mo 21:57 Which is as follows:
Margaret 21:59 Okay,
Mo 22:00 A judge cannot put you in prison to punish you in the absence of due process, in the context of Grand Jury litigation, Contempt of Court is Civil and not Criminal. And so you don't get due process in the way that you would have to, in order for the judge to punish you. And so the judge...the fiction here is that the judge is not punishing you by confining you, the judge is just putting you in an uncomfortable situation with the promise that it will stop if you agree to do the thing the judge wants you to do. So, it isn't punishment. It's coercion.
Margaret 22:51 Hooray.
Mo 22:52 So it's, it sounds very silly, except what follows there from is that if you can demonstrate to the judge, that it isn't coercive, and it's only punitive, then they have to release you, because it's unconstitutional to punish you.
Margaret 23:13 Right.
Mo 23:14 And so, being able to demonstrate that the confinement in federal prison has been transformed from a coercion into a punishment is the way that you can eventually after some, usually many months, you can get your client out of prison, which is what happened with Jerry.
Margaret 23:43 Okay, I kind of love because it's like, "Look, if you're a badass, and you come from a badass movement, I'm sorry, you just can't put badass is in jail. It's just not allowed anymore", is like the kind of and like, I'm under the impression when you were talking earlier about one of the reasons why anarchists in particular, might want to refuse to speak to Grand Juries is does this build a stronger case for future anarchists basically, to be like, "Oh, it doesn't work. This won't work."
Mo 24:13 Absolutely. I dont think it will prevent them from trying to exact a cost.
Margaret 24:17 Right.
Mo 24:19 They'll still put you in.
Margaret 24:20 Right. But I was under the impression this was like part of the way of explaining to a judge like "My you know, my client cannot be coerced into testifying."
Mo 24:33 Absolutely. Yes, very much. You know, there's...and it isn't just to be clear, it isn't only anarchists who do this. There's some really great case law that stems from different organized crime people and white collar crime, which is just another kind of organized crime, I guess, people refusing to cooperate. There's a really great case where a Jewish guy says that it's against, you know, It violates the tenets of his faith to to snitch, which I as a Jew, I I would say, "Yes that I would agree with this assessment." And of course the judge said, "No, you... I'm sorry you don't have a religious First Amendment right not to snatch." Morris Simpkin, I think was the was the guy. Rabbi Morris Simpkin.
Margaret 25:26 That rules.
Mo 25:27 Yeah, no, he's he's a hero. And then there's a guy who basically was released, because he, he said, "I'm not going to...I'm not going to talk. Because, as you know, I have several million dollars waiting for me in an offshore bank account. If I tell you about it, I won't, you know, I wont be able to access it later."
Margaret 25:51 Did that work?
Mo 25:53 I don't think it actually did work particularly well. I think the Court said something like, "You know, this is a little too venal even for us to deal with." But, so...it isn't just anarchists who refuse to cooperate with Grand Juries. And then there's also people who refuse to cooperate with Grand Juries, because they're in fear for their life, which is, I think, maybe even more common than people refusing on principle.
Margaret 26:23 Yeah. So how does this come up in movements? Right, like, you know, the the example that we use at the beginning is a fairly like, it ties into the anarchist movement in New York City at that time, but it's a fairly isolated incident. But I'm under the impression that Grand Juries are used or end up disrupting social movements in a broader sense.
Mo 26:45 Yeah, absolutely. Have you ever heard the phrase, "Nobody talks, everybody walks"? That's sort of, I think this is not a legal strategy commentary. But, I think the sort of the goal of anarchist communities is to recognize that the more people talk, the more evidence you are creating, the more information you are providing to the State that can--even if you're providing evidence that has nothing to do with unlawful conduct--providing information of any kind to the State gives the state a toehold that gives them a foot in the door, it gives them something to hang a warrant on for example. It just gives them an entree into your community in a way that makes you more vulnerable. And so, you know, when when we're saying, well, "Nobody talks, everybody walks," the less information the State has, the less effective they will be at intruding into your community, at manufacturing allegations of unlawful conduct of fabricating, you know, conspiracy charges. There's all kinds of ways that federal prosecutions can emerge. I mean, I would say, it's important to recognize the way that State repression is used against vulnerable communities generally. A few years ago, there was this really horrific conspiracy prosecution that involved over 100 people in the Bronx. And, you know, there was a guy who ended up in federal prison because the evidence that he was part of this conspiracy was that he waved to somebody at the bodega.
Margaret 28:38 Oh, God.
Mo 28:38 You know, so when we're talking about, is it protecting our communities? I'm not suggesting that, that there's a conspiracy to hide. It's that...or that there's even unlawful behavior to hide or to conceal. It's just that it is very disturbingly easy for federal law enforcement to sort of manufacture charges and allegations out of whole cloth that can just devastate a community, you know, with long term consequences. So, not handing over information to federal prosecutors or law enforcement of any kind even if you think the information is harmless, or even if you think the information serves to demonstrate your innocence. Any amount of information that's given to federal law enforcement is dangerous to you, and it's dangerous to your community.
Margaret 29:46 So, if you get subpoenaed or you suspect you might be subpoenaed. I'm under the impression that because the subpoena is not a warrant, that It's not illegal to...to not get subpoenaed, to avoid being subpoenaed. Is this is this true?
Mo 30:09 It's not...I mean, I know what you're trying to say it's not...you're not going to get like arrested for avoiding service of a subpoena,
Margaret 30:19 Right? Which means you think they might come to your door, just don't answer the door or don't be there? Not saying that this is the strategy everyone should take, obviously. But, I'm curious...because this whole thing is so anonamalous, a nominal...is out of the ordinary. It...I'm under the impression that there's like, a lot of history of people...like it's a weird...I'm under the impression is a gray area where you're kind of like allowed to go on the run. Like, it's not illegal to flee a subpoena. It would be illegal to flee after you've been subpoenaed is my impression. I'm not telling people what to do. I'm just merely... it's a very interesting part of this whole thing from my point of view,
Mo 30:59 It's not necessarily exactly illegal. You could be arrested on what's called a "Material Witness Order." Because you haven't, you're not being accused of a crime. Right? So running isn't exactly illegal. There are examples of people going underground to avoid subpoena. I'm not sure it's...you know, I wouldn't advise somebody to do it as a lawyer. But, you know, I would tell them what the potential consequences might be. But, largely the consequences would be a lot of discomfort and instability, I think. And if you, you know, I guess it sort of depends on what kind of resources you have, if you feel like you want to, if you want to go underground in order to avoid a subpoena, and you think that's going to be easier than getting a movement lawyer to fight the subpoena. Or, you know, I think it would be very disruptive at one way or another, you are going to get a subpoena. It's going to be disruptive. So I guess, pick your poison.
Margaret 32:06 Fair enough. I just, I kind of want to go through, like, what happens if you get a subpoena? And you know, obviously, or if you believe you might get subpoenaed. And so when I imagine the flowchart, like, yeah, one of the options is if you're aware that you might be subpoenaed, and you want to disrupt your own life dramatically...
Mo 32:25 Certainly.
Margaret 32:26 And it's basically a way of LARPing undergrounder because you'd like on the run from the law, but you're not breaking the law to go underground.
Mo 32:34 I don't know if you can LARP underground. I don't know if you can learn being underground. You...because even if you're being underground...
Margaret 32:44 Legally,
Mo 32:45 Because you have a delusion that you might be subpoenaed, you're still going to be really uncomfortable.
Margaret 32:52 That's true. Yep. Okay,
Mo 32:55 The consequences are still going to be real.
Margaret 32:57 Yeah.
Mo 32:58 But sure, one of the...one of your, one of the options available to you is to go underground. And then another option that's available to you is to call an attorney. I'm gonna give you the hotline number, the National Lawyers Guild, federal defense hotline is (212) 679-2811. And if you call that hotline, you will get me, and you can have a privileged, confidential, and secure conversation about your rights, risks and responsibilities. And I will do my very best to connect you with appropriate legal resources in your jurisdiction. And that's a better idea, in my opinion then going underground, but I am not the person who's looking at subpoena. So that is a choice that you get to make.
Margaret 33:53 Yeah, I'm not advocating here. I'm just like, you know, laying out options to people.
Mo 34:00 It is an option.
Margaret 34:01 Okay. Okay. So if you get the subpoena, and you decide to fight it, and they call you, what next?
Mo 34:08 I'll take a look at the subpoena, or your attorney will. Your attorney will take a look at the subpoena. They will call the prosecutor who issued the subpoena. Typically, they'll ask for some time to postpone the date of appearance so that they can put together some legal arguments and try to have the subpoena quashed, which as I said before means nullified or withdrawn. They try to look for some way in which the subpoena is unenforceable or invalid. And that can be on the grounds again of the First Amendment. Like, "This subpoena intrudes into First Amendment protected behavior. The subpoena is a Fourth Amendment violation," or "We believe that it that the subpoena was issued on the basis of evidence that was illegally obtained by the prosecution." Or, "This subpoena in some way violates the Sixth Amendment," or, very commonly, "This subpoena violates the Fifth Amendment and testifying in front of this Grand Jury would expose the witness to criminal liability." So, you make all of those arguments. If the federal prosecutor really wants you to give testimony, what they will very frequently do is approach the federal government or they'll approach the Department Of Justice and ask for what's called an "Immunity Order", which undermines your right against compelled self-incrimination, because it involves a promise not to prosecute you. And so, the idea is that they can then compel your testimony, because nothing you say could be self-incriminating,
Margaret 35:55 Right. But it's still incriminates everyone else you know, and...
Mo 35:59 That's right.
Margaret 36:00 Which could lead to them...
Mo 36:00 And probably still yourself anyway.
Margaret 36:02 Right, because then if they get someone else to talk, they could talk about you, and then their testimony can be used against you.
Mo 36:08 And your own testimony can be used against you, it just isn't quite as straightforward as it might otherwise be.
Margaret 36:13 Oh, cool. Okay.
Mo 36:14 No, Immunity Orders are not meaningful in the way that the government would like to have you believe. So, you know, honestly, testifying before a federal Grand Jury really does...I can't emphasize how dangerous it is, it really does expose you and anyone else, you know, to criminal liability, even if you haven't done anything unlawful, because this is really a situation where your innocence will not protect you. And very often, especially if we're talking about the sort of world of "conspiracy", the very fact that you might be perceived to have information in itself can be parlayed into evidence of culpability. You know, there's there's just a lot of ways in which giving testimony before a federal Grand Jury is very dangerous, and really exposes you and anyone, you know, to criminal liability. And it also perpetuates the cycle of more Grand Jury subpoenas being issued,
Margaret 37:31 Right. Because they know it works.
Mo 37:34 Well. Because, if one person responds and goes before the federal Grand Jury, and are asked who was at the anarchist meeting in 1998, and then says, "Oh, I think, you know, Jose, Joseph and Joe, were all there." Then Jose Joseph and Joe will get supoenas.
Margaret 37:55 You know this is a public show, though, right? You just used their names...
Mo 37:59 Oh. Hahah.
Margaret 37:59 And I really like interrupting you with jokes, because I feel like a jerk every time I do it. Anyway, I'm sorry. Please continue.
Mo 38:12 I love you very much.
Margaret 38:13 Thanks.
Mo 38:18 Yeah, it perpetuates a cycle of more subpoenas being issued, because anybody who says anything, the prosecutor then takes anything they've said, and you know anybody's name who comes up gets, then that that person gets a subpoena. They also, you know, the more information you give them, the more that they can figure out how to target people who feel isolated and vulnerable, and who are more likely to cooperate, right. So if you...and just to be clear, what the federal government perceives as like "vulnerabilities and weaknesses" are not necessarily things that are vulnerabilities and weaknesses. So for example, they may target people who have children, believing that, you know, someone who has a child will be more willing to cooperate with the federal government, then to potentially risk prison time for a refusal to cooperate. They might target someone who's gender non conforming, you know, on the belief that, you know, a trans person would be less likely to be able to like tolerate the idea of going to prison. They might target someone who has mental health issues, or who has a lot of friction in their community. The belief that a person who has...who's sort of fighting with other people in their community will have an incentive to, I guess, to talk shit about those people, and to give them up and to give the government information. I think the federal government thinks we're a lot less organized and a lot more petty than we are. And, I think the federal government thinks that we have a lot less courage than we have. But yeah.
Margaret 40:12 I mean, it's one of the reasons that Grand Juries are scary, right, is that it's one of the things where, as you said earlier, like "Innocence will not protect you," you know, like, there is a level of risk just being socially engaged in activist movements, right, and so, you know what, whether or not you...what...whether or not you like do crimes, doesn't necessarily, like affect the degree to which this particular threat might threaten you?
Mo 40:47 Yeah, I mean, I think this is the point where, you know, to return to the story of what happened to Jerry, right? Nobody ever said that Jerry knew anything about the Bicycle Bombing. Nobody ever said Jerry was involved in the Bicycle Bombing. The claim that was made is that he might have been present when a couple of other people were having a casual conversation about it.
Margaret 41:11 Right.
Mo 41:12 Which is, you know, one of the reasons that we say like, "Don't speculate. Don't make jokes. Don't brag," right? Like, because you're not just exposing yourself to liability. You're exposing anyone who hears you, or who is believed to have heard you to a Grand Jury subpoena, which if they're a principled person means exposing them to prison time,
Margaret 41:41 Right. When when Grand Jury stuff hit closer to me, and it started affecting more my friends, and you know, when Jerry went to jail and stuff it, you know, sort of selfishly scared me. I had nothing to do with any of that stuff. I wasn't living in New York, any of that. But just that realization, my that my like, non crime-ness is not enough to keep me safe or whatever. But then, I guess I'm trying to, like, offer this, like note of courage or hope, I guess, which is my legal strategy is hope. But, that's not true.
Mo 42:16 When you say it like that, it actually sounds reasonable, though.
Margaret 42:19 Well, okay. But so the one of the things that I remember when we were working on on Jerry's campaign, was there's this flowchart of Grand Juries, right? And what can happen to you at each stage. And the end result of that is freedom.
Mo 42:38 Yes.
Margaret 42:39 Like, the degree to which it sucks before then varies. But, the the end result is that you're out and you're back with people, and everyone knows that you're fucking badass and have their backs. And, and, and I feel like that's a useful thing that like, I hold on to, and that I think other people. I mean...
Mo 43:02 That's true. I think that's true. You know, there...it is finite. There's a few really unusual cases where someone has been charged with instead of Civil Contempt, Criminal Contempt. There are, you know, a few very, very specific instances where, you know, really post 9/11 people who were alleged to have been involved in, quote, "terrorism," have done very serious prison time on Criminal Contempt for refusing to cooperate with a Grand Jury. But typically, what we're looking at is a maximum of 18 months, which doesn't have no lasting consequences.
Margaret 43:51 Oh, yeah.
Mo 43:51 But, but it is finite.
Margaret 43:54 Yeah.
Mo 43:55 You know, I mean, one of the things about Grand Juries for...in terms of resisting as a community, is that federal Grand Juries are secret, right? No one can talk about what happens in the Grand Jury room, with one significant exception, which is the witness. The witness can disclose that they've been subpoenaed. The witness can say what they said or what they didn't say. They can say what they were asked. And the power of the federal Grand Jury really does very much lie in its secrecy. You know, I said, there's no judge there. There's no defense attorney there. I think even more importantly, there's no public there. Right? And so it functions to isolate the witness. It functions or it is intended to function to isolate the witness. But the fact is, you know, one of the things that, as you know, Jerry did was he stood out on the courthouse steps and he made a statement and he said, "I've been subpoenaed. This is what I think they want to ask me about. I'm not going to talk to them about it." He went into the Grand Jury room, he came out and disclosed what he had been asked very publicly, you know, he made a bunch of statements about his commitment to principle, and people really rallied around him. And that really served to undermine that terrifying power of secrecy, just by making that process more transparent.
Margaret 45:34 Yeah. Well, are there any final thoughts about Grand Juries that you want to want to offer the audience? Or did we miss anything major?
Mo 45:46 So, you know, we were just talking about how, you know, in Jerry's case, and in many other cases, I've, I've litigated, the witness has been very public about their experience with the Grand Jury with the subpoena with litigation. And this is socially useful and politically useful. I will, I'd like to let your audience also know, it's legally very useful, because at the end of this process, when you're trying to demonstrate to a judge that your client is in-coercible, that they, that the incarceration that has been imposed upon them in order to coerce them, isn't working, and is therefore punitive, but since they haven't been given any due process, they're not allowed to be punished and should therefore be released. The evidence that you put before the judge is evidence of the witness's articulated moral conviction, their psychological makeup, and all of these social incentives that have not wavered or changed over, you know, some not insignificant period of confinement. So, all of those sorts of public statements, and, and those acts of silence before the Grand Jury, those are, in fact, the substantive evidence that will hopefully serve to win their freedom.
Margaret 47:09 Yeah.
Mo 47:11 And in fact, one part of the evidence is social support. So the more you can educate your community about what a Grand Jury is, why they're dangerous to the community, and really help people to rally around, it sort of...showing that kind of community support, also functions to help the judge understand that it would truly be a loss, a moral loss for the witness at this point to disappoint all these, all these supporters. I want to reiterate sort of the consequences of cooperation with a Grand Jury, because, you know, being confined in a federal prison is terrible, and, and frightening and hugely disruptive. So, you know, I think there are a lot of incentives for people to cooperate. But I think people really need to understand that the consequences of cooperation don't just include snitching about criminal conduct. It includes disclosing information about people and movements, that is totally unrelated to illegal behavior, but can be compromising in other ways that aren't any of the State's business that can cause internal conflict in movements, can chill other people's commitment to movements, their willingness to participate in movements. And, of course, the, you know, the consequence that I keep talking about is the witness themself ending up in prison, which, you know, if you are convicted of a federal criminal offense, as opposed to being civilly confined, because you're refusing to cooperate with a Grand Jury, the sentencing guidelines for federal offenses are typically way longer than 18 months. So you know, when we're talking about going in for being a recalcitrant witness, and saying, I'm not going to cooperate with a federal Grand Jury, it is truly finite, which is may or may not be the case, if you end up incriminating yourself or somehow exposing yourself to criminal liability. And then you're looking at a much longer sentence that, you know, that is punitive. And that that is going to last a lot longer than 18 months likely.
Margaret 49:38 So it's kind of a parallel to the whole like, "Shut the fuck up when you're arrested thing," where like, all right, you're going to jail and the difference is whether you're going to jail, like for a couple of days or you know, for a long ass time.
Mo 49:53 Right. I mean, I again, I cannot advise someone not to cooperate with a Grand Jury. That's not my role, it would be unethical for me to do that. But what I can do and what my job is to do is to make clear what all the various consequences might be...
Margaret 50:15 Okay.
Mo 50:16 Of cooperation, or non cooperation. And I'm not going to, I'm not gonna lie, like, if you're subpoenaed before a federal Grand Jury, and it's at all politically motivated, you know, there is a long history of federal Grand Jury abuse in this country that goes back to, you know, prosecuting abolitionists for sedition, and continues through the labor movement, and the 19th century anarchist movement, and the Women's Rights movement and anti-war stuff, and Black Panthers and environmental stuff and the Green Scare. It's a pretty strong through line of using the federal Grand Jury to disrupt, drain, distract, and repress social movements.
Margaret 51:07 Yeah.
Mo 51:09 And one of the reasons that Grand Jury subpoenas are such a powerful tool is that the government's basically always going to get something that they want, right, they might not get to put all of you in prison, but you know, they're gonna get something. Either they're gonna get the information they want, which has sort of the added consequence of disrupting a whole community, because everyone's afraid. And there are indictments and convictions. Or they can get someone to cooperate and catch them in a perjury trap, and then exploit that person for more information by agreeing not to prosecute them for the perjury, or they can subpoena someone that they absolutely know, for a fact will not cooperate. And then they can do what I would call "coercing Contempt of Court", right? Because they've subpoenaed someone they know is going to...they can be held in Contempt. And then they exact a real cost from that witness, and from the whole community, and they're draining the whole community of time and energy and resources, and distracting from the actual work that that community was trying to do in the first place.
Margaret 52:17 Yeah.
Mo 52:17 So, you know, I think your exhortation to hope is well taken. But, I also want to be very real about the fact that a Grand Jury subpoena, in and of itself, can be extremely disruptive. That said, I mean, we have been through this a bunch of times. We know how to support each other. We know how to endure the consequences of resistance. We also know how to endure the consequences of people betraying us in cooperating with Grand Juries. Right? And there's people like me, there's lawyers and legal workers and people like you, and people like Jerry, who is now both a former Grand Jury resistor and a lawyer.
Margaret 53:05 Yeah! That's cool.
Mo 53:07 Yeah, I know, I couldn't yell, any harder. There's, you know, there's a lot of people out there who have already been through this crucible.
Margaret 53:16 Yeah.
Mo 53:18 You know, and like I said, there's ways to protect each other from subpoena by observing good security hygiene.
Margaret 53:24 Yeah. It's a...it's a..it's a...it's a proud lineage to be part of, you know, if you need to hold on to something, like going through the like history of people who've been fucked over by Grand Juries. It's like, you just like listing the high points of American history, you know, like...
Mo 53:43 No, I mean, you're gonna be in good company.
Margaret 53:45 Yeah.
Mo 53:46 I mean, to be clear, not every federal Grand Jury is...I mean, every prosecution is political.
Margaret 53:52 Right.
Mo 53:53 But, not every Grand Jury investigation is explicitly motivated by political animus against the person who's being investigated.
Margaret 54:02 Right.
Mo 54:03 But there is, you know, there is a very well documented history of the federal government just using Grand Jury subpoenas to gather information to disrupt, to, to criminalize people who haven't actually done anything unlawful to criminalize people who are doing something that is unlawful, but just.
Margaret 54:28 All right. Well, if people want to know more about Grand Juries, is there any resources you could point them to? Or?
Mo 54:35 No, there's no resources, sorry.
Margaret 54:37 Okay. Wait...are you doing dry sarcasm back at me? I'm supposed to do the dry sarcasm.
Mo 54:44 Sorry. No, there are there are resources. There are some zines out there that I think are pretty good. There's one that we put together during Standing Rock. There's...actually, oh no, that's on jury nullification. There's a really great--this is off topic so you can totally feel free to cut it--there's a really great scene on jury nullification that was written and illustrated by the guy who wrote "Go The Fuck To Sleep."
Margaret 55:10 Oh, that rules. We're gonna keep that in. Okay, cool.
Mo 55:13 Anyway, yeah, there's like there's good zines. There's a--I think it still exists now I gotta google it...Oh well, the CLDC, the Civil Liberties Defense Center, and Lauren Regan have a Grand Jury brochure that's good. Oh, and then here it is the Grand Jury Resistance Project. I think this is what it is. This is at GrandJuryResistance.org. And CLDC.org has a brochure about about Grand Juries. There's also some information from...there's a really great resource that is on SparrowMedia.net. That is a letter that Chelsea Manning wrote to the judge in that case when I was representing her, that goes through sort of the history of Grand Juries in the United States and internationally. And I think it's, if I say so myself, it's a really thorough and really compelling letter. And, I think it was really helpful in educating the judge about, you know, what her reasons were at least, for refusing to participate in the federal Grand Jury system, and what her objections were. So if anyone's interested in that again, that's at SparrowMedia.net. And, they have a search function.
Margaret 56:33 Cool.
Mo 56:33 And it was the letter that Chelsea Manning wrote to Judge Trenga at some point when we were trying to get her out.
Margaret 56:42 Okay, well, thank you so much for taking time out to tell everyone about this terrible thing.
Mo 56:49 My pleasure?
Margaret 56:52 Do you have any anything else that you want to shout out or ways that people should or shouldn't reach you or anything you want to promote?
Mo 56:57 Yeah, I would, I would just like to remind people that there's really never any reason to talk to police officers of any kind. Certainly not prior to consulting an attorney. If cops knock on your door, tell them you are represented by counsel, and to leave their name and number and your lawyer will call them back. Feel free to call me at the National Lawyers Guild Federal Defense Hotline at (212) 679-2811. And just remember, if you are arrested to say, "I am going to remain silent, and I want to speak to a lawyer," and then actually remain silent.
Margaret 57:41 Sounds good. All right. Well, thank you so much.
Mo 57:45 You're very welcome.
Margaret 57:51 Thank you so much for listening. I hope you never need the information that was in this week's episode. But, I feel like it's worth having in your back pocket just in case, like a lot of preparedness. And see this is a preparedness episode, you all were like, "The fuck have to do preparedness?' Well, we want to be prepared for a lot of different threat models. So if you enjoyed this episode, you should tell people about it. You can tell people about it in person. And you can tell people about it on the internet. And you can tell algorithms about it by liking and subscribing and rating and reviewing and all that nonsense that tells robots what to do. And you can also support this podcast by supporting the people who helped make, which it just not just me anymore, it's a whole team of people working at a publisher that I'm part of, an anarchist collective publisher, called a Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. And if you support us on Patreon, you'll get access to...well, you won't get access to a ton of like unique content. But, what instead is you'll support us making content. And then if you support us $10 A month you'll get a zine in the mail every month, and anywhere in the world. In particular, I would like to thank Mikki, and Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher Eleanor, Natalie Kirk, Micaiah, Nora, Sam, Chris, and Hoss the dog. Your support makes this show and so many other projects possible. Alright, well that's it for now. And I will talk, I guess "at" you soon, not really "to" you because it's kind of a one way communication media, which is kind of weird, but it is what it is. I hope you all are doing as well as you can with everything that's going on.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Episode summary
Margaret talks with Elle, an anarchist and security professional, about different threat modeling approaches and analyzing different kinds of threats. They explore physical threats, digital security, communications, surveillance,and general OpSec mentalities for how to navigate the panopticon and do stuff in the world without people knowing about it...if you're in Czarist Russia of course.
Guest Info
Elle can be found on twitter @ellearmageddon.
Host and Publisher
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Show Links
Live Like the World is Dying: Elle on Threat Modeling
Margaret 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like The World Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret killjoy. And with me at the exact moment is my dog, who has just jumped up to try and talk into the microphone and bite my arm. And, I use 'she' and 'they' pronouns. And this week, I'm going to be talking to my friend Elle, who is a, an anarchist security professional. And we're going to be talking about threat modeling. And we're going to be talking about how to figure out what people are trying to do to you and who's trying to do it and how to deal with different people trying to do different things. Like, what is the threat model around the fact that while I'm trying to record a podcast, my dog is biting my arm? And I am currently choosing to respond by trying to play it for humor and leaving it in rather than cutting it out and re recording. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network.
Jingle
Margaret 02:00 Okay, if you could introduce yourself, I guess, with your name and your pronouns, and then maybe what you do as relates to the stuff that we're going to be talking about today.
Elle 02:10 Yeah, cool. Hi, I'm Elle. My pronouns are they/them. I am a queer, autistic, anarchist security practitioner. I do security for a living now that I've spent over the last decade, working with activist groups and NGOs, just kind of anybody who's got an interesting threat model to help them figure out what they can do to make themselves a little a little safer and a little more secure.
Margaret 02:43 So that word threat model. That's actually kind of what I want to have you on today to talk about is, it's this word that we we hear a lot, and sometimes we throw into sentences when we want to sound really smart, or maybe I do that. But what does it mean, what is threat modeling? And why is it relevant?
Elle 03:02 Yeah, I actually, I really love that question. Because I think that we a lot of people do use the term threat modeling without really knowing what they mean by it. And so to me, threat modeling is having an understanding of your own life in your own context, and who poses a realistic risk to you, and what you can do to keep yourself safe from them. So whether that's, you know, protecting communications that you have from, you know, state surveillance, or whether it's keeping yourself safe from an abusive ex, your threat model is going to vary based on your own life experiences and what you need to protect yourself from and who those people actually are and what they're capable of doing.
Margaret 03:52 Are you trying to say there's not like one solution to all problems that we would just apply?
Elle 03:58 You know, I love...
Margaret 03:58 I don't understand.
Elle 04:00 I know that everybody really, really loves the phrase "Use signal. Use TOR," and you know, thinks that that is the solution to all of life's problems. But it actually turns out that, no, you do have to have both an idea of what it is that you're trying to protect, whether it's yourself or something like your communications and who you're trying to protect it from, and how they can how they can actually start working towards gaining access to whatever it is that you're trying to defend.
Margaret 04:31 One of the things that when I think about threat modeling that I think about is this idea of...because the levels of security that you take for something often limit your ability to accomplish different things. Like in Dungeons and Dragons, if you were plate armor, you're less able to be a dexterous rogue and stealth around. And so I think about threat modeling, maybe as like learning to balance....I'm kind of asking this, am I correct in this? Balancing what you're trying to accomplish with who's trying to stop you? Because like, you could just use TOR, for everything. And then also like use links the little like Lynx [misspoke "Tails"] USB keychain and never use a regular computer and never communicate with anyone and then never accomplish anything. But, it seems like that might not work.
Elle 05:17 Yeah, I mean, the idea, the idea is to prevent whoever your adversaries are from keeping you from doing whatever you're trying to accomplish. Right? So if the security precautions that you're taking to prevent your adversaries from preventing you from doing a thing are also preventing you from doing the thing, then it doesn't matter, because your adversaries have just won, right? So there, there definitely is a need, you know, to be aware of risks that you're taking and decide which ones make sense, which ones don't make sense. And kind of look at it from from a dynamic of "Okay, is this something that is in my, you know, acceptable risk model? Is this a risk I'm willing to take? Are there things that I can do to, you know, do harm reduction and minimize the risk? Or at least like, make it less? Where are those trade offs? What, what is the maximum amount of safety or security that I can do for myself, while still achieving whatever it is that I'm trying to achieve?"
Margaret 06:26 Do you actually ever like, chart it out on like, an X,Y axis where you get like, this is the point where you start getting diminishing returns? I'm just imagining it. I've never done that.
Elle 06:37 In, in the abstract, yes, because that's part of how autism brain works for me. But in a, like actually taking pen to paper context, not really. But that's, you know, at least partially, because of that's something that autism brain just does for me. So I think it could actually be a super reasonable thing to do, for people whose brains don't auto filter that for them. But but I'm, I guess, lucky enough to be neurodivergent, and have like, you know, like, we always we joke in tech, "It's not a bug, it's a feature." And I feel like, you know, autism is kind of both sometimes. In some cases, it's totally a bug and and others, it's absolutely a feature. And this is one of the areas where it happens to be a feature, at least for me.
Margaret 07:35 That makes sense. I, I kind of view my ADHD as a feature, in that, it allows me to hyper focus on topics and then move on and then not come back to them. Or also, which is what I do now for work with podcasting, and a lot of my writing. It makes it hard to write long books, I gotta admit,
Elle 07:56 Yeah, I work with a bunch of people with varying neuro types. And it's really interesting, like, at least at least in my own team, I think that you know, the, the folks who are more towards the autism spectrum disorder side of of the house are more focused on things like application security, and kind of things that require sort of sustained hyper focus. And then folks with ADHD make just absolutely amazing, like incident responders and do really, really well in interrupt driven are interrupts heavy contexts,
Margaret 08:38 Or sprinters.
Elle 08:40 It's wild to me, because I'm just like, yes, this makes perfect sense. And obviously, like, these different tasks are better suited to different neuro types. But I've also never worked with a manager who actually thought about things in that way before.
Margaret 08:53 Right.
Elle 08:54 And so it's actually kind of cool to be to be in a position where I can be like, "Hey, like, Does this sound interesting to you? Would you rather focus on this kind of work?" And kind of get that that with people.
Margaret 09:06 That makes sense that's.... i I'm glad that you're able to do that. I'm glad that people that you work with are able to have that you know, experience because it is it's hard to it's hard to work within....obviously the topic of today is...to working in the workplace is a neurodivergent person, but it I mean it affects so many of us you know, like almost whatever you do for work the the different ways your brain work are always struggling against it. So.
Elle 09:32 Yeah, I don't know. It just it makes sense to me to like do your best to structure your life in a way that is more conducive to your neurotype.
Margaret 09:44 Yeah.
Elle 09:45 You know, if you can.
Margaret 09:49 I don't even realize exactly how age ADHD I was until I tried to work within a normal workforce. I built my entire life around, not needing to live in one place or do one thing for sustained periods of time. But okay, but back to the threat modeling.
Margaret 10:07 The first time I heard of, I don't know if it's the first time I heard a threat modeling or not, I don't actually know when I first started hearing that word. But the first time I heard about you, in the context of it was a couple years back, you had some kind of maybe it was tweets or something about how people were assuming that they should use, for example, the more activist focused email service Rise Up, versus whether they should just use Gmail. And I believe that you were making the case that for a lot of things, Gmail would actually be safer, because even though they don't care about you, they have a lot more resources to throw at the problem of keeping governments from reading their emails. That might be a terrible paraphrasing of what you said. But this, this is how I was introduced to this concept of threat modeling. If you wanted to talk about that example, and tell me how I got it all wrong.
Elle 10:07 Yeah.
Elle 10:58 Yeah. Um, so you didn't actually get it all wrong. And I think that the thing that I would add to that is that if you are engaging in some form of hypersensitive communication, email is not the mechanism that you want to do that. And so when I say things like, "Oh, you know, it probably actually makes sense to use Gmail instead of Rise Up," I mean, you know, contexts where you're maybe communicating with a lawyer and your communications are privileged, right?it's a lot harder to crack Gmail security than it is to crack something like Rise Up security, just by virtue of the volume of resources available to each of those organizations. And so where you specifically have this case where, you know, there's, there's some degree of legal protection for whatever that means, making sure that you're not leveraging something where your communications can be accessed without your knowledge or consent by a third party, and then used in a way that is conducive to parallel construction.
Margaret 12:19 So what is parallel construction?
Elle 12:20 Parallel construction is a legal term where you obtain information in a way that is not admissible in court, and then use that information to reconstruct a timeline or reconstruct a mechanism of access to get to that information in an admissible way.
Margaret 12:39 So like every cop show
Elle 12:41 Right, so like, with parallel construction around emails, for example, if you're emailing back and forth with your lawyer, and your lawyer is like, "Alright, like, be straight with me. Because I need to know if you've actually done this crime so that I can understand how best to defend you." And you're like, "Yeah, dude, I totally did that crime," which you should never admit to in writing anyway, because, again, email is not the format that you want to have this conversation in. But like, if you're gonna admit to having done crimes in email, for some reason, how easy it is for someone else to access that admission is important. Because if somebody can access this email admission of you having done the crimes where you're, you know, describing in detail, what crimes you did, when with who, then it starts, like, it gets a lot easier to be like, "Oh, well, obviously, we need to subpoena this person's phone records. And we should see, you know, we should use geolocation tracking of their device to figure out who they were in proximity to and who else was involved in this," and it can, it can be really easy to like, establish a timeline and get kind of the roadmap to all of the evidence that they would need to, to put you in jail. So it's, it's probably worth kind of thinking about how easy it is to access that that information. And again, don't don't admit to doing crimes in email, email is not the format that you want to use for admitting to having done crimes. But if you're going to, it's probably worth making sure that, you know, the the email providers that you are choosing are equipped with both robust security controls, and probably also like a really good legal team. Right? So if...like Rise Up isn't going to comply with the subpoena to the like, to the best of their ability, they're not going to do that, but it's a lot easier to sue Rise Up than it is to sue Google.
Margaret 14:51 Right.
Elle 14:51 And it's a lot easier to to break Rise Up's security mechanisms than it is to break Google's, just by virtue of how much time and effort each of those entities is able to commit to securing email. Please don't commit to doing crimes in email, just please just don't. Don't do it in writing. Don't do it.
Margaret 15:15 Okay, let me change my evening plans. Hold on let me finish sending this email..
Elle 15:23 No!
Margaret 15:25 Well, I mean, I guess like the one of the reasons that I thought so much about that example, and why it kind of stuck with me years later was just thinking about what people decide they're safe, because they did some basic security stuff. And I don't know if that counts under threat modeling. But it's like something I think about a lot is about people being like, "I don't understand, we left our cell phones at home and went on a walk in the woods," which is one of the safest ways anyone could possibly have a conversation. "How could anyone possibly have known this thing?" And I'm like, wait, you, you told someone you know, or like, like, not to make people more paranoid, but like...
Elle 16:06 Or maybe, maybe you left your cell phone at home, but kept your smartwatch on you, because you wanted to close, you know, you wanted to get your steps for the day while you were having this conversation, right?
Margaret 16:19 Because otherwise, does it even count if I'm not wearing my [smartwatch].
Elle 16:21 Right, exactly. And like, we joke, and we laugh, but like, it is actually something that people don't think about. And like, maybe you left your phones at home, and you went for a walk in the woods, but you took public transit together to get there and were captured on a bunch of surveillance cameras. Like there's, there's a lot of, especially if you've actually been targeted for surveillance, which is very rare, because it's very resource intensive. But you know, there there are alternate ways to track people. And it does depend on things like whether or not you've got additional tech on you, whether or not you were captured on cameras. And you know, whether whether or not your voices were picked up by ShotSpotter, as you were walking to wherever the woods were like, there's just there's we live in a panopticon. I don't say that so that people are paranoid about it, I say it because it's a lot easier to think about, where, when and how you want to phrase things.
Margaret 17:27 Yeah.
Elle 17:28 In a way that you know, still facilitates communications still facilitates achieving whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish, but sets you sets you up to be as safe as possible in doing it. And I think that especially in anarchist circles, just... and honestly also in security circles, there's a lot of of like, dogmatic adherence to security ritual, that may or may not actually make sense based on both, you, who your actual adversaries are, and what their realistic capabilities are.
Margaret 18:06 And what they're trying to actually accomplish I feel like is...Okay, one of the threat models that I like...I encourage people sometimes to carry firearms, right in very specific contexts. And it feels like a security... Oh, you had a good word for it that you just used...ritual of security theater, I don't remember...a firearm often feels like that,
Elle 18:30 Right.
Margaret 18:31 In a way where you're like," Oh, I'm safe now, right, because I'm carrying a firearm." And, for example, I didn't carry a firearm for a very long time. Because for a long time, my threat model, the people who messed with me, were cops. And if a cop is going to mess with me, I do not want to have a firearm on me, because it will potentially escalate a situation in a very bad way. Whereas when I came out and started, you know, when I started getting harassed more for being a scary transwoman, and less for being an anarchist, or a hitchhiker, or whatever, you know, now my threat model is transphobes, who wants to do me harm. And in a civilian-civilian context, I prefer I feel safer. And I believe I am safer in most situations armed in that case. But every time I leave the house, I have to think about "What is my threat model?" And then in a similar way, sorry, it's just me thinking about the threat model of firearms, but it's the main example that I think of, is that often people's threat model in terms of firearms and safety as themselves, right? And so you just actually need to do the soul searching where you're like,"What's more likely to happen to me today? Am I likely to get really sad, or am I likely to get attacked by fascists?"
Elle 19:57 Yeah. And I think that there is there's an additional question, especially when you're talking about arming yourself, whether it's firearms, or carrying a knife, or whatever, because like, I don't own any firearms, but I do carry a knife a lot of the time. And so like some questions, some additional questions that you have to ask yourself are, "How confident am I in my own ability to use this to harm another person?" Because if you're going to hesitate, you're gonna get fucked up.
Margaret 20:28 Yeah.
Elle 20:28 Like, if you are carrying a weapon, and you pull it out and hesitate in using it, it's gonna get taken away from you, and it's going to be used against you. So that's actually one of the biggest questions that I would say people should be asking themselves when developing a threat model around arming themselves is, "Will I actually use this? How confident am I?" if you're not confident, then it's okay to leave it at home. It's okay to practice more. It's okay to like develop that familiarity before you start using it as an EDC. Sorry an Every Day Carry. And then the you know, the other question is, "How likely am I to get arrested here?" I carry, I carry a knife that I absolutely do know how to use most of the time when I leave the house. But when I'm going to go to a demonstration, because the way that I usually engage in protests or in demonstrations is in an emergency medical response capacity, I carry a medic kit instead. And my medic kit is a clean bag that does not have any sharp objects in it. It doesn't have anything that you know could be construed as a weapon it doesn't have...it doesn't...I don't even have weed gummies which are totally like recreationally legal here, right? I won't even put weed in the medic kit. It's it is very much a...
Margaret 21:52 Well, if you got a federally arrested you'd be in trouble with that maybe.
Elle 21:55 Yeah, sure, I guess. But, like the medic bag is very...nothing goes in this kit ever that I wouldn't want to get arrested carrying. And so there's like EMT shears in there.
Margaret 22:12 Right.
Elle 22:13 But that's that's it in terms of like...
Margaret 22:16 Those are scary you know...the blunted tips.
Elle 22:21 I know, the blunted tips and the like safety, whatever on them. It's just...it's it is something to think about is "Where am I going...What...Who am I likely to encounter? And like what are the trade offs here?"
Margaret 22:37 I remember once going to a demonstration a very long time ago where our like, big plan was to get in through all of the crazy militarized downtown in this one city and, and the big plan is we're gonna set up a Food Not Bombs inside the security line of the police, you know. And so we picked one person, I think I was the sacrificial person, who had to carry a knife, because we had to get the folding tables that we're gonna put the food on off of the top of the minivan. And we had to do it very quickly, and they were tied on. And so I think I brought the knife and then left it in the car and the car sped off. And then we fed people and they had spent ten million dollars protecting the city from 30 people feeding people Food Not Bombs.
Elle 23:20 Amazing.
Margaret 23:22 But, but yeah, I mean, whereas every other day in my life, especially back then when I was a hitchhiker, I absolutely carried a knife.
Elle 23:30 Yeah.
Margaret 23:31 You know, for multiple purposes. Yeah, okay, so then it feels like...I like rooting it in the self defense stuff because I think about that a lot and for me it maybe then makes sense to sort of build up and out from there as to say like...you know, if someone's threat model is my ex-partner's new partner is trying to hack me or my abusive ex is trying to hack me or something, that's just such a different threat model than...
Elle 24:04 Yeah, it is.
Margaret 24:05 Than the local police are trying to get me versus the federal police are trying to get me versus a foreign country is trying to get me you know, and I and it feels like sometimes those things are like contradictory to each other about what isn't isn't the best maybe.
Elle 24:19 They are, because each of those each of those entities is going to have different mechanisms for getting to you and so you know, an abusive partner or abusive ex is more likely to have physical access to you, and your devices, than you know, a foreign entity is, right? Because there's there's proximity to think about, and so you know, you might want to have....Actually the....Okay, so the abusive ex versus the cops, right. A lot of us now have have phones where the mechanism for accessing them is either a password, or some kind of biometric identifier. So like a fingerprint, or you know, face ID or whatever. And there's this very dogmatic adherence to "Oh, well, passwords are better." But passwords might actually not be better. Because if somebody has regular proximity to you, they may be able to watch you enter your password and get enough information to guess it. And if you're, if you're not using a biometric identifier, in those use cases, then what can happen is they can guess your password, or watch, you type it in enough time so that they get a good feeling for what it is. And they can then access your phone without your knowledge while you're sleeping. Right?
Margaret 25:46 Right.
Elle 25:47 And sometimes just knowing whether or not your your adversary has access to your phone is actually a really useful thing. Because you know how much information they do or don't have.
Margaret 26:01 Yeah. No that's...
Elle 26:03 And so it really is just about about trade offs and harm reduction.
Margaret 26:08 That never would have occurred to me before. I mean, it would occur to me if someone's trying to break into my devices, but I have also fallen into the all Biometrics is bad, right? Because it's the password, you can't change because the police can compel you to open things with biometrics, but they can't necessarily compel you...is more complicated to be compelled to enter a password.
Elle 26:31 I mean, like, it's only as complicated as a baton.
Margaret 26:34 Yeah, there's that XKCD comic about this. Have you seen it?
Elle 26:37 Yes. Yes, I have. And it is it is an accurate....We like in security, we call it you know, the Rubber Hose method, right? It we....
Margaret 26:46 The implication here for anyone hasn't read it is that they can beat you up and get you to give them their [password].
Elle 26:50 Right people, people will usually if they're hit enough times give up their password. So you know, I would say yeah, you should disable biometric locks, if you're going to go out to a demonstration, right? Which is something that I do. I actually do disable face ID if I'm taking my phone to a demo. But it...you may want to use it as your everyday mechanism, especially if you're living in a situation where knowing whether or not your abuser has access to your device is likely to make a difference in whether you have enough time to escape.
Margaret 27:30 Right. These axioms or these these beliefs we all have about this as the way to do security,the you know...I mean, it's funny, because you brought up earlier like use Signal use Tor, I am a big advocate of like, I just use Signal for all my communication, but I also don't talk about crime pretty much it in general anyway. You know. So it's more like just like bonus that it can't be read. I don't know.
Elle 27:57 Yeah. I mean, again, it depends, right? Because Signal...Signal has gotten way more usable. I've been, I've been using Signal for a decade, you know, since it was still Redphone and TextSecure. And in the early days, I used to joke that it was so secure, sometimes your intended recipients don't even get the messages.
Margaret 28:21 That's how I feel about GPG or PGP or whatever the fuck.
Elle 28:24 Oh, those those....
Margaret 28:27 Sorry, didn't mean to derail you.
Elle 28:27 Let's not even get started there. But so like Signal again, has gotten much better, and is way more reliable in terms of delivery than it used to be. But I used to, I used to say like, "Hey, if it's if it's really, really critical that your message reach your recipient, Signal actually might not be the way to do it." Because if you need if you if you're trying to send a time sensitive message with you know guarantee that it actually gets received, because Signal used to be, you know, kind of sketchy on or unreliable on on delivery, it might not have been the best choice at the time. One of the other things that I think that people, you know, think...don't think about necessarily is that Signal is still widely viewed as a specific security tool. And that's, that's good in a lot of cases. But if you live somewhere, for example, like Belarus, where it's not generally considered legal to encrypt things, then the presence of Signal on your device is enough in and of itself to get you thrown in prison.
Margaret 29:53 Right.
Elle 29:53 And so sometimes having a mechanism like, you know, Facebook secret messages might seem like a really, really sketchy thing to do. But if your threat model is you can't have security tools on your phone, but you still want to be able to send encrypted messages or ephemeral messages, then that actually might be the best way to kind of fly under the radar. So yeah, it again just really comes down to thinking about what it is that you're trying to protect? From who? And under what circumstances?
Margaret 30:32 Yeah, I know, I like this. I mean, obviously, of course, you've thought about this thing that you think about. I'm like, I'm just like, kind of like, blown away thinking about these things. Although, okay, one of these, like security things that I kind of want to push back on, and actually, this is a little bit sketchy to push back on, the knife thing. To go back to a knife. I am. I have talked to a lot of people who have gotten themselves out of very bad situations by drawing a weapon without then using it, which is illegal. It is totally illegal.
Elle 31:03 Yes
Margaret 31:03 I would never advocate that anyone threaten anyone with a weapon. But, I know people who have committed this crime in order to...even I mean, sometimes it's in situations where it'd be legal to stab somebody,like...
Elle 31:16 Sure.
Margaret 31:16 One of the strangest laws in the United States is that, theoretically, if I fear for my life, I can draw a gun.... And not if I fear for my life, if I am, if my life is literally being threatened, physically, if I'm being attacked, I can I can legally draw a firearm and shoot someone, I can legally pull a knife and stab someone to defend myself. I cannot pull a gun and say "Back the fuck off." And not only is it illegal, but it also is a security axiom, I guess that you would never want to do that. Because as you pointed out, if you hesitate now the person has the advantage, they have more information than they used to. But I still know a lot of hitchhikers who have gotten out of really bad situations by saying, "Let me the fuck out of the car."
Elle 32:05 Sure.
Margaret 32:06 Ya know?.
Elle 32:06 Absolutely. It's not....Sometimes escalating tactically can be a de-escalation. Right?
Margaret 32:17 Right.
Elle 32:18 Sometimes pulling out a weapon or revealing that you have one is enough to make you no longer worth attacking. But you never know how someone's going to respond when you do that, right?
Margaret 32:33 Totally
Elle 32:33 So you never know whether it's going to cause them to go "Oh shit, I don't want to get stabbed or I don't want to get shot," and stop or whether it's going to trigger you know a more aggressive response. So it doesn't mean that you know, you, if you pull a weapon you have to use it.
Margaret 32:52 Right.
Elle 32:53 But if you're going to carry one then you do need to be confident that you will use it.
Margaret 32:58 No, that that I do agree with that. Absolutely.
Elle 33:00 And I think that is an important distinction, and I you know I also think that...not 'I think', using a gun and using a knife are two very different things. For a lot of people, pulling the trigger on a gun is going to be easier than stabbing someone.
Margaret 33:20 Yeah that's true.
Elle 33:21 Because of the proximity to the person and because of how deeply personal stabbing someone actually is versus how detached you can be and still pull the trigger.
Margaret 33:35 Yeah.
Elle 33:36 Like I would...it sounds...it feels weird to say but I would actually advocate most people carry a gun instead of a knife for that reason, and also because if you're, if you're worried about being physically attacked, you know you have more range of distance where you can use something like a gun than you do with a knife. You have to be, you have to be in close quarters to to effectively use a knife unless you're like really good at throwing them for some reason and even I wouldn't, cause if you miss...now your adversary has a knife.
Margaret 34:14 I know yeah. Unless you miss by a lot. I mean actually I guess if you hit they have a knife now too.
Elle 34:22 True.
Margaret 34:23 I have never really considered whether or not throwing knives are effective self-defense weapons and I don't want to opine too hard on this show.
Elle 34:31 I advise against it.
Margaret 34:32 Yeah. Okay, so to go back to threat modeling about more operational security type stuff. You're clearly not saying these are best practices, but you're instead it seems like you're advocating of "This as the means by which you might determine your best practices."
Elle 34:49 Yes.
Margaret 34:49 Do you have a...do you have a a tool or do you have like a like, "Hey, here's some steps you can take." I mean, we all know you've said like, "Think about your enemy," and such like that, but Is there a more...Can you can you walk me through that?
Elle 35:04 I mean, like, gosh, it really depends on who your adversary is, right?
Elle 35:10 Like, if you're if you're thinking about an abusive partner, that's obviously going to vary based on things like, you know, is your abusive partner, someone who has access to weapons? Are they someone who is really tech savvy? Or are they not. At...The things that you have to think about are going to just depend on the skills and tools that they have access to? Is your abusive partner or your abusive ex a cop? Because that changes some things.
Margaret 35:10 Yeah, fair enough.
Margaret 35:20 Yeah.
Elle 35:27 So like, most people, if they actually have a real and present kind of persistent threat in their life, also have a pretty good idea of what that threat is capable of, or what that threat actor or is capable of. And so it, it's it, I think, it winds up being fairly easy to start thinking about things in terms of like, "Okay, how is this person going to come after me? How, what, what tools do they have? What skills do they have? What ability do they have to kind of attack me or harm me?" But I think that, you know, as we start getting away from that really, really, personal threat model of like the intimate partner violence threat model, for example, and start thinking about more abstract threat models, like "I'm an anarchist living in a state," because no state is particularly fond of us.
Margaret 36:50 Whaaaat?!
Elle 36:51 I know it's wild, because like, you know, we just want to abolish the State and States, like want to not be abolished, and I just don't understand how, how they would dislike us for any reason..
Margaret 37:03 Yeah, it's like when I meet someone new, and I'm like, "Hey, have you ever thought about being abolished?" They're usually like, "Yeah, totally have a beer."
Elle 37:10 Right. No, it's...
Margaret 37:11 Yes.
Elle 37:11 For sure. Um, but when it comes to when it comes to thinking about, you know, the anarchist threat model, I think that a lot of us have this idea of like, "Oh, the FBI is spying on me personally." And the likelihood of the FBI specifically spying on 'you' personally is like, actually pretty slim. But...
Margaret 37:34 Me?
Elle 37:35 Well...
Margaret 37:37 No, no, I want to go back to thinking about it's slim, it's totally slim.
Elle 37:41 Look...But like, there's there is a lot like, we know that, you know, State surveillance dragnet exists, right, we know that, you know, plaintext text messages, for example, are likely to be caught both by, you know, Cell Site Simulators, which are in really, really popular use by law enforcement agencies.
Margaret 38:08 Which is something that sets up and pretends to be a cell tower. So it takes all the data that is transmitted over it. And it's sometimes used set up at demonstrations.
Elle 38:16 Yes. So they, they both kind of convinced your phone into thinking that they are the nearest cell tower, and then actually pass your communications on to the next, like the nearest cell tower. So your communications do go through, they're just being logged by this entity in the middle. That's, you know, not great. But using something...
Margaret 38:38 Unless you're the Feds.
Elle 38:39 I mean, even if you...
Margaret 38:41 You just have to think about it from their point of. Hahah.
Elle 38:42 Even if you are the Feds, that's actually too much data for you to do anything useful with, you know?
Margaret 38:50 Okay, I'll stop interuppting you. Haha.
Elle 38:51 Like, it's just...but if you're if you are a person who is a person of interest who's in this group, where a cell site simulator has been deployed or whatever, then then that you know, is something that you do have to be concerned about and you know, even if you're not a person of interest if you're like texting your friend about like, "All right, we do crime in 15 minutes," like I don't know, it's maybe not a great idea. Don't write it down if you're doing crime. Don't do crime. But more importantly don't don't create evidence that you're planning to do crime, because now you've done two crimes which is the crime itself and conspiracy to commit a crime
Margaret 39:31 Be straight. Follow the law. That's the motto here.
Elle 39:35 Yes. Oh, sorry. I just like I don't know, autism brain involuntarily pictured, like an alternate universe in which in where which I am straight, and law abiding. And I'm just I'm very...
Margaret 39:52 Sounds terrible. I'm sorry.
Elle 39:53 Right. Sounds like a very boring....
Margaret 39:55 Sorry to put that image in your head.
Elle 39:56 I mean, I would never break laws.
Margaret 39:58 No.
Elle 39:59 Ever Never ever. I have not broken any laws I will not break any laws. No, I think that...
Margaret 40:08 The new "In Minecraft" is "In Czarist Russia." Instead of saying "In Minecraft," because it's totally blown. It's only okay to commit crimes "In Czarist Russia."
Elle 40:19 Interesting.
Margaret 40:23 All right. We don't have to go with that. I don't know why i got really goofy.
Elle 40:27 I might be to Eastern European Jewish for that one.
Margaret 40:31 Oh God. Oh, my God, now I just feel terrible.
Elle 40:34 It's It's fine. It's fine.
Margaret 40:36 Well, that was barely a crime by east...
Elle 40:40 I mean it wasn't necessarily a crime, but like my family actually emigrated to the US during the first set of pogroms.
Margaret 40:51 Yeah.
Elle 40:52 So like, pre Bolshevik Revolution.
Margaret 40:57 Yeah.
Elle 40:59 But yeah, anyway.
Margaret 41:02 Okay, well, I meant taking crimes like, I basically think that, you know, attacking the authorities in Czarist Russia is a more acceptable action is what I'm trying to say, I really don't have to try and sell you on this plan.
Elle 41:16 I'm willing to trust your judgment here.
Margaret 41:19 That's a terrible plan, but I appreciate you, okay. Either way, we shouldn't text people about the crimes that we're doing.
Elle 41:26 We should not text people about the crimes that we're planning on doing. But, if you are going to try to coordinate timelines, you might want to do that using some form of encrypted messenger so that whatever is logged by a cell site simulator, if it is in existence is not possible by the people who are then retrieving those logs. And you know, and another reason to use encrypted messengers, where you can is that you don't necessarily want your cell provider to have that unencrypted message block. And so if you're sending SMS, then your cell, your cell provider, as the processor of that data has access to an unencrypted or plain text version of whatever text message you're sending, where if you're using something like Signal or WhatsApp, or Wicker, or Wire or any of the other, like, multitude of encrypted messengers that you could theoretically be using, then it's it's also not going directly through your your provider, which I think is an interesting distinction. Because, you know, we we know, from, I mean, we kind of sort of already knew, but we know for a fact, from the Snowden Papers, that cell providers will absolutely turn over your data to the government if they're asked for it. And so minimizing the amount of data that they have about you to turn over to the government is generally a good practice. Especially if you can do it in a way that isn't going to be a bunch of red flags.
Margaret 43:05 Right, like being in Belarus and using Signal.
Elle 43:08 Right. Exactly.
Margaret 43:10 Okay. Also, there's the Russian General who used an unencrypted phone where he then got geo located and blowed up.
Elle 43:23 Yeah.
Margaret 43:24 Also bad threat modeling on that that guy's part, it seems like
Elle 43:28 I it, it certainly seems to...that person certainly seems to have made several poor life choices, not the least of which was being a General in the Russian army.
Margaret 43:41 Yeah, yeah. That, that tracks. So one of the things that we talked about, while we were talking about having this conversation, our pre-conversation conversation was about...I think you brought up this idea that something that feels secret, doesn't mean it is, and
Elle 43:59 Yeah!
Margaret 44:00 I'm wondering if you had more thoughts about that concept? It's not a very good prompt.
Elle 44:05 So like, it's it's a totally reasonable prompt, we say a lot that, you know, security and safety are a feeling. And I think that that actually is true for a lot of us. But there's this idea that, Oh, if you use coded language, for example, then like, you can't get caught. I don't actually think that's true, because we tend to use coded language that's like, pretty easily understandable by other people. Because the purpose of communicating is to communicate.
Margaret 44:42 Yeah.
Elle 44:43 And so usually, if you're like, code language is easy enough to be understood by whoever it is you're trying to communicate with, like, someone else can probably figure it the fuck out too. Especially if you're like, "Hey, man, did you bring the cupcakes," and your friend is like, "Yeah!" And then an explosion goes off shortly thereafter, right? It's like, "Oh, by cupcakes, they meant dynamite." So I, you know, I think that rather than then kind of like relying on this, you know, idea of how spies work or how, how anarchists communicated secretly, you know, pre WTO it's, it's worth thinking about how the surveillance landscape has adapted over time, and thinking a little bit more about what it means to engage in, in the modern panopticon, or the contemporary panopticon, because those capabilities have changed over time. And things like burner phones are a completely different prospect now than they used to be. Actually...
Margaret 45:47 In that they're easier or wose?
Elle 45:49 Oh, there's so much harder to obtain now.
Margaret 45:51 Yeah, okay.
Elle 45:52 It's it is so much easier to correlate devices that have been used in proximity to each other than it used to be. And it's so much easier to, you know, capture people on surveillance cameras than it used to be. I actually wrote a piece for Crimethinc about this some years ago, that that I think kind of still holds up in terms of how difficult it really, really is to procure a burner phone. And in order to do to do that safely, you would have to pay cash somewhere that couldn't capture you on camera doing it, and then make sure that it was never turned on in proximity with your own phone anywhere. And you would have to make sure that it only communicated with other burner phones, because the second it communicates with a phone that's associated to another person, there's a connection between your like theoretical burner phone and that person. And so you can be kind of triangulated back to, especially if you've communicated with multiple people. It just it is so hard to actually obtain a device that is not in any way affiliated with your identity or the identity of any of your comrades. But, we have to start thinking about alternative mechanisms for synchronous communication.
Margaret 47:18 Okay.
Elle 47:18 And, realistically speaking, taking a walk in the woods is still going to be the best way to do it. Another reasonable way to go about having a conversation that needs to remain private is actually to go somewhere that is too loud and too crowded to...for anyone to reasonably overhear or to have your communication recorded. So using using the kind of like, signal to noise ratio in your favor.
Margaret 47:51 Yeah.
Elle 47:52 To help drown out your own signal can be really, really useful. And I think that that's also true of things like using Gmail, right? The signal to noise ratio, if you're not using a tool that's specifically for activists can be very helpful, because there is just so much more traffic happening, that it's easier to blend in.
Margaret 48:18 I mean, that's one reason why I mean, years ago, people were saying that's why non activists should use GPG, the encrypted email service that is terrible, was so attempt to try and be like, if you only ever use it, for the stuff you don't want to be known, then it like flags it as "This stuff you don't want to be known." And so that was like, kind of an argument for my early adoption Signal, because I don't break laws was, you know, just be like," Oh, here's more people using Signal," it's more regularized, and, you know, my my family talks on Signal and like, it helps that like, you know, there's a lot of different very normal legal professions that someone might have that are require encrypted communication. Yeah, no book, like accountants, lawyers. But go ahead.
Elle 49:06 No, no, I was gonna say that, like, it's, it's very common in my field of work for people to prefer to use Signal to communicate, especially if there is, you know, a diversity of phone operating systems in the mix.
Margaret 49:21 Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, it's actually now it's more convenient. You know, when I when I'm on my like, family's SMS loop, it's like, I constantly get messages to say, like, "Brother liked such and such comment," and then it's like, three texts of that comment and...anyway, but okay, one of the things that you're talking about, "Security as a feeling," right? That actually gets to something that's like, there is a value in like, like, part of the reason to carry a knife is to feel better. Like, and so part of like, like anti-anxiety, like anxiety is my biggest threat most most days, personally. Right?
Elle 50:00 Have you ever considered a career in the security field, because I, my, my, my former manager, like the person who hired me into the role that I'm in right now was like, "What made you get into security?" when I was interviewing, and I was just like, "Well, I had all this anxiety lying around. And I figured, you know, since nobody will give me a job that I can afford to sustain myself on without a degree, in any other field, I may as well take all this anxiety and like, sell it as a service."
Margaret 50:33 Yeah, I started a prepper podcast. It's what you're listening to right now. Everyone who's listening. Yeah, exactly. Well, there's a value in that. But then, but you're talking about the Panopticon stuff, and the like, maybe being in too crowded of an environment. And it's, and this gets into something where everyone is really going to have to answer it differently. There's a couple of layers to this, but like, the reason that I just like, my profile picture on twitter is my face. I use my name, right?
Elle 51:03 Same.
Margaret 51:04 And, yeah, and I, and I just don't sweat it, because I'm like, "Look, I've been at this long enough that they know who I am. And it's just fine. It's just is." One day, it won't be fine. And then we have other problems. Right?
Elle 51:18 Right.
Margaret 51:19 And, and, and I'm not saying that everyone as they get better security practice will suddenly start being public like it... You know, it, it really depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Like, a lot of the reasons to not be public on social media is just because it's a fucking pain in the ass. Like, socially, you know?
Elle 51:36 Yeah.
Margaret 51:36 But I don't know, I just wonder if you have any thoughts about just like, the degree to which sometimes it's like, "Oh, well, I just, I carry a phone to an action because I know, I'm not up to anything." But then you get into this, like, then you're non-normalizing... don't know, it gets complicated. And I'm curious about your thoughts on that kind of stuff.
Elle 51:56 So like, for me, for me personally, I am very public about who I am. What I'm about, like, what my politics are. I'm extremely open about it. Partially, because I don't think that, like I think that there is value in de-stigmatizing anarchism.
Margaret 52:20 Yes.
Elle 52:20 I think there is value in being someone who is just a normal fucking human being. And also anarchist.
Margaret 52:29 Yeah.
Elle 52:30 And I think that, you know, I...not even I think. I know, I know that, through being exactly myself and being open about who I am, and not being super worried about the labels that other people apply to themselves. And instead, kind of talking about, talking about anarchism, both from a place of how it overlaps with Judaism, because it does in a lot of really interesting ways, but also just how it informs my decision making processes. I've been able to expose people who would not necessarily have had any, like, concept of anarchism, or the power dynamics that we're interested in equalizing to people who just wouldn't have wouldn't have even thought about it, or would have thought that anarchists are like this big, scary, whatever. And, like, there, there are obviously a multitude of tendencies within anarchism, and no anarchist speaks for anybody but themselves, because that's how it works. But, it's one of the things that's been really interesting to me is that in the security field, one of the new buzzwords is Zero Trust. And the idea is that you don't want to give any piece of technology kind of the sole ability to to be the linchpin in your security, right? So you want to build redundancy, you want to make sure that no single thing is charged with being the gatekeeper for all of your security. And I think that that concept actually also applies to power. And so I...when I'm trying to talk about anarchism in a context where it makes sense to security people, I sometimes talk about it as like a Zero Trust mechanism for organizing a society.
Margaret 54:21 Yeah.
Elle 54:21 Where you just you...No person is trustworthy enough to hold power over another person. And, so like, I'm really open about it, but the flip side of that is that, you know, I also am a fucking anarchist, and I go to demonstrations, and sometimes I get arrested or whatever. And so I'm not super worried about the government knowing who I am because they know exactly who I am. But I don't share things like my place of work on the internet because I've gotten death threats from white nationalists. And I don't super want white nationalists like sending death threats into my place of work because It's really annoying to deal with.
Margaret 55:02 Yeah.
Elle 55:03 And so you know, there's...it really comes down to how you think about compartmentalizing information. And which pieces of yourself you want public and private and and how, how you kind of maintain consistency in those things.
Margaret 55:21 Yeah.
Elle 55:22 Like people will use the same...people will like be out and anarchists on Twitter, but use the same Twitter handle as their LinkedIn URL where they're talking about their job and have their legal name. And it's just like, "Buddy, what are you doing?"
Margaret 55:37 Yeah.
Elle 55:38 So you do have to think about how pieces of data can be correlated and tied back to you. And what story it is that you're you're presenting, and it is hard and you are going to fuck it up. Like people people are going to fuck it up. Compartmentalization is super hard. Maintaining operational security is extremely hard. But it is so worth thinking about. And even if you do fuck it up, you know, that doesn't mean that it's the end of the world, it might mean that you have to take some extra steps to mitigate that risk elsewhere.
Margaret 56:11 The reason I like this whole framework that you're building is that I tend to operate under this conception that clandestinity is a trap. I don't want to I don't want to speak this....I say it as if it's a true statement across all and it's not it. I'm sure there's absolute reasons in different places at different times. But in general, when I look at like social movements, they, once they move to "Now we're just clandestine." That's when everyone dies. And, again, not universally,
Elle 56:40 Yeah, but I mean, okay, so this is where I'm gonna get like really off the wall. Right?
Margaret 56:46 All right. We're an hour in. It's the perfect time.
Elle 56:50 I know, right? People may or may not know who Allen Dulles is. But Allen
Margaret 56:54 Not unless they named an airport after him.
Elle 56:56 They Did.
Margaret 56:57 Oh, then i do who he is.
Elle 56:59 Allen Dulles is one of the people who founded the CIA. And he released this pamphlet called "73 Points On Spycraft." And it's a really short read. It's really interesting, I guess. But the primary point is that if you are actually trying to be clandestine, and be successful about it, you want to be as mundane as possible.
Margaret 57:22 Yep.
Elle 57:23 And in our modern world with the Panopticon being what it is, the easiest way to be clandestine, is actually to be super open. So that if you are trying to hide something, if there is something that you do want to keep secret, there's enough information out there about you, that you're not super worth digging into.
Margaret 57:46 Oh, yeah. Cuz they think they already know you.
Elle 57:48 Exactly. So if, if that is what your threat model is, then the best way to go about keeping a secret is to flood as many other things out there as possible. So that it's just it's hard to find anything, but whatever it is that you're flooding.
Margaret 58:04 Oh, it's like I used to, to get people off my back about my dead name, I would like tell one person in a scene, a fake dead name, and be like, "But you can't tell anyone."
Elle 58:15 Right.
Margaret 58:16 And then everyone would stop asking about my dead name, because they all thought they knew it, because that person immediately told everyone,
Elle 58:22 Right.
Margaret 58:23 Yeah.
Elle 58:24 It's, it's going back to that same using the noise to hide your signal concept, that it...the same, the same kind of concepts and themes kind of play out over and over and over again. And all security really is is finding ways to do harm reduction for yourself, finding ways to minimize the risk that you're undertaking just enough that that you can operate in whatever it is that you're trying to do.
Margaret 58:53 No, I sometimes I like, ask questions. And then I am like, Okay, well don't have an immediate follow up, because I just need to like, think about it. Instead of being like, "I know immediately what to say about that." But okay, so, but with clandestinity in general in this this concept...I also think that this is true on a kind of movement level in a way that I I worry about sometimes not necessarily....Hmm, what am I trying to say? Because I also really hate telling people what to do. It's like kind of my thing I don't like telling people what to do. But there's a certain level...
Elle 59:25 Really?
Margaret 59:25 Yeah, you'd be shocked to know,
Elle 59:27 You? Don't like telling people what to do?
Margaret 59:31 Besides telling people not to tell me what to do. That's one of my favorite things to tell people. But, there's a certain amount of.
Margaret 59:38 Oh, that's true, like different conceptions of freedom.
Elle 59:38 But that's not telling people what to do, that's telling people what not to do.
Elle 59:44 It's actually setting a boundary as opposed to dictating a behavior.
Margaret 59:48 But I've been in enough relationships where I've learned that setting boundaries is the same as telling people to do. This is a funny joke.
Elle 59:55 Ohh co-dependency.
Margaret 59:58 But all right, there's a quote from a guy whose name I totally space who was an old revolutionist, who wasn't very good at his job. And his quote was, "Those who make half a revolution dig their own graves." And I think he like, I think it proved true for him. If I remember correctly, I think he died in jail after kind of making half a revolution with some friends. I think he got like arrested for pamphleteering or something,
Elle 1:00:20 Jesus.
Margaret 1:00:21 It was a couple hundred years ago. And but there's this but then if you look forward in history that like revolutionists, who survive are the ones who win. Sometimes, sometimes the revolutionists win, and then their comrades turn on them and murder them. But, I think overall, the survival rate of a revolution is better when you win is my theory. And and so there's this this concept where there's a tension, and I don't have an answer to it. And I want people to actually think about it instead of assuming, where the difference between videotaping a cop car on fire and not is more complicated than people want you to know. Because, if you want there to be more cop cars on fire, which I do not unless we're in Czarist Russia, in which case, you're in an autocracy, and it's okay to set the cop cars on fire, but I'm clearly not talking about that, or the modern world. But, you're gonna have to film it on your cell phone in order for people to fucking know that it's happening. Sure. And and that works absolutely against your best interest. Like, on an individual level, and even a your friends' level.
Elle 1:01:25 So like, here's the thing, being in proximity to a burning cop car is not in and of itself a crime.
Margaret 1:01:33 Right.
Elle 1:01:34 So there's, there's nothing wrong with filming a cop car on fire.
Margaret 1:01:41 But there's that video...
Margaret 1:01:41 Right.
Elle 1:01:41 There is something wrong with filming someone setting a cop car on fire. And there's something extremely wrong with taking a selfie while setting a cop car on fire. And don't do that, because you shouldn't do crime. Obviously, right?
Elle 1:01:42 But there's Layers there...No, go ahead.
Margaret 1:02:03 Okay, well, there's the video that came out of Russia recently, where someone filmed themselves throwing Molotovs at a recruitment center. And one of the first comments I see is like, "Wow, this person has terrible OpSec." And that's true, right? Like this person is not looking at how to maximize their lack of chance of going to jail, which is probably the way to maximize that in non Czarist Russia... re-Czarist Russia, is to not throw anything burning at buildings. That's the way to not go to jail.
Elle 1:02:35 Right.
Margaret 1:02:35 And then if you want to throw the thing at the... and if all you care about is setting this object on fire, then don't film yourself.
Elle 1:02:41 Right.
Margaret 1:02:41 But if you want more people to know that this is a thing that some people believe is a worthwhile thing to do, you might need to film yourself doing it now that person well didn't speak.
Elle 1:02:53 Well no.
Margaret 1:02:56 Okay.
Elle 1:02:56 You may not need to film yourself doing it. Right? Because what what you can do is if, for example, for some reason, you are going to set something on fire.
Margaret 1:03:09 Right, in Russia.
Elle 1:03:09 Perhaps what you might want to do is first get the thing to be in a state where it is on fire, and then begin filming the thing once it is in a burning state.
Margaret 1:03:25 Conflaguration. Yeah.
Elle 1:03:25 Right? And that can that can do a few things, including A) you're not inherently self incriminating. And, you know, if if there are enough people around to provide some form of cover, like for example, if there are 1000s of other people's cell phones also in proximity, it might even create some degree of plausible deniability for you because what fucking dipshit films themself doing crimes. So it's, you know, there's, there's, there's some timing things, right. And the idea is to get it...if you are a person who believes that cop cars look best on fire...
Margaret 1:04:10 Buy a cop car, and then you set it on fire. And then you film it.
Elle 1:04:15 I mean, you know, you know, you just you opportunistically film whenever a cop car happens to be on fire in your proximity.
Margaret 1:04:23 Oh, yeah. Which might have been set on fire by the person who owned it. There's no reason to know one way or not.
Elle 1:04:27 Maybe the police set the cop car on fire you know? You never know. There's no way to there....You don't have to you don't have to speculate about how the cop car came to be on fire. You can just film a burning cop car. And so the you know, I think that the line to walk there is just making sure there's no humans in your footage of things that you consider to be art.
Margaret 1:04:29 Yeah. No, it it makes sense. And I guess it's like because people very, very validly have been very critical about the ways that media or people who are independently media or whatever, like people filming shit like this, right? But But I think then to say that like, therefore no, no cop cars that are on fire should ever be filmed versus the position you're presenting, which is only cop cars that are already on fire might deserve to be filmed, which is the kind of the long standing like film the broken window, not the window breaker and things like that. But...
Elle 1:05:29 I think and I think also there's, you know, there's a distinction to be made between filming yourself setting a cop car on fire, and filming someone else setting a cop car on fire, because there's a consent elemenet, right?
Margaret 1:05:34 Totally. Totally.
Elle 1:05:47 You shouldn't like...Don't do crime. Nobody should do crime. But if you are going to do crime, do it on purpose. Right?
Margaret 1:05:55 Fair enough.
Elle 1:05:55 Like that's, that's what civil disobedience is. Civil disobedience is doing crime for the purpose of getting caught to make a point. That's what it is. And if you if you really feel that strongly about doing a crime to make a point, and you want everyone to know that you're doing a crime to make a point, then that's, that's a risk calculation that you yourself need to make for yourself. But you can't make that calculation for anybody else.
Margaret 1:06:25 I think that's a great way to sum it up.
Elle 1:06:27 So unless your friend is like, "Yo, I'm gonna set this cop car on fire. Like, get the camera ready, hold my beer." You probably shouldn't be filming them.
Margaret 1:06:38 See you in 30 years.
Elle 1:06:39 Right? You probably shouldn't be filming them setting the cop car on fire either.
Margaret 1:06:43 No. No
Elle 1:06:44 And also, that's a shitty friend because they've just implicated you in conspiracy, right?
Margaret 1:06:49 Yeah.
Elle 1:06:50 Friends don't implicate friends.
Margaret 1:06:53 It's a good, it's a good rule. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, I that's not entirely where I immediately expected to go with Threat Modeling. But I feel like we've covered an awful lot. Is there something? Is there something...Do you have any, like final thoughts about Threat Modeling, and as relates to the stuff that we've been talking about?
Elle 1:07:18 I think that you know, the thing that I do really want to drive home. And that honestly does come back to your point about clandestinity being a trap is that, again, the purpose of threat modeling is to first understand, you know, what risks you're trying to protect against, and then figure out how to do what you're accomplishing in a way that minimizes risk. But the important piece is still doing whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish, whether that's movement building, or something else. And so there there is, there is a calculation that needs to be made in terms of what level of risk is acceptable to you. But if if, ultimately, your risk threshold is preventing you from accomplishing whatever you're trying to accomplish, then it's time to take a step back, recalculate and figure out whether or not you actually want to accomplish the thing, and what level of risk is worth taking. Because I think that, you know, again, if if you're, if your security mechanisms are preventing you from doing the thing that you're you set out to try to do, then your adversaries are already winning, and something probably needs to shift.
Margaret 1:08:39 I really like that line. And so I feel like that's a decent spot, place to end on. Do. Do you have anything that you'd like to shout out? People can follow you on the internet? Or they shouldn't follow you on the internet? What? What do you what do you want to advocate for here?
Elle 1:08:53 If you follow me on the internet, I'm so sorry. That's really all I can say. I'm, I am on the internet. I am a tire fire. I'm probably fairly easy to find based on my name, my pronouns and the things that I've said here today, and I can't recommend following my Twitter.
Margaret 1:09:17 I won't put in the show notes then.
Elle 1:09:19 I mean, you're welcome to but I can't advocate in good conscience for anyone to pay attention to anything that I have to say.
Margaret 1:09:27 Okay, so go back and don't listen to the last hour everyone.
Elle 1:09:31 I mean, I'm not going to tell you what to do.
Margaret 1:09:34 I am that's my favorite thing to do.
Elle 1:09:36 I mean, you know, this is just like my opinion, you know? There are no leaders. We're all the leaders. I don't know. Do do do what you think is right.
Margaret 1:09:55 Agreed. All right. Well, thank you so much.
Elle 1:09:59 Thank you. I really appreciate it.
Margaret 1:10:07 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, you should tell people about it by whatever means occurs to you to tell people about it, which might be the internet, it might even be in person, it might be by taking a walk, leaving your cell phones behind, and then getting in deep into the woods and saying," I like the following podcast." And then the other person will be like, "Really, I thought we were gonna make out or maybe do some crimes." But, instead you have told them about the podcast. And I'm recording this at the same time as I record the intro, and now the dog has moved on to chewing on my cloak. Why am I wearing a cloak? That is a question between me and God, I guess. And if you want to support this podcast, you can do so by supporting its publisher, which is Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. And actually, Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness is a very old project, but also a new project. We're relaunching it's tangledwilderness.org. And we're going to be bringing you all kinds of stories, and podcasts, and memoir, and role playing games, and all kinds of fun stuff. I think you'll actually really like it. I hope you really like it. And we're also looking for more content, and we do pay our contributors, so please check out our submission guidelines. Or just support us on Patreon which is patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And we send out a zine every month to our backers as well as put it online. Although people can also eventually read the content for free on our website. Because paywalls are gross and weird. In particular, I would like to thank Mikki, and Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jennipher, Eleanor, Natalie Kirk, Michiahah. Nora, Sam, Chris and Hoss the dog. Your contributions are absolutely what make this podcast possible. Because it no longer supports me directly. My this used to be supported by a Patreon that was for me directly. But now it instead supports a whole bunch of people doing a whole bunch of other things with as Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness and also people who are doing transcription and editing and all of those things that make podcasting possible. So thank you so much. I hope you're doing as well as you can, and I hope that you to find someone's arm to chew on in a very annoying fashion. Much like my dog is doing to me. Take care
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Episode summary
Margaret talks with two people who work with the Bay Area Doula Project. They talk about different kinds of abortions, histories of abortion methods, different kinds of self-managed abortions, clincal and procedural abortions, pharmacological methods vs herbal methods, and abortion access.
Guest Info
Bay Area Doula Project can be found on Instagram @BayAreaDoulaProject or on Twitter @BAPDtweets
Host and Publisher
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @LiveLikeTheWorldIsDying. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice We're a national nonprofit network of law students and lawyers who know that reproductive justice doesn't just happen. www.ifwhenhow.org
Places to donate: https://www.ifwhenhow.org/ https://abortionfunds.org/ https://accessrj.org/
Some history of misoprostol in Brazil: https://www.scielo.br/j/hcsm/a/X74PWDTg8njthWPPh5dVQSd/?lang=en
Some history and resources on Reproductive Justice: https://www.sistersong.net/reproductive-justice/ https://www.blackwomenradicals.com/blog-feed/black-feminism-and-reproductive-justice-a-reading-list Some info on trans-inclusive abortion care: https://translash.org/translash-guide-to-trans-bodies-trans-choices-my-abortion-saved-my-life/ https://www.optionsforsexualhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/FQPN18-Manual-EN-BC-web.pdf
Criminalization California judge overturns 11-year prison term for woman whose baby was stillborn Adora Perez, who admitted to using meth, was originally charged with murder and pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter. www.latimes.com
Women who were recently imprisoned for their pregnancy outcomes in California:
Chelsea Becker: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-05-20/murder-charge-dropped-against-woman-who-suffered-stillbirth
For the following, folks may want to consider digital security. As in use a VPN to visit these links, TOR, ect...
We like hackblossom's guide: https://hackblossom.org/cybersecurity/and Digital Defense Fund also has great info: https://digitaldefensefund.org/ddf-guides/abortion-privacy
info on abortion with herbs: https://www.instagram.com/holistic.abortions/ https://holisticabortions.bigcartel.com/ https://we.riseup.net/assets/351138/22321349-Natural-Liberty-Rediscovering-Self-Induced-Abortion-Methods.pdf
info on abortion with pills: http://www.misoprostol.org/ https://www.plancpills.org/ https://hesperian.org/books-and-resources/our-mobile-applications/safe-abortion-sa/
Other Projects Awesome fund in Mexico City: https://www.fondomaria.org/ The New York Doula Project: https://www.doulaproject.net/
Literature They also have this great zine on being your own doula: http://www.diydoula.org/
Margaret 00:14 Hello, and welcome to Live Like The World Is Dying, your podcast. It feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret killjoy. And this week I'm talking about some end times stuff. It's not really end times. End times is too complex... whatever. You've heard me talk about my opinion about end times and how complicated that is. But, I think that is absolutely happening right now is that people's ability to access abortion is being stripped away inside the United States. And so I'm talking today with two people from the Bay Area Doula Project, about self managed abortion, about the state of things, about the different types of abortions that one might seek to release their pregnancy. And I think that there's going to be a lot in here for every listener, including those who think it doesn't affect them directly. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts and here's a jingle from another show in the network.
01:36 jingle
Margaret 02:13 Hi, if you two could introduce yourself I guess with your your names, your pronouns and kind of what you do what what brings you on the podcast today.
Aspen 02:25 I'm glad to go first. My name is Aspen I use they/them pronouns. I'm an abortion doula fertility awareness educator and also an herbalist. And I've been work doing abortion work for the past, I don't know, handful of years, seven years or so I've been deepening the relationship with the idea of abortion, the practice of abortion, the herbs that have been facilitating abortion for centuries. And I'm excited to be on this podcast just because it feels like a really but especially potent moment even thoughaccess to abortion has been on the front of my mind for a long time. I'm like thankful for this moment where it's in more people's awareness.
Cobalt 03:08 And I'm Cobalt, I've been doing abortion support work, you know everything from emotional support, to rides and hosting people who have to travel and also abortion, you know, education about self managed abortion with pills and abortion support education, helping other people kind of understand what their power is in supporting other people through their abortions, whether it's in or out of clinic. And I've been doing all of that for more than a decade now. And yeah, what Aspen said about why we're here. And oh, and we are with Bay Area Doula Project. Which, there are a bunch of doula projects around the country that have, you know, different ways of working that are just based on you know, what's appropriate for the area and the collectives. And, we are a pretty small group focused on, like you said, the supporting people individually and also helping other people learn how they can support their communities.
Margaret 04:06 So what does that look like with the Bay Area Doula Project? Is it you know, can people just reach out to you? Is it like, basically, people are like, "I'm hoping to have an abortion. I'm pregnant and wish I wasn't. Can you all help me in various ways?" Or what is the...what is the actual project kind of look like on a tangible level?
Cobalt 04:24 Aspen does a lot of the answering the emails, so I think they should talk on this.
Aspen 04:29 Yeah. So we definitely have like a platform for people to reach out if they're looking for...you know, as an abortion doula, we hold a lot of hats. You know, sometimes we provide counseling. You know, sometimes people don't...don't know their options, don't realize like, you know, they have options inside clinics, outside of clinics. And so meeting people where they're at whether they've already made their decision or they're still in that sort of uncertainty, space of uncertainty. We can pair people with abortion doulas, if that's what they're seeking. We do also partner with an organization called Access, which is our, our local California abortion fund. And through that sort of pathway, we can connect them with like ride support, child care support, hotel if the hotel if they need it, because sometimes abortions need multi or multi day procedures and they need overnight support. And especially if people are traveling, even in California people have to travel hours. So we also provide trainings and that's a lot of our work at Bay Area Doula Project is providing trainings so that people can learn how to support their communities as an abortion doula or an abortion supporter.
Margaret 05:36 So why do people have to travel hours if you're in the golden land of California, where everything is perfect and easy and accessible? And everything's great.
Cobalt 05:48 Yeah, because we still don't actually have that very many clinics, because the clinics that do exist in smaller towns tend to be extremely risk averse. And so they may not do procedures for people who have, you know, a pre existing medical conditions like a heart condition. Maybe even the reason that they need to terminate is also the reasons they'll be refused an abortion.
Margaret 06:11 Oh, cool.
Cobalt 06:13 People may be refused, because the anesthesiologist doesn't know their job and doesn't know how to work on fat people, or maybe the gestational limit that the clinic has. And so therefore, they need to travel to a place where they can get in hospital care, or something like that. And, yeah, so and or the clinic that's in their town is maybe only open one day a week, and it's not a day that they're able to do things.
Cobalt 06:36 How do people....you said that one of the things that you end up helping people do is pick between clinic and non clinic, clinic abortions? What kind of, I mean, obviously, you can't give the listener advice, because you don't know the listeners position. But like, How does someone go about picking between clinic or non clinic for their abortion?
Aspen 06:54 That's a good question. I think that...so so earlier, Cobaltt and I were talking about how we really complement each other and how we practice and how we move through this work. And so I'll talk from my perspective, as someone who identifies as a spiritual...like I and like, something that's big for me, when I'm walking someone through that process is like, consent is like the number one thing like every step of the way, they're making a choice. And it's their choice. And I think choice has been one of those big words around the abortion movement. And it's not just the choice to have an abortion and not have an abortion, but how they're going to have an abortion, who they want to be around. Do they want to be in their home releasing their pregnancy? Do they want to go to a clinic? Do they have the time to actually work with herbs over a couple of weeks? Or do they want to get it done sooner? Because it's just a matter of practicality? And like, what are they feeling? Because I think that when it comes to reproductive justice work, and when it comes to abortion, a lot of sometimes there's a lot of healing and doing what our body consents to, because most people in this world have had an experience where that consent has been crossed. And so I think that this is an opportunity to heal that within them spiritually and emotionally. So I think that, walking through that someone's process with that is asking a lot of questions and just meeting them where they're at.
Cobalt 08:13 Yeah, for me, I work with a lot of folks, but specifically with trans guys, and, you know, other folks who may deal with like, body dysphoria stuff, and, you know, for a lot of reasons, needing to get an abortion in clinic might just really add to that. So, you know, that's one of the reasons that a lot of people I work with might decide, you know, that they would just like to do some pills and have something that's like, relatively straightforward and doesn't involve anyone sticking any instruments anywhere. And, you know, but of course, all that's also limited by, you know, things like what's the gestational age that you're at, also by like any other health concerns people might have, how available pills are, things like that. So, you know, there's like a combination of physical safety concerns why someone might decide that working with the clinic is more important. There's also a lot of other things that can go in to making it so that doing things outside of clinic is both safe and practical and a much better experience.
Margaret 09:17 That makes sense, as a trans person who is very statistically unlikely to get pregnant, personally, pending various medical things that may or may not be on the horizon. I'm curious, though, you know, you say that you you do work with, with trans folks who, who do need abortions, and I'm wondering if you have any, like, advice around seeking abortions while trans whether how that impacts either the way that one might navigate the social and political environment of the medical industry or, and this is completely I have literally no knowledge about this about whether or not various medical transitioning that people might be doing, whether that impacts anything about the decisions that they might be making? Basically just like, so much of what we hear about about abortion applies, for good reason, you know, majority of the people who can get pregnant are cis women I would guess statistically, but I feel like there's not as much information out there for people who aren't.
Cobalt 10:15 Yeah, so let's see, there's a few things. First of all, so Miffy and Miso, the abortion pills, both are have have like very low incidence of side effects, but Miffy. Sorry, so I should first say slang terms, Miffy is mifepristone. Miso is misoprostol. Much easier to just say Miffy and Miso. So mifepristone is the Ru-486. It's a progesterone blocker, and it can help increase the effectiveness of the abortion. So you can do things with Miffy and Miso together or just Miso alone, like either one is safe and effective, but with Miffy is a little bit more. Okay, so that said, Miffy can increase blood levels of testosterone, Valium, Xanax, ibuprofen, and some other drugs. So you don't have to, like stop taking T or something in order to, you know, take medication abortion, but it may actually heighten your T levels in your blood for a little bit, you know, you should also be careful, if you're taking any of those meds to maybe calm yourself or reduce pain. You might need a slightly lower dose than usual. So that's like, one thing is like, just, you know, interactions and things to worry about. But as far as dealing with clinics, it can be really complicated. You know, even in the Bay Area, not every provider that you might go see is super, you know, trans informed. And you know, even if you have a support person with you, right, like, it can be really hard to make decisions about how much you're going to push back against anything, because it might compromise your care. And so people you know, may try to go stealth, you know, they may be out and you know, put pronouns on the door, and really, you know, like, make demands of people really just, yeah. That part depends on personality. Problems that can come up, people can hear a masculine voice on the phone and think it's your, you know, somebody's boyfriend calling to set up the appointment for them and just refuse to serve them.
Margaret 12:12 Oh, shit. Okay. No, that makes sense. I just, that never would have occurred to me. Yeah. Because they think that the, they think that the person who needs the abortion is not the one making the decision?
Cobalt 12:21 Exactly, yeah.
Margaret 12:22 Okay.
Cobalt 12:22 Yeah, they're worried about coercion. And so they're, like, "No, how, you know, the, the person who's getting the abortion has to call." and they're like, "But it's me!"
Margaret 12:31 Yeah.
Cobalt 12:32 And so that can be difficult. I've even heard, even heard of people having problems with insurance. Like if they had even if you have insurance, insurance might go "Well, well, your gender marker is male. And this is not...this procedure is not for men."
Margaret 12:46 Oh, god.
Margaret 12:47 Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. And, yeah, and then there's, you know, just stuff like being in the waiting room can be kind of uncomfortable, right? Like, one of the reasons that, you know, we do like waiting room support is because, you know, you're sitting in the waiting room, and people are looking at you weird, because you're a like, dude, and why are you there? Or sometimes clinics will be conscious of that. But, their solution is to like, sweep you into a backroom somewhere. So nobody sees you. And like that could feel like crap too. Yeah. So yeah, those are a few of the challenges that I can think of.
Margaret 13:28 Yeah, I could see that impacting people's decision about clinic versus nonclinic, for example.
Cobalt 13:34 Yeah. And also, you know, if you're, you know, if the place you have to go is like "women's clinic", like it can be really hard to tell if they're gonna be, you know, yeah, kind, anything, giving you good service, give it give you you know, quality medical care. Yeah.
Margaret 13:50 So, let's presume that I don't know anything about how abortions work, which is not totally the case, but I try... whatever. How, you know, I've heard you've talk about abortion pills and herbal abortions so far, like on this, what are the what are the differences between this. I'm under the impression both can be used for both self managed and being taken care of, I don't know the opposite of self managed. You know, what, what are the advantages or disadvantages that people might be looking at?
Aspen 14:24 Yeah, I can start and please fill in any gaps I have Cobalt. So herbal abortions, herbal release. One of the incredible things I think about when I think of herbal abortion is it's an opportunity to connect to connect with your individuals ancestral medicine, like all of our lineages. There have been abortions that have happened within our lineages you know, we think we focus on the birth but you know, it's an opportunity to connect with the plants from your your lineages, connect with your families medicine to like take things slow and learn a form of medicine that can't be taken away by the governmen,t. Can't...there can't be distribution mishaps when you can grow these plants in your garden outside or in a pot even, or even on your windowsill like these plants are in grocery stores. They are literally under our nose are everywhere. And I'm, you know, talking from a place in California where things are growing a lot. So it's also... I'm in a position of privilege to, just how incredible the growing season is out here. But the thing about herbal abortions is that a lot of this medicine has been like scattered, it's been specifically targeted through many systems of harm, through colonization, through the witch trials, through even through like, medical Industrial Complex was like built on the backs of herbalist and medicine, people who knew this knew how to control their family size. And so there's a lot of reclaiming someone's power when they are working with plants and other medicines too. But I'm just talking specifically about this. But because that information has been so scattered and hurt and harmed, like a lot of it has contained, like that lineage of medicine has continued and has been resilient. And there's a lot of information, but a lot has been lost. And so one of the things I think has been lost is that either the information of how to induce an abortion later, later on after you know, six weeks and someone's last menstrual period isn't so accessible. So it's much better and safer. And someone will have better effects if they use plants earlier on, either even before they miss their period, which is just isn't an option for everyone. And so that's definitely a con of like herbal abortion is that people because we're trapped in this, in capitalism, people don't even realize that they missed their period. Because we're not taught how to track our cycles, or how to follow our own rhythm when we're following the rhythm of capitalism. And it can take two, three weeks of an herbal protocol where you're taking herbs all day long, on quite a regiment before the pregnancy actually releases. And so during that time, you're going through quite a phase of uncertainty. Are the herbs going to work? Are they not going to work? And you also have to really keep with it. And so for some people, that's a pro and some people that's a con but it definitely is a much more involved process than some of the other options. And I think that something that can really help for anyone who's releasing a pregnancy with herbs is to prepare for it. Prepare for your abortion a year before. So it means like building relationships with these plants. It's not just picking up the plants that you just met for most people. And so that's the herbal piece. There's also the medication piece, and someone can, depending on where they are, either access medications from a clinic, where they're given mifepristone inside the clinic and then they're given misoprostol to take within 48 hours. The mifepristone ends the pregnancy. It blocks progesterone and the misoprostol causes uterine contractions, which is cool, because that's the same thing that the herbs are doing. So that is an option for some people. And now, you know, and there's been really interesting developments since COVID, that telehealth, and people are able to access these medications by ordering them online. In some states, people can even order these medications, the abortion pills even before they're pregnant, just to have on their shelf. And so when abortion is like induced with medications, it can be more of that something's being done to your body, then your body is like just releasing the pregnancy on its own. So it can be more of a physical experience than the herbs. Do you want to add a little bit about medications before I move to like surgical and those kinds of things.
Cobalt 18:49 I was actually going to ask you to say something about combining herbs and medications.
Aspen 18:54 Yeah, so herbs and medications play really well together. You know, like we mentioned, like I mentioned before, this process of mifepristone, which is blocking progesterone and then misoprostol, which is inducing uterine contractions and stimulating the uterus, thi\s is actually the same template, herbs have been doing the same things that the way we ingest herbs that they induce on to the body. And so in some cases, some people can only access misoprostol because it's more easily accessible. It's cheaper than mifepristone and there is a beautiful legacy of around the world of misoprostol being used on its own. it is highly safe and effective. And so when someone doesn't have access to that first pill that mifepristone, this is where pills...or this is where herbs can come in. Herbs that block progesterone, pair really well at misoprostol, and so there are herbs that can help in combination with misoprostol help ease the process of abortion, but also herbs can come in just to help our nervous system, help calm us down, like I'm just I'm always about talking about chamomile to help you know ease our bodies leading into an abortion, after an abortion, and herbs are also there to help supplement all that blood loss with iron support and nutrition.
Margaret 20:08 Well, I've heard that both medicated and herbal abortions can be fairly intense, like, physically on you, and so the idea of like, working with something to sort of mitigate that, that makes sense to me.
Cobalt 20:20 Yeah, I was also gonna say, nausea can be an issue when dealing with all those uterine cramps to you, which is something where like, yeah, you can take a Dramamine. For that you can also yeah, have some ginger or some other...anything that kind of helps calm that nausea is a good idea. Also to add on to like the history of Miso was basically like, we owe a huge debt to people in Brazil, for miso it was originally an ulcer medication, it still is an ulcer medication, it's prescribed to humans, and also two dogs and horses, possibly other animals as well. And it was available in Brazil with a big warning on it saying that, you know, you shouldn't take it as a pregnant person. And it's known that it could cause interactions. And so people in Brazil started using this. And eventually, providers in Brazil were like, "We're seeing a lot fewer complications from more physical abortion techniques," right, from, you know, people, you know, sticking unsterile instruments in places that they shouldn't go or, you know, having like punctures, because of the instruments being, you know, used or misused, and were like, "Well, this is happening a lot less what's going on?" and you know, sort of like talking to, you know, patients and things. And that is how Miso got figured out. You know, it was really people creatively, you know, off label usage. And, yeah, and that was in like, the, like, late 80s and into the 90s, when that was going on, and then we got Miffy. If you're, if you're a human in the 90s, then, Ru-486. Right, was developed in France in early 90s, as well, and then we didn't get them as available in the US, the FDA didn't approve them. I shouldn't say available in US, but the FDA didn't approve them until 2000. So, yeah, there's gonna be a lot of, you know, Aspen mentioned, telehealth, you know, also allegedly, one could use an online pharmacy to order things they're often called, like a combo pack, where it just comes with like, you know, the Miffy is in like, one, you know, larger circle of the foil pack and then the the Miso pills that you need are in the rest of this, you know, smaller bits there.
Margaret 22:37 So when you say ""allegedly", is that because it's not always legal in all areas, and yet somehow might still be accessible in areas where it's not legal, which obviously no one should ever do.
Margaret 22:45 Yeah and actually, so this is the interesting thing about abortion generally, and, you know, abortion with pills specifically, and even just supporting people with abortions is that basically, there's no specific laws against it. So in a lot of ways, it's totally legal. But also, as we know, basically people can make anything illegal if they try hard enough if they really care. And so people will dig up practicing medicine without a license and abuse of a corpse and all kinds of other stuff that was never meant to criminalize, you know, a pregnancy loss of any kind. And yet, it happens all the time. It especially happens with people who use drugs and come to the hospital having a pregnancy loss. And that is like the most common way for people to get reported and in fact, there were like two cases within the last few years in California where we had like this one jackass prosecutor tried to charge two different women with murder for...
Margaret 23:41 Oh my god.
Cobalt 23:42 Yeah, for having admitted to using meth and then having....and there's no medical connection. Like there's literally like no research that indicates that that's...there's a correlation there, but he managed it. Luckily they've now both had their charges fully dismissed. But you know, it's still lost them years of their lives. So yeah, so yeah, so basically, I'm gonna say "allegedly", and, you know, in my craft and whatever else, so for some things. And Aspen...
Aspen 24:10 I also want to just add "allegedly", misoprostol is also used to stop hemorrhaging inbirth, and so midwives have access to misoprostol, allegedly, so they should have it in stock.
Margaret 24:20 Yeah. For births. Yes,
Aspen 24:23 Yes. Strictly, yes.
Margaret 24:26 Okay.
Cobalt 24:27 Yeah. I mean, it's also the standard protocol, when someone you know, has experienced a pregnancy loss, you know, the loss of a pregnancy that they wanted to keep, and there might still be some tissue around that needs to be expelled. So yeah, it's, it's used for a lot.
Margaret 24:44 What's the effective shelf life of....the prepper and me is coming out whenever like things can be acquired. I'm like, "Acquiring things! How long does it last?"
Cobalt 24:55 Yeah. I forget right now what the shelf life is, I'd have to look it up. I'm also fairly laissez faire, about expiration dates, you know, things like, it's always best to, you know, have the things as fresh as possible. And also, things often continue to work long past, you know what it says on the bottle.
Margaret 25:18 Yeah, I'm under the impression, it's like a, you just start losing some efficacy rather than entering danger. But then the danger might be that you're using something that is less effective than you need it to be is would be my concern. But I also don't know anything about applying or using these things. So I don't know whether you're like, "Oh, it's not working, just take more whether that's like ever the plan." I'm not trying to make y'all give medical advice on this show.
Aspen 25:40 Can't give medical advice. But I do want to say that like the general protocol, if someone does have...if someone is taking medication and like not, all the tissue doesn't actually release just to take another protocol of the medication within the week are within 48 hours. And so if an abortion is incomplete, the risks are, we'll get into the risks a little bit later, but there is like the potential for infection and things like that, even though those those those possibilities are lower than the reality that the body will just continue to release the pregnancy on its own. But it also, it also depends on how far along someone is. And so there's a certain protocol of taking a certain amount up until 12 or 13 weeks. And then after that point, actually, it's better to take less misoprostol to release a pregnancy. So it just depends on how how far along the pregnancy is.
Cobalt 26:34 Yeah, and that's because the the body gets more, I guess sensitized to the miso and more, you know, prone to do contractions as you get later in the pregnancy. And so you actually want less and there is a danger of taking too much in the sense that the contractions can get so strong that that becomes a danger, a uterine rupture. So yeah, like, there is such a thing as taking too much. Don't just ever be like, "Well, I think this is probably less than efficacy, I'll pop a few more," is probably not a good idea.
Aspen 27:09 Yeah. And the same with herbs. That's what I, you know, as an herbalist, I see that a bit too much on the internet, but people being like, here are the 20 herbs that I know that can cause on abortion, and it's like actually it works a lot better if using three or four with intention, that we know what they're doing, than throwing in the kitchen sink, whether it'd be with medication or with herbs.
Margaret 27:32 That makes a lot of sense to me. So okay, we've talked about medicated abortion, herbal abortion, and then what would you call things like D&C [dialation & currettage] ? Is that the medical abortion? Like, what's the, the taxonomy here is not super important. Do you all want to talk about other types of abortions?
Cobalt 27:49 Yeah, I would say procedural abortion. Some people will say surgical, which I find, you know, scary and like, there's no scalpels involved, and it just doesn't feel accurate. Other people will say therapeutic abortion, which also just seems like an odd word choice to me. So...
Margaret 28:03 That makes it sound like there's really nice music playing.
Aspen 28:09 Right, which like I hope?
Margaret 28:09 Yeah, no, I mean, I would want that. I've had some, this is a tangent, but I had some energy work done at one point, and I was like, "Why isn't that dentist like this? This rules. Like, this is so much nicer." Anyway, in terms of the atmosphere, I don't want my dentist putting crystals in my mouth. I want my dentist cutting abscesses out, but but I want but it would be really nice if you know, there....everyone's talking very calmly. And anyway, please continue. I'm sorry.
Cobalt 28:40 Yeah, so that's so yes, I say procedural, you know, this is stuff where like, when we're supporting people who are having, you know, in clinic abortions can become relevant, not something that I would generally encourage folks to do at home, you know, again, unless you're, although, you know, I will say like, I do know, folks who, you know, practice menstrual extraction on each other. And, you know, there are ways to do that, you know, safely but, you know, again, it's one of those things that you don't want to do it like, first time, you know, when it's critical. That's something that if people have a lot of practice in then it can be okay. And it can be a good way for people to get to know their bodies if that's something that they want to do. There's also, just want to plug there's an awesome papaya workshop. So papayas are vaguely uterus shaped. And you know, and they kind of have a wall with some soft stuff in it. Andthey're so I think it was UCSF developed a whole like a program where they like teach med students how to do IUD insertion with papayas and also teach them how to do an aspiration abortion with a manual. So there's two there's two different kinds of things that can be used for an aspiration abortion and one is like, like desperation...
Margaret 29:57 So what is an aspiration abortion?
Cobalt 29:59 Ah-hah, that is basically, that's something that can be done a little later than pills, is sort of the first like least invasive procedural method that can be used where basically they're using a vacuum either an electric vacuum and EVA for electric vacuum aspiration. It's a machine that is providing the suction or manual vacuum aspiration MVA that is using this kind of like, big kind of syringe shaped thing to....yeah, actually, this will not help podcast listeners, but this. [Holds up an MVA] and basically, you know, you pop the base, and then pull this out.
Margaret 30:45 Dear listener, they're holding a giant, weird syringe thing. I actually didn't catch your pronouns at the very beginning. I just use they for you.
Cobalt 30:52 Yeah, they/them is perfect. Yeah. And so when you, you know, so if I had had my hand on the end of this, you know, when it pulled it out, it would have like, stuck to my hand, right? You know, creates that vacuum. And then when you're using this on a person...
Margaret 31:05 There's no needle again?
Cobalt 31:07 There is actually...
Aspen 31:08 It's called a cannula.
Cobalt 31:09 Yes, cannula, which is this sort of straw that goes on the end,
Margaret 31:13 Which I pronounced wrong in my other podcast, and like four people yelled at me.
Cobalt 31:19 Haha, It's medical terms.
Margaret 31:21 Yeah.
Cobalt 31:23 So yeah, but then. So this is what you know, goes through the cervix, this, this is the part that needs to...the cannula is the part that needs to stay sterile, it's going into the cervix. And so that's definitely a place where infection can be introduced and stuff. But assuming you're all in a good clean environment, then this is what's used. So the, you know, the vacuum is working, it's pulling tissue in through the hole at the end of the straw. And then they're, you know, using that against the wall of the uterus and stuff to make sure they're getting out all of the tissue. Yeah, so the the advantage of that the fact that you have this manual aspiration is that it can be used anywhere, whether you have electricity or not, you know, it's something that's used in a lot of clinics all over the world, that don't necessarily have stable power.
Aspen 32:05 Or, you know, if you're outside of a clinic, then it's something that can be used in a living room with like someone who has the experience of it. And that's where you can get your music playing good, happy, you know, however, you can create the scene, however you'd like. And I think that's one of the things about, you know, having an aspiration abortion in a clinic, you have people who are in that medical model, or you could have one at home with someone who has the experience of using it. And you can really set the tone and the setting of who you want to be there. And how you want it to be. You can, you know, in every procedure, there should be the option, whether there is or not, there should be the option to slow down. But when you're in your when you're in your own space, you can really set the terms of slowing down and taking a break and having some tea. So that MVAs can work in or out of a clinic.
Margaret 32:52 When I...I'm really not trying to play like I'm the expert here. I did a...my other podcast, I did an episode about the Jane collective and in Chicago. And in it, I ended up talking about the people who invented the "cannula?" [pronounces carefully testing the pronunciation]
Cobalt 33:09 Yeah exactly.
Margaret 33:10 And then later, menstral extraction, the guy who invented...I don't have anyone's names in front of me, I don't have any notes in front of me...But the women who invented menstrual extraction, and so I'm kind of I'm framing this as a question...Basically, they were able to do it so that wasn't considered medical, and it wasn't considered an abortion, because it was just the like, an extraction of the menstrual products or whatever. And it was like a way to skirt...because it wasn't an abortion. It was just like, "Oops, we're just cleaning out all the menstrual products."
Aspen 33:43 Yeah,
Margaret 33:44 Is that....that seemed really hopeful to me in the era of post Roe v. Wade, that was going around.
Aspen 33:50 Yeah, those people...so there was a Jane collective up in Chicago, but the people who really worked with menstrual extractions lived in California. So in California, it's considered a home remedy. And I think that's the language that they've used. And it was sort of, you know, people can extract their period or their menses, even if they aren't pregnant. And it's actually what some people prefer to do, because they don't want to bleed. They could extract their menses, but it is a bit of like an involved experience. You have to have a cannula inserted into the uterus and have that be extracted, but then you're not bleeding for multiple days, which may be one of the ways to practice before someone's actually pregnant is to extract each other's menstrual cycles. But the thing about it is that, so someone, so by the time....So someone's inserting the cannula in with the MEs (Menstrual extraction). There's a little bit of a smaller syringe, and the person who's having the experience can actually pull the syringe and so it's much more of like I'm doing it to my own body too, which makes it a bit detached from like a providers providing a service who's not actually part of the clinic system.
Margaret 33:51 It's cool. I got really excited when I learned about it and I remain excited about it.
Margaret 35:01 Like in a dettached way.
Cobalt 35:01 Yeah.
Cobalt 35:02 Yeah, I think it's very cool. I appreciate people that are, you know, doing it thoughtfully and safely. And I'm also much more of a proponent for pills, like myself again, because like, I also deal with like, the dysphoria, and I'm kind of like, "I'd rather not deal." And also because they really are, you know, the pills, depending on you know, exactly how far along on your gestational age it's like, up to 97% effective.
Margaret 35:30 Okay.
Cobalt 35:30 And, you know, with with no risks of...very low rate, you know, you're not, you're not inserting anything there. So you're not introducing a possible infection vector that way. There's also no like risk of puncture. Although 1) it's better not to have an IUD in if you're inducing, pretty terrible cramps. But, uh, yeah, so but it's definitely an option for people who you know, don't like have access to pills, don't have you know, access to herbs, or not doing things that you know are the right time for that, it's definitely another option that is available to folks. And that can be done quite safely.
Aspen 36:07 And it's, it's all done on like a shorter timeline, like with with herbs and with....like herbs is one of the longer timelines and with medication, it's within a couple of days window, but someone's still going to be likely bleeding for a couple of weeks after that, even if they pass the tissue, their bodies still healing, and they're likely still bleeding. And with the menstrual extraction, and with the MVAs, you're you're taking out all the contents, and so it's much easier to go right back into getting back into your flow. You're not...there's a shorter healing time, maybe like
Margaret 36:37 Get right back to work?
Aspen 36:39 I was gonna say that. Honestly to me, and that's their priority. They're like, I don't want to be disrupted.
Margaret 36:47 We got to eat, you know?
Cobalt 36:48 Yeah, exactly. I can't afford to miss my job. So yeah.
Margaret 36:54 Yeah. Okay, well, to go back to kind of the doula project itself, I'm kind of curious about how things like this, you said, there's a whole bunch of these around, are they? Is it a network? Are these just completely independent and autonomous groups that use similar names and structures like, like, what's going on with doula projects?
Cobalt 37:16 So the original doula project is in New York, and they even have a book out about kind of their founding and some of the work that they do. The people that initially formed the Bay Area Doula Project, got a lot of their initial materials and like kind of training and inspiration from those folks. And I know a couple people associated with the project in New York, but we've not like strongly connected as any kind of organization. It's really been something, I believe, where people who want to set up a doula project, you know, may inherit some materials and just go with it. And again, do with it, what's possible and appropriate, in whatever location there they are.
Margaret 37:58 How would one go about starting in such a thing?
Cobalt 38:03 That's a very good question. We fell into...So, so history of theory of Bay Area Doula Project is that it's been through, my understanding is that it's been through sort of several incarnations where people have kind of, you know, some group of people have done it until they have gotten burned out or had other projects and then or been priced out of the bay area or whatever. Yeah, and they, you know, leave but have left behind some, you know, group of people who, you know, then try to, like resurrect it in a new like, new and different way that's appropriate for this, like new group who's taking it over. That's certainly what happened with us. So we came into this pre founded, Bay Area Doula Project has been around for in one or one or another form for a bunch of years now. But as far as like, trying to get started, I think it's, you know, find at least a few other folks with, you know, similar care about, you know, abortion and specific and emotional support around medical care, like, and, you know, start figuring out what is needed in your area, you know. One of the things here...so like the New York Doula Project, they do a lot of in clinic work, they have, you know, they train people to be in the clinic, and people work shifts, and they sort of help whoever comes in who, you know, to have somebody, you know, hand to hold and, you know, just someone you know, being there who's not practicing medicine upon them. And whereas here, you know, the local clinics do have, you know, some great people doing counseling and things already that are paid to do that. So it's not something they need volunteers for, you know, but so we focus more on the out of clinic stuff or on the waiting room support, you know, things like that, you know, helping people get from place to place and have...not feel so isolated, or scared while things are happening.
Aspen 40:00 I think that there's something beautiful in that like, we can't just be duplicated everywhere. And I think that the best thing people can do is go to their community and figure out what the needs are. I've seen some doula projects who focus like, mostly on more practical support. So like they're connected more with like the abortion funds in their area. I've seen doula projects do like Plan B drives where they distribute Plan B to a bunch of people. So it can look like you know, being an abortion doula can look so many different ways. And so I really just want to empower people to go to their communities and ask. Figure out what the need is.
Margaret 40:35 You talked about abortion funds, and one of the things that I've been running across in the wake of, you know, this thing that is happening, where Roe v. Wade is no longer the law of the land or whatever. And one of the things that I've been running across as people saying donate to abortion funds, rather than, say, for example, Planned Parenthood. Is that a framework you all believe in? If so, can you can you talk about what abortion funds are? And how people who want to help...how can people best help if they're not starting a doula project? Like with their money?Is it abortion funds? Is it something else? Is it you all?
Cobalt 41:18 It is definitely abortion funds. You know, Planned Parenthood does a lot of good things that they're also already pretty well funded. You know, everybody knows who planned parenthood is. Abortion funds are the people who fill in all of the different gaps, right, they, you know, in a lot of ways, a lot of times they do, you know, work directly with clinics, you know, help support clinics in you know, whatever way, so you're also helping support, possibly a Planned Parenthood or possibly a more independent clinic. And, you know, funds are also going to be helping with the things that make access actually possible. So again, helping with people who need to, you know, get a bus or train or a car, to travel costs or, or plane possibly hours to get to their appointment, helping people figure out childcare, and helping people afford meals while they're doing this traveling, you know, filling in all of those gaps. Not every fund does the practical support part, but a lot do and I think it's, you know, a growing thing. So that's really why I would say and again, not just in, you know, certainly certainly in the States, where, you know, abortion access is most restricted, but really everywhere, everywhere needs them. And also, the funds that are part of the NANF, if, you know, they kind of work together. They're, they're a network for a reason. And so it's been...
Margaret 42:34 What's the NANF?
Cobalt 42:35 Ah, the National Network of Abortion Funds.
Margaret 42:38 Cool. Thanks.
Cobalt 42:38 So jargony, Yeah, yeah. So it's a network for a reason. And when those, you know, if there's a clinic that's, you know, really low on money this month, and has a particular need, you know, the call will go out and it will get covered, you know, by however, we can make it happen. So, yeah, donate to your abortion funds.
Aspen 42:58 I totally agree with that, and that abortion funds are doing a lot of good, I really appreciate they're doing a lot of local work. It's not just this like overarching Planned Parenthood, even though Planned Parenthood, I want to keep I want it to keep on staying or sticking around. But like, I think that people should really be directing their energy elsewhere. But the thing about abortion funds is that their funding clinical abortions, which is just a part, just a sliver of abortions, which we've been mentioning throughout this entire podcast, so find your local abortion doulas who are doing work too and get...you know, we also need to be funded. And that's something that, you know, me personally, I'm trying to figure it out because a lot of the work that...the people who are providing and supporting abortions outside of clinics are supporting people who can't afford, you know, or access clinical abortions, which the abortion funds are filling to some extent. But, I mean, there's so many, like we mentioned before, there's so many reasons why people might not want to go into a clinic, whether it be just not aligned with what their what their what they're wanting, and yeah, abortion providers outside of community abortion providers are doing really great work and we need to be funded to.
Margaret 44:08 Yeah, no, that makes sense.
Cobalt 44:11 I also want to plug If/When/How. They have a repro[ductive] legal helpline, so anyone who has any questions about, you know, legality of something they might be considering, or especially if someone has been criminalized for a pregnancy loss of any kind, those are folks that will jump in and help. They are awesome. They're If/When/How, or they're like Lawyering For Reproductive Justice, I think is the name, is the full name, and they're just fantastic. There's a lot of other great orgs you know, doing work in the space. They're one of them. I also realized we've been using this term reproductive justice and I want to make sure that we call out like the, you know, history and origin of that, which is that in 1994 I think it was a group of black women, you know, really called out that like you choice just doesn't, you know, cover it right, like choice is not enough. And, you know, called out the you know that it's not just the choice to have an abortion, right, it's access to abortion, but it's also the choice to have a child when you want to, and to parent the children that you might already have, you know, in, in safety, and then health. And so reproductive justice is just like a much wider lens, and, you know, more inclusive of all of the, you know, things that come under bodily, bodily autonomy and parenting and yeah, so like, you know, the formula shortage that we've been having is definitely a reproductive justice issue. The fact that WIC doesn't cover diapers, the Women, Infants and Children program that like makes sure that kids have food doesn't cover diapers, and if you don't have diapers, then you often can't drop your kid off for daycare, because they'll require you to give them a certain number of diapers for the day. And so therefore, you can't like go...
Margaret 45:55 Have a job to buy diapers.
Cobalt 45:56 Exactly. You know, that's a reproductive justice issue. The asthma rate for often, you know, Black, or Latin or Native American, you know, places like asthma rates, worries about, you know, if you do have a child, can you safely breastfeed them because of the pollution that you know, is in your area, right, like, all of these things are also like big and important. And that is, you know, once again, black women like leading the way to think about all this stuff more broadly. So, I'm going to call that out.
Margaret 46:33 Yeah. Do you ever have those moments where you just, there's something you already know, but it still hits you as an epiphany, like, whenever I do this kind of....whenever I like, talk to people about this kind of thing. It's I don't know, I just have this moment where you're talking about like, "Oh, in case you're being criminalized for losing a pregnancy..." And I'm like, "What fucking world we live in?" It's like something I've been, like aware of for a very long time, right? Which is like every now and then it like slips through the armor that you build up. And you're like, oh, right, people aregoing to be locked into cages because they lost a pregnancy that they may or may not have wanted to lose.
Aspen 47:11 People already are. People are already incarcerated in the so called United States for miscarriages. And it's just going to increase because really, we are criminalizing bodies that are losing pregnancies, whether it's by an abortion or a miscarriage. And the thing is that they're, they're medically identical. So yeah, it's it's really concerning how many people are going to be harmed in general, but specifically the people who are going to be miscarrying losing pregnancies.
Margaret 47:41 Yeah.
Cobalt 47:41 And I was just gonna say, this is a good chance to circle back to, okay, so like things that can go wrong, especially specifically....
Margaret 47:47 Hurray!
Cobalt 47:48 Specifically about pills, which is, you know, you might be bleeding a lot, the recommended, or the sort of definition is, if you've soaked, you know, all the way through two or more pads an hour for two hours, then, you know, like, go seek help for blood loss. I feel like I would probably go in a little sooner, especially, you know, depending if people were showing other signs of blood loss, like, you know, being pale or like, you know, if their skin like, you know, if you the dehydration test, if you like kind of pinch the skin on your hand, and it stays up, you know, you don't have enough fluid in your body, like, that's another, you know, check, but definitely, if it's more than two pads an hour for two hours. So that should also be a consideration, you know, is like, how close are you to the hospital, you know, when you're sort of figuring these things out there. And then the other big thing is like infection. So you know, if you, in the days after develop a fever, or start having some really bad smelling, or strange looking discharge, then that's probably you need to go to the hospital. But, like, Aspen just mentioned, miscarriages or miscarriages. Medically, there's not a blood test that one could give for what pills a person might have in their system. There's like, no medical reason why one would need to say whether or not this miscarriage was self induced or not.
Cobalt 48:01 There's...like it should not change the treatment plan or the plan of care of a doctor at all. So there's literally no reason for you to self disclose, and certainly no reason for a doctor to or a nurse or anyone to pry. So one thing is a lot of the guidelines for self managed abortion, encourage people to take things by mouth. And that's partly because one could also take it vaginally, but if you swallow it, it's gone. If you spit things out into the trash, or if there's like residue leftover in the vagina, that could be something that can be used to criminalize a person. So that's why it's like kind of the protocol is to let things dissolve in the mouth. And then once they've been in the mouth for the required amount of time, you know, you could swallow them or spit them out. But the the choice, the best choice is generally to swallow them. So yeah, but the most important thing is, yeah, there's no medical reason why you would need to say anything about, like, what started the sequence of events, and just that you're there, you know, you think you might have lost a pregnancy and you're bleeding a lot, or you might have an infection. Yeah.
Margaret 48:01 Okay.
Margaret 49:18 Okay
Aspen 50:26 Yeah.I appreciate you Cobalt naming like those, like those big things like the, like, possible complications, or like bleeding too much, and also infection. But the reality is that the biggest complication and risk of, of abortion is being incarcerated for it and being criminalized for it. So that is honestly like the biggest harm or the biggest, like concern of abortion, to be honest.
Cobalt 50:50 Yeah, it's also important to say this is a lot safer than carrying a pregnancy to term. As far as like likelihood of side effects, likelihood of harm, especially, you know, again, frankly, especially if you're a person of color in America, and especially if you're a Black person in America, you know, the mortality rates are absurd, for people who are getting for black people who are giving birth, so there's multiple, there was multiple points buried in there. One is that it's super safe. And two is that like, we need to do better by Black folks, and they are linked together, but also separate.
Margaret 51:25 The fact that the most dangerous part about seeking an abortion is that someone might try to lock you into a cage and ruin your life for doing it is so just fucking dark. I don't know. Like, again, not in this like surprising way. But every now and then I just have like these moments where I'm like, there's someone right now who's in a cage for like, smoking weed, and the fact that we live in a society that has people in cages period, just like walking around being like, oh, that's the place where everyone's kept in cages as if that's like this, like normal thing. But every now and then it just, yeah, I don't know why it's just every now and then just like hits me like this horrible dark epiphany, that of something I already know. But...Aspen, at the very beginning, you talked about how one of the things that you do is teach people how to track fertility. Is that something that there's like a really short, useful way to talk about to an audience? Or is that? Or maybe like how people can go about finding this out? Or?
Aspen 52:25 Yeah, I mean, so I am a fertility awareness educator. So looking at those terms, fertility awareness, there's a directory via the Read Your Body app. So if you look up, there's like a Read Your Body fertility awareness directory, and there's like, a bunch of fertility awareness educators, so you can really find someone who like who meshes with you and who you're interested in learning from. There's also like, it's possible to also self teach or like, be self taught when it comes to fertility awareness. In my own journey. I was self taught for a while until I just really needed another human to be like, "You're doing it, right." So I also want to validate like, needing that community support and that like, you know, it's it's also okay to, to learn from someone. And I think that...so I'm excited about cycle tracking, not only it for...for me, it feels like a huge resistance against the laws that are being passed that are restricting abortion to a certain certain week, because it's essentially capitalizing off the fact that most people who bleed haven't been taught much about their cycle, they've just been taught that it's like a pain. And that's pretty much it. Which if for some people, it is just a pain, which is okay. But I track both...I take my temperature every morning. Every time every morning, when I wake up, I take my temperature and I write it down. Every day I check for my cervical fluid. Every time I use the bathroom, I look in my underwear and when why when I wipe across my vulva, I look at the toilet paper, and I see cervical fluid. And that is what...in those combination of combination of information. I know when I'm fertile. I know when I'm infertile. And it might be news to someone to learn that. If you have a uterus, you're not fertile every single day of your cycle. That was news to me. I was really raised with like the hyper fertility myth. And so just bursting that bubble in the first place, I think is important. And knowing that it's totally possible to check cervical fluid to take someone's temperature every morning, and to make different decisions to use condoms certain times of the month, to abstain certain times of month, to have different types of sex and intercourse in different types of the month, to avoid pregnancy pretty effectively.
Margaret 54:32 Hell yeah. Alright. Is there last stuff? Is there stuff that I should have asked you but I didn't? Like, I mean, obviously, there's a lot more about all of this. Well, for example, actually, we didn't talk about like specific herbs and I was guessing that that was kind of an intentional thing of like, not trying to just go tell people to drink pennyroyal tea or whatever. I'm using that as a specific example of what you shouldn't go do, to my understanding, but...
Aspen 55:00 Yeah i i Like don't call out certain nerves, because I think that I really want to elevate people building their relationship with herbs and there are so many herbs out there but since you mentioned Pennyroyal and that's a friend of mine like there's a lot of slander on the internet right now against pennyroyal. I just want to push against it for a second because pennyroyal is so great in a tea. There has been harm caused to some body because they've ingested the essential oil. So never ingest the essential oil, but Pennyroyal tea is such a great ally and friend when it comes to releasing pregnancies. But I do want to name a couple resource books, "Natural Liberty" by the Sage Femme Collective is a really great book, that's like a pretty extensive resource book about a lot of different types of self managed abortion. It does use gendered language so just as a content warning. There's like a if you can go through go through your TOR and your VPN, there is like a Rise Up pdf of it online. So it's easy. It's like free online, or you can purchase the book. Holistic Abortions on Instagram is another maker of educational content that I would suggest finding some information from. They have a zine called "Grow Your Abortion", which focuses on like 10 plants. And it teaches you how to gives you information on how to grow these plants, what dosages, how to work with the...how they would work together. Because like I mentioned, at some point in this podcast, it's about choosing three or four plants with like, with reason and skill, rather than just choosing a bunch of plants. And like, you know, there's these resource books, because a lot of this information has been lost to us in our lineages, but I also want to elevate the fact that like, so these stories and medicines might still be within your family line. And I really want to encourage folks to talk to your elders, talk to the people who you can talk to about abortion within your families to learn what are your family's abortion stories? Did your did your abuela did your grandmother drink some tea to release some pregnancies? Because she might have and she might have some stories that she's like, ready to share.
Margaret 56:58 Fuck, yeah. Okay, any last? Any other? Any other thoughts?
Cobalt 57:05 Oh, yeah, you know, I wrote down some things to make sure we covered and the last one I wrote down was that like, LMP is confusing and terrible.
Margaret 57:14 Okay what's LMP?
Cobalt 57:14 So yeah, LMP is your last menstrual period. Right. And so your your gestational age, like the number of weeks pregnant you are is calculated from the first day of your last menstrual period, regardless of whether you know that you only had sex once in the last month. And you know exactly when it was, that's not the day that they will consider you to start having been pregnant. It's just the first day of your last menstrual period. So when people hear like a six week abortion ban, I think most people will kind of assume that it's like six weeks from your first missed period. But it's not. Like it's, you know, it's basically two weeks from your missed period if you have regular periods and happen to have noticed, you know, when it went missing, so yeah, it just I don't like it so much. And it causes Yeah, like it's it muddies the debate more, so I just needed to say that I hate it.
Margaret 58:05 Yeah,
Aspen 58:06 Some of my final thoughts that I want to share is that abortion has been happening as long as people have been giving birth. And like, really, abortion has become medicalized through legislation and the so-called US over the last 150 years and there's so...it's like, there's the right now is like a great opportunity to zoom out and be reminded, like the large expansiveness that is abortion care, it is clinical abortion, but also, it's much more than that. And whether or not this is going to be published before after Roe v. Wade, is overturned, if it's overturned, whatever is that, like, I really want to encourage folks to make a safety plan like, you know, "What would happen if you did if some, if you did get pregnant, or you know, someone in your community did get pregnant? How would you respond?" Because it'll be much more easier on your nervous system in your heart. If you already have that plan in place, already have the ideas and the resources you can reach out to before you need it.
Cobalt 59:03 Very much seconded. Yeah.
Margaret 59:05 Yeah, there's something that you all brought up at the very beginning. I actually wrote it down. I remember which one you said is like, kind of almost being like thankful for this moment that it's in people's minds. I didn't get the impression that you all were like, "Oh, thank god everything's about to get harder," or whatever, but like, but it was still an interesting silver lining that I pulled from what you were saying.
Cobalt 59:23 Yeah, I mean, that is the weird thing about stuff like this right is it gets more attention to something that's already been bad. Yeah, that's what I'll say. Roe has never ever been enough. You know, three years after...two-three years after Roe v. Wade, they passed the Hyde Amendment which makes it so that no federal funding can go towards abortions which means that people who you know rely on Medicare or whatever can't get their their abortions funded that way. That's another reason why the the abortion funds are so important. And yeah, it just means that like, although things are going to get harder for more people, you know people are gonna have to travel further distances and all of that stuff, for you know poor people and young people of color, and people living on reservations and all kinds of stuff. It's just already access already hasn't been there. And so in some ways, this is a huge change, but in some ways, it's just not a change at all. And we need to do better. Like, you know, I met some abortion activists from Mexico City, and they, you know, part of their slogan is that, you know, like, "it needs to be free and on demand." And I was like, we don't even bother trying to ask for it for free in the States like...but we should. Yeah. Everywhere. Free. On demand. Easy to, you know, access all of that. Yeah.
Aspen 1:00:51 Yeah, I really feel like this moment in time, people want to...people's eyes are open. And so that's a lot of my excitement. And I also feel like some shits gonna have to burn down before things get better. And this is something that is needing to burn down, because the clinic system has never served everyone and we need to expand access to abortion in a way that's actually sustainable. That includes ancestral medicine that actually prioritizes the wellness of the person. And I think that what's going to be...what's going to grow out of this, what's going to be born out of this is going to be something amazing and radical, so I'm here for it.
Margaret 1:01:26 Yeah, fuck yeah. All right.
Cobalt 1:01:29 Uplifting ending!
Margaret 1:01:31 Well, how can people find or support either your project or you as individuals, if that is a thing that you desire strangers on the internet to do? Yeah, where where would you like to draw attention?
Cobalt 1:01:48 I prefer to remain a cipher. But we are BayAreaDoulaProject All one word on Instagram, and BADPtweets on Twitter.
Aspen 1:02:02 Yeah, I want to second that. Please come reach out to us at BADP. Send us an email, find a post on on Instagram or on Twitter, come comment if you're if you're interested in like, getting involved or like learning more about what a doula project is, and wanting to support people more around abortion. And if you're looking to provide, you know, funding to this sort of effort to I really would encourage you to reach out because if you have money to share, and you want to support abortion workers who are doing the work on the ground, then we'd be happy to funnel that money too.
Margaret 1:02:38 Fuck yeah, thanks so much for coming on.
Cobalt 1:02:43 Thank you.
Margaret 1:02:48 Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, the first thing you should do is check out the Bay Area Doula Project and give them money. And when you're done giving them money, and maybe you don't have money, I'm not trying to be like "the only way to do anything good in the world is money." That's not...that's completely not true. But it is a thing that you could consider doing. And or you could start your own doula project. Or you could do anything else that you feel drawn to including tell people about this fantastic podcast you listen to called Live Like The World Is Dying. And you can also support this podcast and not just by telling people about it. But by sponsoring Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness on Patreon. Because Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness is a publisher that publishes this podcast. It also publishes another podcast that you might want to check out. It's called Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. And it is a podcast that has different fiction, and essays, and memoir, and role playing game content, and all kinds of stuff, basically, that we publish every month with Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness also gets put up in audio format. And the host of that show, Inmn, then goes and interviews the authors about what it is they've created. It's really cool. And you should check it out. Because I made the theme song. You can hear me play piano on it. In particular, I would like to thank Hoss the dog, Chris, Sam, Nora, Miciahah, Kirk, Natalie, Eleanor, Jennifer, Staro, Chelsey, Dana, David, Nicole, and Mikki for your support and making this podcast possible. I would also like to thank Inmn, the producer. And I would like to thank Bursts, the audio editor, and you can check out Bursts' is podcast The Final Straw, which is also on the Channel Zero network, but not part of Strange In A Tangled Wilderness, because the world is full of all these complicated interacting things and different organizations that do different things made up of different volunteers. Can you tell that I haven't gone outside enough today and I'm rambling at you? Well, I'm gonna go outside now and you should too, or maybe you were outside already. Either way. I will talk to you all soon. And I hope you're doing as well as you can
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Episode summary
Margaret and Casandra talk about the importance of learning mediation skills, what mediation is and what different processes look like.
Guest Info
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Margaret 00:14 Hello, and welcome to Live Like The World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret, Kiljoy, and I use 'she' or 'they' pronouns. And today we're going to talk about something that everyone has requested. Just kidding, no one actually bothers request this because they don't know they need it. That's actually not true. People actually haverequested this. We're gonna be talking about conflict mediation, and we're going to be talking about when conflict mediation isn and isn't the way to handle different types of situations. And when we'll be talking to Cassandra about that. And I'm very excited to hear what they have to say. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show in the network.
Margaret 01:40 Okay, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then I guess kind of your background, both professionally and non professionally with what we're gonna be talking about today with conflict mediation.
Casandra 01:52 Yeah, my name is Cassandra, I use 'they' or 'she' pronouns. I'm a volunteer mediator at a community mediation center. I trained in mediation...What year is it right now? I don't know, eight years ago?
Margaret 02:08 It's 2022, right now,
Casandra 02:09 Nine years ago, something like that. And I also worked at my local mediation center, at the beginning of the pandemic, as program coordinator for one of the counties.
Margaret 02:25 So what is conflict mediation? This is when when you don't like someone, you just respond passive aggressively to them and or cancel them, right?
Casandra 02:36 Yep, and block them on Twitter.
Margaret 02:39 That's important.
Casandra 02:42 Conflict mediation is where a third party is called in to be present during discussion about a conflict. So, in its most basic form, that could mean asking a friend who isn't like a stakeholder in a conflict to come sit in while you talk with someone who you have issues with. Through the mediation center, like on a, on an organizational level, we deal with all different sorts of conflicts. So community conflicts, like neighbors disputing property lines. We also do family mediation, parent/teen, stuff, things like that, we do a certain amount of mediation through the court system. So people in my area can opt to do mediation instead of going to like small claims court, which is pretty cool.
Margaret 03:32 So like if you're mad at your neighbor for hitting your car with their bicycle. I don't know that's not a good example. Instead of suing them, you can, like go hash it out with someone.
Casandra 03:49 Yep. Yeah.
Margaret 03:50 How do you then maximize your personal profit?
Casandra 03:54 Well, that's a good question. I mean, the chance if you go before a judge, there's a chance that they'll say, Nope, you don't get this money. Whereas in mediation, you get to talk to the person and explain to them why you need the money, and they explain to you why they can't pay the money, and then you work out a plan, which usually benefits both people.
Margaret 04:14 Well it just doesn't lead very easily to feeling righteous and better than everyone, though. So it seems like a disadvantage.
Casandra 04:21 Yeah, I mean, I think if you want to feel righteous, you should probably just sue someone and okay, and not worry about mediation. Yeah.
Margaret 04:29 So what were you gonna say before, i said weird sarcastic things?
Casandra 04:32 The center where I work, also has this really cool program, where we do restorative justice processes for youth offenders. So, rather than going through the usual punitive process, some juvenile offenders have the option to do restorative justice instead.
Margaret 04:52 Give me an example of like, not a "John did this," but I like what that might look like?
Casandra 04:59 Yeah, Let me think. I have to be vague. So I'm remembering a case where one teenager punched another teenager, like the, I think they were at the movies or something, this was pre-pandemic, and was charged with assault. And so rather than having to go through a punitive process and have that assault charge on their record, they have the option to do this restorative process instead. So that would look like sitting down with the person who was harmed or with a proxy, we use proxies as well, if the victim doesn't want to be present, and talking about the impact of their actions and then coming up with a plan for making amends, which can be really varied. Like it can be, It can be as simple as like, "I will go to therapy." Or it can be direct remediation, like "I will pay you money or do yard work for you," you know, it, people get really creative. But it's a cool option.
Margaret 06:04 Okay. What is the difference between, outside of a legal or court system, what is the difference between conflict mediation and restorative justice? Like, when is one thing appropriate? And when is the other thing appropriate?
Casandra 06:20 Yeah, I think of mediation as a part, like an aspect of larger alternative justice processes. So it's like a tool you can use in alternative justice processes. But alternative justice processes are intended for instances where harm has been caused. So it's not just a you and me on equal footing having a conflict or disagreement, actual harm has been done. Does that make sense?
Margaret 06:46 Yeah, so like, basically, if I'm trying to...if someone within my same social circle sexually assaulted me, and then I don't want to go and sit down have a like samey samey conversation with them about like, how we all have feelings. Instead, I can....instead restorative justice as the more appropriate thing, then specifically, mediation in that circumstance. Is that what you're saying?
Casandra 07:11 Yeah, or probably transformative justice. But yeah.
Margaret 07:15 What's the difference?
Casandra 07:17 Sure. So.
Margaret 07:19 Sorry.
Casandra 07:20 No, that's fine. Restorative justice was developed, I think in the 70s, I want to say, and that's what the mediation center where I work...that's what we use in conjunction with the court system. And it's dealing more with individuals. So, this individual has harmed that individual, and we're going to figure out how to make amends as best as possible between the two of them. Transformative justice, I think, was developed in the 90s. And it's a more systemic approach. So it's acknowledging that people often cause harm. Because of trauma, because of a lack of resources, you know, it acknowledges that we're all a part of these larger systems of oppression. And so through this transformative process, it seeks to heal both people. Often communities are brought in as part of that as well.
Margaret 08:22 Okay. So like, everyone who's involved with the thing shows up, and has a say in it.
Casandra 08:31 Maybe not for all parts. But, you know, the hope is to bring in as many people as possible, because the idea is that, that creates more sustainable change.
Margaret 08:42 So how does one...How does one go about doing this, right? Like to focus maybe more on mediation than restorative and transformative justice? We obviously within our communities come up with like ad hoc means quite often, and we just sort of try weird things all the time. And sometimes those things don't work very well, like passive aggressive notes. Or, you know,
Casandra 09:11 Wash your dishes!
Margaret 09:13 Yeah, totally. Yeah. You know, like, how does one do this? Like, if I'm starting to feel like I'm either having conflict with someone that I'm in community with, or I'm watching a conflict develop within the community that I'm part of? What are some steps to notice that that's happening and work to resolve it?
Casandra 09:35 I feel like that shouldn't be a big question, but because we're so conditioned to be conflict avoidant, not just on an interpersonal level, but like, society, you know, we live in a....part of liberal democracy, part of representative democracy is like creating these abstractions when it comes to conflict and creating institutions to deal with it, instead of even acknowledging that the conflict exists. Now I have to remember what your question was.
Margaret 10:09 So what the fuck do you do when you're like, really pissed off that your roommate won't do the dishes, and is like, snubbing you at parties and this pretending like you don't exist. But they think that it's happening because you borrowed their guitar without asking.
Casandra 10:31 I mean, mediation doesn't have to be a big formal thing, right? Like, you can just ask a mutually trusted friend to be...Well, first of all, you can just talk to them. So, so mediation is just a tool in our toolkit. But there's something about having a third person present, who isn't like a stakeholder in a conflict. And even if they don't say anything, just having a third person present and witnessing is sometimes really helpful. One of my favorite mediators at the center rarely says anything. He just has this presence, he'll sit there with his hands in bold and just like exists, and somehow people are like, Oh, well, shit. Now I have to...
Margaret 11:13 Just like quietly judging you?
Casandra 11:16 No, just like, holding this like, calm space. He's, yeah.
Margaret 11:23 Quietly judging you! Because like, well not in a bad way, right? Because like, yeah, if I'm like, if I feel really, like, justified and you know, like, bah, blah, blah. But then as soon as I realized I'm saying it to a third party, I'm like, "Oh, this might not make sense." Like when I say to a third party? Yeah, yeah, no, okay. Okay.
Casandra 11:41 Yeah. And anyone can do that. Right? Anyone who isn't a stakeholder and who's comfortable being around, conflict can be in that role. Obviously, there's more that you can do to like develop those skills. That's why trainings and mediation centers exist.
Margaret 12:00 Most of the time, I've tried to do this. It's gone very badly when I've been asked to mediate things, but I think that's usually because the people...because I did everything, right, and the people involved id everything wrong. But, it seems like people got really defensive and kind of entrenched in their positions. And it stayed a really like, "No, I'm right. Fuck, you," "No, I'm right. Fuck you," kind of thing? How do you break that up?
Casandra 12:31 Yeah. Have you heard the analogy of like, if you draw a heart on a piece of paper, and place it between two people, and they're like standing on opposite sides of it, and ask them to describe what they see, they're going to describe totally different things, but they're looking at the same image, you know?
Margaret 12:50 Oh, because it's like, not symmetrically positioned between them.
Casandra 12:53 Yes.
Margaret 12:54 Okay.
Casandra 12:55 I think that...Well, first of all, I think it's okay for people to just not agree, tight? Part of getting over our conflict avoidance, as a society, I think is acknowledging that, like, we're not going to agree and that's not only okay, but positive. Like we need to have people around us who we disagree with, in order to like, examine our own opinions and things like that. But, the second thing is that conflict isn't bad or scary. Like, I feel like part of people's fear around not agreeing with someone is that the assumption is that if you and I don't agree, then we can't have any sort of relationship or function. Like we're so conflict avoidant, that if we don't agree, we just simply can't function.
Margaret 13:46 Oh, yeah, totally. And then we just like ice each other out completely.
Casandra 13:49 Yeah, which is really common and unfortunate. And obviously, like, there, I'm gonna disagree with a Nazi, right?
Margaret 13:58 Right.
Casandra 13:59 We're not just going to agree to disagree, but I'm gonna ice them out. But, that doesn't have to be the case for everything.
Margaret 14:06 No, that makes sense. I kind of...I kind of do this thing where I have, like, one set of values that I hold myself to, and one set of values that I hold other people to, you know, so like, I'm trying to come up with a good value to to use this for. I don't want to get...Okay, so like, but if there's if there's something that I believe I shouldn't do, it doesn't necessarily mean...even though kind of in the abstract, I wish no one would do it. Like okay, like lying, right? Like I have a very, very strong sense of never lying to anyone that you're not trying to control or hurt, right? And I, I will, like live or die by this as a person, but I recognize that not everyone I surround myself with holds the same value, and it like rubs me the wrong way. But, I can agree to disagree about it because I recognize that this is a value that is not shared by everyone. Um, and I'm on my own, like, wing nut paladin and kick or whatever. Andk but then yeah, like, there's other values like, you know, "don't be like", I don't know, "don't be fucking, like racist or whatever, like, don't be a fucking Nazi," that or...is that kind of what you're kind of what you're saying, like learning to have different standards for yourself versus other people or I guess that's not just the only way to...how do you how do you personally decide which things you are allowed to disagree about and which things you're not allowed to disagree about?
Casandra 15:39 Oh, I don't feel like I'm in total agreement with anyone, like literally anyone. And that's great. Yes. The world would be really fucking boring. If I was. There's this, there's this essay called "In Defense of...." shoot, am I going to forget it while we're recording? No. In Defense of Arguing.
Margaret 16:05 Okay.
Casandra 16:05 Like an anarchist theory of arguing or something like that. And the author talks about these like larger things, like how social democracy...how the how liberal democracy as a larger structure encourages us to to not be in direct communication, and to avoid conflict.
Margaret 16:24 Well, okay, so, how does this I guess my question is like, okay, we know that Nazis are on the far end of one...you know, like, God gave us Nazis, so that we have enemies. You know, there's this, like pure representation of bad right, that most of society used to agree on and it's no longer the case, but like, we have this pure representation of bad over on one end, and then you have like, you know, "John Barrows, my guitar without asking sometimes, and thinks it's okay, that he does." Or someone is has a different interpretation of some political analysis or, you know, like, like, shit that I might feel really directly personally strongly about, but is at the end of the day, not a big deal. You know, so that...Is the answer, "Everyone's just gonna draw those lines in different places?" That's my instinct is that everyone's going to draw the lines of like, well, I can be in community with someone who I don't know, like, sometimes as a like grouchy libertarian on some issues. Or some other people will be like, "Oh, I can be in community with Marxists," or something, right? And then other people will be like, "No, we've seen where Marxism leads to. So fuck them." So people are going to draw these lines in different places. Is it just, is it just alright, that people are going to draw those lines in different places.
Casandra 17:53 Yes. And that, thank you. Yeah. So it's alright, that people are going to draw this lines in different places. And that reminds me why I brought up that article, which is what...not only is it okay to draw those lines, but having actual dialogue about where we draw those lines and why, and how they might be different from where other people draw those lines is ultimately productive.
Margaret 18:15 That makes sense.
Casandra 18:18 Because that's how we, you know, interrogate our own boundaries, right? And our own ideology.
Margaret 18:26 It was interesting. I was like, this thing is gonna be very, like nuts and bolts episode Are we like talk about like, really specific practices, but...
Casandra 18:32 I mean, we can but...
Margaret 18:33 No, we should do it too, but I, what I really like thinking about this stuff around...Yeah, the how we build diverse communities and how we avoid, you know, I would argue that echo chambers are one of the things that destroys communities of resistance more effectively than even sometimes outside pressure. You know, as soon as everyone starts...go ahead.
Casandra 18:55 Oh, I was just gonna say that like moral homogeneity is also what leads to these like, fundamentalist movements that were opposing, right. .
Margaret 19:04 Yeah. And then yet, like, people were like, well, you know, you can't let 'something something' in because it's a slippery slope. And I'm, I'm on this like, crusade against slippery slope as a useful phrase, because, well, it's a useful phrase, be like, "Hey, that's a slippery slope," should mean like, so be careful when you walk it not like boarded up, none shall enter like, you know, maybe like put handholds along the way to like, help people like navigate complicated ethical terrain.
Casandra 19:31 Cautionary signage.
Margaret 19:32 Yeah, exactly. Like instead of being like, well, everyone who likes the following philosopher who died 100 years before Nazis came about is a Nazi, even though like, you know, both Nazis like this guy and some Nazis hated this guy and some non Nazis hated this guy. I'm actually not trying to defend Evola right now at this time. That's not the path I'm trying to go down right now. Maybe Nietzsche is how I'm trying to...But I don't even want to defend Nietzsche... anyway.
Casandra 20:04 They can both go to the sun as far as I'm concerned.
Margaret 20:08 But like, but you know, where we draw these lines might be different about like, okay, so like, fuck this guy, but is it fuck everyone who is inspired by this guy? And is it fuck everyone who's inspired by people who were inspired by this guy, you know? Because, like how many how many layers removed from something do we still hate it? You know?
Casandra 20:33 Yeah. Yeah, totally.
Margaret 20:37 So nuts and bolts of conflict resolution?
Casandra Johns 20:42 Can I first...
Margaret 20:43 Yeah, please do.
Casandra 20:44 Before we move into specifics. I think the like overarching stuff is really important because every so often I see these pushes in radical spaces to develop more skills around things like transformative justice, but no one talks about conflict resolution, no one talks about mediation, which is wild to me. Like, the reason I trained as a mediator is because I saw it is like one of the building blocks of these larger structures. But it's just not something that seems to be valued or discussed on the left for the most part. And that's baffling to me, considering how much divisiveness we face and how we all seem to agree it's a huge issue. But haven't put in the work to develop the skills to like, deal with it.
Margaret 21:35 So what we're doing is we're jumping straight to the like justice framework, which is, you know, far more, it's not inherently punitive, but like, it's more antagonistic and implies far more heavily that there's like harm that's been done. And it's one directional, right like, which is often the case, I'm not trying to claim that this is not the case quite often, but but we're jumping to that rather than a lot of things that could be headed off way before they get really intense through mediation, or even things that are really intense are still a mediation type thing rather than a transformative justice type thing is that right?
Casandra 22:12 So yeah, even just as abolitionists, if we're talking about divesting from the current system as a whole, people don't just go to court because they've been abused, you know, they go because they're in conflict with someone and want an authority figure to decide who's right and who's wrong. And so that's something we have to replace as well.
Margaret 22:36 Yeah, I know that makes sense.
Casandra 22:36 And ideally without the authority figure. But even like, it doesn't have to be some intense formal, heavy thing. You know, like I've mediated for friends, and it's just been like a very casual conversation. I think that normalizing it, talking about it at all would be great as the left, but then normalizing these practices,
Margaret 23:02 Just normalizing going to your roommate, your housemate, the third person and being like, "Hey, like, we keep arguing about the fact that I want to leave my socks in the living room."
Casandra 23:16 Will you just be present while we chat through this?
Margaret 23:18 Yeah,
Casandra 23:19 Like yeah why not? You know.
Margaret 23:22 Okay. I'm coming up with silly examples, but I'm like, mostly because I'm just not feeling very imaginative off the top my head, but
Casandra 23:28 I've had housemates, I know how it goes.
Margaret 23:31 It starts feeling really personal at a certain point.
Casandra 23:33 It does!
Margaret 23:35 Yeah, and sometimes it's really easy to be really, really angry at this, like, heavier stuff than the larger framework of what's happening.
Casandra 23:46 Yeah, totally. I have a child, I understand that. I'm taking your lack of folding your laundry personally at a certain point.
Margaret 24:01 That's because you're the authority. No, I don't want to get into that that's a different conversation.
Casandra 24:07 Abolish bedtimes?
Margaret 24:12 Yeah, okay. So like, well, actually, I mean, I mean, this would be an appropriate, like mediation would be an appropriate thing to do with, like, between you and between a parent and a child at various points also, or is that?
Casandra 24:26 Yeah, yeah, one of my favorite types of mediation that I do through the center's parent/teen. There are different types of mediation. And the type I was trained in was..is somewhere between what's called facilitative and transformative mediation. So, in some scenarios, we're just hashing through a specific problem. And the people aren't going to have a relationship after that. And then in other scenarios, we're actually trying to shift the relationship to make it healthier, which I prefer. And
Margaret 24:58 Yeah.
Casandra 24:59 The Family mediations tend to go in that direction. But there's a power dynamic, right. And so part of the mediators job is to level out power imbalances, which can be really tricky. But also really cool to watch.
Margaret 25:17 Well that's cool, because I think that critiques of power are necessary, but there's always going to be different types of relationships between people with power imbalances, right? Even when, like two adults are dating, you know, there's going to be power imbalances based on like, different levels of societal privilege, or, you know, heterosexual relationships have a massive power imbalance to start with that they have to deal with...either overcome or like learn to address. So it makes sense to, like...
Casandra 25:46 I think personal history and like communication style cnn create that
Margaret 25:52 In terms of like, if someone has a more aggressive communication style, and another person has like a style that is triggered badly by that style of communication, is that kind of what you're getting at?
Casandra 26:03 Yeah, things like that.
Margaret 26:05 Okay. I remember thinking about how this has to, like, sort of be taught and developed, I remember being at a workshop once at a conference about this issue....Pardon me, as I pull a tick off of my head and cut it with a knife
Margaret 26:23 But ticks aside, you know, the way the way that this needs to be taught was really laid clear to me, I was at this, this workshop, and we're going through and, you know, the person teaching the workshop was teaching about conflict resolution and things and, and a friend of mine, who was a, I believe, a kindergarten teacher, I'm not entirely certain worked with very young kids. And my friend was explaining it was like, "oh, when two kids get in a conflict, like they both want a toy, you know, it's recess, and only one of them gets the toy. And they, they both want it, they get really excited, and they run up and they're like, "Teacher, Teacher, we have a conflict, we have to resolve it."" You know, and it was this really amazing heartwarming story. And, unfortunately, most of the people at the workshop, because they didn't have enough context for what was being told in the story were like, Ah, yes, this is the wisdom of children. You know, we should all just learn from children. And then my friend came up to me later, and was like, that was really frustrating. The kids do that, because we taught them how to,
Margaret 26:23 Oh God!
Casandra 26:29 Yeah, yeah.
Margaret 26:33 And it... And there was a certain amount of like wisdom of children, and that they hadn't specifically developed other bad habits, like, you know, I have a lot of bad conflict habits that I don't love about myself that are ingrained to me for various purposes. But, it seems like we still have to, like...go ahead.
Casandra 27:47 Even that approach, that they were excited to talk about it...like they knew where to turn. They knew where their resources were, and they were excited to resolve it. Like imagine feeling that way about disagreeing with someone. One of my teachers says that every mediation is a success, meaning that regardless of whether or not people come to an agreement, the fact that they've shown up to talk about it shifts something in their relationship. And that is in and of itself a success.
Margaret 28:16 That makes a lot of sense. And then also might lead to kind of my next question, which is like, when? Well, as I had a phrased was like "when conflict resolution fails," you know, but it seems like sometimes you would go and be like,"Oh, we've heard each other out. And we fucking hate each other. or we're fucking mad about this thing."
Casandra 28:39 We've heard...like feeling hurt, being able to say your piece to someone, and knowing that you're in this contained space where they have heard you. And then still not agreeing with them is still a form of resolution, you know, like, we're not going to agree on this. But, I've had the opportunity to, like, say my part. And that's something.
Margaret 29:03 Yeah. No, that makes sense. It's like, asking nicely before you ask meanly, in terms of like, on like, a social change level, right? You know, we're like, "Hey, give us our rights." And they're like, "No, we don't give you your rights." and we're like, "Well, we asked, now, we're not asking anymore." And that. And that's sort of assuming one person is like, right in this mediation whereas theoretically, probably both parties think they're right, but I don't know. Yeah, I feel like sometimes I've been asked to kind of mediate informally, which i don't have nearly the background you do, but I like rambling. And I've kind of ended up leaving with this result with like the, you know, no one's really asking my opinion, necessarily, but I'm like, oh, probably the answer is that they hate each other. That the answer is that like both people feel totally justified and from their own perspective, they are totally justified. And probably this won't be settled and they should stay away from each other.I don't know.
Casandra 29:59 Which like, at least they knew that afterward, you know?
Margaret 30:02 Yeah.
Casandra 30:03 Yeah. I mean, I've had many...or I've been present for.... I've been present for many more mediations than I've actually actively mediated just because of the job I had. Which is awesome, because I get to see the way other people mediate and learn from that. But I've witnessed really shocking mediations where it seems like the people walk in hating each other, and they don't come to an agreement. They're not going to agree. But they... the sense in the room at the end is peace. You know, they're like, "Ah, well, we both know, we're not going to agree and why. And at least we know that."
Margaret 30:43 Yeah. Yeah.
Casandra 30:45 Which is real. Right. Yeah.
Margaret 30:49 No, I like that. Because it's like, it's not trying to...
Casandra 30:53 Kumbaya?
Casandra 30:53 I've already said this but, yeah, they're not trying to solve everything, you know, like some things just don't get solved. But, but at least everyone knows what's happening.
Casandra 31:04 And there's that detachment to, you know, the idea that one person's right and the other is wrong is something that if you're mediating, you can't, that can't be in your brain. It's not your job to decide who's right and who's wrong or to even have an opinion about it. And there's something freeing there, because suddenly, you can see why both people feel they're right, like where the rightness is in, in both stories, which is pretty interesting.
Margaret 31:30 Well does that end up leaving the mediator like, hated by both sides often? Because like, this person, this staying neutral when clearly I'm right?
Casandra 31:31 No, and maybe this is important to talk about, but like part of, especially in a formal setting, when I open to mediation, some of the things I explain include, like confidentiality and mandatory reporting stuff, but I also explain that my role is to be neutral. I'm not going to take aside, I'm not going to make decisions or offer opinions or advice, like, all I'm there to do is to help them communicate productively. Yeah.
Margaret 32:07 And I actually, I would guess, that the average, not...no training mediator of the things that you just said that they might fail at, would be the not offering advice part, right? So it's not like showing up to the council of elders or whatever the people who are going to, like, offer their wisdom down onto you. Instead, it's really just about helping the people involved, develop their own communication as relates to it. So it's not a...you're a no way like a judge or an arbiter. Is that kind of what you're saying?
Casandra 32:39 No, there are. So there are different types of mediation. Arbitration is involved in certain types, but not the type I do and not the type that I think is useful in like, community and interpersonal settings. Yeah, and it is hard sometimes to not give advice.
Margaret 32:59 Yeah, I know when I'm like, I think people might have failed that. I'm like, No, that's probably what I failed at.When I have attempted to mediate things, because I'm like, " Ah! I now, see, because I have all of the information. Now I will clearly explain because I'm so wise." And then I'm like, "Why isn't this working?"
Casandra 33:13 Okay, no, it's it's really hard. And it takes a lot of practice. Honestly, the...when in mediations where I take a more active role, because in some mediations, I don't have to people are...people don't really need much guidance sometimes. But, when they do, I find myself almost like teaching healthy communication skills through example. And there's really not any time for me to think about offering my opinion or something like that. I'm like, so busy trying to help them untangle the communication.
Margaret 33:50 Okay. Which seems like, in a similar way that like facilitating consensus in a large group is absolutely not about your own opinions about what should happen. And basically by being a facilitator in a large group you like, kind of like, get your own voice removed from that particular decision.
Casandra 34:12 Yeah, I see it as a spectrum of skill sets, the like facilitator, the mediator and then whatever we want to call these transformative or alternative justice.
Margaret 34:21 Judge Dredd? No, we have no movie about that. Okay. Okay, so which brings me to this idea like, right, you're like, oh, you know, you're gonna come in assuming neutrality as mediator, not that both sides are equal, but assuming your own neutrality to help foster communication. What about when it is...like, this sounds like it would be really unhealthy if I was forced to do it with an abuser, right? And so I'm under the impression that you would not use this in situations of abuse is that?
Casandra 34:59 Mediation?
Margaret 35:00 Yeah.
Casandra 35:01 Yeah, yeah. And, and maybe before that, it's expected that if a mediator doesn't feel that they can maintain appropriate neutrality, they just don't mediate the case, they pass it to someone else. So that's, you know, people are gonna have strong opinions, and feel triggered by different scenarios. And that's real and fine.
Margaret 35:27 Oh, I meant I meant as a participant, I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't want to be called...am I wrong in thinking that it would, that I wouldn't want to be called into mediation with my abuser, you know?
Casandra 35:42 Well, I mean, the easy answer is no. But both restorative and transformative justice, have mediation type processes, that can be a part of these larger processes.
Margaret 35:59 Okay.
Casandra 36:00 So, and maybe we don't call it mediation, maybe we call it like, a facilitated dialogue or something?
Margaret 36:06 I don't know.
Casandra 36:09 I think it's, it's a tool, right? Like mediation is a tool. And you have to do it differently when there's a vast power imbalance like that, or when harm has been caused. But..
Margaret 36:25 So I guess...how do you judge...How do you judge when to use mediation versus transformative justice? Like, how do you decide when a given thing is the right means?
Casandra 36:42 That's a really big question. Because ideally I don't, right? So I can tell you at the Center, how it works, which is that if the courts contact us and are like, "We have decided that someone harmed another person, therefore this is going to be restorative process." Like that's how we know.
Margaret 37:00 Right.
Casandra 37:01 But in this larger project on the Left of developing these these alternative systems, that's something we have to figure out. And I don't think it can happen without intact communities. Because, I don't think it would be an individual process.
Margaret 37:21 Yeah, okay.
Casandra 37:23 But as a mediator, if I'm in a session...maybe this is a much simpler way to answer it, If I'm in a session, and someone says something about, like, causing physical harm to the other person. That's a like, "Oh, we got to stop this and shift" moment.
Margaret 37:39 Okay. That makes sense. That is kind of one of my questions is like, do you ever like, yeah, escalate up the like, response ladder? It's a terrible way of phrasing it. But yeah,
Casandra 37:53 There are plenty of cases that get called...so that so the Community Mediation Center, it's all free, right? Like anyone can call in with anything and be like, can you help me with this, which means there are plenty of cases that we can't mediate, that we say, "Oh, that's, that's not an appropriate topic for us. But here's some other resources."
Margaret 38:11 And that would be usually cases of like, clear harm having been caused?
Casandra 38:15 Yep. Or like certain types of conflicts, just because of the way the legal system is set up. Like, custody disagreements, we don't do it our center, it's just bureaucratic bullshit. But I think it would be similar in a community setting where different mediators are comfortable mediating different types of cases. And if something comes up within a mediation that either signals that harm has happened or that isn't suitable for that particular mediator, you just stop and find someone else to help.
Margaret 38:49 Okay.
Casandra 38:50 Like, we all have different skill sets, you know,
Margaret 38:52 And what you said about it requires an intact communities to be able to, to effectively do this kind of thing, as a, you know, the more transformative justice element of it. It's kind of interesting to me, right? Because then that's something that... it seems to me that intact communities relies on conflict, resolution, and conflict resolution, and mediation and all of the things we've been talking about. So it's sort of a...
Casandra 39:19 Chicken, egg?
Margaret 39:20 Oh, I was thinking almost of a like, like, building a building, you know, like, a pyramid, a traditional representation of hierarchy. But, in this case, representing bottom up, you know, where like, the strong base of a community is not it's like justice system, but instead it's like, conflict resolution and the ability for diverse opinions to coexist. And there's the general ability for people to coexist, because people implies diverse opinions unless you live in some hellscape. Ideological bubble.
Casandra 39:54 Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Margaret 39:57 Now, it's interesting because then this answers the question of how do you supplant the justice system? which is an important question.
Casandra 40:05 You support people in developing skill sets like this, which I was thinking about it before this interview and remembering when I was...so I don't get paid to mediate as part of the neutrality, nut the initial 40 hour training, I took cost money, because it's a non profit, very poor mediation center. And you're one of the people who who you gave me like 50 bucks or something.
Margaret 40:32 No.
Casandra 40:32 And you said, you messaged me, you said something to the effect of like, "Oh, I'm giving you money. This is like a skill that I think we need in more radical spaces." And I was like, "Fuck, yeah, this Margaret person seems really cool."
Margaret 40:44 Cool. Yeah, I don't remember that. But, I believe you. I don't remember a lot of things, dear, listener. That's one of my skill sets is that I don't remember things.
Casandra 40:59 That can be a blessing, I suppose.
Margaret 41:02 Sometimes, it's like I, you know, it helps me really live in the present, you know, because it's all just fog in front of me and behind me. I have impressions, impressions of what's ahead and impressions of what came before. No, that's great. I mean, how common are these types of organizations? Like, you have one in your town? Is it? Do I have one in my...well, I don't have one in my town. There's 500 people who live in my town.
Casandra 41:28 I'm only really familiar with my state. So, I'm in Oregon. And we have a network of Community Dialogue Resource Centers [CDRC]. I'm so bad at acronyms. There's a whole network all over Oregon. And each center works, to some extent with the current justice system, depending on where they are in the resources, but they also offer free community mediation, and it's really easy in my state to get training. Like at my center, you can, if you speak Spanish, and are willing to volunteer, as a bilingual mediator, you can get training for free, like it's a pretty accessible thing, but I'm not sure about other states, like the agreement we have with the Justice System to do these restorative processes for youth offenders is pretty unique, apparently, like it's a it's a test...test run, that's been going on for years. But I don't think that's necessarily common.
Margaret 42:31 I mean, it's so basically, a way that some elements of the Justice System are trying to move towards an actual reasonable model away from the incarceration and punitive model is that right?
Casandra 42:43 Yep. Yeah. And it's been because people at these Community Dialogue and Resource Centers have pushed really hard for the state to implement these programs here. But it's also...I mean, mediate.com has really good classes, you can just take on mediation. You can get, I have a whole...I'm looking at it, I realized this is not a video recording, but I have a whole bookshelf full of books on mediation, AK has presses put out...you know, there, there are lots of resources on mediation that are accessible. If people want to explore the skill set.
Margaret 43:22 Would you be able to provide a few of those links for our show notes?
Casandra 43:27 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Margaret 43:29 Thanks. So okay, my last question, I want to I want to take with take you on this journey, where we imagine you know, a society without the state, whether because we win or because we lose, depending on how you know, like, like,
Casandra 43:47 How you want to look at it?
Margaret 43:48 Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously, like, this is a, it's not gonna be like some wingnut thing for people, for me to suddenly be like, "What if there was an apocalypse?!" right? Y'all are listening to Live Like The World Is Dying. I kind of want to ask you about the role of, and I know a lot of it's implied, but we talked about, but like, the role of conflict resolution in terms of community preparedness, if you have like thoughts around that? [That] didn't really end with a question mark.
Casandra 44:18 That's fine. That's hard for me to answer because it feels like a given. Like, community preparedness means that we need functional, intact communities, which means we have to have systems that could look all sorts of different ways, right? But we have...
Margaret 44:34 Like passive aggressive notes?
Casandra 44:36 That's one way. But we have to have systems for working through conflict or else we do not have functional communities. And maybe different communities choose to do that in different ways. This is just like one particular tool or skill set that's very adaptable.
Margaret 44:54 So if the state is abstraction of power, right, away from ourselves, basically the existence of the state, the long standing existence, the state is probably a huge part of what leads us to this conflict avoidance that you talk about, like causes these problems, we're so used to relying on the state to handle our conflicts for us by calling armed people who like putting people in cages. And so basically...do you ever have those moments where like, you've been an anarchist for a long time, and then you still end up with these, like, obvious epiphanies that like, seem really obvious when you say them out loud, but still feel like epiphanies? That's what I'm having right now about this, because I'm like, "Oh, this is everything. This is the foundation," which is also what you just said, I'm saying this back to you.
Casandra 45:39 That's why it's so baffling to me that I've searched for years for collectives, groups, any, any individuals, anyone offering these skills in radical spaces, and it's so hard to find. And that's wild to me. It's so wild. And that doesn't, people aren't doing it.
Margaret 46:00 Right.
Casandra 46:01 But it just doesn't seem to be of high value.
Margaret 46:04 I wonder if it's like, because people...because I have seen a lot of groups, and I'm glad there are groups that focus on transformative justice, right, but that's the top of this pyramid of needs...my hierarchy of needs that I've created because I love hierarchy.
Casandra 46:19 Such a good anarchist.
Margaret 46:21 I know. I wonder if it's kind of similar to how like, it's a lot easier to find like armed anarchist organizations that will teach you how to shoot guns and like harder to find ones that'll teach you how to like immediate conflict resolve, like someone angrily comes into your...you know, I and often I'm...the individuals do this, right? Like, there was a time. I don't know if this person listens to this podcast, but a friend of mine was at some anarchist screening at some info shop and some angry guy comes in and starts yelling this and that about I think trans people. And my friend who's trans was just like, "Hey, man, you want to go outside and have a cigarette with me?" And just like, went outside and talked to the guy. And he calmed down and left, and like, and my friend carries, right. But like, it's so much easier to find information about the nuclear option the the, you know, the escalated version than it is to find resources about the "Hey, man wanna step outside with me and have a conversation."
Casandra 47:26 Yeah, those soft skills are really devalued because of the way our society...
Margaret 47:32 What?! What if there was like a word to describe type of...We should call it patriarchy?
Casandra 47:38 I mean, who did people used to go to? Right? Was it like, grandma? Or like, gr... you know, the people, we devalue? e?
Margaret 47:53 Yeah.
Margaret 47:55 Well, I, you know, it's hard. I don't know where to go from, okay like, now we understand the entire basis of an anarchist society, without the state, basically means that we have to learn how to stop putting this not on other people, because obviously, we need other people, we need society to help us do this, but stop putting it on this, like, legalized abstraction that's off in the distance.
Casandra 47:55 Yeah.
Casandra 48:23 So there, I mean, there are interpersonal skills, we all need to develop right around communication? But if we're talking about people actually filling these roles that we need, we have to actually figure out how to support people in developing those skills and like value their skill set.
Margaret 48:40 Yeah. So how do we how do we do that?
Casandra 48:44 Well, you did it for me, I was like, Hey, Internet, I need money for this training. And you were like, "Here's 50 bucks. This is important." I was like, "Thanks!"
Margaret 48:58 Best part is that was probably a couple of years ago when I had substantially less ...and like I've, since I think people who listen to this know that I've since like, started a nonprofit job and like, have more money than I used to.
Casandra 49:09 Oh, this was like 2016.
Margaret 49:11 Yeah, okay. Yeah. Okay. But okay, so like, so people can go and get trainings and people can bring this kind of information to their communities, both by doing it, but also by maybe like spreading the skills that people could be setting up like informal collectives or formal collectives are something to kind of like, work on fostering these types of skills like what else can we do?
Casandra 49:38 Just talking about it more. I mean, I remember who was I...Oh, I guess I can't talk about this on the internet. I was doing seasonal labor that grants one a lot of spare time to talk and the people I was doing this....
Margaret 49:53 Blueberry harvest.
Casandra 49:55 Yes, blueberry harvest. The people that I was doing the seasonal labor with were like, "Hey, what if we listen to Rosenberg's lectures on non violent communication and practice, because we got time to kill." And we were like, "Alright," so we all... I mean, and there's a lot to say about NVC and its flaws, but we agreed to do this as a group and she sat around and practiced arguing using NVC until we got comfortable like, I, it's hard to, it's hard to, like, write us a prescription for people to normalize something like this, right? But the, the solution is that we have to normalize it somehow..
Margaret 50:35 No, that makes sense. Do you have any any final thoughts on conflict resolution or things that we didn't talk about that we should have talked about?
Casandra 50:46 Um, it's really important, we won't function as a society without it whether it's mediation or some some similar skill. I don't know, Google "mediation centers" where you are. Chances are there there's one somewhere in your state, or wherever you're listening from.
Margaret 51:08 Yeah, I think we sometimes try to reinvent the wheel all the time, within radical subcultures. I can't speak to other ones besides the anarchists ones, because it's the one I participate in the most. But, we I think sometimes we like only look to existing anarchists projects as like, the realm of what's possible. And that seems nonsensical.
Casandra 51:29 Yeah, actually, that reminds me...so that the center where I work is not politically affiliated, right. I'm like the youngest person there. It's mostly a bunch of retired folks of various political leanings, which we don't talk about. And there's something to be said, for working in spaces like that, and learning these skills in spaces like that, because we don't live in an anarchist society right now. Which means that we need to be able to navigate conflict with people who aren't anarchists. And so if two people are in conflict, and they aren't anarchists, and I approach them and say, "Hey, I'm an anarchist mediator," then suddenly I'm not neutral or like a useful resource, right?
Margaret 52:16 Right.
Casandra 52:17 So it's not that I think we shouldn't have anarchists mediation collectives. I'm just saying that. I don't think people should shy away from these a-political resources, because they really valuable still.
Margaret 52:31 There's this thing I learned yesterday while doing research for my other podcast that you can check out, it's called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff that comes out every Monday and Wednesday. Okay, and um...
52:41 I know what you're going to say, and yes.
Margaret 52:43 Yeah, well, okay. So like, I learned about this thing where, you know, I have infinite respect for the Jane Collective, right, the people who in the late 60s, early 70s, in Chicago were in this collective that ended up including more than 100 different people; women working as Abortionists illegally before Roe v. Wade. And for some reason that's on a lot of people's minds right now. But then I discovered looking back that in the 1920s and early 30s in Germany...Cassandra's already heard this...there was all of these non politically affiliated organizations of illegal birth control advocates and Abortionists all over Germany. There's more than 200 of these groups, and they were non politically aligned. But it was almost all syndicalists, anarchist syndicalists coming from a specific union, the acronym of which I forget off the top of my head. FAUD actually, I now remember it. And it's like the Free Workers Union of Germany or something. And even though they did a lot of organizing and propaganda as anarchists in the rest of their lives, the abortion clinics, were not an anarchist project, because that wasn't the point of it. And they weren't there to recruit. And they weren't...they were just there because people needed to have access to birth control and abortions. And I could imagine mediation....you know, if I was forming an anarchist mediation collective, if it was like, "We are the anarchists mediation collective," it would maybe be for the anarchists, but if it was like, "We are anarchists doing this mediation collective and we're willing to tell you, we're anarchists, but it is not about anarchism." I don't know is that?
Casandra 54:23 Yeah, totally. I mean, I remember during my first training, going up to one of the directors and asking, I don't remember what question I asked, but it was something about like, "What we're talking about sounds like prison abolition," you know, and like, there's a particular mediation center in my area that is politically affiliated, and I was asking him if I should try volunteering with that center or with one of the non affiliated centers, and he said, "Definitely one of the non affiliated centers because the whole point of this if we're actually abolishing the prison industrial complex is to get everyone to divest from it, which means everyone needs access, which means we don't want to turn them off because we say we're liberals or anarchists or whatever."
Margaret 55:17 Yeah.
Casandra 55:18 I say liberal because he was probably a liberal, but surely, yeah.
Margaret 55:23 Yeah. No, that that makes a lot of sense to me. It's interesting challenges a lot of like, the presuppositions I have about like when it isn't, isn't useful to identify projects politically. But, I think that makes a really strong case. Because, the point has never been, from my point of view to create little weird pure bubbles, cause, as we talked about creating weird pure bubbles is just....they're just going to destroy themselves, much like bubbles, when you blow bubbles, they don't last.
Casandra 55:54 Well and even like if you create this weird pure bubble, what if someone..what if you're in conflict with someone outside that bubble? Is that person going to trust a mediator who is strictly inside that bubble?
Margaret 56:08 No, then we'll just go break their windows, no matter what happened. Even if our friends are the one at fault.
Casandra 56:15 You know, if I get in an argument with my Catholic, Republican, anti-semitic neighbor across the street, even if I might prefer an anarchist mediator, that's not something he's going to agree to, therefore, the mediation won't happen, and therefore it's not productive.
Margaret 56:33 Right. Yeah. And, and even then, like, if you have a mediator who specifically there to be on your side, you don't have a mediator, you have an advocate, I guess.
Casandra 56:42 Which is important. Advocates are really important. But that's different. Different skill set.
Margaret 56:50 Yeah. No, totally. I mean, and then you get into the like, since you can't enter someone into transformative justice, if they don't want to, and if they're not part of a community, you know, sometimes like, I remember there was an instance where to abstract this as far as I possibly can with the story is still making sense, where an anarchist went on a really bad date with a guy who wasn't an anarchist, and then, like 30, people in black bloc, showed up outside his house with megaphones, and scared the everLiving shit out of him. And I think he was a little bit more careful from then on. But...
Casandra 57:28 Different techniques for different scenarios, right?
Margaret 57:31 Exactly. Exactly. Like, not everything should resort to violence or the threat of violence, but also, not everything...I think that is...I think that's one of the things that turns people off from a lot of mediation is that I think that people see it applied at times when sometimes like,"No, maybe just like direct conflict is the actual answer to certain types of problems," you know, but not that not that many of them.
Casandra 57:56 Well in mediation when it's done well, I see the same argument around nonviolent communication, which I think Rosenberg was brilliant, I think that...or is? he like...
Margaret 58:07 I don't know.
Casandra 58:08 Anyway, I don't know, I think the way it's applied often is horrible. But, I see this a similar argument around mediation and NVC and where those tools can be utilized to like tone police or silence people, etc. But mediation, one of the foundations of mediation is that it's a consensual process. Which means that if someone's in a mediation, and is like, "Oh, this doesn't feel good to me anymore. This is like some boundaries been crossed, or I'm not comfortable with the way I'm being asked to communicate," or whatever. They just stop the process. That's it.
Margaret 58:50 Yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah, I wish I could have done that with like...I have such negative connotations for NVC, because I feel like the times it just gets use...it's, it's just been like weaponized against me by people who are like, making me cry and then asking why I'm communicating so meanly while I'm crying because of the things that they're saying to me or whatever, you know?
Casandra 59:10 Same, same. When I when I actually read Rosenberg, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's not what he was describing.
Margaret 59:20 Yeah.
Casandra 59:23 Yes, yeah.
Margaret 59:24 And the spirit of the law, the spirit of the idea often gets stripped away and left with the letter of it.
Casandra 59:31 I've also had so many jobs where I've had so many bosses who were like, hippies using NVC to just like gaslight the shit out of you, you know? Like, "Yeah, I hear you feel this way. But I'm still your boss and will fire you." You know?
Margaret 59:52 Yeah. All right. Well, I think we've covered every single thing about mediation and...
Casandra 1:00:01 Ever. Yep. And even can go and mediate now I'm sure.
Margaret 1:00:04 Yeah, totally. Just make sure to stick your own opinions in. Anyone is free to leave at any point all they...they will just be excised from the community. And, passive aggression is the logical response to everything. What else, did we cover everything?
Casandra 1:00:20 Gossip with your friends about everything you hear in a mediation so they can cancel each other.
Margaret 1:00:24 Oh, yep, definitely. And it's really good to not only block people on social media, but then yell at everyone else to block the person on social media. Getting anything? I sarcastically make fun of things that people do in order to defend themselves from really bad things that happen. I understand why people do these things sometimes. It just gets out of hand.
Casandra 1:00:49 Different different tools for different scenarios.
Margaret 1:00:51 Yeah, totally. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Is there anything you want to shout out or plug or draw people's attention towards here at the end of the episode?
Casandra 1:01:05 Um, maybe this...I don't know publishing project called Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness.
Margaret 1:01:12 Oh, are you part of a publishing project?
Casandra 1:01:13 Have you heard of that?
Margaret 1:01:15 Is it Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness at Tangledwilderness.org? The publishing collective that you and I are both part of?
Casandra 1:01:24 Yeah, yeah, we could call that out.
Margaret 1:01:27 Yeah, if...this podcast is published by Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness, and we also publish a monthly zine. We're publishing a bunch of books this year. And we're really just...it's a project that's been around in one incarnation or another for about 20 years. But we're like really, kind of kick starting it. No pun intended with the company this year and trying to give it a good push and we have a bunch of stuff coming out.
Casandra 1:01:54 If you like podcasts, now, there's an audio version of each zine each month.
Margaret 1:01:58 Oh, yeah. What's it called?
Casandra 1:02:01 Oh, shit, isn't it's just called Strangers [In a Tangled Wilderness]? This is our job.
Margaret 1:02:10 We're very professional. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on.
Casandra 1:02:18 Thank you.
Margaret 1:02:19 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, you should learn how to mediate or don't learn how to mediate and just walk like a wrecking ball through communities and tell everyone what you think. I guess I've already made enough sarcastic jokes this episode. Mediation is really cool. And you should look into it. You can also support this podcast. The main way you can do that is by telling people about it. You can tell people about it on the internet, or in person. Those are the only two spaces that exist I think. But either way you'd be helping us out. You can also support us directly by supporting us on Patreon. Our Patreon is patreon.com/strangersInatangledwilderness, and depending we put up content every month, we have now two podcasts, this one and the podcast Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. We publish a lot of fiction, we will be publishing some poetry's, and role playing game content, also some essays, memoir, history, you name it. And in particular, I'd like to thank Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsey, Staro, Jennifer, Elena, Natalie, Kirk, Micaiah, Nora, Sam, Chris, and Hoss the dog. You all are amazing and make all this possible. Strangers...well, this podcast used to be just me. But now it's going to be coming out more regularly, thanks to all the hard work of all the people who work behind the scenes. So thank you for supporting them and thank you people who are behind the scenes for doing that also Anyway, I hope you're doing as well as you can with everything that's happening and I will be back soo
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Episode summary
Guest info and links
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at Tangled Wilderness You can support the show on Patreon.
Referenced Texts:
> Fitzpatrick's Dermatology, 9e > Taylor and Kelly's Dermatology for Skin of Color, 2e > Sanford Guide To Anti-Microbials > UpToDate: > UpToDate – Evidence-based Clinical Decision Support | Wolters Kluwer > Where there is no Doctor:Books and Resources - Hesperian Health GuidesHesperian Health Guides > CDC > American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons >
Max on Taking Care of Medical Needs
Margaret 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like The Wold Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host Margaret killjoy. I use she or they pronouns. And this week I'm talking to another medical practitioner. I'm talking to a nurse practitioner named Max, who is going to talk about how to access medical care when medical care doesn't want to give you access to medical care. And we'll be talking about the different ways that people source medications, and we'll be talking about the different diagnostic tools and kind of talk about what you can do to learn how to be your own doctor. Yeah, I hope you enjoy it. This podcast as a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. Ba-da-da-dah-dah-da.
Channel Zero Jingle
Margaret 02:18 Okay, so if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then I guess a little bit of your background as relates to the kind of stuff we're going to be talking about today.
Max 02:27 Sure, my name is Max, I use he/him pronouns. I'm a medical provider, technically, I'm a nurse practitioner with a degree in family health care. I've been working in health care for about 15 years on the, on the East Coast, first doing primary care and working with LGBTQ+ folks, and now mostly doing HIV care in an infectious diseases environment.
Margaret 02:56 Okay, so the reason I wanted to have you on the show is I wanted to talk about, I guess you could say like DIY allopathic health care, or maybe rather like accessing allopathic medical care without access to the allopathic medical system. And, I was wondering if you could kind of give a brief introduction to that, and also explain what allopathy is, for anyone who's listening who's not familiar with that term?
Max 03:21 Sure. Allopathic is the word I think I'm going to use to describe the medical world I work in, I think about it, like how people talk about Western medicine. But I feel like there are so many different contributions to what we think of as Western medicine, from all over the world historically, and currently that it seems kind of like a dumb term. And I sort of reached out to some friends of mine who are in other kinds of health care, outside of this sort of what we think of as like this health care model and was like, "What's the best terminology?" and they're like, "Oh, "allopathic", that's what you should use," you know, and so I think, "all right, that's what I'm going to use for this." And for me, I think a lot about expertise, right? Like someone could learn to work on a bicycle outside of ever having to learn necessarily in a shop or in a school. And they could learn to work on their bicycle super super well, and they could learn to start working on other people's bicycles. And they could go on the internet and they could diagnose problems with bicycles and they could you know, become the person who lives next door who's really really good at fixing everybody's bicycles. And ultimately with experience that person can be an expert in bicycles right? That's that's something we allow people and there's something about allopathic medicine that just doesn't allow for that expertise outside of really rigid model, outside of schooling outside...it it police's its borders. So like, if you want to go and look something up about your own health care on the internet, the things that you find are are terrible, even the things that are supposed to be reliable, like something like Medscape or something like that, you know, it's like every, "Oh, you have a sore throat," you look up sore throat, and it gives you every possible thing that could ever possibly have ever caused a sore throat, including some kind of cancer, right
Margaret 05:16 Yeah like if you look up, yeah.
Max 05:17 Yeah. And if you...but if you look up how to fix a flat, there's not disclaimers about "Oh, you might cut off your tongue while fixing a flat, or run yourself over, or wear a helmet." You know, it's this...it's like, matter of fact, you're allowed to access the information. And I think that there's...it's a big problem when it comes to health care. And...
Margaret 05:29 Well everyone has bicycles, but only some people have bodies.
Max 05:42 No, no one has bodies. No one...
Margaret 05:44 Yeah. But everyone has a bicycle. So it makes sense.
Max 05:47 Everyone has a bicycle. Yeah.
Margaret 05:49 Yeah. Sorry, I cut you off. Please continue.
Max 05:51 No, it's fine. Makes total sense. I, I, I also think too, about a lot of the, you know, I think one of the things I think about in your show is that idea of like, you know, the prepper, and the fallout shelter, or like the little green anarchists like how that's not necessarily like a sustainable model in the, in the tradition, like, because we need each other, right. And I think one of the things that we need about each other is that we need all of each other. And I think this idea of being able to just go and live on the mountaintop and survive on your own is deeply ablest and assumes a lot about bodies and what bodies need and what people need to keep their bodies healthy.
Margaret 06:29 Yeah, and it doesn't take into account that like even able-bodied people aren't always perpetually able-bodied, you know, like, speaking as someone who currently lives alone on a mountaintop...you know, I think about it a lot, right? Like, I'm like, if I fall on the ice, my dog isn't going for help. You know, and like, I could probably only do what I do with access to a cell phone. You know, like, realistically, I mean, sure people successfully live alone for long periods of time, without access to any of that, but people also unsuccessfully live alone without access to other people, too. So I agree with you. I am....Yeah, we do need each other even even, even when you choose to be mostly isolated, which actually come any kind of crisis. I'm not making this about me, I just got really self conscious thinking about the mountain top thing. You know, come any kind of crisis, I immediately don't want to be alone anymore. Like, be...living alone only make sense in the context of the entire, like, social infrastructure that we have set up, you know?
Max 07:34 Oh, for sure. Oh, for sure. And it's like, as soon as you get a little bit hurt, and you're laying on the ground, and you're like, "Why did I do that thing that I just did that got me a little bit hurt?" you're like, "Will I be hurt forever. Will anybody findfind my corpse.
Margaret 07:51 Okay, so, so and then. So, you're someone who does have access to a lot of the, you know, traditional allopathic medical world, right. And and what you're saying is that it's something that people can become more competent as individuals, whether they're, like specializing, or whether they're just like Jack-of-all-trades-ing their, you know, their health care. What does that...what does that look like? What are good places to start, either in the current context, or in a, you know, a crisis context in which we might be detached from social infrastructure? Like, what what should people learn?
Max 08:28 I'm definitely not in the working in any kind of realm of right now, like, emergency, right? So this definitely isn't the like, 'how to, you know, stop somebody from bleeding and excessively' or...
Margaret 08:41 We have that episode, actually, so.
Max 08:43 Exactly, yeah. No, I've listened to it. And it was great. Um, but it's sort of more like, how do we access these things, so that so that people can become experts outside of a traditional model, right? And so I think about things like, like, sort of big three big things as like reliable sources, right? Where can you look up information and actually get information without being told that you're gonna, that you have cancer when you just have a sore throat, right. And, and then you have access to diagnostic tools, and things that help make diagnostics, and things that help sort of lay it out. And then because that's something that you...we use all the time. And then the final thing I think about is, and also in in that realm of tools, is medications, right? Like how do we get medicine? You know, like this, like medicine in pill form, medicine in injectable form, like how do we get those things outside of a doctor model? And then the final thing is just like, what makes someone an expert is experience. But so the big things I'm going to talk about, like are like what I'd like to talk about, I guess is sources, and tools. Tools, and in the sense of tools I think, you know, diagnostics, manuals and things like that, but diagnostic tools and, and medicines. Okay, so
Margaret 10:09 This is exciting, I want to know these things, and then I'm going to ask you about fish antibiotics afterwards.
Max 10:13 And then in the very most fundamental level, I think that everyone in the whole world who...should have a little index card that they keep on their person that says, you know, their name and emergency contact, what they're allergic to, if they have any medical conditions, if they take any medications, you know. It...or make, you know, or make that if you live with someone who's older, if you live with someone who's house bound, if you live with someone who's particularly vulnerable, help them do that, make them for that for them, and just have that on hand. Because that just simplifies every process.
Margaret 10:50 I, I really liked that idea. And then like maybe people who have access to whoever in your neighborhood has a lamination machine, you know, make laminated cards for everyone. No, that makes sense. It's one of the questions I get the most, you know, because the traditional, as you kind of mentioned, the traditional prepper space is very ableist, and very focused on people who are not marginalized by society. And, and so a lot of people are like, well, you know, "I need a thyroid pill every day, or I'll die," or, you know, or "I don't want to go off antidepressants, I'd rather die," or, you know, whatever these things are. And I don't usually have good solid answers. So that was actually why when you reached out, I was so excited to talk to you. So I guess, do you want to start with sources? What are good sources, obviously, WebMD and Wikipedia, but...
Max 11:41 I have a ton as they do about ways of sort of amassing medication, so we'll get to that.
Margaret 11:46 Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah.
Max 11:47 So, sources was like the first thing. If you can get health insurance right now. And I mean that in like...there are sometimes ways to get it. Like if you can access a lower income clinic, or you know, someone who's a social worker, or does case management, they can help you often get, like state assistance health insurance. And like if you're super sick, and you have a complex issue that would might involve...like, if you have a broken bone, or you worried that you might have legit pneumonia, you can absolutely always give fake information at an emergency room. Just be savvy about it...
Margaret 12:24 Right, and obviously only do this....
Max 12:25 And if you have to get hospitalised...
Margaret 12:27 Oh no, obviously, we're talking about fiction in this particular context, as we would never advocate for you to break the law, but yeah.
Max 12:31 Yeah, absolutely fiction. Yeah, absolutely fiction and in...
Margaret 12:33 In a post apocalyptic society that looks exactly like our current society. This is what you could tell.
Max 12:37 Yeah, that's what we're, that's what we're talking about. And the only way to talk, you know, and in said society too, if you end up in a in a hospitalized situation, and you're what they consider to be indigent. They know they can't get blood from a stone. So they'll often sort of retroactively sign people up for medical coverage to cover that. This is all of course, assuming that someone is documented so I don't want to, I don't want to assume that. So that's on the baseline. But, so things that you could do diagnostic wise, right, we can learn and people can learn how to do physical exams. But I'm a big fan of, of, of some sources that people can access, there's this book called "Where There Is No Doctor", and everyone and their mother should ownthis book. You can get free PDFs of it, and tons and tons of languages, tons and tons and tons and tons of languages. And it is an incredibly useful thing. People should just get it for each other for like birthday presents, you know, and it pretty much shows you how to like diagnose and treat a wide variety of illnesses, even with explicit medication instruction. And it's just, it's just a really, really, really, really useful tool. There's also this thing, this online thing that most healthcare people have access to called "Up To Date." And if you know anyone in healthcare, and you know, in an in an in an alternate reality, where people can share things like you know, logins and things like that, you know, someone who might be willing to share that, you can use Up To Date to diagnose and treat everything. And what it is, is it's, it's, it's staffed by medical people who create, you know, pages about different illnesses, about different things that you might encounter, and gives you all the most quote unquote, "up to date" well referenced literature about whatever it is, you know, and they kind of grade like, "Okay, we give this a Grade A, we give this a Grade B" in terms of like, okay, this is a good intervention or not. And you it's, it's, I look at it all day long, and I've been doing healthcare for a long time. Another possible thing that one could do if one was in like a collective of people was you could all go in on it have an Up To Date.
Margaret 15:06 How much does it cost? Or do you need to provide like medical license? Or?
Max 15:09 I've not had to, to sign up for it? I mean, and I think it's, I think it's very worth it. But I think it's also like one of those kinds of things like, you know, a lot of subscription services where somebody's got login. And there's no way to sort of misuse it, you know.
Margaret 15:29 it just, it drives me crazy how like, this exists, and that we can't access it. Like, I mean, obviously, some people can. And that's, that's wonderful. And I'm sure there's reasons or whatever, but it's just, it's very frustrating the idea that, like, we're all stuck with WebMD, you know, whereas like, actual doctors are able to like...it's not that they just magically know, all this information, you know, I mean, I've been going to a friend of mine for years as like my primary medical provider, basically. As soon as he started going to med school, you know, he just started answering everyone's medical questions for the community that he was in. And, you know, yeah, he spends all of his day like reading and stuff like that, and keeping up to date...it is a very clever name...about all this stuff. And it's amazing how much it changes. I don't know. I don't know, I sorry, I just got really frustrated, think about how that that exists, and I can't immediately access it, and I'm stuck, like, using things telling me I'll die of cancer.
Max 16:30 And it's, it's...that's kind of one of the things I mean, like what else? What else? Where else? Is it so difficult maybe to to access, actual legitimate, you know, resources, if you have a friend, like who's in health care, and they're associated with a university or like a major hospital system, there are also sometimes these biomedical libraries online? Well, of course, there are there are biomedical libraries online, sorry. And, you know, you can look up to the very most current research on things papers wise, you know, and that's a fantastic, fantastic resource. If you know anybody with a login, who's...or is...who is a medical student, or even just a student period, most of them have an online acc... online access to really, really good current research. And ways of guiding care. And so that's another great tool. So you can actually be doing, you know, very, very current, you know, well documented smart health care for people, because they're these things exist. These these documents, these research papers, exist, we just, it's the access, right? It's, it's the access like 100%. Let's see....
Margaret 17:56 I mean, it's, it's ivory tower shit, it's like, it's the same as like, whenever I'm trying to research history. There's all kinds of papers written by historians, and they're all locked up behind these academic paywalls. And I basically have to like bug my friends in the academy being like, "Hey, can you pull this paper?" Or like, write the author's directly and be like, "Hey, you're the only person who's written about the blue spectacles worn by the nihilists in 1860s. Russia, can you tell me why they were blue? Can you just give me the paper?" You know, and I don't know. Sorry, as an aside, it just irritates me. I don't like this ivory tower thing.
Max 18:28 It's ridiculous. It's so ridiculous. And you know, but it really, I think, probably a lot of people are only probably a couple of degrees, like, away from someone who might have one of these log-ons...logins. So I think we should just pressure the hell out of our friends and colleagues, and make sure that they you know, distribute...
Margaret 18:48 Yeah.
Max 18:49 equitably, equitably. The...one of the things I really use a lot is like dermatology guides. So if you have a bunch of friends and you want to go in on a little like Biomedical Library, you know, you know if you know someone who ever went to nursing school or anything like that, ask them if they have, you know, things like anatomy books and things like that. But if you can get Derm books, they're great. There's one called "Fitzpatrick's Dermatology". And it's just like the tome, and has, it has tons of color pictures, if you get an outdated one, just know that some of the recommendations in terms of things like antibiotics might be outdated, but...but what the rash is, and what it what it is, you know, is not...it hasn't changed. That book, though, has...centers I think white skin considerably. There's a book called "Taylor And Kelly's Dermatology For Skin Of Color" that's much much better in terms of, obviously, skin of color. It's very, very good book as well. The problem with both of these books is that they're not cheap. So it's totally worth finding old copies. But then again, just remembering that, you know, the "how to treat things" might have changed.
Margaret 20:11 Okay, so the diagnostics are good, but the treatment...
Max 20:15 Yeah, but the "what to do" has changed.
Margaret 20:17 But once you diagnose it, then you can reference Up To Date or whatever to figure out a better....
Max 20:23 Absolutely. And just in terms of rashes, you know, rashes kind of can all look like each other, too. So that's that problem with rashes.
Margaret 20:30 I mean, to be honest, like to just admit to everyone the main thing I've been going to medical care provider for many years, I, you know, i was a squatter, and I live in a van, I live in a cabin was was like, "Hey, what's this rash?"
Max 20:43 What's this rash!
Margaret 20:44 And usually the answer is shower more, and...
Max 20:48 Dirt rash.
Margaret 20:50 Yeah, and like, I think, ended up having to put anti-dandruff shampoo on various parts of my body at various points, and like leave it there for 10 minutes. Anyway, now that you all know more about me, then you need to...dermatology that that makes sense.
Max 21:09 I love getting to tell patients to shower less that sometimes happens with eczema,
Margaret 21:13 Oh, interesting. I haven't had that problem. I'm looking forward to having that problem.
Max 21:24 So there's a thing called the "Sanford Guide To Anti-Microbials". They're little bitty books, if you can get a very, very up to date one, or like, like, current one. Sorry. That's a really useful thing. They're teeny. The CDC website is really, really useful when it comes to all manner of things like travel exposures, bacterial and viral illnesses, their STD stuff is great, their PrEP stuff, which is like a pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV, their PrEP guidelines are great and super, super accessible. And that's just free and available, and you just look it up. But just instead of looking at the...look at the "For Providers", you know, always just click on "For Providers." And then I really like the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeon website when it comes to like certain exercises for bones and joints. And then let's see, a lot of schools and universities will just have like"best practice guidelines, which are just the best ways to...like algorithms for diagnosing things. And then there's some, like online videos, there's this place I used to work....They... I used to refer a lot of my patients at this one practice to this place called Excel PT, Physical Therapy, and I love them because they have tons and tons and tons of free physical therapy videos on their website that are really really good. Like they're legitimate physical therapy exercises that people can go through and be put through. And I just really liked them because I feel like, I don't know it's not just a printout. It's...they're actually putting someone's body through the motions. They have them right up there and there's not like 50,000 disclaimers, like you're gonna...I don't know, I really I think they're super, super valuable. And I use them a lot with patients of mine who are uninsured who can't go to physical therapy. So, that's some of my...those are like my manuals, I love manuals anyways, in all manner of things.
Margaret 23:37 Yeah, that's like the...sometimes people come over my house are sort of disappointed because I'm a fiction writer, and most of my shelves are just like...if I see a manual for how to do something at a used bookstore, I'll buy it.
Max 23:47 Oh my gosh, totally. Every time.
Margaret 23:51 I really don't see the world where I'm trapping small game. I just don't see it happening. I've been vegan for 20 some years, but...
Max 23:59 I got this really good. It's like a guide. It's exactly that. I have to remember the name. I'll have to tell you later. We can cut this out of there.
Margaret 24:07 Naw, we should leave that part in.
Max 24:10 It's like a hunter-trapper manual. It's so good.
Margaret 24:14 Good. Will we be able to put in the show notes all of the... wil you be able to send me the list and I could put this in top of the show note, so you don't have to dig through the trans, transcription to find these again. Anyone who's listening they'll be in the top of the show notes.
Max 24:27 Absolutely. I will send you all of my, all of my bits and bobs. And then, I guess after after that comes to me like, diagnostic tools in terms of like physical things in like, you know everybody if you you know [have a] blood pressure cuff, pulse oximeter and stethoscope. Right. But you can use...if you get a microscope and you have slides...like a decent student microscope, you can actually diagnose a fair number of things. You know, if you can, you can learn how to Gram stain so you can figure out, you know a lot about bacteria.
Margaret 25:08 What kind of stuff can you successfully diagnose yourself with this kind of thing.
Max 25:12 Like with a microscope, for instance?
Margaret 25:14 Yeah.
Margaret 25:16 You can diagnose like a yeast infection or a fungal infection. If you have a microscope and something called potassium hydroxide, you can like...Trichomoniasis is like an STD. You can absolutely see Tric, like swim on a microscope slide. Um, you can, you know, if you look at a slide and there's like loss of white blood cells, and then also like little 'cock-eyes' , sometimes you can diagnose certain kinds of STDs. And then yeah, with a microscope slide and some some pH paper, you can diagnose bacterial vaginosis, yeast infections and Trichomoniasis for sure. For sure.
Margaret 26:08 That's cool.
Max 26:09 And then, yeah, it's really cool actually. It's fantastic. And it's old school and, you know, people miss things. And sometimes things don't look like how they should but there's tons of information about that online
Margaret 26:22 There's a question and probably, you probably can't,but a friend of mine in med school saw his own chromosomes. And I assume that's more than a microscope.
Max 26:33 Yeah, no. But, you know, a student microscope is going to be kind of more like bigger, bigger cells, things swimming across, you know, little fungal things that are growing. That kind of stuff.
Margaret 26:46 Okay.
Max 26:48 And then if you can get access to urine dipsticks, so which you can actually buy, I think just, I mean, I even I think I looked them up on Amazon, which I shouldn't have. But I did, just to see how easy they were to get, because there are in medical offices. They just have to be kept like in the little...they have to be kept in their little container that they're in because they have to be kept dark. But, those can be used to diagnose, you know, a urinary tract infection. And if there's sort of three things, or if there's little two major things going on on them, you know, if you see something like an increase in the white blood cells that are on the little strip, and you see something called leuk leukocyte, esterase, or leuk esterase, or nitrites on there, those things pretty much are indicative of of a UTI. So if someone has recurrent UTIs, they can actually like pee on a strip and be like, you know, this is this is legit, this just this isn't just me feeling like dehydrated or having coffee, too much coffee bladder or something like that. So it's kind of really useful. Also, if someone just has a ton of glucose on there, that you know, that's like a diabetes diagnosis. So that can be really useful. Having a glucometer is really useful, which tests their blood sugar levels because it can test to see if someone, you know if someone in somebody's community is diabetic, and they get too low or too high, or just in general, if you have someone that's not faring super hot, you can check their their blood glucose levels. The problem with glucometers is they're maddeningly proprietary. So you get them and like there's strips and there's the little finger stick things and they all go with the one has the ones and so it's really obnoxious because it's not like you can super easy cobble together a little glucometer setup.
Margaret 28:44 That's basically to rip off diabetic people.
Max 28:47 Oh, completely. It's just all...it's the dum dum dum dum, dum dum. You know, pregnancy tests. There's home HIV tests. Now we've got COVID test. Apparently, mine's coming from the government. I just finished and I just got it back a negative rapid covid just like two seconds before this. I was feeling kind of rundown. Yeah, I was feeling kind of rundown. So I was like, I should do this before I see my kiddo tomorrow. Yeah. And then now more and more, you can just order lab work for yourself. And I think it's really useful to know what you're going into before doing something like that. And all these things I'm talking about, you know, it should be for really big like, "I think I might have an STD," you know, or like, I think, you know, there's something, something isn't right with this very specific thing. But a lot of these sort of like LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics and things you can actually just go on and order your own tests. It's not cheap, but...
Margaret 29:52 I went and got a bunch from Let's Get Checked. And I'm a little bit squeamish around blood and it was like, "Oh, it's a finger prick and I can handle a finger prick." What they don't tell you is that it's a finger prick and then milk the blood out of your finger.
Max 30:05 Oh, I hate that, the word milking.
Margaret 30:08 Yeah, and I literally couldn't do it. I like, tried. And then I was like making someone help me. And then they were like getting really stressed out because I was kind of freaking out of them. And I couldn't do it. So I have like, a fair amount of expensive tests sitting and waiting for me to figure out how to, and then, you know, I like I talked to them, and they're like, "Oh, you just got to make sure you take a shower first, and that you're all warmed up so that you can like..." and I'm like, "I will not milk blood from my finger." So I have...my squeamishness prevents me from accessing certain amongst these tests.
Max 30:48 Well, some of them, you can order yourself and actually just bring to the lab. And they'll actually do a blood draw for you. So I learned that from...
Margaret 30:57 Okay, okay.
Max 30:58 Yeah. But they're not always, you know, I think the cost is always kind of an issue at the end of the day with some of these things.
Margaret 31:08 Yeah, I like the idea that someone in like, someone in your crew can have a microscope and at least tell you if you have Tric.
Max 31:15 Yeah, for sure. For sure. Especially if you know, the symptoms, and the and the test match up. Yeah, possibly all labs may be able to be ordered. But the thing is, I'm a big fan of like, not going looking for things unless there's an actual... I don't know, unless someone's having a problem in that they feel like it means that something has changed from their baseline to such a degree that it's causing them...like, things aren't going well.
Margaret 31:48 Yeah.
Max 31:48 You know? And if something I always tell people, if something's been there on your body for a long time, and it's unchanged, it's probably not anything. You know, like, it's probably just a... it's probably just your variation on a theme, or it's some kind of weird little cyst that's just always gonna be there. And if if it's causing sort of psychological distress, distress, or something, that's totally fine. Like, we can deal with it. But if it's not changing or getting worse or anything, it's probably nothing. That...nothing worrisome. It might be something but it's not going to be something worrisome.
Margaret 32:23 Yeah.
Max 32:24 Yeah.
Margaret 32:25 You mentioned also in diagnostic tools, like physical exams, like, what are the kinds of physical exams that we should be learning how to administer on ourselves and our friends?
Max 32:35 Well, I think just sort of knowing what your body is like, like know, from the get-go, like not to be totally "to our bodies, ourselves," but I think there's something really good about knowing what's there. You know, and, like self exams are good in terms of people think about, like, you know, chest self exams, testicular self exams, those kinds of things. I think if someone really wants to pursue be... you know, knowing about other people's bodies, you know, knowing knowing what, what to listen for, would you listen at someone's heart and things like that are important things, you know, to know. But I think just having kind of a sense of oneself and like, "Oh, something isn't right. Something really isn't right," is is kind of the most important part when it comes to physical exams.
Margaret 33:25 So just knowing your baseline basically, and knowing...
Max 33:27 Knowing your baseline and knowing when something wildly deviates from your baseline.
Margaret 33:33 Okay. Which of course always says the fun, like aging thing where you're like, Oh, that's a new spot.
Max 33:38 Oh, yeah, totally. Or that hurts so much.
Margaret 33:41 Oh, actually, okay here's a diagnostic question: What should I look for? What should 'one' look for when they look at moles? To try and figure out whether or not they're worrisome?
Max 33:52 Is it? Is it new? Is it irregular? Like very irregular. Not like a nice little round, nice, like continuous border, but does it look raggedy? Right? Is it, is it kind of just like a different pigmentation from your skin color? Or is it like, like really black? Or is it like, going to bleed easy? Is it kind of bumpity all over as opposed to kind of a continuous smooth thing? In my experience, things that are worrisome that turn out to be cancer, things look worrisome. They look really different. Usually. Not always, but usually, you know, you see something and you're like, "What is that?" That's not something that's been on your body before. And again, if it's something that's unchanged, really, mostly it's been there for a long time. It's not doing anything. It's just chillin with you.
Margaret 34:55 So, one of the things I want to ask about, that you talked about briefly before we before we started recording is, is access to medications. Obviously, medications are something that it's, you know, there's there's probably two types of answers to this question or almost two questions. And one of them would be like, "What can you gain access to in a situation where law is no longer a thing?" Versus "What can you gain access to within the existing society?" Like, how can you gain access to different things? And those are maybe related questions, and maybe not, but I'm curious.
Max 35:31 I think they're related. I think I need to preface it, okay. Something that's really important to me is anti-microbial stewardship. And it's, it's up there with, you know, all kinds of stewardship, right, like Earth stewardship, meaning like, we have access to drugs that treat microbes. We have overuse to them as a society, right. And now we have these things called multi-drug-resistant organisms. And the way we prevent more of that is not is by not taking medicine that we don't need. Okay. And by taking medicine, that makes sense for the organism. So that's my only little caveat that I'm putting out there.
Margaret 36:18 No, that's interesting. The way of phrasing it as like, part of stewardship makes a lot of sense. Like, so what's involved in...I mean, like, you know, I remember, was a kid, we'd all be like, "Oh, don't use antimicrobial soap, or you'll make everything worse," you know, and I don't know, that was us being like, proud about being dirty, or whether that was legitimate and, like, like, so what else is involved? I mean, there's also the like, you know, always complete your round of antibiotics, so that you like, actually destroy it versus like, you know, almost killing it having come back worse, but like, what are...
Max 36:53 That's kind of changed a little, they've actually shortend a lot of courses.
Margaret 36:55 Oh, interesting.
Max 36:56 Yeah. You know, it used to be these sort of like long drawn out courses. We just want to make sure that someone's using the right, right drug for the right critter, right. And that we're not just taking medicine because we don't feel good. Because, there's a lot of things that may make people not feel good, that doesn't even have anti whatever's towards it, like anti-microbials. Because it might not be bacterial it might be viral, there might not be anything to do for it. You know, like the vast majority of of those, those two, three weeks, sort of sinusitis, doom, "I'm so sick, and I'm never going to be a well person." That's all viral illnesses, you know, there's not anything we can really do for them. If it's multi-symptom, like that, like runny nose, and yucky eyes, and a cough, and chest, and I mean pre-COVID virus, right? Viruses present a lot similarly to each other. Right. And viral illnesses make us kind of have viral illnesses, which are usually multi-symptom. And a lot of viruses, we just kind of have to suck it up and do the soup and neti pot and be miserable for a while.
Margaret 38:15 Okay.
Max 38:16 But so that, you know, we can target anti-microbials like anti-biotics like specifically to certain to certain things, because we can diagnose them pretty specifically with certain tools, or, you know, we kind of really know that these symptoms always kind of equal "this" or whatever. But it's just something good to keep in mind going into things. I mean, everybody does dumb things. And everybody...sometimes I have definitely...many times I've written prescriptions for things that I wasn't 100% sure of, because I want to make someone well, and we don't have access to all the diagnostics and...
Margaret 38:56 Right. So it's just your best guess or whatever.
Max 38:59 Yeah. But, not everybody should be taking azithromycin if they feel bad, ya know? But so I think that's my only thing going into things. It's just, you know, we should be we should be conscientious of these things. Um, because we only, you know, we have the potential to create total havoc when it comes to critters, right. I mean, yeah. I guess I think about accessing medications or anything. So, where do you get medications in the world, right, if you don't have like a provider or prescriber? So, most medicines, if they're like a tablet form, do not readily expire. So most medication...
Margaret 39:50 I've heard the efficacy drops a little bit.
Max 39:53 Maybe, maybe a little, but it takes a lot for the efficacy to drop, drop, drop. I mean, I guess Have you opened up an old thing of meds and it just looked very, very strange? Maybe...but if it's still there, most of the time, most medications, they just don't have the money to keep studying them out and out and out and out and out expiration wise and they get to the point where they're like, "It's probably not expired..." Certain...like tetracycline, maybe it causes a dangerous situation. So, stay away from old tetracycline and Ranitidine.
Margaret 40:32 And that's an anti-biotic?
Max 40:34 Oh, yeah, so tetracycline is the antibiotic. And that, that could be dangerous if, if it's old, theoretically, but it's not prescribed, like all that anymore. And Ranitidine, which is like a stomach med that's been taken off the market, it's an antacid style medication, it has some cancer causing compounds that could have occurred, that most things like if they're a tablet, they don't expire. Like it's completely reasonable to hoard medication.
Margaret 41:05 Okay, is there a way to get the doctor to give you like, longer prescriptions? Like I've heard that like, sometimes people struggle to be like, I want my ADHD meds more, you know, and people are like, nervous to give larger best perscriptions or whatever.
Max 41:21 That's tricky because they're control...sometimes they're controlled. And I think with controlled meds, providers are super squeamish.
Margaret 41:28 Okay. Okay.
Max 41:29 Which sucks. But, some meds just keeping them you know, just if you have them in your house, and, you know, maybe you didn't take them, as long as it's not liquid medicine or emergency medicine. So, if it's like an epi pen, or insulin, you want those things to stay, obviously, like, you don't want them to be expired.
Margaret 41:52 Okay.
Max 41:53 But you know, but inhalers seem to be okay. And I always just say, if you have like old meds, antibiotics, et cetera, keep them. Someone may need them. Right? Do you have a relative that's passed from this mortal coil or whatever, and you know, you're cleaning out their space? Maybe there's something that they might have that someone needs?
Max 42:18 You know, I shouldn't I mean, this is like that...my pharmacist friend is going to roll over in her not grave, but like, but we're always told not to tell people this, but we're talking about, you know, access, if someone doesn't have access to medicine that they need, you know, how do we get them access to medication. So this is sort of talking about, like, you know, worst case scenario, but, and then I always think about, you know, if someone, if you got a prescription of something, say, and you took it, and it gave you a rash all over, and the doctor said, "Don't take it anymore, you're allergic to it," or you're like, "Oh, I threw up and I never took that, again," save it, because that's almost a full course of the medicine. It's probably the you know...which is fantastic. You know, if you if you were taking something for something like, like for HIV, and you were on anti-retrovirals, and you switched regimens, because you were cured... like wanted to take something new, save your old meds. So, because as long as you're not resistant to your old meds, your previous med regimen still works. And you could go back to it, and you could save yourself, like a couple months of heartache if something went down.
Margaret 42:18 Yeah.
Margaret 43:34 Okay. So theoretically. This is okay...Wait, no, I don't want to give terrible medical advice on this show. Nevermind.
Max 43:44 I'm not trying to either. That's, why I'm like..."ahhhh!"
Margaret 43:48 Because I'm like, well, how could someone get a backstock of you know, someone who's HIV positive and wants to have access to their medication, despite disruptions in supply chains, and whatever. I dunno people can figure that out themselves.
Max 43:59 You know, I think about this all the time, I think about this all the time, do you have a friend that would be willing to get meds prescribed for them? Even if they you know, do you have a friend with insurance that would be willing to, to say that they had X, Y and Z in the low stakes way? I mean, it starts to become high stakes if controlled substances are involved. Right? That's when things become dangerous for everyone involved. And you know, could be...
Max 44:02 And that would be stuff like painkillers, Ritalin. I forget the name of the larger...SSRIs.
Max 44:39 Not SSRIs.
Margaret 44:41 Oh really, okay.
Max 44:42 But benzodiazepines...
Margaret 44:45 Oh, that's what I was thinking of, benzos. I dont' take medication.
Max 44:48 Yeah, I think that you know, you have to you have to go and and, you know, get special scripts for and things. Those are the things that they...
Margaret 44:56 The stuff with street value, basically. The stuff that's fun to take.
Max 44:58 Exactly. Those are the things sprays thick eyebrows. Yeah, yeah. And, and, you know, and there's a lot of surveillance of, you know, but if if if you're someone who needs thyroid medication to live, you know, and you have someone, you know, if you have access to other ways of getting your same medication, you know, that's not a medicine that's necessarily going to raise eyebrows or some of the medications can be very expensive. Sometimes, you know, people can ask their providers to give them 90 day supplies of things. I...you know, I think we try to do that all the time. And I think a lot of people who do have chronic health conditions are very savvy about pre planning.
Margaret 45:47 Okay.
Max 45:47 When it comes to medications, otherwise, you can't go anywhere.
Margaret 45:50 Yeah. So so what else? How else does one access medications?
Max 45:56 I think I talked about partners like if you if you have a partner or a friend who has health insurance, and you don't. And then if you know, anyone who's traveling to countries with pharmacies that don't require prescriptions. So there's a you know, handfuls of countries where one can just go into a pharmacy and just purchase medication.
Margaret 46:15 And is this something that's like, like, what's the legality of taking like, let's not let's, let's pretend like we're not taking other controlled substances, let's talk thyroid pills or whatever, right? If I, if I go to a country where I can just get thyroid pills over the counter, I actually don't know whether you can get thyroid pills over the counter or whether they require Medicare? Is this a good example?
Max 46:34 It's a great example. Okay, let's talk about levothyroxine. Can you go in to a pharmacy in some countries and just buy it? Yes. Do you have someone in your life that needs it desperately? Maybe? Go and get it.
Margaret 46:46 What? What's the law about bringing it back into the country, something that requires a medication [perscription] in another country, and in this country?
Max 46:54 So I can't speak specifically to any law, but it's not something that I've ever heard of penalized.
Margaret 46:59 Okay.
Max 47:00 Because again, it's not, it does...There's not a control piece there.
Max 47:04 Okay. And again, we're not telling anyone to break any laws, and people should make their own decisions. And if it turns out that this stuff is illegal, that would also map to being morally wrong, because obviously, the laws of our society are just and worth valuing.
Margaret 47:04 Right.
Max 47:04 It's not a scam. It's not a, you know, I think if you set up like a capitalist, Super Buyers Club kind of concept thing where, you know, you're bringing levothyroxine back into the United States and selling it for I don't know, I would be like, you're pretty savvy, but you know, that I don't think it would be...I mean, otherwise, I think if you're just bringing back amounts, that makes sense for like, a person, a single person to use, I don't think there would be any surveillance of that at all.
Max 47:50 Especially when it comes to people's health.
Margaret 47:52 Yeah, totally.
Max 47:54 And you know, some countries, some countries have it more restrictive than we do like, right, like so in Ireland, like, if you go to Ireland bring birth control to Ireland. People can't get birth control, you know, i was staying in the, I was staying in the Netherlands with some friends years ago, and they had a kid who had pretty severe allergies, like, you know, and you can't buy over-the-counter Benadryl in in the Netherlands at least when I was visiting. So we would just always bring Benadryl to the Netherlands, especially children's Benadryl.
Margaret 48:29 Yeah. Yeah, that's funny. Cuz that's like, what I mean, people give that for anxiety when they don't want to give benzos you know, I don't know about Benadryl, specifically, but things in that catergory.
Max 48:45 Like hydroxyine and things. Yeah, for sure. It's just wild, though, what is and isn't sort of acceptable, over the counter and not over the counter and all that in, in different places that you visit and, and we should just, you know, be be trucking things around, because these aren't things that are they're not, they're not controlled medications. They're not, you know, medications that are necessarily going to get someone in trouble,
Margaret 48:48 Right. So what about um, it's funny because like, the classic example in a prepper mindset is that preppers are very concerned about the health of their fish. And they're very concerned about their fish getting diseases. And since they're so worried about their fish, they stockpile fish anti-biotics for their fish. And with the possible use, if absolutely worse, came to worse of taking them as humans, because theoretically like veterinary medicine isn't as controlled. But obviously this then gets into like current horse medicine craze with ivermectin,
Max 49:10 Oh, ivermectin.
Margaret 49:16 Or even ketamine. I mean, you know, we're talking about like, the Right takes ivermectin and the Left takes ketamine where everyone wants horse drugs. Like, how useful is like, how useful are things like fish antibiotics, or even like other veterinary medicines for cross species application in an apocalypse? And that's not why you bought them. It just happens to be the apocalypse and you happen to have them?
Max 50:21 Well, I mean, so ivermectin has its uses, right? Like we use it in people to treat like, I don't know, like, Strongyloidiasis. Like it's an anti parasitic, so it has its uses. I think it's sometimes about the preparation of things. Like is something, if you're giving it to your fish? Like, what how would you make it? I think it would be about figuring out how to make it so that it was in people. People form. In terms of dosage.
Margaret 50:57 Right.
Max 50:58 Right, and figuring out that kind of thing. And I think it depends on the antibiotic.
Margaret 51:03 Okay.
Max 51:04 Yeah.
Margaret 51:04 So some of them will actually only be applicable to fish, whereas some of them might actually be applicable across species?
Max 51:10 I think most of them should be applicable cross species, if it's something that is a drug that both species use.
Margaret 51:18 Okay.
Max 51:19 Like, so if I don't know what fish antibiotics are available? I wish I did. Because it I could say, "Oh, this, this amoxicillin could absolutely be used for fish and people. You know, I mean, I think it's more just about like, how do you figure out... because, you know, it's probably with the fish, it's probably like some kind of, like, drops that you put in the water? Or? Because, it can't imagine how you would give your fish their antibiotics.
Margaret 51:44 I'm a bad prepper I should know this stuff. But I don't actually know a ton about bunkers, or fish antibiotics, or buying gold.
Margaret 51:47 Is it flakes? Is it in flakes? Yeah.
Max 51:54 But I mean, I think yeah, I mean, I think at the end of the day, we're going to have to find ways to access these things. You know, I think the big deal is going to be like, how are we going to eventually manufacture things that we... because we are going to need antibiotics, we are going to need anti-parasitics, and all these sorts of things.
Margaret 52:15 Well, my general mindset around that, you know, people have asked me this a long time, people might ask it more about like, "How in an anarchist society, would you X, Y and Z," right? Like people will be like, well, "I need..." I'm just gonna use thyroid medication forever as my example just because like years ago, like 10 years ago, a friend of mine asked me this question directly, you know, and they were like, "Well, I need a thyroid pill every day. Or I'll die? How would an anarchist society make it?" And my answer has always been, or I don't know, however, we do it now, right? Because like, people and physical infrastructure will likely still exist in various ways through various types of crises. And the things that are more disrupted are the, the mechanisms of control and the organizational mechanisms that, you know, distribute these things, or even pay the people to make them, right, that kind of stuff could be disrupted. But by and large, you're still going to have people who know how to make antibiotics, and you're still gonna have, you know, the...the supply chain might get disrupted, which is a problem, right? But then even then, it's like, you know, well, there's people who know how to grow grain in the West and Midwest. And there's people who know how to load it onto trains, there's people who know how to drive those trains to the coasts to feed people, and we probably won't lose that. But we might lose the system that tells everyone to do those things. And I don't know whether it's a cheap out, but...
Max 53:40 it's obviously like anarchists and BioPharm. Like, it's not like we're like in this universe, like where it's just, you know...there's all kinds of folks. I just sort of think about it, like, in terms of times of times have like interim times times of like crisis. How do we make sure that people have access to things? Which I think were gonna have to work on.
Margaret 54:02 Yeah, no, that makes sense. Because, it's like, there is a difference between talking about disaster and talking about like an anarchist society or whatever.
Max 54:09 Yeah.
Margaret 54:10 Okay. So one of the things that you mentioned, kind of related to this, but in an actual like, apocalypse scenario, right every...I'm no longer being euphemistic. Although, of course, I was never been euphemistic. But, I'll be euphemistic if i includes zombies in this in this disaster, but whenever you watch a zombie movie, they like raid the pharmacy, right?
Max 54:29 Which is such a good idea.
Margaret 54:31 Yeah. So what would you raid like if you're in the apocalypse and like you are trying to set up your I guess, like clinic or you're trying to take care of people, while there's like nuclear fallout and zombies and, I don't know, roving militias, but different than the current roving militias, what are you looking for?
Max 54:52 When a...you know in an apocalypse situation? I think about this so much I've had so many fun conversations with my peers. It's actually wonderful to work in an infectious diseases practice and ask everybody what they would bring, because it was one of the biggest, like conversations, like arguments that came up about anti-microbials, antibiotics that was just amazing. I don't think I would be thinking in terms of setting up a clinic, I think it would be very much in terms of like, "What can't I get?" and I would try to get broad spectrum antibiotics. So if I had to name them, I would get doxycycline, and levofloxacin, and or ciprofloxacin, and or a medication called amoxicillin. amoxicillin, amoxicillin clavulanate, because I can't talk today, I would get albuterol. And mostly, that's for selfish reasons, because I'm a little asthmatic. And also, because asthma. I would try to get prednisone, epinephrine, like epi pens, and some...anything for like pain and fever. Those would be like, really, really high up there on my list. But I would, if I had to have pick a single antibiotic, I would choose doxycycline, all the way, which is part of my big arguments with all my coworkers. But you know, everybody has their things.
Margaret 56:26 They're not big doxy, they're not big doxy-fans?
Max 56:29 All of them. Everyone is. They would all have it on their list, but everybody had it on different sections of their list.
Margaret 56:36 Yeah, it was an interesting conversation. And then I think if, if things were a little more mellow, and had a little more time in there, I would start to grab stuff that was like, sort of more meaningful for just long term existence. Right? And I think about this in terms of my, my friends and my people and stuff, but um, you know, like queer folks and, and, and PAW's [Post Acute Withdrawl] folks and stuff, but, so I think, alright, I would, you know, maybe grab...let me see, do I have my list up even?
Margaret 56:36 Okay.
Margaret 57:13 In your bug-out bag is the like...you keep a laminated, like if you hit the store, this is what you get list.
Max 57:23 Yeah, exactly...if you have 10 more minutes in the store you know...
Margaret 57:27 If you brought the large bag put in....
Max 57:30 So like insulin, you know, requires refrigeration. But if you could get any kind of grab 70/30 cause you can keep the largest number of people, probably. I would grab testosterone and estradiol. Probably morphine, because it's really useful in a lot of different situations, and in cardiac situations. And then if I had to choose like two HIV meds, I would choose Biktarvy and Prezista, or probably Biktarvy and Prezcobix, cause that combination of medicine covers for a huge number of resistant HIV strains. And also, it's just, I would just have it and be like, "Here, let's keep people around for longer."
Margaret 58:16 Yeah.
Max 58:17 I don't know. Those are sort of, that's sort of my short list. I...honestly, if I was if I was raiding, a pharmacy, and...I would just grab everything that I could get my hand on. Seriously, because it all would come in handy at some point, you know, especially if it was antibiotic.
Margaret 58:36 Yeah.
Max 58:37 Or like something for giardiasis , that would also be something I would probably get on there.
Margaret 58:42 I had giardia once, it was not my favorite thing that's ever happened to me.
Max 58:45 It's not the...it's...I had it too. It's not fun.
Margaret 58:48 Yeah. Which is why I'm such a big like filter water person. Because I definitely got it from unfiltered water at a big gathering once.
Max 58:56 I got it from swimming in, from swimming in the river by my old house.
Margaret 59:02 See, that's better because that's like a reasonable thing to do. Whereas, I should have known better, you know?
Max 59:07 It wasn't...it was not that reasonable. Believe me it's a filthy river.
Margaret 59:11 I'm Sorry.
Max 59:13 It's okay, it was a blast, but i was like "Ooooh,"
Margaret 59:18 No pun intended?
Max 59:20 Yeah, that's true, too.
Margaret 59:24 Okay, but what...it seems like okay, you raid the pharmacy, it would just set up shop in the pharmacy. Just get like, you know, all your friends with rifles, defend the pharmacy and become a pharmacist.
Max 59:35 That's true. I would be a terrible pharmacist. I have no precision in anything I do.
Margaret 59:41 Yeah, okay.
Max 59:42 I would bring in my pharmacist friends.
Margaret 59:45 Okay. So you'd be the doctor at the pharmacy?
Max 59:48 No, I don't know what I would do. If I didn't...I don't know, healthcare is like it's a job. But I like doing it also. I don't know, I'm sort of thinking about your friend who, who we're talking to, in the interview about working during COVID....
Margaret 1:00:11 Are you having feels about the working during COVID?
Max 1:00:15 Big time. It's been a wild thing. Everyone's sad.
Margaret 1:00:22 Yeah,
Max 1:00:23 Yeah. But no, it's just more just sort of like, would I do health care if it wasn't my job? And I think I would, but I think I would do it in a totally different capacity.
Margaret 1:00:37 How would you do differently if in a, in an anti-work environment where you didn't have to?
Max 1:00:43 I would walk in the woods with people and talk about their health in a totally different way.
Margaret 1:00:48 Yeah.
Max 1:00:49 Yeah. You know, and, or visit them in their homes. And I would have a ton of time. And I would like get to know what they were doing in their lives in a way that I can't in like tiny little weird rooms, with a limited amount of time and that kind of thing.
Margaret 1:01:12 I even just think about one time someone was doing some alternative healing with me, actually helped. I used have a chronic injury in my chest. And it's, it certainly wasn't the thing that cured it, but it helped. But as they're doing this thing, they're like, playing soft ambient music and like, you know, like, talking softly to me, and like, the lights are dim, and it's a very calm environment. And I'm like, "Why can't the dentist be this way?" You know? Like, why do you gotta go to the dentist, and it's not like, I don't know, like, someone's rubbing your feet and like telling you, everything's gonna be fine. You know?
Max 1:01:55 I can't go to the dentist until...unless I'm like, high out of my mind on some kind of benzodiazepine. Like I can't, I have to literally kind of create like a, like a non remembering experience every time I go to the dentist. So like, I go to the dentist, and I'm like, "Do whatever you want." And then three years later, I go back and have the same experience.
Margaret 1:02:24 Yeah.
Max 1:02:25 Which is probably a self fulfilling prophecy of dentistry.
Margaret 1:02:28 Yeah.
Max 1:02:29 Yeah, but then it's always like a tooth removal.
Margaret 1:02:32 With what you're talking about, about, you know, all the medical care providers being so tired. And obviously, this thing that I'm talking about doesn't solve like, COVID, right? But what you're talking about about wanting to help people become...gain expertise and control over their own bodies, it seems like that would help, you know, because it's like, like with the bike repair example, right? Like, I don't know, when I wrote a bike all the time, like I could, I could swap out the handlebars, I could tighten the brakes, I could patch a tire. Or I could patch a tube. But, I couldn't. But, I couldn't align the spokes. I could have learned to align the spokes, but like I, I didn't, you know, and I certainly wasn't building bikes. And every time I look at the derailleur, my head would break. And like, and so there's, there's always going to be a role for bike shops, even if everyone's good at bikes. And...
Max 1:03:31 Right.
Margaret 1:03:32 And so having, you know, crews of people who are specialized in allopathy, as the thing they do, the thing that they're most interested in, will always make sense. But like, just having more people able to do more of it on our own seems like it really just helps everyone. It doesn't help the people who want to make a ton of money off of things, or have a ton of control over how people live and what they do, you know.
Max 1:04:01 Yeah, I think that's totally real. I think it will also alleviate things on patients. I think that when people know themselves and can come to their provider, with a sense of what's going on with their bodies and navigate the system in a way that feels a little bit more, I hate to be corny, but like empowered. Like, I think that's super legitimate. I think that one of the ways that healthcare just screws people over constantly, is that no one knows how to deal with it. They don't know what to ask for. They just they are in a little room and all of a sudden someone comes in tells them a bunch of stuff they're supposed to do gives them some papers and shews them out.
Margaret 1:04:42 Yeah.
Max 1:04:43 And it's there's nothing in there that that creates a relationship. There's nothing in there that creates...I don't know. I don't know. I think that people being in charge of their own bodies is is awesome.
Margaret 1:05:00 Yeah, and it's, it's something that like, I had this realization about school, as well as like doctors or whatever. Like, at some point, especially with like higher education, if you go to college, it doesn't make any sense to me that the teachers like, are in charge of you. Because they're, they're literally people that you're hiring to teach you. Like, you're giving them money, and they're teaching you and that's cool. That's great. But they, they act like, "Oh, well, if you miss class, then you're in trouble." It's like, what trouble? Like, why? Why would this institution have any leverage over you?And
Margaret 1:05:39 And that's kind of how I feel about the medical world is that like, it always helps me, and I'm actually almost lucky in that I've been, well, now I have regular insurance, but I was sort of underinsured for most of my adult life. And so I relied heavily on public health and clinics. And I actually found that people on public health they are way more tired, but they're also working there because they like care. And so they're like frazzled and annoyed, but they also like, fundamentally care more often, I also am more likely to end up at like LGBTQ clinics and things like that. And that also helps me. But it...the main thing that helps me is that I kind of remember I'm like, in there, and I'm like, the doctor is not in charge of me. Like, either I'm paying or the state is paying or whatever for service. It's like, it's like going to the bike repair shop, you know, like, you're like, if I go into the bike repair shop, and they just yell at me about how I'm riding my bike. I'm like, I mean, you could tell me that if I ride this bike this way, it's gonna get destroyed. And that makes sense. But you can't tell me I can't ride my bike that way. Like, I don't know.
Max 1:05:39 Always true
Max 1:06:46 Yeah. But like going on that metaphor, right, like, same thing, like, how many times have people gone to the bike shop and been treated shitty, and then left out feeling like, super demoralized? And like, they can't ride their bike?
Margaret 1:07:02 Yeah, totally.
Max 1:07:03 And Like I think about that too, like, there's so much of that. I don't know, it's that it's that it's the realm of expertise. And like, you know, it's like, once, once someone is like, in this certain space, they get to have all the power and authority. And I always tell people, like, if you're the doctor, and you don't like what's going on, just leave.
Margaret 1:07:25 Yeah.
Max 1:07:26 Just leave, like, unless you like, are in a bad way and are really, really, really sick. Like, if you're there to get get access to things or something and you're not being treated well just get out of there if things are not going well.
Margaret 1:07:41 Yeah.
Max 1:07:42 Because that's going to end up being a squirrely relationship. And there's some really bad doctors, there's some really bad nurse practitioners, there's some really bad everybody, but like, there's, you know, there's people that are unkind and not not good, and are just going to tell you what they think, is the matter with you before they've even met you.
Margaret 1:08:01 Yeah, and, and, just like this, like sense of that, people thinking that they have power over you, because we have these institutions that sort of claim it, but it's like, you're, you're in charge of yourself. Like, I mean, there's, there's institutions that exist to try and stop you from being in charge of yourself, you know, like, there's a certain things that we could do that would then have other people throw us in prison or whatever, right? But like, that doesn't mean we're not in charge of ourselves. It just...Well, it does, but, you know, on this, like pure theoretical level, we can still choose how we act even if there's consequences. But, but at the end of the day, it's like, if you're going to the doctor, I don't know, you're, again, not always in all situations and all kinds of things, but it's like, I don't know, I I get really annoyed whenever I go to doctors, and they don't treat me like that. That I'm like, fortunately, I guess also, since I'm usually going as public clinics are kind of trying to get me out. So they're not like really trying to force me to do one thing or another, I don't know.
Max 1:09:02 My hope would be that if someone had a health care provider they would guide the ship, and their health care provider, who had access to the resources, and and the access to the you know, things like being able to do the prescribing, and the ordering of the diagnostics, and the access to the expertise in the sense of, of time and, and education, and things would be like, "Alright, you guide the ship. And I'll tell you where the icebergs are," kind of concept.
Margaret 1:09:36 Yeah.
Max 1:09:36 You know, like that would be you know, and if you want to hit one just freakin tell me.
Margaret 1:09:42 Yeah, or what port you want to go to.
Max 1:09:44 Yeah, what port you want to go to. Or, or who else you want to hire onto your ship, whatever. I mean, we but but but that it would be a relationship that would be very much completely patient guided And, and that the patient would be the person who has all the say, even if it's something that, like me as a provider I don't necessarily agree with.
Margaret 1:10:11 Yeah.
Max 1:10:11 You know?
Margaret 1:10:13 Well, I like to sort of tie it back into preparedness and all of that. Mostly just my favorite image of the whole conversation as the image, we're talking about what you would do, if you were a medical care provider without the existing messed up system that you have to interface with, with, like, going on walks in the woods with people and talking about them with like, what's wrong and how they're feeling. And, you know, that's like, the kind of almost optimism I don't see about like, I mean, obviously collapse is largely bad and bad stuff happens and disasters are really rough, you know. But I, on some level, like that's like maybe something I kind of look forward to, is the sense of like, when your medical care provider comes over to your house, and, you know, and like, and our ability to reimagine structures. It's like the one optimism. I'm trying to end on this, like, positive note.
Margaret 1:11:10 Yeah, it's cool.
Max 1:11:10 Totally, I think of it the I saw this David Attenborough thing, where they're like in Chernobyl, they like visited Chernobyl recently. And it just is the most beautiful thing, because it's just trees growing out of.... like, it's the city just with a forest in it. It's just it's a, it's a forested, abandoned space, right?
Max 1:11:13 And all these amazing buildings, and then there's so many different animals that they haven't seen, like, there's just like wild horses and wolves moving through it. And I don't know, that sort of helps me when I think about collapse in it helps me to think about it in a positive way.
Margaret 1:11:55 Yeah.
Max 1:11:55 I'm just like, "Oh, yeah. The wild horses wandering through the school buildings in Chernobyl."
Margaret 1:12:00 Yeah. Well, do you have any, like, kind of last thoughts about community or individual preparedness and accessing allopathy, or any of the stuff that we've been talking about?
Max 1:12:13 I think that there's a lot more like rad health care providers out there. And you probably know, some of them, I don't, I tend to be kind of cut off from people. But if you know, I think talk to people, you know, who are in health care about the access to resources they have, because I think sometimes people in health care don't even realize, like what we have, that people are outside of health care half, that we can just plug people into. And, you know, educate people about so that we can everybody can be a healthcare provider.
Margaret 1:12:49 Yeah.
Max 1:12:50 Because I think it's totally possible. Like, I would way rather that than doctors.
Margaret 1:12:59 I mean, I like it, because it's work that's been done in herbalism, and other like naturopathic fields for very long time. And, and I'm fully in favor of that. But I'm also just really excited to see sort of allopathy like, jumping on board with that also, you know, like, spreading that information and letting it become more of a somewhere between like a some, like, synthesis between like folk practice and like scientific practice, you know? I don't know.
Max 1:13:31 Well, my sort of hope is that eventually, it doesn't have to be this weird thing where we have, you know, allopathic medicine that refers to other kinds of medicine as like complementary and all this. It's so offensive to me, it's like what we're going to eventually come to some holopathic medical model, which will be really, really amazing.
Margaret 1:13:50 That would rule.
Max 1:13:52 Yeah.
Margaret 1:13:53 All right. Well, is there anything that you'd like to shout out? Either something that you do or something that people who are listening that you hope that they learn about or get involved in?
Max 1:14:02 No, I just all the harm reduction people out there that are still doing awesome drug work, I really appreciate them. And I think it's been really hard for people during COVID.
Margaret 1:14:13 Yeah.
Max 1:14:14 Anybody who's doing health care work or taking care of people, just, you're doing good, good work. That's all.
Margaret 1:14:27 Thanks.
Max 1:14:29 Thank you.
Margaret 1:14:34 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, or enjoy this show in general, please consider telling people about it. The primary way that people hear about the show is through word of mouth or through word of internet mouth. And if you can feed the algorithms that shouldn't run the world that would do everyone a service. So, if you like, and comment, and subscribe, and don't think comment is actually one of your options, I'm just used to hearing what people say on YouTube. But, if you rate and review and you do all of the various things, and you post about it to social media, all that's shit's so good unfortunately. Unfortunately, it does a lot of things, but make machines tell other people this is content that they might enjoy. But, it is content that they might enjoy. I hope. You can also support this show a little bit more directly by supporting on Patreon, our publisher, which is Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. I used to have a personal Patreon that supported the show. But, we've transitioned that over to Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. And, if you are one of our supporters, thank you so much for making that transition with us. There's going to be so much good content that's going to be coming out this year, with your help, and basically it's no longer about me. And, that's really exciting. Honestly, it's a bit of a relief. And so you can support us there, and you get access to content that will go to you before it goes to everyone else. And then if you back us at $10 a month, you'll get a zine mailed to you every month anywhere in the world. And, if you support us at $20 or more, we'll say your name right now. So in particular, I would like to thank Nicole and David and Dana Chelsea, Staro, Jennifer, Eleanor, Natalie Kirk, Hugh, Nora, Sam, Chris, and Hoss the dog. Thank you so much. And I will talk at you, and by you I mean this microphone in a closet. Soon. Be well.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Episode summary
Guest info and links . The guest Jason Sauer can be found on twitter @jasonrsauer. He is involved with another podcast, Future Cities, that you can find wherever you listen to podcasts.
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support this show on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Yellow Peril Tactical can be found on Instagram @yellow_peril_tactical, Twitter @YPTActual, and Patreon @yellow_peril_tactical. You can listen to their podcast The Tiger Bloc Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.
Margaret Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and I use she or they pronouns. And this week I'm talking to 3 people from Yellow Peril Tactical. Yellow Peril Tactical is a group of Asian I guess firearms enthusiasts? That's probably not the proper way to say it. They'll explain themselves a little bit better in a moment. But they are a group of people who organize different shooting clubs and different tactical training. as well as putting out a lot of content online. They're actually one of the more interesting sources of non-right-wing gun stuff on the internet. And so I was very excited to sit down and talk to them about what is involved in starting your own firearms club and what is involved in organizing as marginalized people. And I also talk to him about guns, you'll be shocked to know, so there'll be some geeking out about guns. But a lot of it is about how to organize stuff and make things happen. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on the network. Da-da da-daaaaaa.
Jingle 1 Hello! If you are listening, then you are here on purpose. This is Twin Trouble, the podcast about fighting the system and staying rebellious while incarcerated. The show takes the form of a recorded phone call between my twin brother, currently locked up in a federal transfer overflow jail in Grady County, and myself in the “free” world of Chicago. Why are we talking about prison abolition?
Jingle 2 The reason I wanted to do this whole prison thing is they keep people’s voices down. They want to shield the public from the day-to-day experiences of the [inaudible] who are incarcerated are going through. I’m not gonna take this sitting down or bent over, I’m standing up and I’m gonna continue to speak my mind about what’s going on. So I would hope [inaudible] the podcast we could get [inaudible], we could set it up
Margaret Okay, if you all could introduce yourself with I guess your name, your pronouns, and then I guess what brings you to Yellow Peril Tactical.
Snow Hi I'm Snow, she/they pronouns, I was invited to Yellow Peril Tactical by John Chinaman and another contributor. And I had been following their/our work for a little bit. And the posts that I actually have in mind is the one with the squid sauce and the handgun. And that just really, like, I felt so seen just by that one picture. And I just really felt like—I don’t know, it was a very pivotal moment for me and a moment where I really felt like a sense of community around meeting other fellow leftist Asian folks who are also into firearms and self-defense, community defense, and also shared like an intention to get better for themselves, for their community, and I think just the camaraderie, so to speak, among the other YPT tigers (dare I say) has been really nice actually. We shoot the shit a lot but we also have a lot of, like, encouragement towards each other and give each other advice as well as folks that reach out to us. So that's kind of what keeps me in it. It's a fun time so far.
Margaret What was the post?
Snow It was one of our earliest posts and it was, like, this pretty well-known, like, bottle of squid sauce. I use it all the time. And it's a handgun propped up by a chopstick and I just, like, I saw that and was just, like, what the fuck like this is me.
Margaret Cool.
Camilla I'm Camilla. I use she/her pronouns. I found out about YPT through the internet/someone told me about it. About a year and a half ago almost I started taking up firearms as a training and self-defense tool, and started getting really into community defense, and have just been using it as something to get me out of the house and into the woods for the past year. I've been getting into doing the beginners/intermediate people teaching other beginners thing. And actually the first time I ever heard that was on your show, so I heard that and I was like, yeah, that's totally what I'm about to start doing, that's wild, that's cool that other people are talking about it. So thank you for that and I'll pass it to John.
Margaret That's cool.
John Hey y'all, I'm a John Chinaman, he/him pronounce. I am actually one of the original Yellow Peril people. But I'll say before, like, that doesn't fucking matter. Like, it doesn't matter when you join. It holds no specialness being one of the original people. But I only say that to just explain that I was—I was around the beginning. And basically what happened was me and some people that I shoot with in real life, we heard about this guy. His name is Austin Tong. And he was a Fordham student and he got in trouble by his university because he had posed on Instagram with a firearm. And, well we were like, that's bad. And then we checked his Instagram and it was all just like pro-NRA bullshit, pro-Donald Trump bullshit, I own a gun because, you know, I'm afraid of anti-Asian violence. Oh, me too. But, I mean, oh damn, I wonder who's trying to stoke all that anti-Asian violence, you know. Think about it there. And so we were just pissed off. We were just pissed off. And we were just, like, we’d like toyed around this before. We were like, hey, when you go start that Yellow Peril Instagram account. And so I was in like—I was in a freaking parking lot I just started it. And I was like, ah shit, like, we actually have to like post things. Shit. I don't want to reiterate too much what Snow and Camilla said, but honestly one of the most special parts about this has been honestly learning about more of my own heritage. Like, talking to other people, you know, obviously—obviously I’m a firearm enthusiast, but really talking to other people who are going through or have gone through similar things as me and learning about, like, what it means to be Asian American in these United States, so-called United States, and the grappling with that has honestly been the most special part for someone who didn't actually kind of grow up with that community.
Margaret Yeah. Could one of you all explain a little bit more—just kind of an overview of what Yellow Peril Tactical is to our listeners?
Snow Yeah, I can do that. We are a collection—collective of leftist east and southeast Asians that do a lot of firearms education. But we also do political education, the occasional shit post, which the internet seems to really like. It seems like the memes, actually, that we put the least amount of effort in get the most likes. It's kind of wild, like we'll just throw something together and it'll just get like a thousand likes and just makes no sense but, you know, it's cool. We also do fundraisers. I think last year we raised like $5600, something around there, to various fundraisers. We also post a lot of infographics geared towards new shooters, like we've done a couple like how to shop for a firearm like a handgun and a rifle, and like we did a glock guide recently. And we also do we peer pressure people into posting their groups and splits because we like seeing people get better, including ourselves. And we recently started doing like a drill of the month thing just to kind of give new shooters something to go on when they're at the range instead of just mag-dumping with their friends. So yeah, we do all sorts of shit. But that's kind of like the main hustle.
John And it's definitely geared towards, like, newer shooters, people who are newer to firearms. Second everything that Snow said, it's very easy to just go to the range and be like, okay, cool, what do I do? Like just shoot a bunch of rounds into a microwave or something, and then you're like, oh no, this like a skill. You can build and learn from others and teach others as well.
Margaret But shooting a microwave sounds really fun though.
Snow I have been to a range area—like a public land—and there was like this random thing in the middle and I got a closer look at it, somewhere about a fucking TV. Like a flat screen. And it was just like in pieces. Like the screen was shattered and then like the frame was all fucked up and, like, whatever layers in between those two was just, like, perforated, and it was just so confusing to me because I'm just like, why? Who brings a TV out to the range and just shoots at it. That's so bizarre.
Margarte I mean it sounds like it would be a perfect like 90s anti-capitalist video, you know?
Snow Instead of Office Space where it's like a printer, it's just a fucking TV.
Margaret Yeah. Kill your television. Okay, so there's a bunch of stuff I want to ask you about and some of it is a little bit more like theoretical, and I kind of want to ask you a bit about your experiences. But I think I want to start a little bit with some of the practical stuff. Like you all are—I mean, one of the things that I find so interesting about you all is that you're one of the best resources for new shooters on the left—or probably just new shooters in general—to gain firearms information that is, like, practical instead of, I don't know, shrouded. You all have this whole thing where you attack Red Fudds all the time and I want to ask you about that and a little bit. But one of the things I want to ask you about is what are some of these basic drills that new people can—or possibly intermediate people, but especially new people—can be doing. Like, what are groups and splits, for example?
Camilla To start off, groups and splits is essentially taking metrics and applying it to how you're training. So that involves having a timer of some sort. You can do it the hard way, or you can go in with a bunch of friends to get a shot timer. And you essentially put up a fresh target, you have your shot timer, you press the button—usually have a delay set, at least that's how I prefer to do it—it goes beep, and then it from that beep onward it's counting the amount of time between your shots. And the groups part is how far away your rounds are hitting on the target, and the splits is the amount of time in between your shots. Usually you pay most attention to the first shot and the last shot, but it totally depends on what the drill is. When it comes to drills, there's a lot of different things you can do. It entirely depends on where you're at in your journey. If it's your first day shooting, the drills are going to look really different than if you're going to the range to work on your draw from concealment or something in an ongoing kind of practice way.
John One of the things we talk about a lot is that, when you're at the range, like, not going to lie, like, shooting is expensive. Ammunition is expensive, guns are expensive, right? So when you're at the range with live ammunition, it's good to show up with a plan. You may not stick to it, but show up for a skill like you want to work on. Whether that's, like, getting rounds on target fast from your holster, from concealment or whatever, or being able to hit fast follow-up shots, or being able to transition between targets quickly. There's a lot you can do at your house in dry fire— for those who don't know, dry fire is making sure your gun is unloaded, pointing in a safe direction, and practicing it. Just pulling the trigger. And you can do a lot of that at home and when you're on the range, you know, practicing the stuff that you can't do at home. You need live ammunition for, like, recoil management. One of the things that we did our December—someone correct me if I'm wrong here—drill of the month was like putting four rounds on a 3x5 index card. Actually quite difficult. January—I see Snow nodding at me because, actually and Camilla too because we've all been having trouble with this. Literally draw—put two rounds on a 3x5 index card, rehoster, draw, put two more rounds on. And it is very very hard. It took me a week to do this by the way.
Snow It is unforgiving. Yeah.
John It is extremely unforgiving. I finally did it today.
Margaret What kind of range is that?
John Five yards. Really not that far. Um I but there's.
Margaret I mean, I don't think I could do it, like...
Camilla It's one of those things where it's like, it just sounds, like, very doable—well, because it is. But when you're there and you're timing yourself and someone's filming you.
Snow All your friends are watching.
Camilla Yeah, you just kind of like revert to your worst fucking version of yourself, you know. You're just, all your training goes out, you're at your most, like primal, like nerves. Just yeah.
Margaret One of the things I actually really appreciate about the content you all put up is I feel like you encourage people to post not just their like coolest sexiest stuff, you know, like I think it was even today that you all posted, like, I failed at the thing I was trying to do. And it was like someone like sitting there sad, you know. And like, you know, and I actually think that that's an important part of making people feel welcome into a sport like this because it's so buried in machismo and it's not just—in my experience it's not just about the gender or the gender presentation of the people that you’re shooting with, but it's stuff like that. It's the, like, making sure you can do like the coolest thing and then only posting your like super coolest—also one of the reasons I appreciate it is that, frankly across the board when I watched watch right-wing or left-wing or centrist whatever, like, guntube people, they always look like they think they're really badass looking. And it never looks like smooth or good. And I'm always like, huh, okay. It's all like slow motion with dramatic music and stuff as they, like, kind of like jiggle with this thing and there's lots of—I don't know, this is completely meaningless to anyone who doesn't spend all their time watching dumb videos about new calibers and shit. But so that's something I really appreciate about you all is the way that you break down some of that machismo just by actually being honest about what the journey looks like. That's not really a question. Sorry.
Snow No, I'm glad that you brought that up because, like, we teach like 101s to folks in the area and something that I always incorporate into when I'm teaching is just, like, telling folks, one, marksmanship is like not the goal of the 101 class. And when I first started shooting, I was fucking horrible. Awful. And I probably say it like two to three times within like the first hour. And I do it in a way to be like, yeah, like a lot of people aren't fucking good. Most people aren't good at shooting for a very long time, even if they've been shooting for years. But I think bringing that, like, honesty and like humility means a lot to folks because like guns are intimidating. And like, it's already hard enough to learn a new skill let alone one that’s fucking firearms and.
Margaret Yeah.
Camilla Yeah, and it's intimidating because, like, we're presented with this message in this worldview—or at least I was growing up in liberalism—that the only legitimate and skilled people with firearms are law enforcement and military and that those skills, like, reside squarely in their domain. And I think like the demystification process of, like, going out to the range, having someone show you who feels like from your community—like your friend, your family member, chosen or otherwise, or your comrade—like having them really like spend some time with you and, like, show and put some care into how the stuff is presented really just kind of, like, cuts through a lot of the misogyny and like the militaristic machismo culture like y'all were talking about. And shooting guns isn't actually that hard, it's just there's so much mental shit attached to it. It's really hard to shoot with, like, you know, whatever hair’s breadth precision. But I don't know if there's—I don't know if that's real, to be honest. Like I know there's people that drill that and—but like 99% of the people out there are relying on a veneer of, like, machismo to really get the point across. But yeah. It's all bullshit. Just need to find people that are willing to like sit down with you. And I think maybe that's one of the goals of our page and our collective is just, like, to be a virtual friend or something.
John We answer all of those to DMs. Every—basically every single one gets answered. And just so listeners who, like, don't know a lot about guns know, like, if you're going to the range like once a month with some buddies and, like, trying to just, you know, just do your best—like I'm not even saying you have to be good—just like do your best. Put rounds on target. See if you can learn from your mistakes. You're already shooting more than the law enforcement officer on the beat. Like you're already doing more than those people, like not even joking.
Margaret I've had vets who have been part of different shooting groups who I've been around—I used to live somewhere with access to a shooting range—and the vets didn't know better than other people. I don't know how to say this politely. And also the number of times I had to insist that, yes, actually people should wear ear protection. And it's always vets who are like, we don't need ear protection or whatever. Okay, so one of my questions—we talked a little bit about the like misogyny and bravado, but I'd love to talk about guns in the United States traditionally white supremacist—or at least primarily white space. Gun culture—and obviously you all are an intervention into that. And I'd like to kind of ask you more about ways in which racial dynamics come up and how you all handle them and what especially listeners of color or, you know, people can take away from what you all have learned.
Snow Yeah, I could take the first stab at that. I think growing up that was definitely my understanding of it, that it's mostly white cis dudes that go shooting and go hunting and posts unsolicited pictures of their hunts on social media—and I get to look at them. And, you know, I grew up in like an anti-gun household, like my parents are Vietnamese refugees and so their relationship to guns and war is just that it's bad, right? Like they endured a lot of trauma. Like my mom hid under a table until like the 90s whenever she even heard like a helicopter fly over the house. And this is when she was living in the states. Like, they got here in the 80s, right. And so that's how deep like that warfare trauma was for my family and, you know, my mom side the family lives in East Bay California, and so, you know, they are familiar with guns. And I knew that, but I never really interacted with it because it was, like, it's my male cousins, you know, and so getting into it more in the last like year and a half has been like a wholly new endeavor in a lot of ways. Being a part of YPT makes that a lot easier and more navigable. But overall, like, the majority of the people I see at the range like whether or not I know them were still, like, white people. And a lot of chuds. And it's intimidating, not just because of them being men, but also because they're like politically opposed to people like me—that look like me—taking the means necessary to, like, defend ourselves in our community. And it motivates me in a lot of ways to be the best that I can be, but ultimately, like, it doesn't take away that, like, stress that I feel, like the anxiety I feel around who else has guns. But I find that the more folks—like-minded folks that I've met shooting and going to range days, like, we need more—well maybe not we need—but like, there ought to be more BIPOC folks and femme/nonbinary-presenting people, identifying people in these spaces if they want to be. And from the conversations that I have, like, they want to be there. Like we have so many people reaching out to us via DMs or like, how do I get involved in a group, like do you know anybody in this area. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don't, but we've seen a trend of like more and more people, like, reaching out and asking for those kinds of resources. And I think given, you know—especially since 2017 after Charlottesville, like it's becoming much much more apparent how brazen a lot of these armed right-wing militias are going to be. I think January 6th 2021 was a lot—a wake up call for a lot of people. I was horrified but not surprised. I was a bit entertained to be honest. I was like, he he he. But at the same time I was just like, you know, we warned y'all. We have been saying this and y'all think we're not based in reality when we say these things, but yet here we are. And, you know, Asian people—I've mentioned this on like one of our previous podcasts, but just like, my aunt and grandma were mugged a couple summers ago. And, like, my aunt was knocked unconscious and like spent a couple days in the hospital. And this was like during the wave of like anti-Asian hate crimes, and then actually like kind of validated my, like, inner stress and anxiety of, like, this kind of thing. And that I think it's a far-fetched reality to think that like hate will go away as long as we just keep organizing. The right is always going to be there. Fascism is always going to be there.
Margaret Mhmm.
Snow And the only way we can endure is by being resilient and continuously adapting. And so firearms and firearms education, for myself and others, is like one of the tangible ways that I feel like I can move towards that resiliency. I just talked a lot. But yeah.
Margaret No no, that's all really useful.
John I mean, I’ll say it, like I got my first gun—I think it was like 20? I think it was 2018. I mean it wasn't very good or practicing a lot., but that's when I got mine. So it was in the wake of Charlottesville and seeing some of that stuff happen, and I want to second what Snow said about finding a group, finding a crew not only to keep you like sort of motivated—it's obviously more fun when you do with others than I suppose just like going to the ridge and just blasting around by yourself. But in some cases it can honestly be—it can honestly be related to your own physical safety—and I hate saying this, especially if there's people out there who are new to firearms or thinking about getting into firearms—but I mean, like me and people I shoot with, like we'll go to ranges and we'll see like 3% militia there. You know what I mean? Like see like dudes who—and they're all dudes obviously, like people who given the chance, if they knew what we believed or even, yeah, some people's, you know, racial makeup or, you know, or sexuality, like people could get hurt. Like, you know, one time people started pulling tags like at a like at a range once where I as at. Like having people to not only keep you motivated but to help keep you safe is honestly very important in a space where it's a lot of armed reactionary white dudes. I gotta let this dog out. Sorry.
Margaret Yeah, where I live currently I'm back undercover, like I'm back in the closet essentially in a lot of the and situations I find myself in just because I'm now in a sort of deeper rural situation than I was previously. And it, you know I have the like—well I have white privilege and then I have, like, the capacity to put on—well, no one ever reads me a straight no matter how hard I try. But I, you know, I can put up enough of a front that people can ignore my bangs and my braid or something like that and it's a—sometimes just a matter of safety. But that's something I can do because I'm white. I don't know. I have no grand statement out of that, actually.
Camilla Yeah, and I mean it's because it's different for everyone. Everyone negotiation of like arming up and what that means and the things that that confronts you with is really different. But it's—I don't want to say always, but a lot of the time it's really intense and you're kind of like navigating your own, like, mortality. I don't want to be too philosophical and heavy about it. But like, yeah, you don't want to downplay the fact that you have like a machine on you, or that you're training with it at the very least, or owning it, that is designed expressly for killing. And there's no way to dilute that, and it's dangerous too. So yeah, I don't know about other folks but I have a really fragmented consciousness around it. I can't forget that I have these things, especially if they're on your person, but you also can't be thinking about it constantly, at least in a way that gets your nervous system going into fight/flight/freeze. Yeah, a level of normalization and, like, taking it kind of slow and maybe figuring out what sort of increments you can dip your toes and your ankles and your calves and your quads, you know, like you don't jump in, you don't cannonball into like having a gun, hopefully. I mean sometimes there's like intense situations, right? But you navigate those as they come up. But yeah, otherwise you like to have bite-size chunks. Otherwise it can be like too much and you maybe overlook something, and doing it with a crew—doing it with at least one other person means that someone is watching your back and bringing things to your attention that we sometimes overlook.
Margaret Well, that actually leads me to one of the main questions I have for you all, you know, similar to you all saying in your DMs you constantly have people asking basically, how do I get started? And I think that's actually one of the biggest questions facing the anti-authoritarian left in general right now is like, literally, like people want to join us and don't know how, and especially right now in these times of like pretty intense isolation, people don't know how. And so I'm hoping that you all will just magically solve this in the next short bit of time by answering the following question, which is: how do people—how can people get started—how can people start their own shooting groups? Like, how do you—not necessarily like how do you find a crew, but maybe how do you, like, make the crew a crew. How do you—how do you get going?
Camilla Well you’ve got a complete Prestige and Call of Duty first. That's the first step. I'm sorry.
Snow Oh my God.
Margaret That’s actually a reference that goes over my head. I'm aware that there's a video game called Call of Duty but I don't know what Prestigge is.
Camilla It was like an answer antithetical to the one that I want to give.
Margaret I picked up that part but now I'm curious, what is Prestige and Call of Duty.
Snow Yeah, tell us Camilla.
Camilla Ah, Prestige mode is when you max out on your level—I think it's like 55 or something—and then you go through again and you just keep doing it. That's like the almost violent level of, like, never ending-ness of these types of like games where you're just, like, you're just putting a different patina on your gun and spending 8 hours to get there, you know? Yeah, stupid reference aside, let's see I'd say that there's no cut and dry way to get there, but there is a way for pretty much every single person to get there. So I don't have like a road map necessarily, but maybe me and Snow can tag team this because I don't know if my brain alone is up for the task of, like, responding to this and it's a very important question. I did it by just watching Youtube, honestly. That's me being a millennial. Just watching Youtube trying to find some like good introductory, like, safety videos. And videos about philosophy of keeping a gun—not like deep like treatises on owning guns, that's not what I mean. I mean like philosophy as in how do you—how do you do this rightly, you know? How do you protect yourself, protect everyone around you, not expose, anyone to danger? What are all the things to think about in your life? And then there's like political things. I would say some of those things are like, are you dealing with like multiple voices in your head saying like you don't need a gun, like, because those types of voices are generally like the liberal in your head gaslighting you and, like, downplaying the realness of your life. So I would say that, you know, that's a thing to reckon with. That's a thing I've reckoned with personally. And you just kind of, like, have to do it out of love sometimes. That's where I'm going to leave this thought for right now and I'll pass it off to someone else.
Snow So yeah I think that’s—I mean, that's a good start to the answer. I think, like, to add on, it’s just like, what are your goals? Like what is it that you intend to do with these firearms? Hopefully it's self-defense and community defense. And starting out with just one friend, you know, that constitutes a shooting group. But I think, you know, I was going to say SRA. but I've heard very mixed reviews about so those locals. I think some are good. Um, but I can’t—
Margaret SRA is the socialist rifle association?
Snow Yes, thank you. My bad.
Margaret No, it's all good.
Snow And maybe starting there, you could also always send us a DM on YPT. But, you know, I think with all the different leftist gun-stograms that have popped up over the last like year, like it might be worth a start like seeing if any of them, you know, kind of look like they live in your area. Or if not, just like asking them for advice. Because most of the people that are on leftist gun-stagram—I want to say most, not all—are pretty nice. Um, and pretty humble. And I think it's really hard when, like, you live in an area where there's not a lot of like identifiable leftists. And so that can be very hard. Or if you live in an area where guns are hard to access, like that brings a whole other set of obstacles that you have to go through in order to acquire fire arms or the knowledge. But. you know, like Camilla said, like Youtube is a really good place to start. Our page is a really good place to start. If you're aware of even just, like, any mutual aid groups in your area that just do like self-defense classes, like hand-to-hand self-defense kind of stuff might be a good place to start. Like, zine fests. You never know who's going to be at the zine fest. Could be some cool people there. So I think it's just like trying to find community first might be a good idea, especially among leftists. You know, out in the Pacific Northwest we have quite a few zine fests and you never know what you're going to find.
John Starting with people in the community, like, that's legit. Like I know—and they're not in my area—but there is a group of Food Not Bombs people that we know that basically just doubles as a shooting group. They feed homeless people and they're doing a ton of great work, and they double as a shooting group. It's pretty freaking awesome. They do a ton of self-defense stuff as well. I know you mentioned SRA, Socialist Rifle Association earlier. Seems like it's very heavily chapter-dependent. Some chapters are just like—just balling out, like just wonderful people, like lots of resources, people who are very skilled, eager to teach, lots of new people who are eager to learn. Some chapters seem to exist only on paper. It’s always worth reaching out if there's one in your area, to reach out and see, like, what they do and who's around, basically.
Snow There's also—that reminded me of like Arm Your Friends, they’re are relatively new Ongram and they're a great place to start also.
Margaret Okay.
Camilla There’s—like, having trouble with this kind of like implies that there's a challenge or a barrier, right, to like getting into this. I think some of those common barriers that we hear about/have encountered ourselves are: your friends are libs, or your friends, like, don't just agree with your decision and your analysis conclusion that, like, hey I want to be armed now,—regardless of what the reason is, regardless of what the goals are, like if you have lib friends, they're going to push back on that probably. And that is something you can, you know, work in those relationships around or you can try to develop some new relationships. And I think, like, the latter is really like the best way to go about getting some people to shoot with on like a quicker timeline, because you don't know where your friends are gonna move. Do you even want to be learning in the context of like more liberal folks who aren't necessarily like ready politically, etc. to to start shooting? So like ways to do that are DMing people and like trying to set a meetup time, like the old fashioned like hit people up cold or, you know, kind of just like plumbing your social connections and trying to figure out like who knows who and, you know, it can be hard and intimidating as fuck to reach out to people because people are like, are you an op? You must be an op. And there's a lot of that parannoia and that's very real and that's not going to go anywhere. But the more you can, like, create like authentic genuine connection with people who are already doing this or have voiced being interested in it, the better time you're going to have so just look for those moments and opportunities I guess.
John I went shooting today with someone I met at DSA of all places. Like people always trash DSA or whatever, yeah—
Margaret Democratic Socialist America?
John Democratic Socialists of American, people as trash them like, oh yeah, they’re are a bunch of libs, blah blah blah. Dude's a really good shooter, eager to like share knowledge and whatnot, like you just meet people.
Margaret I think that we have these assumptions about how people, like when you live in an echo chamber—I lived in an echo chamber for a very long time. Now I don't live in an echo chamber because I live—the echo chamber’s me and my dog. So I'm not trying to bash that, but when we live in these echo chambers we can start thinking to ourselves like, ah, DSA is all liberals, or all liberals hate guns, or in, you know, all of these things. That don't really hold up necessarily to closer analysis, and also things are changing dramatically and quickly, you know. A lot of people who were liberals a few years ago aren't anymore. Shout out to the more than one liberal financial building accounts that I know—like, the people who, like, tell you what to do with money—that are now like going anarchist because of the times and because of just actually more availability of an understanding of—I mean these are clearly people who understand capitalism, right? And it used to be they were all about helping poor people navigate capitalism, to to work through it, to come out ahead. And now they're a little bit more, like, actually this whole system—Anyway, so I guess I’m—I would say I'm not surprised by, you know, finding comrades in all kinds of places. And I know my own experience is that—it's kind of actually not necessarily the best thing. I'm usually the most experienced firearms person around when I'm shooting, just literally because I'm at the low end of intermediate but I work with new people a lot. And that's actually has worked really well for me, it's just a lot of people coming forward and just being like—I mean some of it is like, yo, I'm kind of sick of all these dudes who are like trying to teach me it. Like more than once people have been, like, my boyfriend really wants to go shooting and I want to go shooting. but honestly I don't want to learn from him, you know. And like that's actually the thing I would say to like someone who's considering learning to shoot, like maybe don't learn from your significant other, especially if there's like kind of a traditional gender relationship going on in your relationship, you know? Anyway, that's a tangent but… Okay, well now that we've solved that and everyone will feel perfectly free to start doing this, which is great, I’ve been trying to solve this for a long time. I want to talk about the kinds of people you don't want to go shooting with, and I want to talk about the Mosin Nagantvwhich is the best rifle ever made, and the 1911, the best handgun ever made. And I want to talk to you all about why you agree that we should look for the firearms that wars a hundred years ago instead of the firearms that are currently in use by militaries, and how we should value aesthetics over function. Is that correct? That's ya’lls line with Yellow Peril Tactical, right?
Camilla Yeah, I could tell you've been—you've been studying up on our Instagram bio—
Johns Go ahead Camilla.
Camilla 1911 is a Colt 45 handgun that chuds’ll often cite—
Margaret What’s a thud in this context?
Camilla A chud in this context is a tending toward violent, like, right wing conservative authoritarian person, very broadly speaking.
Margaret Okay.
Camilla They often say that two world wars! It won two world wars! So that’s, like, that's the joke of the 1911. The history behind that weapon is interesting and horrific, as is the interest—as is the history behind, like, literally every gun that was involved in conflict. But have an interesting story. The reason I chimed in so quickly is because I have an uncle who has been a cop—has been a retired cop for almost my whole life because, so he's like pretty old, but he still every day carries. He, like, his thing is like carrying a 1911 in his fanny pack. And like, you know, I grew up with this person, like, almost my entire life. So finally I'm like, hey, what's up uncle. Like, I'm into guns now, like, what's up. Let's talk. And so the next time I see him he takes me outside into the backyard where we can have like a second of privacy, and he's like, yeah, let me show this thing to you—Really quick, flagging. Flagging is when someone swings the muzzle of the gun across your body or holds it on you unintentionally, usually. So then you say, hey, you flagged me. It means someone pointed a gun at you which means that they're violating one of the most basic, like, safety principles of like having firearms—So he he flags me multiple times with it and I'm just, like, astounded because like it confirms everything that I think I know about police officers, which is that they're incompetent and aren't good at shooting and aren't safe. But it was just, like, such a rich moment for me. And I said something both times and he just kind of, like, waved it off and was like, it's a sick gun though, right? I mean, like he's in his eighties so he's not saying “sick,” but that was his equivalent. And yeah, that's maybe all you need to know about people who really love 1911s. I mean, like, collectors and stuff, there's exceptions to everything that I'm saying, that's like a generalization. And the Mosin is a Russian rifle that someone else can talk about right.
John The 1911, right, like it's a classic, yeah, but it should be left as a classic. It holds 7 rounds of .45 which is a slow round, it's not really as good as 9mm which, if you're not into guns, like every—guns you think of generally like shoot nine millimeters. It’s not as good. They have a tendency to jam. They're not very good. But yes, old heads like them. But again, I agree with Margaret here, if you're gonna get an old gun you have to get a gun that was designed in 1891 by Sergey Mosin that symbolizes an authoritarian Stalinist regime, because that's what makes it good. The optics make it good.
Margaret [Laughing]
John Not, you know, it doesn't matter if it's bolt action and fires extremely slow and only holds five shots, because back in the 40s some conscripts carried it once upon a time and killed some fascists with it and that's why it's still relevant in 2022. You heard it here first.
Margaret The reason I love everyone being obsessed with Mosin-Nagants is that, before I really knew much about guns and my friends would take me shooting, my friend took me shooting actually on the Pacific Northwest—and we were shooting one of his guns which is a Mosin-Nagant—and it fired without the trigger being touched. Twice.
Snow Oh.
Margaret And because we've practiced all of the other rules of firearm safety, nothing bad happened. The gun was always pointed down range and so when it went off on its own, it did so down range so I've never really trusted Mosin-Nagants.
John Margaret, who doesn't love surprises? We all love surprises.
Snow You know, maybe this is too soon, but Alec Baldwin sure doesn't like surprises, you know?
Camilla Oh my goodness.
John Oh my god. Oh, rim shot.
Camilla But in all seriousness, if you have a Mosin, I'm pretty agnostic about whether you hold onto it or get rid of It. Don't shoot someone or yourself with it, please? They're like kind of affectionately and pejoratively referred to as Garbage Rods. And that's kind of like what their value is. Obviously they're bullets. It's a gun. You could really fuck someone up with it. Yeah, if you want to talk about good firearms to get into here and now, we can talk briefly about that because that might be helpful for some people. But it's definitely going to be a more modern thing where you can like pull the trigger more than once without having to like, you know, pull a bolt back.
John I think we should talk about that, Camilla, but it's probably worth saying that or a while there you would see it online all the time—still do—someone being like, you know, ready to bash the fash, right? And it's a firearm designed in 1891 that was just a a crap-tier rifle back in 1891. And you're like, why—you know, you can get—you know, you can get other stuff. And maybe it made sense when that firearm was $100 in a crate in your local sporting goods store. But, you know, we regularly post links to AR rifles that are like $430–440. Like good quality, like, Soviet military surplus. Like, the Mosin was a 5 shot bolt action rifle, so you have to like cycle a bolt—work a bolt back and forth to shoot it. Or the SKS rifle, a firearm that was obsolete 2 years after was introduced, holds 10, incredibly heavy. Like, those guns are now going for $500–700, so you can get a better gun for cheaper. And yet still we see to this day people proudly posting pictures of Soviet Military surplus, you know, “We’re ready. We're ready, boys.” Like, you know, but let's get into more what Camilla said because that was just depressing.
Snow I mean, just to like wrap it up though. Like I think just to clarify for folks that like aren't super gun nerds like we all are is that—to pull out further what John was saying—is just, like, a lot of people out there are saying these kinds of dare I say antiquated firearms are not up to like the performance that more modern guns are. And so for them to say it's “just as good” is actually quite reckless and dangerous. And so that's why we're so against it as being your, like, primary firearm, right? Like I have a lever-action. Is that my primary carbine? Fuck no. But it is it one of my favorite guns? Yes. So it's just like, you know, like we say, mission drives gear and.
John Like, you don't have to have that many guns. Like I have a shotgun which I use for hunting, and then a carbine, and a handgun, right? Like no one's saying you got to get a crapload of guns, and like maybe buying one of those guns back in the day, yeah, it made sense when it was a $100. But now that you can get better stuff for cheaper—for cheaper!—there's no reason you should buy one with your hard-earned money. And advocating that new firearm owners go buy those is frankly—is reckless—is negligent reckless, honestly.
Margaret I mean, I want one. But I want one in the context that bolt action is my favorite action to shoot.
Snow It's fun.
Margaret My current favorite rifle is my dad's 1972 .22 mag bolt action rifle that's meant for shooting groundhogs, and it's my favorite gun. And it annoys me because .22 magnum is the same price as, like, large—same price as a center fire ammunition. But it’s, like, not particularly more effective than .22 LR, which is the cheapest ammunition. But it’s my favorite gun and so I completely feel you on the lever action. And I would totally have a Mosin-Nagant. I like history and there's like something like kind of—I mean, it's funny because I spend most of my time—my waking hours trying to figure out how to be mean to authoritarian communism. That's like, you know, what drives my life. But I still kind of am like, ah, that's cool gun. I don't know. So—but the thing I wanted to point out really quickly for yeah—saying—I wanted to kind of geek out about guns with you all because I don't get a chance too much in my day-to-day life. But I think it was you all who brought to my attention this term Red Fudd. And would one of you be able to briefly explain what a Red Fudd is and what a Fudd is so to sort of tie up this before we talk about good guns.
Camilla Ah, it's a reference to Elmer Fudd, I believe. Red meaning communist, Fudd—affectionately, of course—Fudd is Elmer Fudd. So like, the caricature is someone who believes and is a proponent of what we call Fuddlore which is the comment—you know, it's like summed up in comments like, “the SKS is just as good as the AK47” or “SKS is just as good as an AR15” from wherever. Give me some, give me some other ones.
John I guarantee you that — guarantee you that everyone in here has heard the Fuddlore that on the news when Joe Biden said all you need is two shotgun blasts. If someone's coming to your house just fire in the air. They'll run away. Yeah, that's massive Fuddlore. Do not fire your gun into the air aimlessly and hoping the other person will run away, like—
Margaret It’s also a crime. Warning shots are completely illegal. The president is telling you to do something that is a crime.
John I don't want to opine on any every jurisdiction. But yeah, usually you don't do that.
Camilla Yeah, it's not going to save you either.
John Camilla's colt story, right? It's like, “Why would you want to buy one of them plastic glocks. I got one of these all-metal Colt 45, Two world wars.” Fuddlore
Camilla Yeah, like racking the shotgun being the defense enough to save you from someone breaking in your home trying to harm you. That's another Fuddlore piece. Yeah, I mean, so there's like—there's Fudds that are like more authoritarian right, and then there's just like Red Fudds. So you make a distinction sometimes. But when you want to talk about Fuddlore, you don't need to make the distinction.
Margaret Okay, so if someone listening to this is like, I don't know how this particular episode will convince people that they need to get a gun, but let's say it did. And people want to get involved in shooting for self and community defense purposes. What would be good introductory firearms?
Snow Glock 19, you know. It’s—you know, there's three categories of handguns, right? There's full size, compact, and subcompact. Typically you see most people, like, conceal carry subcompact and compacts. But for smaller-framed people, even a Glock 19 can be hard to conceal. But generally speaking, if you only want to buy one handgun, a Glock 19 is like what we'd recommend—or at least what I'd recommend.
Margaret That's a that's like an in-between size?
Snow Yeah, and it holds 15 rounds stock, but you can buy extendos that—that's slang for extended magazine, or “stendo” even for shorter slang—and that could hold up to like 30 rounds if you want to be ridiculous at the range. But that's a very common handgun. It's also usually standard issue for a lot of law enforcement. So there's just like a lot of aftermarket parts that you can buy to add on to the Glock 19 if you want, But it's also just, like, very common to have it. Even for smaller-handed folks like myself can handle it fairly well for the most most part. I think I've known a couple people that have had trouble handling it, but I mean that's the handgun that I would recommend. Anyone else? Camilla, John? Free handguns?
John I have one handgun. It's a Glock 19. Like, I second everything, what Snow said, and it has a lot of magazines out there because your gun doesn't work if it doesn't have magazines. So, for example, CZ—I don't know what stands for, some Czech manufacturer technology, like to call it. During the pandemic you, like, couldn't get CZ mags because like they had all dried out, like, they were nowhere to be found. You still get Glock mags though. So. Camilla?
Camilla Yeah, I'm big into Glocks too. I don't know if anyone was like holding out hope that we'd say something different, but I would say categorically polymer—meaning plastic—striker fired—as opposed to hammer operated—handgun. Like, so polymer striker fired guns are the easiest to use. They're reliable. If you get one from a brand like Glock, you're going to have a lot of parts everywhere. If you get it in a common caliber like 9mm, there's going to be ammo everywhere when there's not a general ammo shortage. That's a different story though. But yeah, I don't know, that's what was important to me on top of the reliability, on top of like the usability for me and my body. Which, ultimately, that's what this is all about, right? It's a tool. So you don't want to get a screwdriver or a saw that sucks to use, you want to get one that molds to your body and that you can like use exactly how you want to use it. And I think the same goes for a gun. You can hold guns at gun stores. That can really suck though. I mean, not a fun, like, situation when someone you don't know hands you a gun and expects you to act in a way that you might not understand yet. So I'd say if you know anyone that has one that you know is—or that you have some level of trust is going to be safe with it, or if you've had some conversations already, then you can ask them if you can like hold it. Or, you know, if the priority isn't buying the gun but just kind of, like, trying to figure out which one you ultimately, like, someday maybe soon want to buy, then maybe just start doing some research and try to figure out like what size you're going for, what your application is. What's your goal. Yeah.
Margaret I'm going to make a suggestion other than Glock just to be conflictual, and I do this on ya’lls Instagram all the time and you all are very polite and don't argue with me and just ignore it. Which is that I really like—it's still a polymer frame striker fired 9mm handgun—but I really like the M&P series from Smith and Wesson. And frankly I like them because I think they're prettier. I think Glocks are ugly, and I don't like that because I'm vain.
Camilla They are prettier.
Margaret And one of my favorite experiences—and this actually has nothing to do with the quality of Glock, I think it has to do with the hand grip—but I was shooting once with someone who was just being really really dismissive of my M&P and was just singing the praises of Glocks, and then his Glock kept misfiring and my M&P didn't misfire during that, and so I was very vindicated and was winning people over. And so this is the kind of thing that you can look forward to doing is having meaningless opinions about minutiae. And that's the main reason to get involved with gun culture is to have large disagreements about minutia, at least that's the main thing I would argue.
John I mean no, you're right Margaret. The whole point of gun culture is to pick a brand and then saddle yourself and hitch your wagon to that brand for the rest of your life until your're dying days. I mean, you know, that's it. Why else get into guns, you know?
Snow That that's why I got into it, personally. I’ll just, you heard it here first folks.
Camilla This is my nightmare.
Snow Yeah.
John For the record, we do like the M&P, especially the 2.0, Margaret great. That's why we don't argue with you and, yeah, so.
Margaret Good. Thanks. Especially now that the the Shield Plus is double stack now, and so you can get a reasonable number of bullets into a semi—a subcompact, and that's why my concealed carry gun is a Shield Plus.
John It’s probably worth mentioning, just very quickly, like a lot of us like Glocks. But ultimately what Camilla said is really what hits the heart of it. I mean, you're really looking for something polymer striker fired in 9mm. So striker as opposed to hammer. You get the most bang for your buck. That was terrible. I didn't even mean to do that.
Margaret You’re fired.
John You get the most like value ad per dollar up to around, like, probably like 600 or so dollars. And then after that you're really having diminishing returns there. I mean we had a post that people actually got really mad at us for about a Soviet surplus gun called the Makarov. And we told people to buy a Hi-Point instead, which is $150 polymer striker fired 9mm and it'll shoot quality defensive ammunition, unlike some sort of crappy Soviet surplus weapon. And you're probably going to get hate mail now, Margaret, for publishing this opinion.
Camilla And if you want to get a rifle, get an AR platform or an AK platform. We can go into more depth if you if we have time right now, but don't don't get old, needlessly specific guns from history unless you already have guns that accomplish all your core needs.
Snow Also, like, don't buy a Scar as your first rifle.
Margaret Oh, what’s a Scar?
Snow Ah, it's a french—it’s funny, when I was first getting into firearms, the French abbreviation is FN, and I'm like, what the fuck is that? Fucking Nice? And so now whenever I see it I'm like “fucking nice.”
John Fabric national.
01:01:09.89 Snow But it's a fucking like $5000 starting rifle that looks cool, shoots well, eats through optics, but it's kind of like—it's like quite the undertaking if you're new to shooting rifles. And, like Camilla said, you know, AR or AKs—like AsK used to be popular in the way—oh well, “used to be,” excuse me—they still are popular. They used to be more affordable compared to like AR platforms. Now, not so much. You know, they range in like the $900 plus now, whereas before you get a quality AK for like $500 give or take. But I think for folks that are new to rifles, like, ARs tend to be more modular, meaning that you can add more easily different accessories on your carbine. So you can add a flashlight, an optic, a little, you know self open charm maybe. But you can just have more rail options for the AR and it's much easier to just, like, do it yourself versus, like, the AK which has a different structure. So it's a little bit harder. Like some come with like a side mount. Sometimes you have to install that yourself. And so it's just more steps and oftentimes you need like gunsmithing tools to get that kind of stuff done. And so that can be a barrier for folks. So I mean, the AK looks fucking cool, you know. I have one. What can I say. But like, it just depends. Like AK reloads look cooler, you know, because you got that bolt that's just—that click is just so good. But it's a lot harder sometimes to add on stuff, especially if you want to keep the wood furniture that looks just like so good. But it's a compromise to either have the aesthetics of the wood furniture or getting, like, a rail installed.
John One of the YPT homies ended up having to take an angle grinder to I think a handguard so would fit on his AK because it was the wrong type of AK. ARs, like, just get parts, put them on. If you like angle grinding stuff, yeah, knock yourself out. I don’t—I’m not handy like that. Also, yeah, second what Snow said about the Scar. It's nice. It is not $5000 nice. Nope.
Margaret Well clearly this would never apply to guns, because of course there's different laws about the transfer of guns and you by and large can't buy people guns legally, and so—but there's always the kind of, like, once you hit the level of diminishing returns of a survival tool, I find that it's better, rather than getting the like super fancy version of the thing, is to just get another one and give it to someone else. Because I'd rather the person walking next to me having a good enough first aid kit instead of me having like the super best one, you know. And again, obviously this gets very complicated with guns. But there are parts that are not the gun that you can buy for people and might be worth spending money on instead, you know. Okay, well we've been talking for a while and I guess like I kind of have one final ambiguous question that you can kind of reframe however, you would like, and I—it's a little bit of a, like, “why guns?” What does community defense look like to you? What is the—what are you going for here. Sell me on it. Or talk about something completely different. Do a final thoughts thing. Totally up to you.
Snow And I could take a stab at it. This is, yeah, another thing that I've mentioned in some of our previous podcasts. But essentially, like, I could be a rainbow belt in unnamed martial arts, but ultimately, like, if some 6’7” motherfucker wants to harm me like, you know, I'm kind of fucked. And so in some ways like it's an equalizer, right? And that's not to say that, like. my firearm is my first line of defense. Of course I'm going to do all of the verbal de-escalation, prioritize escape, whip out my pepper spray, you know. But ultimately, like, it's something that I feel like I would need for my own safety. And also community safety, like, we've seen chuds, right-wingers, what have you, like, attack people just like marching in the streets, exercising their first amendment rights. And we've seen them pull guns on people, right? We've seen them murder people. And it's just kind of like, if they got them, like, I think it behooves us to also consider getting them, right. Because, as cliche as it says, like, you don't bring a knife to a gunfight, right? Like, if they see that you have one, they're going to think twice. And if they don't think twice, then you have at least the means to defend yourself and whoever else that you're with. And I think the time or the argument for, like, “Well we just need to get rid of guns” is like fucking so done. Like, it's too late for that. We're so far removed from that reality that to say that is just, like, it's just—I mean, it’s just that, it's not based in reality. Like, that's the life that we live in. And it’s like, you know, did Vietnamese people during the American war in Vietnam, like, have a strong opinion on guns? No. But did they also pick up guns? Yes. Right? Like, at that point in time it wasn't about a matter of opinion, it was about a matter of survival. And that is kind of—that is how I see it is that it’s, you know, I'm not here to philosophize, you know, all day long. It’s, you know, understanding and being aware of the situation and like the climate around me and taking the means that I feel like I need to defend myself and those I love.
Camilla I think about it and have like rationalized it to people in my life to help them understand that I'm not necessarily out here training for today or tomorrow. I have, like, an informed realist kind of like perspective on what might lie ahead, and so I'm kind of like trying to get myself to somewhere other than behind the eight ball when it comes time to use those skills. I don't necessarily walk around thinking about the imminence of, like, collapse, civil conflict. But I do want to be prepared for that like when/if it happens. I know it’s, like, a very blunt way of talking about it. But it's very real, right? And it becomes a thing where it's just like, there's such an overwhelming amount of people on like the authoritarian right that have access to these tools and know how to use them, and I just want to help, like, hyper-local communities near me, and wherever else listeners might be, and people who aren't even listeners, to like—whatever, I want people to be able to defend themselves, and that's fundamentally what it's about for me.
John For me, I want to second everything Camilla and Snow said. I actually like it when they speak before me because they are more eloquent than me and say things that I wanted to say. Just to add on to that: for me, why do I want to own a firearm? It's the utter failure of the state. And I'm not even sure it's correct to call it a failure, because it never, like—the state is—the state never protects people like us, right? The state exists for the benefit of the ownership class, white men, and it doesn’t—it's not a failure to protect us. It never was designed to do that in the first place. So when you're talking about community defense, Snow’s right. You don't bring a knife to a gunfight. You get the best tools for the job. I hope I never have to use a firearm in self-defense. Community defense to me, like, you know, I'm not even say—no one's got to go—I’m not saying that anyone's got to go Antifa super soldier and, you know, go march around out there. Although some people do that. But community defense to me can be as simple as, you know, giving someone like pepper spray, right? Which is an extremely effective deterrent. Go on our Instagram, see us blasting one of our homies in the face with it. It—I almost puked and I was, like, I was there. I almost puked. You know, it can be just teaching someone who is interested in guns like how to, you know, how to use a gun. Like, you know, maybe they want to get into guns and like learn how to use them themselves, or worst case scenario, at least they know you know gun safety. But you can't rely on a government or the state to protect you, and in many cases you can rely on them to probably harm you. So you just gotta do it, you just gotta do yourself, rely on yourself and the people in your community, and the people that you trust, and your friends.
Margaret Yeah, and—to interject my own answer to question I asked you—like, just thinking from what you are talking about, one of the things that I think about a lot is that, like, because people—you know, I think sometimes people don't arm up because they're like, well, I would lose a gun fight. And right—well, like, maybe—like, probably—like, you don't really win gun fights, you survive them. And for me a lot of it is just about like—people say like, oh, not being a statistic, right? Because, like, I don't want to get murdered like sometimes people look at me like they want to murder me when they realize I'm a man or whatever, you know. After they're, like, they're checking me out in the dress or whatever. And I don't want to get murdered, but I also just like don't want to passively get murdered. Like, for me, I don't know if this resonates but, like, it's not that I think I'll win. It's that I get to, like, shoot them also. Like, it becomes fair. And so then I'm like, all right, well I fucking lost. Okay. Like, I mean, I don't want to lose. I don't even want to play, I don't want fight, but… I don't know.
Camilla No, I think that's super valid. I think that's very real. Like—and I don't know—especially for us trans folks, like, it's a different thing for me politically. It's just like, it's resistance to like a type of genocide—genocidal conditions that exist in our country towards gender deviance. So—and sexuality. But like, I’m thinking specifically about, like, the obvious violence that's directed towards trans people. And yeah, fuck yeah, if that continues being the case, I'm going to carry something to defend myself with the same lethal means that will be used against me if someone just, you know, whimsically decides they want to—which kind of feels like it's the score out there sometimes.
Margaret Yeah.
Camilla Yeah. I don't know about y'all, but that's kind of my thing.
John Snow, you made this point I think on a previous podcast. It was just like, did y'all learn nothing from summer 2020? Did ya’ll learn nothing from that whole experience? Joe Biden gets elected and we're like, all right, cool. It’s all good, yo. The same people that were talking about ACAB or whatever. It’s like, well you can't be ACAB and be gun control. Like, who do you think is going to take your guns? Who do you think is going to do that, you know. You can’t. I think you made that point, Snow, and it's correct.
Snow Yeah and I think too it’s just, like, I'm not fucking going down without a fight. Like it’s, you know, I've fucking come too far. You know? Lincoln Park is playing in my head right now. And it's like, I have so much to fight for, not just for myself but for my loved ones and my community. And like, it's that drive and like will to live that I've, , had to cultivate for some time. It's not something that has come naturally to me. And I've, like, struggled with my mental health a lot. And so to finally get where I'm at, I'm like, you're not fucking taking that away from me. And if like you're gonna fucking come up on me like that, like, it's gonna be a problem for you and me. And I really like what you said Margaret around, like, you don't when gun fights, you survive, right? And like, I am fucking trying to survive out here, you know, just a ho trying to make it out here. And like, I want that to be a choice that I don't have to defend all the time. You know?
Margaret Yeah.
Snow I feel like I have to like have a like dissertation for a PhD on like why deserve to live and I'm just tired of it. Like, I'm tired of it.
Margaret Oh my god, that's such a fucking good point. Like I finally just, like, my like stock line is, like, self-defense is a right. The current most effective form of self-defense in modern society against lethal force is a striker fired 9mm semiautomatic handgun.
John I'm dying. I’m dying over here Margaret, sorry.
Camilla Amen.
John A-fucking-men.
Margaret And then, you know, on a community level, it’s a semiautomatic rifle—or carbine, which is a shorter rifle, for people who don't keep up with—I don't actually remember where the barrel lengths change between the definitions. But okay, well, you know, there's so much more that I want to talk to you all about and I'd love to have you all on again, but it's definitely running long and then, I guess I wonder if you have any, like, final thoughts about any of the stuff we've been talking about.
[Jeopardy music]
John I got something. I don't know, maybe this is like too big or something, but I don't know. Like, I think the people in Yellow Peril, they know me as like just a sort doomer person. And I am like, that's completely true. But honestly, like, one of the funnest things and one of the most, like, empowering things is like when I'm out there like with my friends and I’m, like, shooting. And a lot of times, like, I fucking suck. Doesn't matter. Like, it's fun, and I I feel better about life. I mean, it sounds cheesy, but it's true.
Margaret All right. Well, where can people find you? I know you're not really online or anything like that but—you know, it's funny, people—I get in trouble for my dry sense of sarcasm a lot, and it's been really kicking in really hard the past couple months. But where can people find you online or find out more about what you do?
Snow We are on a few platforms. Our main platform is Instagram @yellow_peril_tactical and we're also on the Twitter, regrettably. But our Twitter is @yptactual. And if you ever want to send us an email. We're at yellow.peril.tactical@protonmail.com, and we also have a website but we don't really do anything with the website. I think it's just yellowperiltactical.com. But that's where to find us send us a DM.
John We got it because we didn't want anyone else taking the website.
Snow True Domain wars.
John And if you're on Instagram, keep typing it in because we're sort of like shadow banned. You have to typing it in, like, yellow_peril_tac and then it usually shows up.
Margaret And you all have a podcast. What's it called? How can people find that?
Snow So yeah, our podcast is Yellow Peril Tactical Tiger Bloc podcast, and we're on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And you can also find us on Patreon. I say Paaaatreon because I want to be British sometimes. But we’re on Patreon, give us a follow. It's just to help us cover our costs. We don't make any profits off of it. But this is something we do in our free time. And John Chinaman, what's our Patreon.
John Ah, you can find it, the best way to find it is actually like going to like our Instagram or Twitter and looking in the Linktree and just click on it. It's there.
Margaret Okay, and it looks like yawls Patreon is patreon.com/yellow_peril_tactical.
Margaret Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please tell people about it. Tell them on the internet or tell them about it in person while wearing a mask, or not wearing a mask depending on your risk analysis and how well you know the person. You should tell people about the show if you liked it—which you probably didn't hate it because you made it this far, and you can also do all of the internet things as well. You can subscribe and rate and review and do all of those things that make machines tell other people to listen to this podcast. You can also support this podcast by supporting Strangers in the Tangled Wilderness, our publisher, on Patreon which is patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And we are publishers of radical culture. We’ll be putting out zines, and podcasts, and pop culture reviews, and fiction, and poetry even maybe, and a whole bunch of other stuff, and you all are going to help make it happen. Well, some of you all are. The people who support us on Patreon are making it happen, and I'm very excited. There's nothing more amazing than watching a project be able to come forth and do so much stuff. Because Strangers in a Tangle Wilderness has been around for almost twenty years but it's been on and off, and watching it get reinvented anew like a phoenix from the flames. Yeah, I'm going to leave in that terrible metaphor and you can help and you can help by supporting us on Patreon. And in particular I would love to thank Hoss and Chris, Sam, Nora, Hugh, Kirk, Natalie, Eleanor, Jennifer, Starro, Chelsea, Dana, David, and Nicole for making this possible. And well, that's all for me, and I hope you're doing as well as as you can in everything that's happening.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support this show and others on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Margaret Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and also welcome back to the show. It's been several months since I put out the last episode and you'll be shocked to know that's because a bunch of stuff happened in my life which is, you know, everything to do with everything that's going on in the world. Um, maybe most importantly I moved and I now live on-grid in Appalachia instead of off-grid and Appalachia, and I'm very happy for the transition. It's pretty cool to have enough electricity to make this show. And also have an oven that works. I really like having an oven. And I also got a puppy, and I got a puppy who is rescued, so I've not—I spent several months where instead of sleeping or getting anything done, I had a puppy. I still have the puppy but now I get to sleep because the puppy is like five months old. So that's where I've been. And, yeah, welcome back to the show. This week I'll be talking with Summer who is my friend who is an ICU nurse in a rural area in in rural Oregon, which is not the most lefty area, and we're going to be talking about pretty much the—the politics of vaccination and some of what they've dealt with during the pandemic. And I think you'll enjoy it. And this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of Anarchist Podcasts, and here's a jingle from another show on the network. Duh da duh da da daaaaa.
Jingle 1 The Final Straw is a weekly anarchist radio show. It’s fucking awesome, and you’re never gonna hear me say fucking awesome on our show because we’re FCC regulated.
Jingle 2 There’s a black part of my heart that just flutters when you talk like that.
Jingle 1 [Inaudible] talk than more yelling.
Jingle 3 It’s a weird sort of like nice thing, in a way, that also can get kind of frightening at times.
Jingle 1 Thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org
Margaret Okay, so if you could introduce yourself with like your name, your pronouns, and then I guess a little bit about what it is that you do that is the reason I invited you to talk on the show today.
Summer My name’s Summer. I'm a nurse, I live in Rural Oregon. I use they/them pronouns and I've been working in an ICU and have experienced now working in a Covid ICU—full Covid ICU. And I come from a background of radical politics and we're here today to talk about some of that.
Margaret Yeah I guess I wanted to have you on because I've seen some of your social media posts about the hate that you've gotten at the—at the ICU that you work at and I know there's a lot of conversation right now about what do we do about the unvaccinated people who end up in hospital, and you know, combined with the—there's a lot of like news stories about, you know, the ungratitude of the unvaccinated folks and things like that. And I guess I just wanted to talk to you to get more of a firsthand idea of what it's like working at an ICU during Covid in a pandemic. I already set the Covid part.
Summer Sure, um, so to give a little context: like I said, I live in a rural area of Organ. It's predominantly conservative, a lot of libertarian bent, um, included in the state of Jefferson—if you're familiar with that as a concept. And we experienced a huge Covid surge in our ICUs August through October of this last fall—or summer into fall. Maybe even into November really. And so rural area with low vaccination rates. Like I said, a lot of libertarian politics. And during that surge we were experiencing some of the worst numbers in the country in terms of infection rates and it hit our hospital pretty hard. We serve, uh, like very wide rural area. We’re, um, the highest level trauma center within hundreds of miles. And so we get people from a really wide region of the state and even from Northern California. And our ICU just got flooded with very, very sick Covid patients. It's a fifteen-bed ICU and as soon as that filled up, you know, it really impacted the entire hospital system. And it ended up that our ICU and our step down unit were both full of critically ill Covid patients during that time frame, and we ended up having the National Guard and FEMA nurses present at the hospital to just help it continue to function and help it serve the Covid patients and the rest of the patients in the hospital who needed care. So that's the larger context of what was going on. And then more specifically in my experience, you know, the politics around the pandemic not only impacted, like, who's getting vaccinated and who's not and the numbers and how they grew so rapidly, but really, they impact and trust in the medical system. And there's already a lot of reasons for a lot of different demographics and populations to have distrust in the medical system. But right now we're experiencing that kind of expanding into different demographics and different populations. And the things that I think you're referring to that I've experienced was, you know, there was a day during our surge where the national news actually came into our ICU to report on what was happening in this rural area. And, you know, at that time the vast majority of patients we were seeing were unvaccinated. And that very same day there was a protest outside the hospital against the state vaccine mandate that had not been enacted but was upcoming, that would require all health care workers to be vaccinated, um, barring a religious exemption. So we left a shift where the national news was present, high Intensity, we lost like 3 patients that day in our small ICU I think, um, to walk out of the hospital to hundreds of people across the street protesting the vaccine mandate. And then, you know, of course mixed in there are antivaxxers are—you know, generally antivaxxers— more far-right folks mixed in. It was a pretty tough day, a pretty emotional day for a lot of us walking out from some really intense cases in the ICU to a public that is completely undermining your lived reality, you know, just on the other side of these doors, right? And I think that that's, you know, that's a thing that's been seen at different areas across the country, that tension that's escalated between healthcare and the public. And I think there's so many things that we can say about that. But really, I—you know, this question of like vaxx versus antivaxx, um, it's something I've thought out about quite a lot, obviously. And I actually had a friend somewhat recently who, um—a mutual friend I believe—asked me whether I still have compassion for unvaccinated patients. You know, going off of his experience of having healthcare worker friends who are kind of just totally disillusioned around vaccination rates and taking care of these patients who didn't take what seems like the obvious step to take care of themselves.
Margaret Yeah.
Summer And the answer to that is like, yes, I definitely still do have compassion for these people, and um I can understand not—I can understand the frustration. I'm still frustrated, right. It’s still easy to get really angry. But for me it's the same as any other patients that I treat, whether it's an OD, or a DUI, or people coming in with exacerbations of chronic illness. It's not really my job to judge why someone's in the hospital. It's not my job to moralize their suffering. And if you're in a Covid ICU, that is like a hellhole of suffering, let me tell you. These people are suffering in a major way and experiencing a huge trauma. Not just the patients, but families as well.
Margaret Right.
Summer I also, you know, have to contextualize it in this much larger situation where we have a government that is, like, face planting, a public healthcare system that is face planting on managing a global pandemic in our country, and this huge amount of misinformation that's out, both about, you know, a vaccine, but also about a virus and what that is, and about a pandemic and what that is, and what it takes to protect yourself from one another. And so I have a lot of compassion for people who, their world is just a different reality. It's a reality where the facts don't line up, right?
Margaret Yeah.
Summer And a lot of us experience that now, right? Like, what is reality? Sometimes you can't even have a conversation with someone about facts, about what's real and what's not, and I experience that a lot talking to family members in healthcare at this point.
Margaret Yeah. I mean, it's interesting comparing it—kind of, like, subtly comparing it to harm reduction, right? I feel like that was actually one of the most, you know, that was like the way of putting it that really got to me, like, when you just set that just now is because I—yeah, I do think of the like, well obviously these people are making decisions that I don't, right? Um, and yet that's a decision we've made at least in terms of the opioid crisis to just not have any judgment towards, and it's kind of interesting. Also because when you talk about the suffering that people are facing, right? Like, it comes up every now and then that someone who is kind of terrible dies, right?
Summer Right.
Margaret And then, in some ways, especially if they have a lot of like political power or whatever, everyone talking shit on that person who's died. Whatever, I don't I don't care. But on some level there's a certain amount of, like, well can't ask accountability of the dead. You know, like, um, like say—so for example, someone dies doing something very like heroic and good that we all agree is a good thing, but they have a long history of doing bad things. There's kind of a like, well, but they can't do anything about that now, right? There's no way for us to ask for them to do anything about that. And so, maybe even the people who survive who aren't vaccinated who end up in the hospital—I mean I guess what we're kind of saying is, like, get vaccinated or face the consequences. And they were like, “consequences, please.” And then they face the consequences. So on some level—
Summer Yeah.
Margaret —like what more can you ask? They’re suffering, you know.
10:20.19 Summer Yeah. But even in in my regards, some people don't really understand—many people don't really understand the consequences. Not only have many people not really seen what an ICU is, what a ventilator is, what someone's body looks like after weeks on a ventilator. Um, but in their version of reality, the truth that they've been presented, this whole thing isn't real for some of these people. And I'm not exaggerating. Like I have met—I have talked to family members at the bedside of their loved one who has an 80–90% chance of dying—because those were the rates we were seeing in our ICU during that surge—80–90% of our intubated patients were dying of Covid—who says, “I just didn't know. I just didn't think this was real. I didn't think this could happen.”
Margaret Yeah.
11:14.96 Summer “If you were going to get a vaccine, which one would you get.” Like, those are conversations I've had with people, you know, and it's—that's what really for me is so heart-wrenching is, like, the dawning of knowledge upon these people in the worst way possible. Like, that shouldn't be the way people have to understand the truth is by watching their family member die because of what they've all believed. Um, and I mean, I've witnessed that regret from family members for sure, and I—this isn't to, you know, I'm not like a flawless person or something. I also get super fucking frustrated and I've had family members yell at me on the phone about Ivermectin, um, when I'm like, that's not—there's no evidence to support that as a treatment in severe Covid cases. Like that's, like, become this, like, this sentence I've repeated so many times. And it's—that's super challenging when you're working with a team around the clock that is like monitoring literally everything that this person's body is doing, from like every milliliter of urine they’re producing, to all their blood work, to the pressure that's programmed into the ventilator to keep their lungs open, and then you walk out of the room and there's a family member on the phone yelling at you about how, well there's no evidence to support vaccination, and you're staring at their loved one unvaccinated on a ventilator. You know, it's like this this dissonance.
Margaret Yeah.
Summer Um, like I—it's like you're reaching across a span that's really great in those instances, you know, because you don't have a common understanding of what the world is right now.
Margaret Right. It's funny because I kept waiting, you know, like hearing stories about that—obviously I don't experience them—but hearing those stories, I keep kind of waiting for it to, like, break through and for people to be like, oh okay, like, my cousin died and now all of my other cousins are getting vaccinated and I'm going to and, you know what, I'm going to actually tell my friends at the bar that we should get vaccinated, especially if we keep hanging out at a bar. And like, I kept like waiting for that to happen. And at this point I've completely given up on that ever happening because of—
Summer Well it does—it does happen sometimes. And I'm not trying to be, like, a blasting ray of hope, because it doesn't happen a lot, too. You know, but I have seen—like I have cared for a patient who was on a ventilator for over 60 days and then you know, was brought—like he's, the patient's awake now and can talk and whatnot. And any team member, any—whether it's a physical therapist or a nurse or anyone who walks in the room, the patient immediately now asks, “do you have the vaccine.” And because of the experience that this person has had, they’ve completely changed their mind about vaccination, of course. And at our at our hospital you have to be vaccinated to work there at this point, so it's kind of a like moot question, but I do see people turn around in a really big way. But it's just so unfortunate that they have to have what to me looks like one of the worst experiences I could possibly imagine in order to come to terms with the reality that we're living under, you know?
Margaret Yeah
Summer And I get it, you know? I get the root of where people are coming from is distrust of the government, distrust of the media, distrust of healthcare. Like, uh, relatable? Like yeah, I get that. I also don't trust those things, you know?
Maraget Right.
Summer And, you know, depending on what background you come from, you have even more reason. not to distrust those things, especially healthcare. And so I can't, you know, stand on my moral high ground and pretend that I get it and I'm right and they're wrong and I'm smart and they're dumb, you know. Like that doesn't really get us anywhere when the actual reality that I'm faced with is a person in front of me who is deeply suffering, who we're going to try our best to take care of.
Margaret Yeah. I, you know, I'm sure you get this daily and maybe it's annoying, but it's like, I can't imagine being able to do what you do, you know, and then, like, maintain enough, um—yeah, okay, like how do you maintain enough faith in humanity to go to work? Is that too blunt of a question?
Summer You know, I go to work. I don't know if I maintain faith in humanity.
Margaret Ah, okay.
Summer But I keep going back somehow. And it's been Hard. It's been really fucking hard. And if anyone's listening and you are close to anyone who's working in healthcare, especially if they're working and an ICU, like, I can't emphasize enough just taking care of your friends, and even just asking, hey man, shit sounds rough. How are you doing? Like, that goes a long way, you know? And yeah, how do I keep doing it? Honestly it's like—and I guess this ties into some of the topics you kind of mentioned talking about today—um, it's the team that I work with that really does make a big difference. And, you know, going into nursing as like a queer person with this radical background, I felt really alienated from my co-workers. I kind of had this, like, mindset that I was like an alien walking into a foreign land and I didn't want anyone to know I was an alien, you know. And I still feel that like every day of my life everywhere I go but—
Margaret This is unrelatable. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Summer Yeah, you have no idea what I mean. Um, but over time I've developed relationships with people who I probably would never have five years ago, and, um, the type of solidarity that I experienced in the workplace might not be like #radical or something, or #anarchy, but um, those bonds are really important and really powerful, and I know that my co-workers would show up for one another in so many big ways, you know, like, it's not called mutual aid there, but it sure as fuck is. The way that I've seen people show up for one another, especially in these crises. And, yeah, it's—that bleeds into so many other things about nursing and mental health and the crisis that's happening in nursing right now.
Margaret I mean, we could talk about that. I'm curious about that.
Summer Yeah, I think that you know some people are kind of—who aren't in healthcare are kind of aware of what's happening, but I think a large number of people aren't really aware of—
Margaret Which is that everyone's rushing to join the field because you all are well-respectcted, well-paid, and taken care of? Loved by society?
Summer Yeah—and yeah, not facing these like ruptures of, like, what is real on a daily basis.
Margaret Yeah, that’s right.
Summer Yeah, exactly it's going great.
Margaret It’s utopian.
Summer Become a nurse, everyone. Um, no, but there is a—there's a huge crisis happening right now in nursing and there already was this like nursing shortage, right? Like when I was in nursing school they would talk about the nursing shortage. And really what it was was, like, a lot of nurses were retiring at retirement age, and what I see as the biggest barrier wasn't that no one wanted to be a nurse, it's that—it's twofold. It's like we have an aging population with complex chronic health conditions, so more patients, right? And then we have people who want to be nurses, but we have educational institutions that are trying to make as money as much money as possible, and limiting the number of people who can access degrees in nursing. And we maybe don't have enough educators. Maybe, you know, probably a lot of stuff that I don't know about or not qualified to talk about. But and that was already the baseline when I entered the field of nursing, and then you lay on top of that this huge pandemic that is just totally changed everything, changed what nursing looks like. And like, side note, also a lot of healthcare workers have died of Covid. And it's not like an extreme number, but I think the number from the World Health Organization last October was between like 80- and 180,000. I believe that's worldwide. So—and I don't know what percentage of those are nurses—but like, you know, that does play a role, fear of that probably plays a role, and then it's extreme burnout and trauma. Like, you know, I mentioned earlier that during these surges—and probably these numbers differ from hospital to hospital—80–90% of our patients who were put on ventilators for Covid were dying. And, you know, we're pretty used to dealing with people dying in the ICU. It's kind of, like, what we do is try to prevent people from dying. But inevitably people die. Um, but when you have 80–90% of the people that you're taking care of dying no matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, no matter what interventions you try, it is demoralizing to say the least. You know it's awful.
Margaret Yeah.
Summer It's truly awful. Um, and it's like an already high-stress job that then you add that on top of, you add the public discourse on top of that, you add the politics, you add the family's yelling at you about whatever treatment they heard about from Joe Rogan or, you know, whatever. It just creates this stress level that's, I think, unprecedented and really difficult to manage. Um, and there's that narrative of, like, the public not caring about nurses, or the public not understanding what they're going through, but even bigger is like policies that reflect a lack of care for human life in this country, which, you know, our job as nurses is to preserve human life. And then we're faced with the government, healthcare—or public health policies that don't value human life. So there's like that dissonance going on.
Margaret You talking about the, like, the way the CDC keeps changing, like, what's being valued or whatever?
Summer Yeah, I mean just all of it. The way that, um, both presidents who have been elected or serving—or whatever the fuck you call what they do during this pandemic. The way that it's been managed, the way the way capitalism manages this pandemic does not reflect a care for human life, right? It reflects the care for capital. And that just—when your job is to preserve human life and you see all these policies coming down that you're like, what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck? Like, this doesn't line up with what we're supposed to do. Like, this doesn't line up at all. And then you have, you know, places that lack appropriate PPE for nurses, like, these policies that don't reflect I care for healthcare workers. It is, like, the whole picture is a big labor crisis, because people of course are going to be like, the fuck am I doing here when I could do x, y, z thing, right? And, like—
Margaret You should try podcasting. You don't have to leave the house.
Summer I know, I’m thinking about it actually.
Margaret Okay, cool.
Summer And I am lucky in a lot of ways. Like, I live on the West Coast, I am unionized, my pay proportionally is a lot greater than some parts of the country, like some parts would rule south where nurses are getting paid garbage, right? And don't have a lot of the protections that I do. And, I mean, I can keep listing all these things. Like you mentioned the CDC, like, growing lack of trust in the CDC as an institution, as a healthcare worker, because they just say garbage that is not evidence-based. They tell you you're supposed to, like, work your job based on policies that have no evidence behind it. There's just—everything's starting to feel more and more arbitrary, right. Um, and it's gotten to a point where, like, I hear my coworkers in the break room talking about the different psych meds that they're trying. Or like, the different anti-anxiety pills that they're trying, and the different dosages that they're trying, just to manage, like, their job. Now, off course, that's not everyone. I'm not trying to be like overly-dramatic. But it's definitely a trend. And then the—you know, the other side of that is, like, you have people just leaving the field entirely. But you have a shit ton of people who are going to be travel nurses and, like—a travel nurse, for people who don't know, it's an RN who can pick up a contract. Hospitals around the country do this, and have done it since before the pandemic. You pick up a contract for a certain number of weeks for a certain pay. You work that contract, you move on. Um, people do this for short periods of time, for long periods of time, but during the pandemic it's been totally amplified, because you started having these crisis contracts, some of which were funded by the government, to send nurses to places that were really impacted by the pandemic and lacking staff. And you had these huge, huge incentives—like huge pay bonuses—for working in these extreme conditions. And at first you saw that, you know, in places like New York and whatnot with big surges. But now pretty much everywhere is hurting for nurses, and they will hire travel nurses for up to, you know, 4 or 5 times what staff nurses are making at that same institution. So you work under these conditions for long enough, your management tells you for long enough that they can't do—they can't give you PPE or they can't give you a retention bonus, or they just can't, they can't, they can't. Of course eventually people are going to be like, well fuck this place, I'm going to go make 4 times as much 2 hours away or next state over. And so it's turning into a situation where we have more and more travel nurses in hospitals, and less and less staff nurses. And like, that in itself doesn't sound that problematic until you think about, like, what's the difference between a nurse who's been at the same institution for 10 years and one who's been there for 3 days. It's like a commitment to that institution in a certain sense, right? At least a commitment to the community that they're serving in maybe some way, and knowledge of the way things work there because every hospital is going to be a little different. So it does, you know, in some senses pose a safety concern. Um, and in some cases people who are getting travel contracts are maybe not necessarily qualified to work in the positions that they're getting hired to. And I've seen that happen before. People are chasing the money, and I don't blame them right? So anyway, that's like a lot of talk. The whole crisis. But it really is becoming a crisis. At our hospital I see people who I don't think of as, like, labor organize-y or, like, radical by any means, who would describe themselves as moderate talking about this stuff in terms that are getting more and more pressured. And I see people who are talking about leaving who I would have never imagined would leave. And we have management telling us, we can't pay you more because we have to pay all these travel nurses. Well, if you paid us more we might stay and not become travel nurses, right?
Margaret Can I just become a travel nurse and stay here? Actually, do people do that?
Summer Yeah, um, no, they try to prevent you from doing that.
Margaret Oh, okay.
Summer But I have people that I work with who even took travel gigs north like 2 hours, and so they're still living where we live, they just drive 2 hours to work and make 4 times as much.
Margaret Yeah, yeah. One of the things you were talking about earlier, you know, watching the nurses like trust the CDC and the government stuff less and less. And it ties into that thing that you were talking about earlier about how a lot of people have good reasons not to trust the government, and so that's like something that we can all—I think anyone who's thought through most things would have reason to distrust the government, right? Any analysis of history, almost regardless of your background, but obviously some backgrounds more than others. There's good reasons to not trust the government.
Summer I can think of like 5 reasons not to trust.
Margaret Like a little list?
Summer Top 5 reasons not to trust them.
Margaret Yeah, totally. No, this is good. You’re going to be a good podcaster. Better than me. But the thing that works—that it comes down to for me—and it helps that I know people like you. I know medical professionals. You know, my joke for a long time is that the way to get health care in this country is to date a doctor and then stay friends with him. Um, because that's how I had my health care for a very long time, is that my ex is a doctor now. Um you date one boy, you pick the right one. Anyway. Um, and yeah. But the thing is this like—okay, so I don't trust the government. What I trust is people. And so, like, people are like, well why do you trust the government telling you what's good for your health? And I'm like, no, I trust my friends who are doctors. And it's not even like I trust doctors as a category at large, because I also understand why people are nervous around that. And it is this position of privilege where I am around people who have made those choices or have access to those choices to become medical professionals. But it's like, no, I trust you, like I trust you—it's just interesting to me. I don't know like how to—this is my solution. This is how we get, um, you know, all the nurses just go to the people and you'd be like, look hey, don't listen to the government, listen to me. I don't know.
Summer A flawless plan.
Margaret Maybe, everyone to listening, trust us! What could go wrong? Trust the voices and the headphones. Unlike Joe Rogan, don't trust Joe Rogan.
Summer Yeah, don’t trust that voice in your headphone. Yeah I really get it. Why not to trust institutions, why not to trust, uh, what feels like big government saying, now do this to your body. You know, it’s the good thing to do. But, and before the vaccine came out, you know, I had my own, I'll be honest, I had my own hesitations about whether or not I would get it. But the moment that it was made accessible to me I was at work and I got an email that said, hey, you can make appointment. I picked up the phone immediately and made an appointment. I kind of surprised myself with how, like, my response to it. Like how ready I was to get the vaccine. It was pretty early on, it was last December, um, but part of what really changed it for me is kind of what you're talking about. Like not thinking about it as, like, the government made a vaccine or, you know, Pfizer made a vaccine, but thinking about the individual people who worked on producing that vaccine and, like, you know, we've all met science nerds, right? That's like, they're passionate about their nerd-dom around science and I was just imagining people like in these labs working their fucking tails off to produce something. And, you know, whether they do it for money, or glory, or fame, or out of, like, a care for people, who knows? But, I don't know, for some reason that comforted me, thinking about people like pouring their hearts and their minds into this project. But, I mean, that kind of like brings us back to talking about vaccines, right?
Margaret Which vaccine did you get?
Summer Um and I have Pfizer. Yeah. Does that mean—is this like a horoscope reading? Does that mean something about me?
Margaret Yeah, probably. We need to come up with that.
Summer My sun and moon are and Pfizer. Um I just—I've been thinking a lot about this like vaxxed versus unvaxxed thing. And especially in the Biden administration, and how so many liberals—probably more or less well-meaning liberals—thought that, like, Joe Biden was going to turn us around in terms of the pandemic. And what we've seen is, like, definitely not. We have not turned this thing around, you know? Like not even close. By no means have we turned it around.
Margaret Well, I mean, you know, there's like a million people a day getting Covid. Oh yeah, nope. I see what you mean.
Summer Yeah, yeah. And ultimately it's like, I just take issue with this really neoliberal response where this control of a global pandemic is being placed on the actions of the individual, right? Whether or not the individual makes the like “good” or “moral” choice to get vaccinated, and ultimately to me it feels like this fascist tendency. Like we've, like, identified an internal enemy which is the unvaccinated, right? And like those are the people responsible for all of this, for the economy failing for—like what does that narrative sound like, you know? And like this is all to say, like, yeah, I'm provaxx. I'm vaxxed. Like, I think it's a good Idea. You should probably get vaccinated. But I don't, you know, we're talking about like a global issue here and whether or not your neighbor’s vaccinated, ultimately like there's bigger fucking questions of like why there's been such a failure in public health to manage this pandemic. There are countries where this isn't the reality, you know?
Margaret Yeah.
Summer Their numbers right now are like in the dozens, maybe the hundreds. Like, that could have been our reality if this had been managed differently on a policy level, and I'm not even like a fucking policy nerd, you know? I'm just like, wow y' all did bad. Like this has not worked out. And the hyper-focus on the, like, choice of the individual, just like it does with green capitalism, it pulls our attention away from these larger structural issues and institutional responses to the pandemic. Like, are we really—like, don't question Joe Biden, question your neighbor, you know. Don't be mad at like the CDC, be mad at like the guy out on the street. Like, it's just a really ineffectual way to manage this. And it also—like the narrative around, like, well if only they'd get vaccinated. It's just like writing off the deaths of these people as inevitable and as, like, not worth our care, or our time, or our thought. And I don't think—I mean, maybe I can think of some people who like “deserve” to die of Covid, but I don't think the vast majority of people who are dying deserve it by any means, you know.
Margaret Right.
Summer And um—and we're at a point too where like even vaccinated people are getting sick, so it becomes, like, this really big question, right?
Margaret Yeah, and I guess—I guess it's like people are putting their faith—even if they're not putting their faith in government, they're putting their faith in like Fox News or whoever it is who's, you know, telling them not to get vaccinated.
Summer Right, yeah.
Margaret Instead of putting their faith in themselves and their own decision making. Yeah, no, that's interesting. You know, okay, so like one of the reasons that, like, you know, green capitalism—it's like the—well, if you'd only change your light bulbs to LEDs a little bit earlier, we wouldn't have climate change, everyone knows that. If you, Summer, hadn't changed—had changed your light bulbs, still hold you responsible for this. And, you know, and so it's like we all see how that's bullshit, and I can see how that that makes sense about this. But it is interesting because some of the—some of the ways it seems like that countries are handling it successfully do challenge some of my anti-authoritarianism on some level.
Summer Yeah.
Margaret And so it would be less about giving your neighbor the choice, and in some ways it is about like vaccine mandates. It's like, well, if you want to keep working at this thing that you do, you need a vaccine. And I actually don't have—like people ask me a fair amount as, like, a sort of public-facing anarchist or something, people be like, well what is the, you know, anti-authoritarian response about vaccines and stuff. And for me, it's like fairly easy. It's like, well, I don't want to get sick and I don't want to get other people sick, so obviously I take the thing that's available to me that can minimize my chances of that and, you know. But if you're talking about on a policy level, like what does that look like? What does that mean?
Summer Yeah, I don't—honestly, I don't know. It's something I've thought about a lot too because I don't want to come across as, like, everyone should do what they want, because I obviously don't feel that way. Like, that's not limiting—that's what we're doing and it's not limiting suffering. It's not preventing people from dying. It's not preventing people who are medically fragile and don't deserve this from dying, you know? Not that—I don't want to come across that way at all and, like, have you have you read Climate Leviathan”
Margaret I have not, but I once listened to a podcast where they discuss the basic concept. So I basically have read it.
Summer Well, it just it creates this like interesting…w hat would you call it… like, this categorization of different ways that governments could respond to the ongoing climate crisis, right. And there's like climate Mao, which is kind of—resembles like the way a country like China might respond to the climate—or is responding to the climate crisis. And I've been thinking about that in terms of, like, the pandemic.
Margaret So using, like, top-down authoritarian control.
Summer Yeah, yeah. But like left-wing authoritarian, I guess. And in China the way that they're dealing with pandemic right now from some of the stories I've read is, like, people who have tried to travel there and you test positive and you are forcibly put into isolation, you know.
Margaret Right.
Summer You know, you're given treatment and you don't really have a choice. Is that good? Ugh, you know, doesn't make me feel good. And then you have a country like ours which is more of, like, neoliberal, that, you know, we're seeing what that response looks like. Like, freedom to the individual and then like what fuck happens then? It's a shit show in its own way, and all the policies are geared towards, you know, maximizing capital instead of valuing humans or human life.
Margaret Right.
Summer And then there would be like a right-wing authoritarian response, which I don't know what kind of example to give for that. But then there's the, like, what is the response that you're talking about? What do we come up with that's like an antiauthoritarian leftist response to a global pandemic, and I don't know, really. But I do know that, like, things that come to mind are like, we talk a lot about informed consent in medicine and I don't think that people have the right education and right information to make informed decisions around a lot of this. That's like a huge issue, right? Like, our education system, our public health system, our media and the way that—you know, back to what we were talking about earlier, the way that like there's this split in reality, the reality that people are experiencing. Like, people are not making informed choices about their health when they choose not to vaccinate—often. Sometimes they are, but often they aren't, right. Because they don't have access to all the information—or not being given all the information in unbiased manner. So that's one of the things I think about. And then, like, global vaccine equity is huge, right? Because we can't pretend this is just a national issue, like that's absurd, viruses do not, like, acknowledge borders. Like, why we treat this as if it's, like, in an enclosed space ,right, that is called the United States when, um, the border is, like—yeah, it has like very real and fucked up implications in the world. But it's also a concept, right? And like, we need to acknowledge this as a global problem, or else, you know, we're going to keep getting these variants, we're going to keep getting more waves of Covid. So, yeah, I don't really have like a solid answer of, like, how do we deal with this in an antiauthoritarian way. But there's things we can do better, that's for sure.
Margaret I had this like huge moment of, somewhere between disappointment and fear, like I think there was, like, a news story that broke about, like, Russia, like, hacked some of the people researching a vaccine and stole their research or whatever. And everyone's like, oh, damn you Russia. And I'm like, wait, what? It wasn't freely available? Like, you like to imagine that when there's a global pandemic all of the smart people who specifically study that get together and say, like, okay, what's the best plan? And then they all figure it out together and we can have our Star Trek moment where we realize we’re all going to fucking die unless we do it, right? And something about, like, climate change and carbon emissions and stuff, I see how that like screws the economy—I'm completely in favor of this approach to climate change, mind you—but like I could see the argument for it's really more complex than that and it has all these implications. But I just like can't see a defense of intellectual property for vaccines and for medical care. You know, I just, I cannot fathom— especially, even from a self-interest point of view of like as you said, the, you know, vaccine does not respect borders. And so, like, I'm glad I have my like third shot—my booster shot—but it like kind of irritates me that there's, you know, plenty of people who've never had access to it at all, you know, elsewhere in the world.
Summer Mhmm.
Margaret I mean, I think that would be part of anti-authoritarianism, right? Is that you have this like, well obviously we don't respect these like borders or capitalism enough to say that, like, you all can, you know, hide the intellectual property of how we take care of ourselves. But it does get into interesting questions around, like, when you when you bring up informed consent, right. Because you're like, okay, well—I'm almost afraid to get into these kinds of—it's such a murky territory. But it's like, okay, if you have a community of people where they're like, oh, we all agree we're not vaccinated and it might fucking kill us and whatever, you know? But in some ways the consent—like, do I consent to allowing people who have not chose to be vaccinated get near me, you know? Like, what direction does the consent go? Like, I don't know the answer to that, but part of me thinks that the, you know, in the same way that we use informed consent with sex around STIs, right? And like, it's not to say that someone who has STIs like shouldn't have sex, it's just that you just need to have an informed, consensual sex. And like all sex, you know, because it's not like it's like a binary where some people have STIs and some people don't. I’m not trying to like, you know—people don't always know and then there's all these things that people have that—this is why it's so messy. And like, so, I'm not trying to be like, oh, if you want to hang out in Plague Village in Plague Town you can, right? I don't know, it gets—it's really complex and I just—like, I actually almost appreciate but mostly begrudge how much all of this challenges, I think not just like my ideological position, but like all the ideological positions that anyone who's actually thinking clearly comes into this with. If you came into the pandemic with a clear ideological position and it hasn't been challenged at all by the pandemic or climate change, I think you're lying to yourself.
Summer Yeah, or you’ve just like—maybe if you're a capitalist you're still just like, yay capitalism, you know.
Margaret I'm going to Mars, fuck all you!
Summer Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean there is a lot of nuance and I think it's made a lot of us pretty uncomfortable, right, to be like, should the government tell us not to leave our houses? Like maybe, is that a—maybe that's a good idea? That can't be a good idea. You know, like, it is really uncomfortable.
Margaret Yeah.
Summer And it's uncomfortable to be an anarchist or an anti-authoritarian and be like, well, the government should definitely just give me money to stay home. Because then it's like, oh, like—well, you know what—I don't have to explain it. But like, I think there is a lot of discomfort. There's a lot of weird ground here and like, it's—I think that, ultimately, it's just hard to imagine a widespread anti-authoritarian response to something when we live under capital and we live under this extreme—in this extreme situation, in extreme circumstances where we have very little control over something That's so widespread and overarching.
Margaret I think that is the answer.
Summer Yeah. That's not just you like no control, right? Like, we do have some control over our day-to-day lives, over what risks we're willing to accept, how we share information and resources and all that. Yeah, but some of it just feels very, oh yeah, so icky.
Margaret Yeah I mean but it also gets to the level of, like, well, for example, something someone could do is stay being a nurse in the ICU. You know? I'm not trying to convince you to stay your job, you do whatever you want. But like, you know, I feel like that is a—you know, because so much of the response—or like, all the mutual aid organizations that popped up, you know, is like, in some ways that is our response. Because we don't control society, but we do control ourselves and we do control, you know, collectively control smaller organizations and things. Which might be too Pat of an answer.
Summer I'm sure I'm sure there's like people more creative or smarter or something than I am who have a really great response to, like, what could that look like. But if—I know in my life for me right now it's just become—like my circle's gotten smaller in a lot of ways and I just try my best to take really good care of the people that are closest to me, you know. When my friends get sick with Covid I, like, bring them food, and I bring them care boxes and whatnot. And that seems kind of like mundane or simple. But for me, coming from my like ICU nursing position, that's kind of the best I can do. And help people understand what's going on, too, people who I'm close to who are like, wait, what the fuck does this—wait, what's happening with this thing? Like, not that I'm an authority, but I do have some room to speak from here. So.
Margaret Well, is that no okay question to ask you? This will probably come out maybe a week from when we record it, so maybe everything will have changed. But like, what the fuck is happening right now? Is that something I can ask you>
Summer Oh god. You mean with like Omicron, or?
Margaret Yeah, and like, you know, there's a lot of discussion right now about, like, do we throw our hands up in the air and say, everyone's going to get it anyway?
Summer Oh god.
Margaret You know, both like in terms of, like, what kind of response is like appropriate—or even like what response like you take in your personal life, or like the people around you take in your personal lives that you respect, you know?—Whose choices around it you respect. Everyone listening do exactly what Summer is about to say and don’t think for yourself.
Summer Oh my god. Everyone who's listening, do not do as I say. But I think I have a couple of responses to that in terms of, like, what's going on right now with Omicron and, you know, we're seeing a ton of breakthrough infections. We probably all know people who are getting Covid right now. Do we just, yeah, throw our hands up in, like, let nihilism take over and let everyone get sick? No, that is a horrible strategy for managing a pandemic. That's a terrible—
Margaret Oh, interesting.
49:57.48 Summer A terrible strategy and, you know, it does kind of bring me back to policy because so much of Biden's campaign or whatever, the dialogue around it has been about vaccination. And vaccination, yes, that's a tool. But that's not—I guess what I'm thinking of is there was like a statement that Biden made at some point that was like, we have such a great vaccine program and rollout and we’re, rah rah, we're doing the best. It's just those damn unvaccinated people. And it's like, if we have this many unvaccinated people, is our vaccine campaign really that good? No, it's not. It's not good. It's not going well, you know, we could do better.
Margaret We’re doing great in the war except for the enemy that keeps winning.
Summer Exactly. Yeah, it's like, what the hell? And I, you know, I think that like just throwing our hands up and saying, well everyone's going to get sick, it just fucking sucks because I think people are riding on this notion that, like, well, Omicron seems to confer less severe disease. Which, yeah, that's great, right? But if more people are getting infected—we're playing a statistics game, right? If more people are getting infected, then a smaller percentage can still be a bigger number of people who have severe disease, you know what I'm saying? And in like a place that's, like, where I live, where our resources aren't extensive in terms of like ICU medicine, our ICU is 15 beds. It only takes 15 people with severe Covid for us to be completely overwhelmed in a hospital that's already completely overwhelmed, in a hospital system that's overwhelmed, in a health care system that's overwhelmed. And so even if people—even in another situation where the people coming into the hospital don't have severe disease, they just have bad enough disease to come to the hospital, you're still dealing with a healthcare system that is, like, teetering—and I mean it, like really teetering. So everyone getting sick is not a great solution. I think that like, I can't tell anyone—
Margaret But what if we do it all at once?
Summer I can't tell anyone what to do, but in terms of what I do in my life is like, you know, I've all along assessed what risk feels appropriate for me and it's a harm reduction thing, right? It's like, we can't expect people to make the decisions that we would make for ourselves. We can give them the best information possible and the resources and hope for the best, you know, hope for the best outcomes. And I'm not going into indoor dining. I have friends that I see, a lot of them are nurses. I do a lot of outdoor activities so I'm able to see people outdoors a lot. I'm still having some dinners with friends, but I live—I also live in a rural area where, like, transmission isn't quite the same as it is in like big cities, right? So probably some people would take issue with some of the activities I participate in. But that's why I'm saying, like, not everyone should do what I do. But, I don't know, you just, you really need to think about the impact, right? Like, it's not not a big deal if you get sick, and I'm saying that with this assumption that whoever’s hearing this has, like, a level of health and immune function that I do, and a lot of people don't, you know. Like I think we, like—“we” being, you know, maybe me—not trying to make assumptions about you—but a lot of us think, oh, this this isn't conferring severe disease, and we're not thinking about our friends, our community members who are really compromised at baseline, who are disabled at baseline, who are chronically ill at baseline, and who maybe aren't “useful” to capitalism at baseline. So it's easy to write off their illness and their deaths as insignificant. It's only affecting people who have chronic illness, you know, like we hear this narrative a lot. Like, 40% of Americans have chronic illnesses. 40%!
Margaret Oh, that’s a high number, yeah.
Summer Yeah, and not all of those are gonna, you know, make it so you get severe Covid. But I’ve treated patients who their, you know, their chronic illness was hypertension. That's what they came in with, and they're intubated now, you know. And I'm not saying this to like fear-monger but just to, like, there isn't some “other” that is the chronically ill that is the immunocompromised, like, people all around us have these things that they’re managing at baseline. So all of us getting sick: bad plan, was the summary of what I just said.
Margaret Yeah, yeah. Well no, it's—I mean, it's interesting because it talks about the—when you're talking about, like, okay because people hear, okay, Omicron is less likely to cause severe illness. But as you pointed out, more people are still ending up, you know, we're still seeing a spike in severe illness like hospitalizations and death right now as a result of it. And it is—I think it's because, on an individual level, every individual is safer getting Omicron than Delta, potentially, right?
Summer Yeah, potentially yeah.
Margaret And so, any individual, especially probably those who kind of had in the back of their heads like, well, I'm healthy, I'll probably survive, you know, anyway, going on. Then hear this like reassurance. But yeah, we don't—we don't tend to think of ourselves at scale. We tend to think of ourselves as us, or at least I do way more than I would like to, you know?
Summer Yeah.
Margaret No, it's interesting. [Laughs] “Interesting.” What a wonderful word for what we're dealing with. Okay, well we're—we're kind of—we're coming up near an hour, but I guess I wanted to ask, do you have any final thoughts about Covid pandemic, you know, why people should go become nurses, or not become nurses, or anything to impart upon our listeners?
Summer Um, I guess one thought that I have is, you know, I know a lot of us come from communities like DIY communities or communities that really value that ethic, and I also value that. But I just, like, want to remind people that, who are treating symptoms at home if they do get Covid or whatever they're treating at home, that if you're going to, you know, use herbal, or nontraditional, or traditional remedies to treat things like this, you just also have to have—you have to be judicious, you know. A lot of us have laughed a lot about people using Ivermectin or something like that. But I've treated a patient who was treating Covid at home with tonic water and homeopathic remedies, and I think it's easy to scoff at that, but like, one person's tonic water and homeopathic remedies is another person's, like, tinctures, right?
Margaret Right.
Summer Like these just are coming from different cultural backgrounds and situations. And that's not me writing off herbalism by any means, I just want to remind people that, like, in any situation, whether it's first aid, whether it's—we're talking about Covid. There's a point at which we can't DIY anymore, you know. And I just want to like throw that out there because, um, it’s unfortunate, right, that we have to rely on institutions, but they're there for a reason. The ICU is there for a reason, and we can't DIY the ICU. So um, yeah, and just to have compassion for people who are trying those other remedies that seem absurd to you, because your remedies seem absurd to somebody else, you know.
Margaret Yeah. Well, join us next week when we talk about how to set up a DIY ICU. No, no, no, that makes so much sense. And one of the things that I feel like I've learned a lot by talking to people for this show is kind of this, um, like, the institutions that run society are bad, but society is good—or like, the concept of having a society is good. Like DIY is great, but not everything should fall on you, or even the do it ourselves. Like, you know, we actually do need to learn to expand the “ourselves” in do it ourselves. And like, I don't know, I think one of the things that gave me the most hope that you said during all of this is talking about coming into the hospital system, you know, as a, like a queer weirdo, and then being like, oh, I'm not going to get along with anyone, and then like having these deep connections with people outside your usual bubble. I think that that's, like, so important and one of the things that gives me hope is that, you know, there's actually this like—these larger structures that are still just made of people that we can all work together and figure things out.
Summer And, I mean, a lot of those people— I get why we should be skeptical of anyone in a lab coat or whatnot. But a lot of those people really do fucking care, and they really want to do their best even if they fuck up sometimes. So, I'm not trying to be like, woohoo, trust all nurses. But like, some of us are, you know, we're doing all right.
Margaret Yeah. Okay, well do you have any either, like, personal or like any projects that you want to shout out to draw attention to while you have the moment?
Summer I wish I did. I was for a while working on a project around here called Rogue Harm Reduction providing Narcan and STI testing for free, and Narcan training and whatnot. I haven't worked on that project in a while. I got pretty burned out at work, as you can imagine, so I took a step back. But that's a project I'll shout out to, you can look them up on social media. They're great people doing great stuff.
Margaret So they do still exist and people can go support them?
Summer Yeah. Margaret Awesome, well thank you so much. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please tell people about it. It's the main way that people hear about it is word of mouth or, I guess mostly word of internet mouth at the moment. And, you know, you can feed all the algorithms that run the world that probably shouldn't by commenting, and posting about it to all the social medias, and doing all of those things—they have kind of a vastly disproportionate effect compared to what you might think. Every comment and every thumbs up and every subscription and all of that means that more people will run across this content. And if you want to support the show more directly, you can do so by supporting Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which is the publishing collective that publishes this show which I'm part of. And you can do that by going to patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. I used to be supported by a personal Patreon, but owing to various things in my life, specifically that I have a nonprofit job now, I no longer am supported by that I'm supported by my nonprofit job. So instead the Patreon supports a bunch of different people who are making all kinds of awesome content and I'm very excited for people to check out Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness and all the stuff that we're going to be doing in 2022? Yes, that's the year it is. It’s a new year. I'm still not very good at that. And I want to thank all the people who support the show, but in particular I want to thank Nicole and James and David and Justine [inaudible], Sean, Hugh, Dana, Chelsea, Eleanor, Mike, Starro, Cat J, The Compound, Shane, Christopher, Sam, Natalie, Willow, Kirk, Hoss the dog, and Nora for making this show possible. All right, that’s it and I hope you all are doing as well as you can with everything that's going on, and take care of yourself and take care of each other.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Margaret talks to Casandra about canning, drying, and other means by which to preserve food.
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.
Margaret Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the End Times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. And this episode we're going to be talking about food preservation and specifically canning and dried food storage and some other things. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on the network. Duh daaaaa.
Jingle One two, one two. Tune in for another episode of MaroonCast. MaroonCast is a down to earth Black radical podcast for the people. Our hosts, hip hop anarchist Sima Lee, the RBG and sex educator and crochet artists KLC, share their reflections on Maroons, rebellion, womanism, life, culture, community, trapped liberation, and everyday ratchet. They deliver fresh commentary with the queer, transgender, non-conforming, fierce, funny, Southern guls, anti-imperialist, anti-oppression approach. Poly ad and bullshit. Check out episodes of MaroonCast on Channel Zero National, Buzzsprout, SoundCloud, Google, Apple, and Spotify. All power to the people, all pleasure.
Margaret Okay, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then maybe a little bit about your experience with prepping, like, I don't know, if you like work for any prepping podcasts that people might like, if you want to shout them out, but also your experience a little bit about what we're going to be talking about today.
Casandra Yeah, my name is Casandra and I use they or she pronouns. Um, I don't know, I've always been interested in foraging and gardening and preserving food and I happen to work for this really cool prepping podcast called Live Like the World is Dying.
Margaret Casandra is our transcriptionist and we've been talking—I've been bugging them more and more about food preservation. And finally I was like, can I just have you on the podcast? And then you have to listen to the sound of your own voice as you transcribe it. And they said yes, which was nice of them. So okay, so most of your experience in terms of food preservation is canning, is that right?
Salem Speaker 2 Yeah, that's—I think the two things that I do most are drying and canning, but I also do some fermenting and, like, salt preserving.
Margaret Cool. Okay, well, let's talk about all of it. Do you want to talk about the different methods of food preservation and which ones are appropriate for which foods and what you like the most?
Casandra Yes, I think there, there are two things that I think about when I'm deciding how to preserve something and one is, drying, for instance, is good for like really long-term storage. But—and it's also good because the food is lightweight, right? So it's very portable. But in my day to day life, I'm much more likely to use like canned food. So ease of use is another consideration when I'm deciding how to preserve something. And different food is best preserved in different ways. And that's something we can talk about when we get into canning especially a little bit later. Like acidity, how juicy something is, those things all come into play.
Margaret Okay. Why preserve food? I mean, like, obviously, you could just go to the supermarket and buy the food instead of canning it or preserving in other ways. Like, I mean, that sort of—that part's sort of a joke. But what is it that appeals to you about DIY preservation of food, like what got you into it?
Casandra Um, I live in the Pacific Northwest, and there are certain times of year where food is really abundant and accessible. And it just at a certain point seems silly to me to not take advantage of that if I could. You know, so if I have access to, you know, dozens of pounds of green beans once a year, why not can it instead of going out and buying it in the winter?
Margaret Okay, so what are the methods of preserving food? You've mentioned some of them, but is it possible that we could get a list of just, like, what—there's canning, salting, pickling, drying, what am I missing? Smoking? Curing? Is that what you would call that?
Casandra Yeah, I guess smoking and curing could—smoking is like a form of curing I think. Freezing. What else? Did we say fermenting already?
Margaret No, we haven't put that one yet.
Casandra Fermenting.
Margaret Okay, should we just go through them and talk about why each one's great?
Casandra Yes, yeah, we can definitely do that. It's hard to like, it's hard to talk about them all at once because they're all so different so...
Margaret Yeah.
Casandra Yeah.
Margaret Well, so if possible, I mean, like—one of the things I'm really curious about is that, like, when you look at green beans, you're like, okay, green beans belong in a can. And then when you look at something else, you're like, oh, that belongs fermented. You know, hops, obviously. But what, um—is it just the different methods just work for different foods, if you like are working with meats you're mostly interested in curing them or freezing them or something? Like, how does all this work? How do you how do you decide?
Casandra I decide based on what I like to eat most. So like, which preservation method I'm most likely to use because I'm not interested in wasting food. And then also just like, which is the most accessible to me. So for something like green beans, I don't know, I guess you could dry them, but I don't think that would taste particularly. good. So I want to preserve them in a way that tastes really good that I'm actually likely to use throughout the year. And then also space, I think space is a huge issue. So my pantry is only so large so there are certain things that it makes more sense for me to dry like nuts, right? I'm not going to can walnuts, though I suppose you could. I'm just going to dry them and store them in a bin.
Margaret Does it just take up less space because there's like fewer individual jars taking up space.
Casandra Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah. Definitely.
Margaret Okay. What, um, what's like the easiest to get into and/or what's cheapest?
Casandra Probably drying? Drying probably or salt curing because, you know, all you need to salt preserve something is salt.
Margaret Okay.
Casandra Um, but the drying as well. You know, you can sun dry or you can, like, create some trays for yourself and some airflow, you don't need a particular tool to dry something effectively.
Margaret Okay, what, uh—you said that drying tends to make things last longest. Like, what's the kind of like, scale there? Okay, so like, because you were saying how, okay, so you're saying how it's hard to talk about all of them at once because each one has like all these different pros and cons. So I'm trying to, like get you to talk about the pros and cons of different ones. But so like, what's the, like, you know, hierarchy of how long food can last. Like I know, for example, in my own limited research into this, I'm like, oh, I can store dried beans, dried rice, etc., for like, 30 years, right? But I'm under the impression that canning has a shorter shelf life than that. And in my head, of course, like it would be, like, freezing, there's a long shelf life as long as you have electricity, and then like cured food, it's like maybe not as lonh. But this might be my, like, my my weird, like, obviously, like, storing meat isn't as good or something. You know, my own non-meat-eating bias which I will attempt to not bring into this particular episode of the show because everyone's gonna make up their own minds about what they want to eat. But so what, um, so if drying last longest, what last least long and what—where is everything else in the middle?
Casandra Um, yes. I don't even know if drying last longest, honestly, because you hear about like, fermented or cured eggs that are found that are, you know, hundreds of years old and stuff—or like kimchi, like jars of kimchi that are still good after hundreds of years. So.
Margaret Oh lord, okay.
Casandra Yeah, yeah, so, you know, fermenting can be very long lived as well. But, but yeah, drying, as long as the thing stays dry and like bugs and mice don't get to it, as long as it's properly sealed, that's probably the longest—longest-term. And then the shortest—what would be the shortest? I think it's probably either canned or frozen. Like, food can be frozen for a long time—sorry—food can't be frozen for a long time but, like, it starts to taste like freezer at a certain point. So that's like my least favorite method, personally.
Margaret What does that mean? Is that, like, I've heard that like if you store things in the freezer for a long time it starts to like take on the taste of everything around it. Or is there like a specific, like, just as the cell walls burst of frozenness and whatever—I don't know anything about the science of any of this.
Casandra I don't know about the science of freezing. I'm not sure. I just know that, like, you know, if I lose a bag of green beans in the back of the freezer, a year and a half later the green beans don't really taste like green beans anymore. They kind of tastes like freezer.
Margaret Okay.
Casandra Which is gross. I don't want freezer beans. I'm also very anti-freezer just because we had—we had a, I guess a climate event here in February that knocked out power at my house for about 10 days. And so everything in the fridge in the freezer was compromised. And it sucked, and I lost a lot of food, and it was very stressful. But all of my canned goods and all of my dry goods were perfectly fine.
Margaret That's a really important point.
Casandra Yeah.
Margaret I know that's, like, classic prepper style is to have the deep freeze in your garage full of, like, you know, ideally some deer or something like that. But it always seems like it just requires so much electricity to maintain.
Casandra Yeah, and if, yeah. It's also—I mean, I think when we're talking about preparing for disasters, there's the preparing in place versus preparing to move. Um, and so something like freezing makes sense for preparing in place, but—and canning as well. But if you're preparing to move, then something like dried or cured makes more sense.
Margaret Yeah.
Casandra But even with freezing, like, when our power was out, I didn't thaw out frozen food and try to cook it over my wood stove, you know. It was much easier for me to just like open a can of soup that I had canned from the year before and warm it up. So even if I'm thinking about preparing in place, things like canning make more sense to me.
Margaret Yeah. No, such a—being in place versus going—I don't really have anything deep to say about that, I just, I think about that a lot. And there's a reason that all the, like, food you put in your, like, go bag is usually, you know, dried backpacker meals where you add water or whatever, you know.
Casandra Yeah. Which is good, in an emergency, but it's not super sustainable. So yeah.
Margaret Yeah. At the beginning of the COVID crisis when I was, like, alone all the time and I didn't know what's happening so I just didn't go into town and I just, like, ate through my—ate through my own food stores. You know, I definitely was very reliant on canned goods, canned soups in particular. And then also, like, when I lived out of a backpack and traveled I did rely on cans then but I relied on cans, like, you know, I don't like carry two or three or something like cans of chili or something. This wasn't a DIY canning. This was, you know, Amy's chili.
Casandra Right. And that's the other thing too is, like, Amy's chili in a tin can is—it's heavier than dried food, but it's sturdy. But I'm not gonna, like, put glass jars of food in a go bag, right?
Margaret Yeah.
Casandra That would be catastrophe waiting to happen.
Margaret Yeah, I learned the hard way that, like, several times I tried, when I lived out of a backpack I always like want it to travel with, like, this jar of almond butter, but it was glass. Or for a while I decided I was gonna be that asshole who lived out of a backpack and had a brandy snifter. And when I say for a while I mean, like, 24 hours?
Casandra 'Til it broke?
Margaret Yeah. The jar of almond butter didn't last as long as that, and that was a little bit more of a desperate thing, because when I dropped it I was like, that's all the calories that I have on me.
Casandra Oh, God. Yeah.
Margaret And I genuinely don't remember—I remember looking at it and staring at it and being like, do I pull out shards of glass? Or do I just not eat? Oh, yeah, I'm just I don't remember which one I picked.
Casandra Oh no.
Margaret I'm alive so I probably picked not eating the almond butter. Okay, so that's a good point. So is it possible to can and non-glass jars? Like okay, my head like canning requires mason jars. Which people buy in bulk. And they're, like, not crazy cheap, but I haven't looked in a long time.
Casandra I know that historically people have used tin cans, but maybe this is a conversation we could get into right now. But, like, modern food safety guidelines, everything I've read is glass jars. But the good news is, once you purchase the jar, this isn't—this isn't prepping like, you know, storing something away for 30 years and like stocking in bulk. This is, like, something that you do yearly and you're rotating through your food so you're reusing your supplies.
Margaret Okay.
Casandra Yeah.
Margaret Which actually, probably—and now I'm just purely conjecturing—is like a better way to do any kind of prepping anyways, like, it's like reminding yourself that it's very rarely for the long haul. It's usually for situations like what you had happen where, you know, you lost power for 10 days.
Casandra I mean even just part of your daily life. Like I'm—the main purpose of me doing things like canning and saving dry food is to eat throughout the year, not to prepare for disaster. But, you know, when there is a disaster I'm already prepared so, because it's just part of my daily life.
Margaret Well and I guess that's like the yearly cycle that I mean, I grew up completely alienated from, you know, I ate the same things every season of the year. But that's not really the way that humanity evolved.
Casandra Yeah. I mean, the nice thing about preserving food is that you don't have to eat the same things because you've preserved them for a different season. But it is cyclical, because, like, right now it's green bean season. So my weekends are canning green beans or tomatoes. And in a few months, it'll be nut season, so that's what I'm focusing on. But it gives me what I need for the rest of the year.
Margaret Okay, so I'm going to try and make this a pun but it's not going to work very well. Let's get into the nuts and bolts—but there's no bolts and food—of this. And let's talk about canning. Let's talk about, like, how do you get started canning? What is canning? Like, you know, I mean, if—clearly it's not just the can of Amy's chili, it's something else.
Casandra Yeah, so canning is preserving food in a glass jar, in liquid. And you're doing that by using heat and pressure to cook the food inside of it. Like, you're raising it to a particular temperature to destroy microbes and bacteria and things like that. And then it's also creating a vacuum seal. And that's what makes it shelf-stable.
Margaret Okay. How do you do it?
Casandra Hooray for shelf-stable food. There are different ways. So um, let's see. I think maybe I want to give my food safety spiel first before—
Margaret Yeah. Okay, cool.
Casandra So, yeah, so I worked in the food industry for a long time and I feel really comfortable with food safety. But I think that it's wise, if someone doesn't feel comfortable with food safety to, you know, do some research or learn from someone or take a class or something because botulism is fatal. However, canning is really safe if it's done properly. And so as long as you understand what properly mean, you're gonna be fine. And then the anecdote I like to give is that—Let's see—my my grandpa's mom—when I was learning to cat I was really nervous about food safety. And my grandpa was, like, don't worry about it because his mom used to can everything they ate in a two-tiered steam canter, which is just, like, outlandish. And she would do it on a wood stove, like, manually regulating the heat. And she would can everything from like meat to vegetables to fruit, which we'll learn in a second why that's absolutely insane. And, you know, she had 18 kids and none of them died of botulism. So—
Margaret That's—I mean, by that number, one of them would have died of botulism. Even if someone—anyway, yeah.
Casandra So I'm not saying like not to be safe, but just to know that, like, statistically you'll be okay, especially if you do what you're supposed to do. So.
Margaret Okay, so take the warning seriously, is what your—
Casandra Yeah, I think it was important for me to hear that like, no, really, you're gonna be okay. Because if you look at like the USDA website, or the like national—what's it called?—National Center for Home Food Preservation website. I swear, it's like every other paragraph, they're trying to scare you about botulism. Anyway, it feels like every other paragraph they're trying to warn you about botulism. And it feels really, like, anxiety-inducing. So it's something to be aware of but not to be afraid of, if that makes sense.
Margaret What is botulism actually, do you know?
Casandra Um, let's see. I think it's it's a bacteria that produces a toxin that is fatal. And the reason it's so scary is because most food spoilage you can see or smell, but botulism, you can't.
Margaret Okay.
Casandra Um, and it can even be fatal just with, like, skin contact.
Margaret Oh, wow.
Casandra Yeah, so it's it's very scary, but it—I don't know. I don't want to terrify people.
Margaret Well, how do you not make it?
Casandra Right.
Margaret I was reading something that's like has something to do with, like, whether or not there's oxygen or something?
Casandra Yep, yep. So it—botulism grows in an anaerobic environment, which means no oxygen. I think that's correct. I—so I learned from my grandma. That's the other part of the disclaimer. So the science is not something that I know a ton of out, which is fine. But the point is that if you follow proper, like, sterilization and follow recipes that are approved, you'll be fine. So you asked like three times what canning is and how to do it. So maybe—
Margaret Yeah yeah yeah.
Casandra Okay, so there are two different—there are three different types of canners. And they're used are different acidities. So the acidity of a food is important because the microorganisms in acidic food are killed at a lower temperature than non-acidic food. So for acidic food—and that means, like, fruits, pickled things that have like a vinegar brine—those are canned in a water bath canner or a steam canner. And then non-acidic foods like vegetables, meats, things like that are canned in a pressure canner because it helps them get to higher heat.
Margaret Where do tomatoes fall in, are they acidic are they—
Casandra So tomatoes are tricky because you—they're right on the edge of acidic and non-acidic. So if you add an acid to them, like lemon juice or citric acid, you can can them as if they're acidic, but if you don't, you have to put them in a pressure canner. And for a long time, whoever regulates canning shit, said that steam canning was not safe.
Margaret Okay.
Casandra But recently—I think it was Wisconsin University—some school in Wisconsin did a study and found that it is safe, which is great because I prefer it to waterbath canning, and it's how I learned to can.
Margaret And it also, I mean was this, was the test subjects just all 18 of your great grandmother's children, or? Because I think that's a large enough sample size.
Casandra I think so too. They also used the wood stove. No, so the difference between water bath canning and steam canning is water bath canning, you're just taking a big ass pot, and you're submerging your jars and water, and that's what creates the heat and the pressure and the vacuum seal. But it's really unwieldly because you're having to, like, deal with a big ass pot of boiling water. So steam canning is creating the same effect, but just with steam, so the amount of water you need is much smaller. So that's how I learned and that's what I prefer. It's very quick. And then pressure canning takes a special tool called a pressure canner.
Margaret You can't just put it in a pressure cooker.
Casandra No, but you can use your pressure canner for pressure cooking, if that makes sense.
Margaret Okay.
Casandra But pressure canners have—there are two different types, and don't ask me to explain the difference in detail because I won't be able to—but there's a weighted gauge canner and a dial gauge canner. And I believe what I use is a dial gauge. So it has this special gauge on top that tells you how much pressure you're creating within the canner.
Margaret So is the basic idea that all this food goes into a jar, the lid goes on the jar, and then you're trying to create enough pressure and heat to both cook the food and seal it? How does it seal it? Like is it, like, creating like a pressure difference inside and outside? That's like sucking the lid down onto it, or?
Casandra Yeah, yeah, that's my understanding. And it gets sciency especially with pressure canning because altitude impacts—
Margaret Of course it does.
Casandra Impacts the pressure in canning time. But that's why it's—so that's one of the benefits of following—let's talk about this actually, this will be useful. So, what makes a good canning recipe? Because it's important to follow good canning recipes. And they'll include things like how to make sure your food is acidic enough. They'll included chart based on altitude telling you what pressure you need, and also how long to can things. They'll tell you how and whether that changes depending on your jar size. So they'll outline everything like that in the recipe. So it's not, like, an equation you have to figure out every time you can a thing—unless you're changing altitude constantly, which would be, I don't know, adventurous.
Margaret Would you say it would be jarring?
Casandra Yes. Yes, it would be jarring. Yeah, once you know your altitude, it's very easy. And they're, like, companies like Bell jars put out entire books full of charts and recipes and things like that.
Margaret Okay, is there something special about like—like, I've never canned anything, but at various points I've looked at how to do basically everything. And I remember when I was looking at canning and a long time ago, I think I got shy—I think I got scared away by the botulism thing, honestly. And it was like something about, like, if you use the spatula—you use like a rubber spatula when you put the food in the jar, and if you don't do it right then you like murder everyone you know.
Casandra Yeah, so there are some basic safety considerations. So maybe let's, like, pretend we're canning something.
Margaret Okay. Is it green beans?
Casandra Yeah, let's can some green beans and we'll walk through the steps. So. So we're just canning plain green beans, which means that they're not acidic. So we're doing them in a pressure canner. So first you prep your food. So if we're prepping green beans, that means I'm snapping all the ends off. And I'm washing them and I'm, you know, I'm making sure none of them are, like, moldy or anything like that. And then I'm getting a pot going to prep my jars and my lids. The thing about jars is that they're glass. And the thing about glass is that if you put a hot thing into a cold glass thing, the glass thing will shatter, right?
Margaret Yeah. Which is why you don't drink coffee out of mason jars. Well, people do, but why?
Casandra But then they make the ones with the handles as if you're supposed to, you know?
Margaret Yeah, that's a good point.
Casandra Yeah, that's sketchy. Anyway, so sterilizing your jars and heating them up is sort of all done in the same step, you just toss everything in a big pot and put water in it, and you boil it for 10 minutes.
Margaret Okay, and that's not the pressure canner, that's just a pot of water on the stove.
Casandra Yep. And, you know, if you were to read like a canning website or something, they—people have all different methods for heating up and sterilizing their jars. I just think that that's like the quickest and the thing that I do because then they're both warm and sterile. So we're doing green beans. So, let's see, what I'm going to do next is take the jars out of the sterilized water. And I'm going to pack them full of these green beans. So we're putting all of our green beans in a jar, and we're doing something called raw packing, which means that the green beans are raw when I put them in the jar as opposed to cooked. And differrent recipes will tell you, you know what you should be doing. And then I pour warm liquid over them—in this case, it's just water—because if there are air gaps in the jar, that means that there's a chance air will get trapped, which you know, botulism and spoilage and things like that. But it also means there's a chance that the jars won't seal properly.
Margaret Okay.
Casandra Recipes, use something called headspace. So your recipe will specify how much headspace to leave in a jar. And that means the space between the top of your food and liquid and the top of the jar. And so they've timed their recipe based on the headspace. So if the recipe says 1/2in headspace but I leave, you know, an inch and a half, it probably won't seal because it's not in the canner long enough to like vacuum all have that air out. Does that make sense?
Margaret Yeah. And then you murder everyone, you know?
Casandra Hopefully they just won't seal and you try again. Botulism comes after the jar has sealed, and that's when things go poorly. Yeah, so anyway, so we've got our beans and our liquid in a jar. We wipe the rims of the jar because that's where the seal happens. So we want to make sure there's nothing like impeding that.
Margaret Okay. Oh, like a little piece of dirt or something that would keep it from—or like a green bean stem.
Casandra Yes, exactly. For things that are, like, chunkier, that's when your spatula technique comes in because you want to make sure there's there aren't any air pockets. Then you put your lids and your rings on. And then everything's really hot, so you make sure you use gloves and appropriate tools and load everything into your pressure canner with, I don't know, I think it's an inch of water. It depends on your canner. And then you seal it up and you start your canning.
Margaret Are those, like, electric systems or they like stovetop,
Casandra Stovetop, I've never seen an electric one, but I wouldn't be shocked if that existed.
Margaret No I just didn't—I've never seen one of these things, so I struggle to visualize it. Okay, so it's in the pressure canner and we start, and then you leave it for some length of time that is specified in the recipe?
Casandra Yep, yep. And, you know, different canners come with specific instructions to make sure that your weight is correct and your pressure is correct and things like that. So I won't, like, try to detail that out because it depends on the tool you're using. But assuming your weight and your pressure are correct, then you just set your timer once it's up to pressure and leave it in.
Margaret Okay. Is this, like, are they usually like around an hour, or is this like three days? Or what's—
Casandra It depends on the food and how acidic it is. So something like meat takes, let's see, like the the bone broth recipe I use—the canning recipe—takes like an hour and a half in the pressure. But something like tomato sauce takes 15 minutes.
Margaret Oh, because it's so acidic?
Casandra Yep.
Margaret Okay. Cool.
Casandra You know, that means that, like, on tomato day, I can get through a bunch of batches but on broth canning day I can't, so.
Margaret Yeah. What about tomato bone broth canning? Nevermind. Okay.
Casandra The lesson is not to—not to combine recipes.
Margaret See, I think that this is, like—you know, I've never been like a baker. I've technically baked things, but I'm not very good at following directions specifically. My mom isn't any good at this either. I hope my mom isn't—I have no idea if my mom's listening to the podcast. You know, it's like, I'll start a recipe and then somewhere along the way, maybe halfway, three quarters of the way through, I'm just going to do something different. I don't know why. And so I've always been a terrible baker. So maybe canning isn't the food preservation method that I'm specifically going to get into.
Casandra I'm in the same way though.
Margaret Okay. Okay.
Casandra And here's the thing. So like, with—there are so many fancy canning recipes. Like bourbon peach preserves, and—you know, like, people get ridiculously fancy. And those are never the recipes I use because I would be tempted to experiment. So when I—personally when I'm canning, I'm just canning, like, the most basic ingredients so that—like plain, just in water, I don't even use salt. So when it's time for me to cook later in the year, I can experiment because I haven't, you know, I haven't, like, made all of my beans into different like fancy bean recipes already. They're just plain beans. I don't know if that makes sense, but...
Margaret No, no, no, that makes sense. Okay, I think you've sold me on canning—this is—I mean, clearly our job is to sell me on each of these things, one after the other. Okay, so canning is good for something that you're going to cycle through at home. And so that's something that you grow or get access to at one time of year, so you can have access to it at another time of year. And you said you can also, like, can soups—is like the next level up of like the classic bachelor thing where you make a whole bunch of soup on Sunday and put it in the freezer and then just, like, eat that soup all week.
Casandra I mean, I do that. So I—soup is why I can, because my kid loves soup and that's just like what we eat during the winter. So I'll get off work and forget to have planned anything. So I'll just open a jar of broth and a jar of stew meat and a jar of potato—you know, I just throw it all into a pot. But that's like seven quarts of food into a single pot, so I think I'm doing both.
Margaret Okay.
Casandra So we have soup for a week, but it's from pre-canned food.
Margaret There's—I really wish I was on my puns and jokes better today. But somewhere there's a soup for our family joke.
Casandra I'm sure there is.
Margaret Hopefully someone will just tell it to me later on Twitter in a way that is either very charming or very annoying.
Casandra You'll have to send it to me.
Margaret Okay, so that kind of covers canning. Now everyone who's listened is capable of making up their own recipes and so let's move on from there to—what's next? What do you like the most after canning?
Casandra Drying.
Margaret Drying. Okay.
Casandra What do you want to know about drying, Margaret?
Margaret Well, I mean, okay, so like, I feel like there's two parts to it. And maybe I'm totally wrong about this, but there's both the, like, drying of the food and then the storing of the dried food. Does that seem like?
Casandra And then the preparing of the dried food.
Margaret Oh, yeah, no cooking is totally beyond anything.
Casandra It's not like a can where you can just open it and heat it up.
Margaret Yeah, you're right. Yeah, I mean, it's like—oh, so that means I should probably just make canned beans. I've always felt like a terrible prepper because I'm, like, I have all these like dried beans. Then I'm like, I hate soaking beans. I definitely just eat canned beans.
Casandra See, that's why I do both. So I get my, like, 50 pound bags of black beans, right? And I keep them in five gallon buckets. But then I rotate through them. So I will can large batches of them. So I'm only having to think about soaking them once, right? And then the cans and then I buy more dry beans to replace the ones I used, and then I have cans. Does that make sense?
Margaret Yeah. So you can soaked beans, not dried beans, right?
Casandra Yeah, well, they're dried and then you soak them so—and it's actually, going through the soaking process and then pressure cooking, essentially, makes them more digestible. So, I don't know. It's my favorite.
Margaret Okay. Yeah. Cuz like, it's like, one of the reasons I've given—it's really, I mean, people have probably noticed that I haven't done a lot of episodes about food. And it's not because I, like, think that like this other stuff is cooler. It's because, like, food growing, preservation, and preparation, like, intimidate the hell out of me. And, you know, I'm convinced that I can't grow anything because—I said this in like one of the last episodes—because I tried to plant a pine tree when I was a kid and I failed or whatever, you know. And I'm really excited to get to talk about this, basically, even though it's very embarrassing that I'm, like, in my mind I'm like, oh, yeah, when you soak beans overnight they always—you soak them forever and they always end up still just a little bit, a little bit crunchy.
Casandra Because you still have to cook them.
Margaret Well, yeah. But—ah, and then the pressure cooker being the way to—okay.
Casandra But we were talking about drying food.
Margaret Yes. Right. Okay, so yeah, so okay. So there's three different parts to it, there's the drying of the food, the storing of the dried food, and the the preparation of the dried food. Let's not too much get into the preparation of the dried food today. But let's talk about the, like, the drying and the storing. And I'm really sad about this storing because it's the only thing that I've, like, done any of at all and done some research about. So.
Casandra You probably know much more than me about the storage, but—
Margaret Only in that I took a lot of notes like last week.
Casandra Oh Good!
Margaret But okay, how do you dry food?
Casandra Um, so I use just a really cheap food dehydrator, like the cheapest one I could find on Amazon. There are really fancy dehydrators you can get. You don't have to buy a dehydrator at all, you can just, you know, set things out on trays and rotate them and, like, put a fan near them so there's airflow.
Margaret When you say set things out, you mean like in the sun?
Casandra Um, I guess if you want it sun dried, but I—in general, if I'm preserving food, I try to keep it out of sunlight.
Margaret Okay, that makes sense.
Casandra That's maybe—we didn't talk about canning and how long things are shelf stable, but generally, if food is exposed to sunlight, it affects its shelf stability. So.
Margaret Okay.
Casandra Um, but yeah, airflow is the—temperature and airflow are the major factors for drying food. So, especially if something's very juicy, you want it to be lower temperature with lots of airflow because if the outside of it dries before the inside, it's bad news. I guess it can cause mold for whatever's on the inside if it doesn't fully dry, but if it does fully dry, it means that like, say you're drying cranberries or something, they're rockhard instead of that, like, nice, tender, dryness. I can speak. So yeah, most of hydrators will come with like settings for different types of food. And you can look those up online as well. Like which foods need more heat, which foods want less heat.
Margaret How much does humidity affect this? Like I—where I live it's basically I live inside a cloud. All of the South is just a cloud for all of the summer and so, like, I can't even dry clothes on the line unless they're in the direct sunlight. So I assume I would have to use—I would have to use one of these, like, what are they, electric? The ones that you're talking about?
Casandra Yeah, I imagine so. I live in a not humid place. So I haven't had to think about that. Also storage, I imagine that you probably have more trouble with food storage.
Margaret I do.
Casandra Yeah. But, you know, then there are things that apparently great if you have a higher humidity, like—what I'm sure you're super interested in—salt curing meat is, apparently a higher humidity is better so—
Margaret Oh, really?
Casandra There's that.
Margaret I wonder what I can salt cure.
Casandra Right?
Margaret Just slabs of seitan. It sounds terrible. Okay.
Casandra The things that that I mostly dry are nuts and seeds because I grow a lot of sunflowers and also I live in the Pacific Northwest. So it's, like, filbert and walnut territory, acorn territory.
Margaret Do you have to prepare—the only one of these things I know anything about is acorns. And I know that you have to do a lot of work to get the tannins out of acorns. You do that before you drive them in this case?
Casandra You know, I've actually heard—and I'm planning to try this this year—but I've heard that it's actually quicker to get the tannins out if you dry them first because then, when you introduce water to flush the tannins out, it can, like, fully saturate the nut meat.
Margaret Okay.
Casandra Does that make sense? So you're getting rid of all the moisture first, and then when you introduce fresh water to the nuts, it can penetrate into the like flesh.
Margaret Okay. Because yeah, it takes forever to flush acorns.
Casandra It does. If you—I mean, you have a stream, so that would be much, much less time intensive. For folks who don't know, acorns are delicious, but only if they're not full of tannins.
Margaret Which is like, what, a natural preservative or something that's in them that, in order to human edible, you have to get rid of.
Casandra Yeah, I mean, there are tannins and lots of food. It's the thing that makes sour food sour or like astringent food astringent, but, you know, the amount that's in the average acorn can give you a tummy ache.
Margaret Okay, so is this, like, is this one of the ways that you would—because I assume basically all the nuts I eat in my life are, like, dried nuts, right? Because I'm not going around eating fresh nuts. So this is like one of the main ways, if you wanted to make the nuts that you grow taste like the nuts people are used to eating, you would dry them first in this way, right?
Casandra Like acorns or just?
Margaret Oh sorry. I was going back to like, you know, the other nuts?
Casandra Yeah, yeah.
Margaret Cashews. I don't know. You didn't say cashews, I was just thinking about cashews. Because I like cashews.
Casandra I think cashews are actually way different. Have you seen a cashew plant?
Margaret All of the nuts look really weird in the wild. I struggle to understand them. This is the most embarrassing episode I'll ever put out. It's just like, I'm this crazy person who lives in the woods. And I don't know anything about plants.
Casandra Because cashew is part of a fruit, right? It's not, like, in a hard shell like a walnut. Anyway. Let's not talk about cashews.
Margaret Let's not talk about cashews. I'll pretend like I know what filberts are and talk about them.
Casandra A filter is just—I think it's actually a different species than a hazelnut, but it's what we call hazelnuts here.
Margaret Okay, cool.
Casandra So like filberts and walnuts, things that have a hard shell that you crack the shell open, and then—you can eat it fresh. It's delicious, fresh. But if you want to store it, you just dry it.
Margaret Okay.
Casandra And some nuts you dry in the shell like walnuts, but some you don't have to.
Margaret Okay. And so drying is like a little bit simpler. It's like—
Casandra Yeah.
Margaret If you're drying walnuts, you look at the article that says "this is how you dry walnuts," and you put them in your dryer and you dry them.
Casandra I mean, I don't even put nuts in a dryer, because they're already so dry.
Margaret You just leave them out.
Casandra Yeah, I just—like, I put a blanket on the floor in front of my fireplace in the winter and just have a, like, mound of nuts that I—
Margaret Cool.
Casandra Like, rotate. So, but if you're doing something that's, like, quicker to spoil, I guess, like fruit or vegetables, than a dehydrator might be the solution for you.
Margaret Okay, how long—like, what are some of the advantages of drying food? I mean, obviously, like, certain foods, like nuts and things, like that's like almost, like, the way that you you store them, right? But it's like, I don't know a ton about, like, dried fruits—I suppose I know fruits a bit—but like dried vegetables, and, you know, is this, uh, like, how long do they last? Like, what is good about this method?
Casandra I think it's good because it's smaller so it's easier to store, right? It's also lighter. So that goes back to our conversation about, you know, preparing to be on the move as opposed to being stationary. For things that are snackable it's nice to have snacks, so like dried fruits, dried seeds, things like that. Um, I—there are a few vegetables that I routinely dry because I routinely use them. Garlic is one. I guess alliums. Can we call the allium family of vegetable? Garlic and onions are two of them because I don't really can them. You could ferment them, especially fermented garlic is really popular, I just don't do it. Um, but, like, the number of times I've gone to make soup in the winter and not had garlic or onions is embarrassing. But if I have them dried, I can just toss in a handful and it's delicious.
Margaret Okay, but like, so if you dry—how long does dried fruit last? How long do dried vegetables last? Like, is it, like, good enough to last you—kike most of these food preservation methods are sort of, like, meant to kind of get you until—set you up so that the next time—until the next harvest of the same thing. Is that kind of the general idea, like, so that you have this thing that lasts, like, hopefully almost a year, or?
Casandra Oh, they can last—I mean, I have like dried onions, dried plums in my pantry that have been there for two years and are perfectly good. The thing about, like, everything other than canning, is that if something goes bad, you can see it or smell it. So it's good until it, you know, it's good until you can see or smell that it isn't good anymore. And that depends on, you know, how you've stored it. Do you put—is it in direct sunlight? Is it totally dry? Is it in a hot place? A cool place? Things like that. But it lasts a long time. That's a really vague answer. I think you were looking for something more specific.
Margaret I mean, it's fine. We don't have to have, like, a chart—an audio chart of, like, you know, column A, the fruit, column B, how long it lasts with each different method. Okay, that's how you would organize the data anyway.
Casandra It seems like there should be more to it, right? Like, there should be more to talk about with dried food. But it's so simple. You just—
Margaret Yeah.
Casandra But storage you wanted to talk about and I feel like you probably know more about storage can I do.
Margaret Well, only because, like, I came into this with this "I don't know how to make food" thing, right? And, you know, I just remember a couple years ago a food scientist friend of mine was like—this was maybe like four or five years ago—was like, hey, I'm not saying it's gonna happen, but the supply chain on food is looking a little bit precarious this year, or whatever. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna just start having some, like, five gallon buckets of like beans and rice around. And that was probably what started me on the journey that you're all along for with me today. And so I just would go and buy, you know, basically prepper food, right? Ideally, the ones with like the least markup or whatever, but just, you know, five gallon buckets or huge cans of stuff that's like freeze dried or whatever and it's like meant to last 30 to 50 years on a shelf. And so I was doing that. And—but then I realized as I started to kind of, like, scale this, and more people are asking me for my recommendation. And I don't want to just be like, oh, go to Amazon, because that's the main place to buy Augason Farm stuff, you know—ans go for this company I don't know anything about. And instead realized, was like, well, there has to be a way to just, like, put rice in a five gallon bucket. It's like not quite as easy as that. You can do that and that'll last for a fairly long time, again, depending on your conditions, especially humidity and sunlight, as you mentioned, and oxygen is actually one of the biggest ways that, like, long shelf life foods go bad. And so the thing I've been researching, and I'll probably make a YouTube video about in the next week or so, is how to store dried goods for like long term storage, which is less the like—I feel like, in my head, there's like two tiers of food storage. And there's the more important one, which is what you're talking about and the, like, the things that you can cycle through and to get you through any given interruption. And then there's the sort of deep storage stuff where, I don't know, I don't see a reason for most people not to have, like, a month or two of food sitting in five gallon buckets in their basement, you know, that just sit there and you can pass them on to your kids. And—who will be like, really? Why are you giving this to me? But—actually, that's very optimistic to think that they won't immediately understand the need for such things.
Casandra Right.
Margaret And I like to imagine that will be around for 30 to 50 years from now. That seems optimistic, but I like it. So long term food storage, you can make beans and rice and many other things last 30-50 years. And the main way going at the moment—there's a lot of different ways to do it—but basically it's like the main way that people are doing right now and in prepper world, and it's mostly, I think pioneered by the Mormons. A lot of the information you can get about this—and if you live in Utah, apparently there're these stores will they'll just sell you really cheap beans and rice, and some of them are open to people who aren't in the church. But you basically, you put them into mylar bags, which are plastic bags with like an aluminum layer—which isn't technically the definition of mylar but, like, when you say mylar bag, it's what you mean—and you heat seal the bags. You put in the dried food, and then you put in oxygen absorbers. I always thought you put in desiccant because I think that humidity all of the time. The instruments that I built last year, some of them aren't even playable right now because the warping because the stupid humidity. I don't understand how a mountain dulcimer was invented in Appalachia and has such a thin soundboard. Anyway. So, but you don't put in desiccants necessarily—actually, in general, you don't. It actually seems to be contraindicated. But instead you put in oxygen absorbers that are sized to the size of bag, and you got to do it kind of quick, because obviously when you open up the oxygen absorber starts absorbing oxygen. And what it is is like little iron fillings that are absorbing that are oxidizing and making rust, I think, and they're in little sealed packets that air can go in, but rust pellets can't come out. You drop it in, you heat seal the bag, you can either get like a little flash sealer for like 25 bucks, or you can use a household iron, or you can use a hair—you know, it's like, I have a feeling that people making these things don't actually do this because I've seen people say straightening iron or curling iron. But um, you can seal it with heat. And then it is sealed. And then that doesn't keep like animals and stuff out, so then you put it in a bucket. So really, long story short, you take a mylar bag, at least five mil thick—mil is not millimeter, it's, I don't know, .001 or something, I don't remember. Millionth of an inch or 1,000th of an inch or something. You put in the oxygen absorber, you heat seal it, you put it in the bucket, and you're good. And it seems kind of simple. And it's a lot cheaper per five gallon bucket of beans and rice then going and getting the pre made stuff.
Casandra Yeah.
Margaret But being able to do it with stuff that you dry yourself—again, like, different things are gonna last different lengths of time. And oh, and you can only do this with stuff that's, like, less than 10% water content. You know, it has to be like way more dried. So you can't just like put in your, like, dried fruit and stuff. It's like almost all like rice and beans and oats and other things. And then there's like weird stuff where like brown rice is actually harder to preserve than white rice because brown rice has, like—which is much better, of course, in general—has more stuff, like more oils in it that can go bad. That's what I've learned, but you should correct me if that's what you're about to do.
Casandra No, no, I was just gonna say I've heard of people—or I've seen something called dry canning. I haven't actually tried it. But it's something similar, except you're using jars and you're using an oven to, yeah, create a seal—a hot seal on the jars. And it's supposed to make dried food last longer. I've never personally understood the purpose of things like that just because I rotate. So it's just like a part of my life and routine. But yeah.
Margaret Just having some deep storage, you know, like—but okay, this actually makes me—why are mason jars clear? Because isn't sunlight the enemy of, like, all food preservation?
Casandra Yeah, I guess so I honestly—I have no idea. They make fancy, like, tinted jars, but they're much more expensive. I imagine it's just because it's more expensive to make tinted glass. But like traditionally you're not keeping your jars on a shelf in direct sunlight. You're keeping them, like, in your basement or your root cellar or something like that.
Margaret Okay, so we've been talking almost an hour, and obviously there's still several methods of food preservation left, but maybe we won't go into the details about any of the other ones—unless, is, like, is there like one more that you want to like quick like shout out? Like hey, look how great salting is, or pickling, or, I don't know.
Casandra Yeah. I mean, fermenting and pickling is amazing. And that's, like, an episode in and of itself. And I think that it's really like trendy right now, so probably accessible for people to find information on. And then salt preserving and sugar—I can't eat sugar, so I don't do sugar preserving. But those two methods are surprisingly simple. And I'm just beginning to experiment with salt preserving, but I love it. So, I dunno. Check it out.
Margaret Is it just like you take the thing and you pack it in salt and then you're like, it's good.
Casandra Kinda, yeah. Kinda, yeah.
Margaret That's cool.
Casandra I mean, there's more to it than that, but basically.
Margaret Okay, well, I don't know. You've sold me on far more food preservation instead of just looking at it from this, like—you know, as much as I want to like try and sell you on deep storage, I think that that's like the far and away least useful aspect and like the one that ties most into, like, the bunker mentality that I supposedly shit talk all the time. You know, and so this, like, this—these methods of cycling through appeal quite a bit to me. Is there any—are there any like last thoughts on food preservation or anything else about any of this that you want to you want to bring up?
Casandra Just that once you start digging into it, you'll probably be shocked by how many things you can can from, you know, butter to water. So.
Margaret Wait, really?
Casandra To whole chickens. So it's pretty flexible and pretty fun once you get the basic down. Canned water.
Margaret I'm laughing about the canned chicken because I'm imagining, like, the chicken like coming out and running away when you opening up the can 15 years later. Alright, well, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. And also, you know, thanks for helping make the show accessible. And, I don't know, I really appreciate that, and I appreciate all the work that you've done with that.
Casandra You're welcome. I'm dreading transcribing this, but I will do it. So.
Margaret I appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you got out of this as much as I did. I didn't know anything. I mean, well I didn't know anything compared to what I now know. And I'm excited to eat green beans, I mean, prepare green beans. No, I'm mostly just excited to eat green beans. I really like green beans. I'm really glad that was the example food we used. If you liked this episode or this podcast, you should tell people about it and tell people about it on the internet. Well, tell about it in real life. But if you tell people about it on the internet, all the like weird algorithms will like make other people know about it if you like, and comment, and subscribe, and do all the stuff. And you can also support me directly on Patreon. My Patreon is patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. And there's a bunch of like zines and other things up there. And they're behind a paywall, but if you live off of less money than we make off of the Patreon, then you should just message us and—or me, I guess, on any social media platform, and I will give you access to all the content for free because the main point is to put out content and I really just appreciate everyone's support helps me do that. And in particular, I want to thank Sean and Hugh and Dana, Chelsea, Eleanor, Mike, Starro, Cat J, the Compound, Shane, Christopher, Sam, Natalie, Willow, Kirk, Hoss the dog, and Nora. And also I would be remiss not to tell you that I have a book available for pre-order. AK Press is republishing a new edition of my book, A Country of Ghosts, which is an anarchist utopian book. And if you're listening to this podcast, you probably have like a vague idea of what I'm talking about when I talk about anarchy like that. But if you don't, or if you do, you might like this book, A Country of Ghosts. And if you hate the government and capitalism, you might like it. And if you hate the government but like capitalism, or if you like capitalism but hate the government, then I would challenge you to read this book anyway, because you might learn that both of those are very interrelated things and you're kind of only doing it halfway and you have to destroy the Ring of Power and it must be—don't be a Boromir. You should throw the Ring of Power into the—into the fires of Mount Doom. Anyway, you should tell me about the fun foods that you all prepare, because I will be jealous. Or I'll start canning my own foods and I'll talk to you all soon.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Margaret continues talking to Simon, a restoration ecologist who works in the Pacific Northwest, about confronting climate crisis with reforestation.
Simon can be found on twitter @plant_warlock.
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.
1:00:55
Margaret Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the End Times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and I use she or they pronouns. And this episode I'm actually recording immediately after the previous episode with Simon because, as soon as we got off the call, we talked about all of these other things that are worth talking about. And there's just so much to all of this that we thought it might be worth doing a second episode about. You might be hearing this—I don't know when you're gonna hear this as compared to the other part. But anyway, Live Like the World is Dying as a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. Duh daaaaa do.
Jingle What's up y'all, I'm Pearson, host of Coffee with Comrades. Coffee with Comrades is rooted in militant joy. Our hope is to cultivate a warm and inviting atmosphere, like walking into your favorite coffee shop to sit down with some of your close friends and share a heart-to-heart conversation. New episodes premiere your every Tuesday, so be sure to smash that subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss an episode. We are proud to be a part of the Channel Zero Network.
Margaret Okay, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns. And then just a real brief overview for people who didn't listen to the first interview we just did with you about the kind of work you do and what your specialization is.
Simon Yeah, thanks for having me on again. My name is Simon Apostle. I'm a restoration ecologist. And I've been working in Oregon and Washington, kind of across the Pacific Northwest, for the last 10 or so years. And most of my work has focused on reforestation, but also just general natural resource management and ecological restoration.
Margaret So we were talking about—you have ideas about what people who have access to some, you know, maybe homestead-style, size of land or land project or even, like, maybe even smaller scale than that—about what people can do besides just reforestation, what is involved in restoration, and using that to mitigate whether climate change or other problems ecologically?
Simon Yeah, so one of the things that, in our field, we've been looking at quite a bit is how do certain keystone organisms really affect the landscapes. And one of the biggest ones—not just in size, they get pretty large though—is the North American Beaver. Which and this is true across North America. And beaver are a critical component of ecosystems. And they do that by doing what we know they do, by building dams, and altering hydrology in a way that creates habitat, it creates diversity, it retains water in a landscape by damming streams up and creating new channels and all of these things. And so reintroduction of beavers, or by mimicking the processes that beavers create, you can do a lot for the land and also potentially make it work better for you. Because you know, as we face climate change, water retention is kind of one of our biggest issues.
Margaret So you're telling people that they should build dams and cut trees?
Simon That's exactly right. Yeah. If you want to think like a beaver, you should build a dam. If you want to use it for hydroelectric purposes, you can do that. And then, yeah, of course, cut down trees. No, it's a really interesting parallel, right? Because beavers kind of act like us, you know, and they do all these things that we know are—especially in the Pacific Northwest—know are bad. We know that the dams, the hydroelectric dams, are a massive problem for salmon and for other organisms, and disrupting natural water flows and creating barriers and, of course, cutting down trees is the thing we all know is we don't do well. But beaver do things in a way that that they, you know, ecosystem around them has adapted to do and interact with. So a beaver dam—first of all, the scale is different, right, it's not going to be across the Columbia River, it's across a stream, a low gradient side channel, something like that. And a beaver dam is porous, it has water cascading over it, a fish can jump over it. It is complex, you know, there's a pond behind it and there's wetlands on the margins and there's channels flowing around it that they may not have gotten to damming yet. And that complexity is critical, right? Like, it's the taking of a simple stream channel and making it into something really complicated and with little niches for all these different organisms. And it can work for humans too, you know, by recharging groundwater, by retaining water on a landscape for longer you get aquifer recharge, you get, you know, trees surrounding that area, maybe growing a little bit better, all of these things that are directly valuable to us.
Margaret So that's the kind of, like, microclimate stuff of making your area—you're, like, so wells will go dry, slower and things like that.
Simon Absolutely. I mean, water retention in landscapes is so important. You know, as we, like, face climate change, right, it's—and some of that is affected by by climate change directly just through evaporation, but also as you get precipitation changing from snow to rainfall, you know, through a larger portion of the year in a lot of systems, that means that the water's not coming down as a trickle of snowmelt throughout the year, it's coming down, you know, in a single rain of that. And there's none left in the summer. And beaver are one of the organisms that can help counteract that by retaining that water in the smaller streams and then letting it out as a slower trickle.
Margaret It's so wild that that—that something at that small of a scale has an impact. I feel like that's like something that I often forget about because, as much as I'm like, oh, I like bottom-up organizations and blah, blah, blah. I'm like always sometimes forget that something as simple as like blocking a creek can have an impact.
Simon Yeah, and it's the aggregate effect, right, too. It's all of—its every little side channel. And especially if we talk about in a temperate region, like the the Northeast in the US or the Northwest, where you have lots and lots of little creeks. And historically there were probably beaver populations on every single one of those that, of course, were all trapped out, you know, as European trappers moved into those landscapes.
Margaret What—This is it is a question I feel like I should have learned in middle school or something. But why do beavers build dams? Like what's in it for them?
Simon Yeah, so I mean, it's a really good question, right? For them, I think—and actually, this is like, a really interesting evolutionary question because old world beavers, a European, like super similar species. I don't even know how different they are genetically, and I'm sure a little bit, but they don't build dams, they just burrow into into dens on the bank as far as I'm aware.
Margaret Huh.
Simon But beavers build dams largely to create more habitat for themselves. They're safe from predators underwater. The entrances to their lodges are underwater. So they'll build their big lodge and then they'll swim underwater to an entrance and then inside the lodge it'll be back up in the air so that they're safe. They also like to eat willows and willows like to grow in wetlands. And so you flat out an area that was a canyon, you create more sediment deposits, you flood into the flat areas, you're going to grow more of these kind of fast growing hardwoods that they like to eat. So it's about creating more habitat for themselves, you know, in a way you can think about them as, like, they're creating their shelter and they're also, like, farming, the things that they like to eat by flooding.
Margaret No, no, only humans do that. That's cool. That's—yeah, I'm like, now I'm like, I wonder if we should have beaver where I—you know, I live on this this creek and, you know, there's willows around and things like that. Yeah, no, okay. And so you're saying—so what is the water retention do in terms of mitigating the effects of climate change and things like that?
Simon Yeah. Yeah. So, like we talked about, just holding that water in the landscape, letting it permeate into the soil, but also slowing that release through the creek just as it is beneficial to so many organisms, right? Because it allows water flow through a longer period of the year. You know, a big flush of water, a big flood, can be a lot less useful than a steady trickle in a lot of cases.
Margaret Can I selfishly ask you about reforesting willows and, like, is that a useful—you know, I guess as I was saying, I live on a creek that floods. And we've talked about, you know, people talk about willows being very good plants for, you know, sucking up water or whatever, but we don't believe it changes the way that water flows across the land or anything like that. But it might help, like, reinforce banks or—because most of your work is riparian specifically, right? What is—what are you doing when you reforest in a riparian area? And how can I selfishly do that myself?
Simon That's gonna depend on the situation, right, but a lot of what we're doing when we focus on riparian areas is because they're important to so many species, right. And so they're rare and critical. And so the benefits that you have by reforesting of riparian area, you have shade over the stream, you know, you're cooling the water temperature which reduces evaporation, it helps the organisms within the stream. In terms of planting willows, I mean, the one of the best things about willows is that they're one of the easiest things to plant and grow, right. They're adapted to break off in flooding. So you have twigs and stems and branches will just break off, and any single one of those can land on a bank of mud and sprout and turn into a new tree. So they have this vegetative adaptation that's a hormone that allows them to root from any given node, you know, and a node being a part of the plant that can turn into a leaf or a branch, or in the case of a willow or root, even if it was, you know, a branch from the top of the tree. And anyone who's you know, propagated cuttings and stuff knows that some plants have that hormone, and particularly willows do. And you can stick a willow branch in your cuttings of some other tree or shrub and they'll root more easily. So a lot of times what we'll do in riparian areas just harvest willow cuttings, either locally if there's a good source, or bring them in from somewhere nearby, or, you know, from a nursery, and just plant those basically stick straight in the ground. It looks super weird because it just looks like we planted a bunch of two or three foot sticks on the ground. Super dense, in most areas in North America you would have—might be planting 2000 stems an acre of willows and kind of related riparian shrubs. And, you know, if conditions are right, you will get a pretty dense willow stand within a few years.
Margaret Do you then go—let's say for some, you had a homestead and there was a dense stand of willows. Do you then go and, like, thin it out so that there's, you know, so each tree—like I know that when dealing with, like, you know, a monoculture of young pines, sometimes you have to thin it out in order to make them grow healthier?
Simon Yeah, that's gonna depend, you know where you are, but but probably not. They you know, their life cycle is such that they are going to live a much shorter period of time, and they grow in these big, thick, dense stands that all grow up at once because there was some big flood that brought in a bunch of new, clean sediment and wiped out all the old ones. And then the new branches and seeds landed and you grow a thick forest. And they'll kind of self thin. And actually that's—those standing dead trees and fallen dead trees or habitat features in themselves. You know, woodpeckers like them, salamanders like the logs on the ground, so do turtles, you know, things like that. So, generally speaking, no, I mean, we'll do things like we control to reduce competition when they're young. But their growth cycle is such that they're a big disturbance, and then they grow, and then everything gets wiped out in a stand, and then they grow again in most systems.
Margaret I guess to go back to what you were talking about earlier, you said you wanted to talk about bringing back beaver. How to—what does that look like? How do people do that?
Simon Yeah, I mean, and sometimes it's as simple as, you know, you have county highway departments and things that you know, beaver like to build dams, and they like to build dams in a roadside ditch next to a highway. So these county highway departments will trap and kill the beaver. And so if you can work with them to say, no, trap and release it. And in some cases, some counties will actually say—you can say, hey, we'd be okay with you releasing them on our property instead of killing them. And they may be, they may do that for you. The other way to do it is kind of—and it depends on, if they're there, to build it and they will come. So you plant willows on a stream, you know, eventually they might find it if they're nearby. They roam pretty far. The other thing that you can do is, even if you don't have beavers, is to start to kind of connect those processes that beavers create by basically building your own dams that are functionally similar to a beaver dam. And beavers will often find those too and start to build and add to them.
Margaret That's cool.
Simon We actually, we have a whole technical term. They're called BDAs, which just means Beaver Dam Analogue. But it's a really cool sort of growing niche in my field because it's—they're low tech, right. It's, you're putting a bunch of posts in the river and piling a bunch of brush behind them so water kind of dams up but also flows through. Snd anyone can do it. You know, you don't need an engineering degree, you don't need a forestry degree, you can just kind of do it.
Margaret Aren't like riparian areas, creeks and things like that, like, fairly heavily controlled, like, can't you get in some trouble for messing with a creeks flow.
Simon Yeah, I mean, if you're doing something that's, you know—yes, in the United States, and there's stronger rules depending on the state that you're in. There's wetlands and waters rules that have to do with the Clean Water Act. A lot of these were just kind of greatly diminished by the Trump administration. So you're safer there on a lot of the ephemeral streams, and it's going to depend on your state. But generally speaking, I mean, I'm not a lawyer. But, you know, if you're doing a restoration activity on—we're talking a small stream, a small ephemeral stream on a piece of ground that you own, these kinds of activities are fine. You're really talking about, okay, am I bringing in fill, am I bringing in equipment, am I, you know, dumping dirt, am I building a permanent dam that really is, like, easily identifiable as like an irrigation dam or something like that? That's where you need to get into the permitting world.
Margaret And now I'm just trying to figure out whether I can do micro hydro on a beaver dam. Like without actually blocking it.
Simon That you would probably technically need a permit for in the world we live in, but I won't...
Margaret Appreciate it. Neither should any of you. I've not actually—I looked into a fair amount of micro hydro, and it's just not—even though I have running water on our property, it's not the right move for us. Which is a shame because micro hydro where you don't actually block the creek—I'm sure it has ecological impacts. But it doesn't block the creek. I don't know.
Simon Now there's been studies about, you know, replacing the Columbia River dams with things like that. It's, like, they're less micro, I'm sure, because of the scale, but you know, things that just basically sit on the side of the river instead of blocking the whole thing.
Margaret Seems so—now I wonder why we didn't do that in the first place.
Simon How was—I think you'd probably get more power if you dam the whole river. And yeah, different time, I guess. Yeah. I thought, you know, it'd be interesting to kind of like, think about, just because your initial question kind of got me thinking about, like, how do we make for us work for us. And, you know, that can touch on, like, you know, how Indigenous groups interacted with the forest in places that I know, things like that, but like, what are, you know, kind of what are some of like the other human benefits to forests.
Margaret So we're still kind of having this conversation about reforestation, and the advantages of it, and besides just water retention, and besides, you know, the cooling effect and things like that, what are—why reforestation? Like, tell me tell me more about what's cool about reforestation.
Simon Yeah, well I think one of the things that we're kind of slowly realizing is, like, all of the side benefits that the forests provide us. And not—we've already talked about, you know, cooling effects and shading and things like that. But, you know, there can also be like a fair amount of food production from a diverse forest. There's been a really interesting set of research that was done in coastal British Columbia, where they found these pockets of forests where you didn't have a closed canopy, you had this kind of diverse patchwork, and near historic coast Salish village sites we had these—or still have these essentially what have been called food forests. So this kind of diverse array of fruiting species like crab apples and cranberries and huckleberries and things like that, that now we know were managed by people. So it's something that we would kind of recognize as something somewhere between like a European conception of agriculture, and then just a natural, quote/unquote natural forest with no human impacts, which of course, there were. But regardless, you know, there's ways to kind of create something that's diverse and works for plants and animals, while also working for you. And I think food production is one of those. And creating diversity in a stand is one of the ways to do that. So instead of thinking about, we have this stand of trees, and we want it all to be as old as possible. Well, what if there's a little clearing over here, you know, which would—could mimic a natural process. You'd have windfall, you know, knocking a few trees over. And then one of the things that come up in that clearing, might be some of those early seral plants, some of them are fruiting, some of them are useful for other purposes, or, you know, and so you can manage that stand, that clearing, in ways that that work for people. You know, it's like, reframing how we think about agriculture, and also how we think about forestry. We think about forestry as producing lumber, and we think about agriculture is producing things that we, you know, and they don't mix. They're just different things. But of course, you know, they're all just plants.
Margaret Yeah, maybe—we would probably need to have an entirely different economic system in order to take advantage of, you know, decentralized food production like that—which, obviously, I'm in favor of a completely different economic system. So that sounds good to me. So this is the kind of stuff that's mostly useful for people who are working—who have access to, like, a land project and things like that. Is this information that people can use to, you know, influence county decisions about how to do things? Like how much control are people able to exert either within the existing system or outside of it on reforestation?
Simon Yeah. One of the biggest issues is the lack of control that people who don't have a sort of like legal and economic stake in these things, you know, indirectly have, in some cases, you know, you talk about a federal agency planning a project, and they're going to say, oh, we're doing community involvement, we're going to talk to our neighbors. Well, their neighbors might be, you know, a farmer, who may even be a local farmer, but owns, you know, a significant amount of land and is not really representative of maybe your rural communities actual income and wealth distribution. Or their neighbor may even be an industrial timber company.
Margaret Right.
Simon But a lot of these projects have, you know, if they're federally funded, they have public comment periods. They have all these things that are written into law that are supposed to allow for community engagement, and sometimes are not so easily accessible. But you can get together with some people and watch out for things like, there's going to be a forest thinning project and we want input on this, we want to say, hey, you need to consider, you know, our use, like, our group wants to do mushroom foraging in this area, and we're concerned that you're going to disturb this. Or, we want you to think about how your project design affects that, you know, things of that nature. Yeah, and a lot of times nobody really comments on these projects. So a little bit of public comment, a little bit of input, can actually really sway land managers decisions. I know when I'm in that situation, you know, hearing from five people that are all saying the same thing, is a big group of people, because usually no one says anything. So I think you can have a difference—make a difference. And that's going to depend on the sort of willingness and adaptability of people in positions of power, like with all things. But usually these things just kind of get ignored. So.
Margaret Yeah, one of the things—one of the talking points when I did more forest defense out west—one of the main talking points would be—and, you know, most of us weren't, we didn't really care about what what was good for the economy. We cared about what was good for, you know, the values that we held about biodiversity and things like that. But one of the things we would talk about is that you actually literally make more—like it does more for the local economy by and large to leave the National Forest alone and not run the National Forest timber sale program. And, again, is at least as far as I understood it at the time, and that like most of the timber sale program was like run at a loss because they're basically subsidizing all of the costs of these timber companies to come in and clear cut, you know, quote/unquote, our forests within a colonial system, whatever that means. But these public lands—you know, I didn't realize when I was a kid that the national forests were—huge chunks of them are regular clear cut, and they're on some ways like managed just like another timber farm. And there is a little bit more say that people are able to have. And one of the things that I liked about, you know, working with groups like Earth First was that we were very every tool in the toolbox and that absolutely included public comment periods and showing up to, you know, city council meetings in these small towns and things like that. And working with people who are from the small towns, usually. You know, basically, we would come into support local organizing. And then also, you know, direct action and blocking people from logging. It doesn't always work, right? But it works more times than I expected, to basically come in and say, you know, the tree sit doesn't sit on every tree that they're going to cut. The tree sit sits on where they want to build a road, right? And you block access long enough either to make it just so expensive that it stops being worth it for them, or, more likely, it's part of a larger strategy where you're also, like, suing them in the courts. Like often they do this thing where they can—they're allowed to clear cut—you're suing them to say you can't clear cut, and then they're allowed to if there's no injunction. They can do so while the, you know, while court is happening. So they can be like, well, doesn't matter now, we already did it. And so sometimes you're just literally stopping them while you make a larger change, which now that I think about it feels like a larger metaphor for how so much of this is about preserving what we can while we try to make these larger changes, while we try to change the economic systems that we live under and things like that.
Simon Yeah, no, that's definitely true. And I think just being a stick in the mud sometimes just being loud in as many ways as you can think, can be really beneficial. One issue, kind of jumping on, like, federal logging thing that that is a problem is that you can have kind of greenwashing of timber sales sometimes. You know, you look at, like, post-fire salvage logging that is really not ecologically justified, right? You know, well we need to clear out the trees because then we'll have room for the nutrients to grow. It's like, well, no, you know, fire's natural and actually standing dead trees are an entirely separate and unique habitat type. And they're an important thing to protect, you know. And, similarly, we need to thin forests because we've repressed fire for so long, and we need to make them—we need to reintroduce fire to the landscape. But sometimes, you know, these projects kind of—there will be people who insert themselves in them with ulterior motives, right. So it'd be—no longer becomes about—it's ecologically justified, we're thinning out the young trees to save. For the other ones it's like, well, actually, maybe we should take some of the big ones too, you know. There's probably too many of them, you know. It's like—so just being active, and paying attention to when those things are happening, you can make a pretty big difference over a pretty large chunk of ground. You know, one of the issues that we have here is that I think I mentioned last time is how much of our forests are privately owned though, right? And more and more that ownership is not only private, you know, quote/unquote, but owned by investment firms and entities that not only want to extract profit, but they want to extract profit quickly. So they've reduced the length of time between harvest from something like 80 years,—and you know, 80 year old forest has a lot of habitat value, or a 50 year old forest does—to now being maybe 50, or sometimes even 30. You know, 30 year old trees, which basically just looks like a plantation, you know. And they'll harvest and then they sell the land again. And it's just this ongoing cycle of making sure that the quarterly returns are up so the stock prices are up. And, you know, that's something that really needs to be actively fought in my region.
Margaret Yeah. And then I'm under the impression that you can only have these cycles where you remove all the biomass every 30 or 80 years—you can only do that so many times before you end up with no biomass left and get desertification. Is that the case?
Simon Yeah, I mean, there's certainly—we've undergone massive changes to soil structure in ways that we don't understand in forests in the Pacific Northwest. And, definitely, it's that loss of biomass. And there's certain types of biomass that only big trees can really provide. There's like that something called like brown cubicle rot, which isn't a very romantic name, but—there's other terms for it—but basically it's like, if you've ever been in the Pacific Northwest and you'd seem like a big nurse log on the ground, which is we call like a tree that's fallen on the ground and it has other trees and plants growing out of it. It's providing an entirely unique set of soil conditions. And you crumble that apart and it's got these, like, cavities and square pieces, and it's often very brown or bright orange. And that type of biomass in the soil is just, it's just a completely different entity than the bare mineral soil. And certainly you start to reduce the health of the trees that grow when you keep removing that biomass. And, of course, it provides carbon storage too. So, you know, last year in Oregon in 2020—this year, we had record-breaking heat waves, and last year, we had record-breaking wildfires on the west side of the Cascades, which, you know, you're familiar with Oregon, of course. But for people that aren't, that's, like, the wet side, right? That's when people think about Oregon and big trees and things like that, that's kind of what they're envisioning. But we had these fires raging through the west side. And they ended up burning like 2% of the land area of the state in one month. And a lot of those burns were on these these private tree farms with these young trees that are just matchsticks, they're stressed by drought because they don't have the organic matter in the soil to retain moisture. And they just, they burned completely, a lot of these areas, you know, 100%, true mortality. So there's—you can't do it forever. But but they, you know, they don't care that you can't do it forever.
Margaret Which I guess is like—is yet another example of, like, the whole climate preparedness and mitigating the effects of climate change involves stopping all of this treating the earth just like a sit a set of resources to extract, you know?
Simon Yeah, yeah. And it's not, you know, it's not like, I mean, we use wood products, right? But it's just how do we change our relationship to do that in a way that works for us in the present, and will also work for future generations. I'm working on a forest management plan right now for a property—for a reserve—but that will allow timber harvest, and it's, you know, it was purchased from Weyerhaeuser, it's 1300 acres. And a lot of it was logged fairly recently before they sold it because they kind of extracted the value that they could, But it's thinking about, okay, but the trees are too dense, we're gonna need to thin them. At what stage do we send them, you know, that we can actually extract some value and that value goes into the local economy, and we're creating timber products, but we're not—but we're sort of mimicking the natural cycles in order to get to a place where in a couple 100 years, it's a mature, old growth forest, right? And at that point, like, I don't need to consider what the economy is like in 100 or 200 years, I don't need to consider what we need out of forest products. But like we can make it work for us in the present by clearing little clearings and creating, you know, have like diversity areas that're similar those clearings that I talked about before, or selectively thinning, you know, the weaker trees and creating a more open canopy that mimics those natural systems, but also allows for economic activity or for just wood products that we use in our lives. And I really like that, because it's that dichotomy of, like, what do we need now, but how can we plan for a future that's unknowable to us? But we do know that we want all grow for us again someday for future generations.
Margaret Yeah, and I like it because it's acknowledging that it's, like, well, we do want to use wood to build our houses or whatever, you know. There's, in many climates, that's the best way to do it. And most of us prefer to live in shelter and things like that, you know. And it's just—and people have this like, okay, well, since clear cutting, you know, on massive scale is bad, and looking at the earth as a series of resources bad, therefore, we have to feel guilty about using, like, you know, interacting with the earth, and that also doesn't do us any good. One, because guilt-based organizing this garbage. But it's also just, like, it's not—it's a babies and bathwater problem, you know. It's a—we do, we are animals, and animals use, well, other animals and nature to do the things we want to do. I remember trying to, you know, we were trying to protect this forest in Southern Oregon, and it was, it had actually been burned. And it was a salvage—it was old growth forests that have been burned on public land. And none of the locals would log it because everyone knew it was bad. So there was like all of these out of state loggers, which is funny because then, you know, of course we get accused of being outside agitators or whatever. And, you know, I remember one of the times some loggers got past one of our blockades and, you know, and people are like yelling at them. And the logger are like, well, what do you do for a living? You know, and I was like, I'm a landscaper. And the person next to me is like, well, I'm a logger. You know, it's like, like, you can be a logger. Like, if you're—you can be a person who turns trees into lumber and have that be a positive thing in the world, you know, you can do forestry in ways that aren't monstrous.
Simon Yeah, and we often don't give people the opportunity to engage with these practices that we all need, you know, to function, at least in the society that we build. We don't give them the opportunity to engage in that way. You know, you can't just like, well, I'm not going to work—if I'm a logger, I'm not going to work on any standard commercial timber operations, I'm only going to do selective logging and I'm only going to do, you know, sustainable logging. I mean, that sounds great. But you know, people who, again, quote/unquote, own the land, I mean, they need to allow that, they need to give people that opportunity, or they need to organize and demand it. And it's sort of the, you know, it's kind of the, like, Plato's cave of forest management. You know, we all need to, like, envision a different world, you know, that can work for us in order to get there. There's a leap of faith that needs to happen, I think, and there's not a lot of faith in what feels like a declining industry and a, you know, climate change, and all of these things.
Margaret Something that we were talking about, you know, when we were talking about doing this episode—about, you know, there's all this information about how to do reforestation, or, you know, sustainable forestry and all of these different things. But I'm guessing most of you listening don't have even as much access to land as, say, I do. Right? And, you know, and so it can be kind of hopeless thinking like, well, what do I do about this? And, because yeah, most land—most privately owned land—is owned by these, well I don't know this is as a statistic, but there's certainly a lot of land that is in private hands in this country that is just, you know, resources to extract, like, things people who would not be interested in doing this. And the reason I was thinking about this is so useful to talk about—pardon the motorcycle revving its engine outside my office—the reason I feel so useful to talk about is because the current situation, to me, doesn't seem like it's going to stay. Because we probably, as a society, are nearing the end of our ability to stick our fingers in our ears about climate change. I'm sure we'll always have, you know, people will always have, like, disaster fatigue, where we—it's not like we're suddenly gonna wake up one day and everyone's gonna realize climate change is real and, you know, have a glorious happy revolution or whatever. But things will shift as more and more people, like, essentially have to come to terms with this. It'll probably shift in bad ways also. But the thing that I—it occurs to me is that it's like, these people who own, you know, giant tracts of land and stuff, like some of them are people, and some of them are people who would see themselves as decent people. And I think that a lot of people who see themselves as decent people are going to start having a different relationship to economic production in the very near future. And maybe some of the other ones who don't want to change, have a change of heart, might cease being able to have the physical security necessary to control what happens on their property. You know, it's, things are gonna change, probably. Well, they'll definitely change, just I can't tell you how they're going to change. So it feels like it's useful to understand all this stuff and to understand the importance of reforestation and all of this, because we might be able to start convincing some of these people that this is what should happen, you know, that they should not manage their property the way that they currently do at the very least. I dunno. Is there any hope in that?
Simon I think the shift that needs to happen is that we need to think about these things long-term. And, ideally, it would be in multi generational cycles. But even thinking about things in terms of people's own lifetimes, and one of the issues with commercial timber management is that it's not even in people's lifetimes, or it's not even in the lifetimes of the company, its quarterly profit returns, its stock prices, it's all these sort of abstract but very quick return things that just—they don't—there's no way for that to really intersect in a healthy way, no matter what you think about capitalism and the stock market and stuff. And I would guess that most people listening to this don't have like super favorable views on that. But there's just no way for that quick cycle of profit returns to mesh with managing an ecosystem, and particularly managing an ecosystem like a forest where, even in a short-lived forests in some regions, you're talking about trees living 100 years. You know, and then in other areas 300 years, 500 sometimes, you know. So it just can't—it can't operate that way. And a lot of the people that work for these companies are people that have lived in these areas for a long time now, right? And do feel like they care about the land, but also they feel like they care about their communities and they need to provide jobs and they're just sort of wrapped up in the system. And I guess I'll make the forest for the trees puns, right, you know you can't see your way out, the trees are too dense in a tree farm. You need to thin it out a little bit. And, sorry, for that terrible joke. But I think that a lot more people are reachable than we know, and we need to just talk to each other. And I think we all need to sort of meet—I don't want to say meet in the middle—but meet in kind of a new place where we're not sort of old school environmentalist in that we say, okay people do bad things to nature, and then we need to just stop people from doing the bad things to nature. It's like, what new—and then we're not just extractivist, you know, logging everything, mining everything, well the economy, you know, jobs, the economy, blah, blah, blah. We need to come to a new place where it's like, how do we develop this relationship that works for us, you know, with each other and with with nature. And that sounds very Kumbaya, but I do think you're right, that climate change starts to—it starts to force a shift. And even the management of these companies know that, you know, Weyerhaeuser, they're not climate denialist, you know. They do experiments to see how far north they need to move their tree seedlings, you know, their stock, you know, do we bring seedlings from Southern Oregon to halfway up Washington because they're adapted to the hotter climate? They're studying all of that stuff, they know it's real. And the people working for them, I think, largely know that it's real too. It's certainly in the past few years around here, I think, gotten to the point where it's unavoidable. I work with loggers and farmers and people that don't always have the same views as me, but that—I hear a lot less climate denial now than I did even five years ago. We've just had too many extreme events. People know it's here. And, you know, and yeah, disaster can create an opportunity, we realize we need to change and we need to come to a better system with each other. And that may, you know, whether you believe in the power of government to change these things or not, that can lead to either community solutions, people just demanding better from the organizations with whom they work. And also, a lot of this stuff could be easily changed in state legislatures. You know, there's the power in Oregon and Washington to say, no, we are going to disincentivize these outside investment groups from owning these forests. We're gonna, you know, lay down a heavy hand. And if you can get local communities of loggers to say that that's good and that's fine instead of kind of these, like astroturfed, you know, Timber Unity-type groups that are really just right wing, you know, corporate funded, hollow entities. You know, if you have actual communities making their voices heard, change feel possible.
Margaret That idea of, like, we have to meet at a third place is really fascinating to me. You know, I remember—well I don't remember. It was before my time in Earth First. But, you know, one of the, like, one of the main stories we talk about, right, is the story of—are ou familiar with Judi Bari, the Earth First organizer who organized loggers? And she got bombed for it, right. And, you know, basically like, she was organizing as an Earth First-er, but very also explicitly as a labor organizer with the IWW. And being like, you know, loggers have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and, you know, and are by and large people who like the fact that they spend all their time outdoors, you know. And I'm not trying to come Kumbaya either and be like, oh, well, you know, we'll never have to be opposed to the people who are working on resource extraction or whatever, right. But the less we can be, the better, both strategically and ethically. And also, I mean, I think that's why Judi Bari got bombed. I personally believe that that was by the federal government. I know there was a lawsuit that, one, proving that at the very least, they were certainly ready to go to show that, you know, like, ready to blame her own assassination on herself, you know. And—assassination attempt, she survived the bombing, died of cancer a couple years later. But, you know, like, I think that that actually is what threatens power is when—not to sound Marxist, but like when the working—well, whatever, anarchist, everyone knows that—you know when the working class gets together and is like, oh, we can actually see passed our immediate differences and work together towards a goal, we accomplished an awful lot. And I don't personally have the first clue about how to do that. And maybe you do have more of a first clue because you work, I presume your work puts you in touch with both environmentalists and loggers and timber companies and things that are these very traditionally at odds organizations?
Simon Yeah, so my current role is with a land trust. And for those that don't know, basically a land trust, in some cases, buys property directly or has it donated, and then it's put in a trust forever to protect it from development or for restoration, or whatever the threat is. Or it'll be a legal entity, like a conservation easement, that it's still owned by someone else but we have some restrictions on, okay, you can't mine it, you can't put housing developments on it. Maybe you can still log it though, or maybe there's some restrictions on how that logging happens. And so that allows me to kind of straddle that world a little bit. And I've worked in many different organizations with many different entities, but it kind of gives us a, you know, an avenue to interacting with local communities. Like, we're not just flying in, you know, by night—and some people are still pissed at us and that's fine. That's always going to be the case. But we're there more or less permanently. And so, like it or not, we can work together. But also, I mean, you know, yeah, we do, I work with people, I hire farmers for work, I hire loggers for work. We, like as I mentioned, we do, you know, timber production activities. And so, being local and kind of leading by example, if you have the opportunity, it has been really valuable. You know, I will say that a lot of times the groups that get cut out of that conversation of, oh, we need to work with local communities, are Indigenous groups. You know, and when Indigenous groups are brought in, it's usually tribal governments. And, of course, not all tribes are recognized federally. And if they're not federally recognized, they're out of luck. You know, locally we have the Chinook tribe fighting for recognition and wanting to be a part of managing lands in our region on the lower Columbia River, and being cut out without funding, without recognition. But other tribes are, and so they are able to kind of assert themselves. And so I think this is all true. You know, I don't want to go down the road of romanticizing rural communities, because I think that there's a lot that also needs to change, but there are a lot of people in those communities who, yeah, absolutely want it a different way. And like you said, just like being outside, they like being in the woods, and they just really care about things. And, you know, one of the funniest things to me is that, you know, a lot of, like, a lot of these these people in a way that I don't—it doesn't have any packing in theory or in politics, really—but like really push back against private ownership. You know, when you think about like private property being not just like an absolute thing, but a bundle of rights, you know, I have the right to log this, I have the right to access. You know, all these private timber lands used to be, like, widely accessible to people in local communities. And that, especially when they're a smaller companies, and so people grew up, you know, going to places in the coast range and hunting and fishing and just hanging out and camping and, like, that was their backyards. And they have the larger companies coming in and being like, well wait a second, we can we can charge for permit access, you know, and we can hire our security to control it, and we can put up gates on all the roads. And that really pisses people off, you know, and I think there's a real organizing opportunity there, you know, for someone to bridge that gap and be, like, yeah, you know, you're right. These big private companies really are, you know, taking away something that is not theirs to take away. You know, you own it too, and then can we extend this to, okay, but also you own it, but also, you know, there were people here first that also owned it and stuff do and have an ownership stake. And we can kind of build a new vision of who owns the land.
Margaret Yeah, no, it's like—it's like, people coming back just instinctively, on some level, to the the idea of the commons. You know, the idea that there's this land where it's okay to like—I'm not encouraging this, I'm just talking about the original commons in England or whatever—but like, it's okay to take some trees every now and then. It's okay to forage. It's okay to hunt. It's okay to see this as a common pool of resources that we all, you know, maintain and draw from. And in the enclosure of the commons, of course, you know, is the now everyone needs permits, you know, and you get all the Robin Hood stuff about, you know, don't go hunt on the king's land or whatever. It's just kind of interesting to watch that—not the same. But, you know, history doesn't repeat, it echoes, or whatever the—rhymes? I think it rhymes. I don't remember what the cliche is. I'll make a new cliche by not knowing the original cliche.
Simon Yeah, no, I mean, it's true. And that entity that people are mad at for these access issues. I mean, it's, we have—there's just a vision of, like, here's the tax lots on the map, and that's who owns it. And it just is always much more complicated than that. And I think we just need to, like, recognize and put that complexity forward. Maybe in our society, in a way, that we all kind of know instinctively, you know, that it's wrong to just like, gate it all off and say it's a private property and, you know, screw you. And—but by reinforcing that sense of ownership, too, it makes all this stuff easier, it makes my work easier. And I want to expand that sense of ownership, because sometimes the people that are invited into having a say are people with with power in our society.
Margaret Yeah. The large landowners and...
Simon We can—I think we can build it—yeah, we can build a different ethic of, you know, how we interact with lands, with natural lands.
Margaret Do people—I mean, I don't know whether you would specifically know—but I wonder if people do guerrilla reforestation, you know, just like, going to—
Simon You know, it's a really good question. And like, I remember—so, in Oregon—well and a little bit in Washington—I think it was maybe four years ago, we had the first big wildfire near Portland in a lot of people's lives here. And that was in the Columbia River Gorge, which is like a really beloved place. You know, it's—the Columbia River is, I'm sure, you know, of course, but like, for your listeners who haven't been there, the Columbia River is like carving through the Cascade Mountains. And so it's this massive river, and it's easily accessible from the city. And so there's lots of hiking. And a wildfire started there. And a lot of people, unlike in other areas of the West, hadn't really experienced wildfire close to the city before. And so there was a lot of, like, real emotional scarring for people about, like, we lost this place. Like, it's gone. Like not knowing what was there yet. It was closed for a couple years for safety. You know, like, a lot of the hiking trails and things are still closed. And a long-winded way to say there were groups popping up, I remember on Facebook, you know, being like, I'm starting this group, and I'm gonna go in and start planting trees, who's with me? Like, we need to go plant trees. And, of course, people like me were jumping in and saying, well, actually, fire is a natural process and blah, blah, blah, and like, maybe don't. Let's give it a second. Like this is actually like, the gorge probably burned pretty frequently because there were a lot of, like, village sites and people were there and fires—anyways, whatever. But that sentiment was certainly there. So, like, clearly when people, like, know and love a place I think that, like, they can be organized to like do that, you know. Because this was a place that held a lot of, like a really special place in a lot of people's hearts. And so the question is, like, a lot of the places that really need reforestation are the super degraded places that no one goes to, you know, that aren't like the beautiful mountains. It's like the agricultural pasture that's like a little bit degraded and, like, maybe it's kind of a problem now. Or like just this little strip of land next to the creek, you know. So, I would love to see, like, that sort of like community response to doing that kind of thing. I think it would be like incredibly cool. And in terms of guerrilla efforts, I think probably the best examples you would find outside of the United States. Like I am not going to know the name of the village, but I have a family friend who is a doctor who spent a lot of time working in Rwanda for Doctors Without Borders. And she met these people that, like, in this little village they've started just reforesting, like, the hillsides next to their town. There were like these landslides happening and they just—now they started to get like NGO funding and stuff. But they started themselves. And I really wish I remember the name of this group and what they're doing but—and the name of the village—but I don't know. But I think in places without resources and without, like, everything is very codified, you know, here's who owns this land and here's who's responsible for it. There've been really like beautiful examples of people just taking it into their own hands. And this whole village just goes out and plants trees and I—the pictures are looking at—and it's like they're just, they grow them themselves. And they're like terracing the hills a little bit to, like, retain some moisture. And it was, like, to save their land and their lives. Like there were these landslides that were threatening them and they just started doing it, you know? And so I think there's—the best examples, you need to look outside of people like me who work for governments and nonprofits and things like that and look at other parts of the world.
Margaret That's uh... Okay, so the takeaways are: planting trees is good. Bringing beavers is good. Plant trees whether or not you have permission, but possibly, ideally, get actual local expertise about where to plant the trees and what kind of trees to plant. Change property relations. Yeah, no, no big deal. Damn it.
Simon No big deal.
Margaret Yeah.
Simon Also, you know, I mean, build your own expertise, right? Like, just, if you are interested in a piece of ground and in restoring it, just start going there. Like if there's a creek in your town that's kind of abandoned and, you know, whatever. Like, just seeing how it behaves for a couple of seasons, you can start to build that expertise.
Margaret Cool.
Simon So it's not that complicated, really.
Margaret Okay, well, that's probably a good note to end on. Do you have—for people who didn't listen to the last episode necessarily—do you have any organizations you're excited about shouting out or how people can follow you and bug you on the internet?
Simon Yeah, just the same things, I think. For people that are in the Portland, Oregon region, a great group—if you're interested in planting trees—to volunteer with or donate to is Friends of Trees. I don't work for them, but they're excellent. They plant trees in natural areas and in neighborhoods. And so you can just google Friends of Trees Portland and find them. For me, nothing to plug. But if you want to find me on Twitter, it's @plant_warlock. And if you have general questions about forestry or restoration, I'd be happy to to get in touch with you.
Margaret All right. Well, thanks so much for letting us steal even more of your time than originally we planned.
Simon Yeah, thank you.
Margaret Thanks, everyone, for listening. I hope you enjoyed that episode. I was just basically, as soon as we finished the call last time, I was like, no, wait, there's more we want to talk about. Because, while it's such a big issue, reforesting the planet to not all die seems like an important thing to talk about. And I hope you enjoyed listening to the conversation again—well, it's not the same conversation. So different conversation. I bet everyone really just sticks around to the end in order to hear me ramble. That's like the main thing. But if you want to be able to keep hearing me ramble, then the best way to do it is to tell people about the show. Yeah, sure. That works. Help feed the algorithms that run the world and things by liking and sharing and subscribing and retweeting and original tweeting and Instagram story sharing and we're on Facebook and Instagram and, you know, I'm on Twitter @magpiekilljoy. And I'm also on Patreon. And if you want to support the show, you can do so by supporting me on Patreon which goes to support all the people who work on this show and all the other stuff that we're really excited to start putting out soon. And I particularly would like to thank Nora and Hoss the dog, Kirk, Willow, Natalie, Sam, Christopher, Shane, The Compound, Cat J, Starro, Mike, Eleanor, Chelsea, Dana, Hugh, and Shawn. Thank you so much. And also, if you want access to the patron only—Patreon only content—but you don't make as much money as like we make—if you—whatever, if you're like not doing super well financially, just message me on whatever platform and I'll give you access to all of it for free. We do like a monthly zine that at the moment has been like zine by me, but soon is going to be zine—original zine by someone else. I'm restarting an old publisher called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. I'm very excited about it. And we also have YouTube show now called, get this, it's called Live Like the World is Dying because it's the same show, it's just on YouTube. There's some stuff that, like, visually makes more sense—that makes more sense visually. I need to eat, so I'm going to be done recording now. Thank you so much for listening and I hope you're doing great
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Margaret talks to Simon, a restoration ecologist who works in the Pacific Northwest, about confronting climate crisis with reforestation, and about hope and resilience in the face of environmental devastation.
Simon can be found on twitter @plant_warlock.
The host, Margaret Killjoy, can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.
1:00:24
Margaret
Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the End Times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and I use she or they pronouns. And this episode I'm excited—I put a call out basically being like, who should I talk to about reforestation and how we can confront climate change through reforestation and, you know, how microclimates affect things, etc. And I am very excited to talk to my guest for this week, Simon, about reforestation. But first, Live Like the World is Dying as a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of Anarchist Podcasts. I tried to go into, pretty neat, y'all heard it, but I tried to go into the radio producer voice but I gave up. We're proud member of the Channel Zero Network of Anarchist Podcasts, and here is a jingle from another show on the network. Da duh daaaa!
Jingle Speaker 1 (Scully) Where did you get this?
Jingle Speaker 2 (Mulder) Your friendly neighborhood anarchist?
Jingle Speaker 3
More of an anarchist militant...
Jingle Speaker 4
People involved in social struggles, everybody else.
Jingle Speaker 5
People have been waiting for some content.
Jingle Speaker 6
Radio.
Jingle Speaker 7
The show.
Jingle Speaker 8
The Final Straw and I'm William.
Jingle Speaker 9
And I'm Bursts of Goodness.
Jingle Speaker 8
Thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org.
Margaret
Okay, if you could introduce yourself with, I guess, your name, your pronouns, and some of what you do for work professionally that has led you to end up on this podcast talking about this issue.
Simon
Hi Margaret, thanks for having me. My name is Simon Apostle. And I've been a restoration ecologist working primarily in Oregon and Washington for the past decade or so. And a lot of my work has focused on reforestation projects, I guess would be an easy way to describe them to lay people, but really I'm a general practice restoration ecologist. And that means applying science to the field of restoring ecosystems.
Margaret
Okay, so that brings up the broad and probably easy to answer question of how do we fix the ecosystem? It seems kind of broken right now.
Simon
Yeah, I mean, it's obviously the biggest question that is, you know, people are never able to answer in my field. I think the first thing you need to know is what's wrong. Which is a question that is answerable through a combination of research and also just feeling out your values, you know, how do—what do we want from our ecosystems globally and locally? And in the early, kind of the early times of ecological restoration as a field, and it's a fairly new field, you know, the idea was, okay, we're going to find historical reference conditions. We're going to figure out, you know, this is what ecosystems used to be—and used to be usually meant, what were they like before white settlers—I'm speaking at a North American context here which, of course, you know, plays into a lot of racist notions about noble savage, you know, how native peoples here really didn't affect the ecosystem that was in a natural state. And as the field has developed, especially in recent years, people have become much more cognizant of what people have been living in and interacting with and manipulating the ecosystems around us for millennia. But then that question becomes much more complicated, you know, our relationship with the natural world is different than it used to be and different than people in cultures historically have related to the ecosystem. So it becomes a very difficult question to answer. So you need to start to fall back on some priorities, you know, or—and those priorities can be something like, well, we value biodiversity, you know. We can look and see that this ecosystem here is degraded, it's full of introduced weeds, there's only three species really dominant. And we know a minimum, whatever things were like in the past, that there was a lot more going on here. So that's a really good starting point. So you have a value of biodiversity.
Margaret
The the moving away from, like, reference systems is really interesting to me. So the idea is that, like, basically, people are moving away from the idea of, well we're going to make it exactly like it used to be in thism like, quote/unquote, untouched natural state, which of course doesn't really exist because humans have been interacting with nature for a long time. But instead picking what values matter to us and then applying them? Is that—
Simon
Yeah, I think that's true. And one of those values is historical conditions. And that's kind of the core value of the field. But it's the introduction of these other values that have made things much more complicated and I think much more interesting, but also much more true to how we interact with the natural world. So certainly a value is, we know—we basically know that we've messed up. We know that we've come in and through agriculture, and through building cities and roads, and all of the things that modern society does, we've impacted the natural world in negative ways. We see declines of species, we see loss of biodiversity, we see introduction of invasive species from other areas. And so we know that these things are problems, but what I think my field is starting to wrestle with a little bit more is, okay, well, what is what is really the solution? We can't, we can't, you know, find a time capsule and go backwards.
Margaret
Right.
Simon
And even if we did, you know, we don't know how people were managing those systems before we—an when I say we, I'm talking about white people which, again, you know, there's lots of native people that are involved in ecological restoration and that's becoming more of a focus as well. But it's introducing those more complex values. And then, of course, you introduce global warming which is—kind of makes it clear that you can't just go backwards, you know, we don't know what the effects of climate change are going to be in every system or in any system. And so that throws a wrench into the whole idea of, okay, we can just, we can just return.
Margaret
I like that I like—I mean, I don't like that everything's going horribly. But I like this idea of acknowledging that we can't go backwards and, you know, one of the things that always—when I was a younger environmentalist and I was more involved with green anarchism, one of the things that wasn't always the problem but could sometimes kind of come up as a problem is this idea of, like, pretending like we're all going to go back to the quote/unquote natural way of living and like living off of the land in very specific ways. And it never made any sense to me because it always seemed to me that people,—even people who are like foraging and things like that, I always thought of, you know, I mean, if you live in a city, dumpster diving is foraging, you know, like, not just picking berries, or whatever, and—not to be dismissive of foraging in wild environments—but it always seemed like this romanticization of the past. Of, like, trying to recreate the past rather than taking the ideas—well it's like people, the thing that we're excited about is like people working with what's around them. And what's around us is different than what was around people before industrialization and things like that. So it's just, it's kind of interesting to me to see a parallel with that in something like ecological restoration. And, I mean, it's even in the name "restoration," right? To restore things kind of implies the taking things back to what they used to be, but I don't know.
Simon
Yeah, you have to respond to the world as it exists in front of you. And you need to maintain a level of idealism, you know, in order to be in this field, I think, you know, because you're faced with the kind of enormity of the world being fairly messed up, you know. There's a lot of tragedy in environmental fields, you know, it's you feel like you're just fingers in the dam and trying to stem the bleeding. And so, in a way, kind of letting go of that vision of, we're just going to completely return and we're going to have these little time capsules of true native ecosystems that are how things were, and then everything else is changing around it—letting go of that maybe can start to allow for some hope and for a broader vision of the future. But there's room for lots of different methods and lots of different results, and that's going to vary a lot locally as well. I'm speaking again kind of in the context of having worked, you know, in the Pacific Northwest. But things may be different somewhere else. So, and the impacts that you're dealing with may be different. So, there's a lot to consider there. But certainly, you know, some of my work is in coastal estuaries in forested wetlands and it's important work, it's important to restore these areas that have been degraded by agriculture. The land has subsided through lack of sediment inputs and diking. We can restore them and we can, we can rebuild these wetland forests and the estuary. But we also have the knowledge that many of these systems that we're, right, quote/unquote restoring, are going to be gone in 100 years. That's just, that's a certainty. And so is there still value in doing that? And maybe the answer is yes. Because maybe, really, it's not restoration, it's just a form of stewardship of the land. You know, we're taking care of it, we're improving the condition for generations of plants and animals. And we can't know what will happen after that. We know that this thing will be gone, but there will be something else after it. And we're maintaining some biodiversity just for the time being.
Margaret
Well and it seems like if we, if we restore certain areas, even though we know we're going to lose them, you know, we might lose them in like different ways than we would otherwise lose them. I don't know if this is totally naive. But I'm like, well, you know, we know that desertification, and we know that, you know, well at least climate is going to change and overall be much harder. We know that's true. Right? But maybe the way things die off can be different, you know, if we make things a little better ahead of time.
Simon
Yeah, no, that's absolutely true. And I think that there's functional reasons that would be true, just basic population ecology reasons that that would be true. You know, if you're working somewhere and you know, like, for example, okay, we're trying to, you know, we're working on a dry site and we're trying to restore, let's say, ponderosa pine woodlands in the American Southwest. But we know maybe this is a marginal site for Ponderosa pines, and eventually they're not going to persist in this area. Well, one of the potential mechanisms of climate change is that things move both north and they move uphill, they move up slope, especially in mountainous areas as the temperature warms. And those upslope areas become become relatively warmer, but they maybe are closer to the temperature that was previously in the valleys. It's oversimplification, there's many other factors. But if there aren't trees there, then there's no seed source for that population to move up upslope, right. So, you know, and we deal with a similar thing in these estuarine systems in coastal areas where we know sea level rise is going to flood these places out, it's like, well, at least we have the spruce swamps. We have spruce, and if the spruce exists, the spruce can move into the upper areas. Or if they're there, maybe, you know, you have more trees, they capture more sediment, it slows that process and allows things to adapt. And sometimes the slowing of those start processes can be really beneficial.
Margaret
Is this the like—when I was in Arizona I went to this place, I think it was called Mount Lemon—and it was like a sky island. It was basically the Pacific Northwest, but in Arizona. I think it even had Douglas firs. I feel like wrong when I say that. But there was some—
Simon
No. I mean, it probably does.
Margaret
And that's cool. That's like a—do you know this concept, have you heard of green nihilism or like eco nihilism or climate nihilism or whatever, like nihilism as applies to the climate but in a positive way? Have you heard this?
Simon
Yeah, totally. And I mean, I think it's kind of self explanatory, right? Like, it's just, it's too much and it's like, well, there's just there's a fatalism about climate change.
Margaret
Yeah. And this idea—and I think when people use it positively—like green nihilism is like, you know, people sometimes talk about, like, giving up hope in order to be able to, like, you know, stopping—like, giving up stopping climate change and moving towards adapting to climate change. I actually think that that style shouldn't—to me that doesn't feel like nihilism at all, it actually feels very hopeful. Because most of the time, when I think about climate change, I kind of think over everyone forced to live underground and grow foods and hydroponics and, you know, the earth—surface of the earth is unrecognizable. And so when people talk about, like, well, maybe everything will just be a little bit different. I'm like, oh, that sounds so optimistic. And I get really excited about that optimism. But I like, I don't know, the thing that you're talking about now seems like this, like, in between space where it's—you know, it's like, knowing you're going to lose, but seeing what you can gain by trying to win in the process.
Simon
Yeah, I mean, you have to be realistic about that things are going to change, but we also know that changes are just a part of ecology. It's a part of the natural world. And I—these—it's funny to say that out loud, right, because that's the sort of phrasing that gets used by climate denialist—deniers and such, to say, oh, you know, climate change is natural these things happen. And of course it's not. And the rate of change is extreme and it's bad. But we also can—we can have an active hand in that adaptation, I think is what you're kind of getting at. We can, we know that change is coming. And there's people who are working on trying to slow that rate of change and that's what, you know, we're trying to do if we're talking about reducing emissions and things like that. But when we also talk about—a lot of what we talked about in ecology is resiliency, which, of course, is a really important concept in human communities as well, right? It's how do you build community resiliency in the face of disasters, in the face of climate change, or other threats. And that's a lot of what we talked about in restoration as well now. We kind of, when we talk about moving on from that historical model, one of the things that—one of the buzzwords now is—and I say that not negatively, because I think it's important—is resiliency. And a lot of things can make an ecosystem resilient. One of those things is biodiversity. You know, if we don't know how the world is going to change, the more organisms occupy a space, the more they occupy a piece of ground, the more likely it will be that some kind of balance or equilibrium is going to be found later, or that one of those organisms is going to survive and thrive in some form that may not be the current form, it's not going to be the community composition that it is today, but you probably also won't have a monoculture. It won't disappear completely. You won't get desertification or whatever the specific threat is in the area that you're living and working in.
Margaret
So it's just like similar to how farmers, you know, one of the reasons that people push back against Monsanto and these other sort of attempts to sort of monoculture our food sources is because if you have only one strain of rice or whatever then whatever blight comes through iw will take out all of your rice. Versus, the more different strains you have, the better your chances of actually getting a good yield.
Simon
That's exactly right. And that's talking about even just genetic diversity, right. And it's really just, it's threat mitigation. The more—if we have a diversity of species, the same way we think about diversity of genes, you know, and we think about climate change as a disease to an ecosystem, if you think about as a singular living body, the more diversity you have among plant species, the more likely it is that the ecosystem is going to be able to respond. You know, so you don't—if you have a single overstory tree species, which in some cases you have, in some marginal ecosystems that's all that's there and that's all that's available. But if that single overstory species becomes impacted in a way, specific to climate change, to the point where maybe it's wiped out, which is a real possibility in some parts of the arid West where you have native bark beetles, often increasing in damage to forests stands, largely due to climate change, you know, you have warmer winters and so they're able to be active for longer, you have less kills from freezes, so you have whole stands disappearing. And if you have a single tree species in those stands, then it's not a forest anymore It'll be something else. But if you have a multi-layered canopy with with many different tree species, then you know, perhaps one of those other species is going to be resilient, it's going to resist that, threat and it can occupy the space. So it's really just, it's just kind of building in more options for the ecosystem to adapt.
Margaret
I like this a lot. Like, I don't know, I really am enjoying learning this stuff because it—because it dovetails so well into, like, what I believe about the world and things like that. But like, you know, I mean, one of the main things that I'm interested in is that I believe diversity is a better form of strength than, like, unity. Rather than trying to make everyone agree to something or making everyone the same along almost any axis, instead, getting people to work together despite differences, you know, and, like actual multiculturalism versus like the melting pot, for example. Or, you know, even like in political movements, having diverse opinions, diverse strategies, diverse methods, and then just working together to try not to step on each other's toes and to try to figure out how all of our different strengths can tie together. And so I'm excited to hear that that's, like, the main way that people are thinking about creating resilient ecosystems is, you know, because I think people have this concept of, like, the way to stop climate change is, you know, essentially this eco fascist idea—or I heard someone call it, I think, climate Leviathan or something like that—you know, this idea of, like, a top down, here's what we all must do approach. And yet, I think that replicates, well, the problems that got us here in the first place, but also, you know, that would be like saying, like, oh, well, this is the tree, this particular tree will resist climate change the best. So we're just gonna, like, clear cut everything and plant that tree, you know?
Simon
Yeah, I think, oh, yeah, I just—I think there's a lot of social lessons probably to be drawn from ecology. And I think it's tempting for people and it's been done a lot. And it interplays, right, we—ecology is the study of relationships between organisms functionally, and if you're talking about restoration ecology, it's just how do you restore those relationships. And if you have a monoculture, there's no relationships to be had, or there's fewer. You know, your web becomes just some kind of simple grid with a few connections instead of this kind of unknowable complexity of interactions. And it's that sort of unknowable complexity that I think is, like, most beautiful in ecology to me, and is maybe why I was drawn to being a practitioner instead of a researcher. Maybe I'm also just not smart enough, that's part of it, maybe I'm not good enough at the math. You know, it's, you know that you have to let go. You get to act and you get to see how the ecosystem responds, and you're never really going to know what all those response mechanisms actually were. I mean, I think that's really nice. But yeah, I mean, it's, an ecosystem is not top down, it's not anything down, it's just the interaction of many organisms. And as a top-down actor, in a sense, you know, choosing our inputs into the ecosystem, I think that's something that does need to be decided as a society in a way, but also that society can be in, you know, there's layers to that, right. It's like, how, what is our ethic? How do we treat natural systems? You know, I think there needs to be like a moral framework. But then a lot of this stuff, it really is only, it only functions on a local scale. I mean, I think it's, in my field, it's so important to just continue to work in one place as much as possible. I mean, it just, I'm still learning plant species, you know, in sites that I've worked on for years and it's, like, I didn't even know this thing existed. And so some level of local control, even if we're operating in the space where government and funding and all of these things are major factors, you need local experts. And some of that is just that, like, we don't orient our society towards local expertise because people have to have jobs and they need to move on from those jobs. And sometimes a career opportunity is going to be in a different part of the country. And, on and on. But without that local knowledge there's just—you miss too many things. And you miss many things regardless. But—and that's why when people, you know, people do lip service to Indigenous knowledge and cultural practices and stuff, and sometimes it's not genuine, but the most genuinely important thing about it is that local knowledge, right, and when you think about, like—in my field, I think about just like the massive tragedy of losing, you know, 1000s of years of knowledge. And then what of it that we have—because these these, you know, cultures and Indigenous people are still with us and they're like—I see, like, yeah, tribal governments and just individual native people trying to insert themselves into these spaces and natural area management and being kind of like, oh, well yeah, you can have this over here. You can do this over in this other space. And it's like, you know, what little we have left that we didn't, you know, wreck of this built up knowledge over 1000s of years, we're kind of just, like, shunting to the side.
Margaret
Yeah, kind of marginalizing it.
Simon
And putting it into it's own little box when really that's the model we need to be replicating, you know, and building as a culture, right. We need to build those generations of knowledge.
Margaret
I like, I get really excited about organizational structures that are bottom-up, right? Like, where the main most important thing is that local expertise, is the fact that the people who live in an area are more likely to have the skills they need to deal with problems in that certain area, but they might need resources. And in some ways, you might want to centralize the acquisition of these resources or whatever, you know, or talk with each other and like network and coordinate with each other, you know, because there's some—there are decisions that need to be sort of made at a larger and wider level. But I think that just, like, we can essentially invert the kind of hierarchies within our society. But I suppose that is tangential to reforestation. And I've been spending the whole time trying to come up with a way to phrase the pun, like, see the forest for the trees, but I'm just going to leave that there, and you all can come up with your own version of that. What, um, to try and be, like, more specific and more practical about it: How does reforestation affect, like a local area? Besides—I guess, like, okay, it's two separate questions. One is the large scale question: How does reforestation impact climate change, besides, again, like protecting biodiversity like you were just saying, and giving, like more tickets in the lottery of survival or something? But also, like, is it true—okay, I'll just go—like, is it true that if we plant a whole bunch of trees then we'll be able to slow down or mitigate the effects of carbon in the atmosphere because of trees capturing carbon? That would be a first question.
Simon
Yeah. So the simple answer to that first question is yes, of course we know trees capture carbon. And through photosynthetic processes trees and all plants, not just trees, which is an important point that people miss, capture carbon. And that carbon is stored unless it's burned or, you know, otherwise disturbed, sometimes through decomposition processes, you can have methane and carbon released back into the atmosphere. But yes, on a global scale, reforestation, generally, if you're starting at zero state—you know, you take a bare piece of ground and plant trees—reforestation is an effective way to mitigate or counter the effects of climate change. Now, I don't want to go on too much of a tangent, but I will say that one of the scariest sets of words in my field is "global tree planting initiative."
Margaret
Oh, interesting, okay, because that's where my brain goes.
Simon
Yeah, that's less a function—well, I think it's a function of going back to talking about needing local solutions—or at least needing local expertise, even if you have a global initiative. And a lot of it is that, frankly, there's organizations out there that are, they're just big grify, you know, that are saying, you buy this product, we're going to plant a tree. You don't know really where that tree is, or they're going to maybe—sometimes that money goes towards replanting timber plantations in Canada or something, you know, and it's like, well, the carbon accounting of something like that is pretty sketchy, because they were probably going to replant it anyways because it's functionally a farm. Right? They're just replanting the trees that they're going to harvest again in 50 years. And in other cases, you have organizations kind of swooping into areas and planting non-native species, you know, in areas that were already vegetated, and maybe that vegetation has similar, you know, carbon storage capacity as that monoculture of trees that you went in and planted. So, you know, I don't want to get too far down that road. But I—the answer is that trees, yes, of course, store carbon. So does other plant life. And the most effective way to use forests to—at least in the Pacific Northwest where I have some knowledge—to combat climate change, it can be tree planting, but it's protecting existing forests from logging and destruction. Because it's really the old trees, at least in this system that I'm familiar with, that have the most carbon storage capacity. But big, old, you know, 100 plus year old trees.
Margaret
I mean, that's—I guess it's not surprising to me that the organizations are the problem with tree planting initiatives, you know, because I'm so used to not even thinking organizationally at this point that I'm like, oh, no, you just plant trees everywhere, right? But I'm like, oh yeah, but if there was like, either, of course—yeah, of course, these companies where they're like, oh, we want to get the most carbon capture per dollar or whatever. And so yeah, I guess they'll go plant the wrong trees in some area and mess up that ecosystem and mess up the ways of life of all the people who live around there and things. Yeah, I mean, I guess it seems to me that, yeah, defending the trees that we have as well as, I guess, replanting and reforestation but from local, like, in ways that are applicable to the local context as best understood by people who are Indigenous to that context, or at least are experts in that local context, is that...?
Simon
Yeah, I think that's right. And the other thing I would add to that is carbon accounting is extremely difficult. And in any scientist who studies this—I'm not a scientist who studies carbon accounting, but from everything that I've seen and read, and everyone who I know and I've talked to, there's so much hedging as to be the point, well, we know that this probably has impacts, but maybe those impacts are two centuries down the line. One example is I just saw a presentation about, you know, is looking at what was the carbon storage capacity in coastal wetland systems. Again, this is just, these are places I work. So this really smart researcher whose name I'm forgetting—but that's probably okay—was looking at carbon capture, and then also carbon and methane emissions from these wetland systems. And one of the conclusions was that these wetland systems are long term if left alone, you know, net carbon and methane positive, right, like they will capture more than they take in. But a lot of them are actually emit more methane and carbon through decompositional processes. You know, you think about walking around in a swamp, you stick your boots in, and you get that smell of sulfur and methane. Those decompositional processes, which are super important and do a lot for the ecosystem, emit more methane, which is a much stronger greenhouse gas than carbon than they do capture carbon. And eventually it becomes carbon positive, I guess would be the term, right, that it's capturing more than it's emitting, because methane doesn't last as long as the atmosphere, you're continuing to capture carbon, you know, over time, that could be 400 years in the future, you know. So that doesn't make it not worth doing, but if the idea is we're going to solve climate change by planting trees, you know, or by manipulating ecosystems in order to prioritize carbon capture without considering all these other things, I think it's probably too difficult. It's a nice bonus. But I—my feeling tends to be that there's so much that restoring ecosystems, including forests, reforestation does for societies and for people beyond that—things that you can see and feel and effect—and feel the effects of locally, that we should be valuing those things as well.
Margaret
Can you give me examples of some of those things?
Simon
Yeah, well, initially, you know, I know you wanted to talk about micro climates.
Margaret
That is my next question, so this is great.
Simon
Yeah. I mean, well, we can jump right into it I guess. There's like, there's been some really interesting research lately on the local climate effects of forests. I was reading a paper earlier about, you know, of course you have you have effects on ground temperature, just through direct shading, right. Just the creation of shade can make a massive difference. In the Northwest, we just experienced what has been described as 1000 year heat event. In Portland, where I live, we had temperatures pushing 120 degrees, which is, like, not fathomable.
Margaret
Yeah.
Simon
You know, I still can't fathom that, even though it just happened and I'm seeing the effects.
Margaret
Yeah.
Simon
Seeing dying plants. You know, it's apocalyptic feeling. But because we have a good network of temperature sensors and weather stations, you can see that in neighborhoods that had tree cover, you could easily be 10 degrees cooler than neighborhoods without that. And that's going to be largely because of just the direct shading effects. And then there's also cooling effects from respiration and trees, you know, water is one of the best temperature moderators that exists, right. And so just the process of trees respirating and giving off water vapor through that process cools the air. And so—
Margaret
Oh it's like evaporative cooling that's happening on the Trees? Cool.
Simon
Essentially yeah. Yeah, it's just, you know, it's thermodynamics. And that respiration slows, you know, when you have a super hot temperatures, a lot of species will undergo, you know, like, sort of heat dormancy, summer dormancy. But it still happens and depends on the planets but, and then of course just the direct shading. I mean, obviously, shade is cooler than being in the direct sunlight. And open concrete and asphalt is the opposite, it reflects a lot of heat. So in an urban context—and there's been actually some really incredible research done by—again, trying to recall his name. A researcher, same person. Yeah, I will, maybe I'll come up with a later. But a researcher at Portland State University who's done thermal mapping of the City of Portland and now has moved on to other cities, basically showing where there's these urban heat islands, right. And these heat islands are—I mean, it's incredibly stark. And of course, there's all these social implications because the heat islands are in poor neighborhoods, and the rich neighborhoods have big old trees. But again, yeah, that the cooling effects just directly from being your trees is well known and it's becoming more and more well documented.
Margaret
Yeah, I live—I mean, part of the reason I got excited about like reading about microclimate stuff is that, you know, I live on a land project where slightly more than half of it is open field. And then the other half is up in the woods. And I'm the only one who built her house up in the woods. And there's, you know, when it comes to running my solar panels and things, there's a lot of disadvantages here. And the humidity is a little bit worse up there, which is a problem in the mid-Atlantic, although I feel terrible complained about any climate problem that I'm facing in one of the most temperate and so far least affected areas. But it's a 15 degree difference between—you know, and I'm not that far into the woods or something, but my house stays fine in hot Southern summer without AC from, as long as I haven't maintained some airflow and have vents and things. And if I walked out into the field, I'm like—like, I'll walk down in the morning and I'll have a hoodie on, and I'll get to the field and everyone else who lives there will be, like, you know, not wearing a shirt or whatever. It's stark in a way that I never—you know, it's like, I know it on some level, like, oh, if you walk on the middle of the road and it's black and, you know, it's asphalt, it's hot or whatever, right. But I never quite, you know, felt it daily that that difference. And so that's why I got excited about it, just because I was like, oh, this works here. It clearly is applicable on a global scale and I should enforce a global tree planting initiative.
Simon
Yeah. You can make pretty good money at it.
Margaret
Yeah. How long does it take to create a microclimate? Is this something that, like, listeners who if they have, like, if they have enough power to influence the, you know, flora of their neighborhood and things like that could be pursuing as a way to at least keep their environment, like, a substantial amount of cooler, or?
Simon
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean it's, of course, gonna depend on the growth rate of trees. And that's going to depend regionally. I mean, I live in a pretty productive climate, a mild climate so far in our history and lifetimes. But there's tree species here that, you know, in their established can grow 5-10 feet a year. So that's very much within our lifetimes. Those shade effects, you know, you start to feel that as soon as it's putting out shade, and the more shade that's put out, the stronger those effects will be. So absolutely. If this is a primary, you know, if you're talking about an urban context of interest in your neighborhood, you do want to consider, right, like, what is the growth rate of the species that I'm planting? You know, maybe that's an important consideration for a reforestation project or picking something near your house. You know, if you look in the West, you know, all the old homesteads, they would plant poplars in a row, either as a windbreaker or as shade or both next to the houses, because poplars and things in Populous, in that group of plants, grow incredibly fast. They're also very brittle. Something to consider if you're planting near your house, you know. Limbs can fall off and such. But yeah, I mean, it's something that you can be involved in and do and, you know, especially on sites that I work on, I have sites where I I planted the trees or planted trees with a group of people and eight years later, they're, they're 25 feet tall. And so you're really seeing a forest develop.
Margaret
That's cool.
Simon
But of course, that's going to depend on on where you live.
Margaret
Okay, here's an oddly specific question. How do you plant a tree? Like when I was a kid and it was like Arbor Day or something, they were like, go home and plant this pine tree. And they gave us like this like pine tree sapling, and I like dug a hole and I put it in the hole and then it died.
Simon
Yeah.
Margaret
You know? And so I've convinced myself ever since that I can't—I have like a, you know, an anti-green thumb or whatever. And if anytime I plant anything, it's gonna die because I like tried to plant a pine tree in elementary school. But, what's involved in just the literal act of reforestation or even just tree planting.
Simon
Yeah, well in reforestation, you know, what you're talking about, mostly is scale, right? And so the most important thing is covering acreage and making sure that we can cover as much ground as possible and in the field of ecological restoration locally, we're, you know, we're actually borrowing a lot of practices from agriculture and from commercial forestry where these things are—there's lots of money behind them and techniques have been established, right. So a tree planting crew in the Pacific Northwest, even in steep terrain, and the less steep it is, the easier. You know, each crew member can plant 1000 to 1200 trees per day, would be about standard.
Margaret
Oh wow.
Simon
And, you know, if you're reforesting it at an area, say it's canopy species only and you're—you maybe planting 300 stems per acre on a restoration project. So each crew member might reforest four acres a day, on a on a good day. You know, if we're doing a restoration project, we're also planting understory species and other things as well, then maybe that drops to an acre. You know, scale is the most critical thing. So it's professionals, people who know what they're doing, right. And it's not that anyone can't learn, there's some simple things that all plants want when they're being planted. You know, not—letting the roots hang naturally is maybe one of the most important things that people kind of get wrong when they're planting a tree. It's like oh, my god, this, these roots are too big, I'm just going to kind of stuff in the hole and then they turn upwards and we'd call that J rooting. Right? So the root basically forms a J and the tree can recover from that, but when you think about a young sapling developing, one of its biggest limitations in a lot of climates, not all, is going to be water availability. And the deeper those roots are—so the deeper the hole is, the deeper the roots are, and the more natural they are in their arrangement—the later it's going to be able to access water into the dry season. Every inch of depth might gain at a week as the, as things dry out. Trees get planted too high, you know, roots get exposed. That's another component.
Margaret
Okay. So you just, like—you're going out there with like a, like a one person gas auger or something and drilling a bunch of holes and then going back through and putting saplings that were grown in a nursery somewhere into it?
Simon
Yeah, most of what most of what we would use in reforestation projects locally, it's almost all going to be hand planting. Again, you're talking about pretty steep terrain. In some cases we may use augers mounted on the back of a tractor. But anywhere that's flat in Oregon and Washington in the winter is usually pretty wet, when we're planting things. So it can be hard to get equipment around. But usually it's snow, we plant smaller trees, things that people can carry. We use what we would call bare root stock, primarily, that's grown in a commercial nursery. And instead of coming in a container, you know, a plastic pot that creates a lot of trash and also is just heavy and hard to carry around, we—the plants when they're dormant get pulled out of the ground with the roots exposed to the air and then they get put in a, basically a planting bag and sealed up. And then you pull them out when it's time to plant them and the roots are just exposed to the air and you plant them in the ground directly. And when you have that, each tree planter can carry maybe 200 trees at a time in planting bags just on their shoulders because the weight is significantly lighter when you don't have the soil attached. So almost all hand planting. So that 1200 trees a day will be—they're digging every one of those holes and just sliding the tree in. You just dig as small hole as possible. You open it up a little bit and—it's a cool process to watch.
Margaret
Yeah. What do you what are you digging it with that if it's not like a gas auger or something? Like I guess I'm yeah, building foundations.
Simon
Yeah, we have planting shovels. They're just a long shovel with a long narrow spade usually. In some cases, there's a tool called a hoedad in steep areas. And actually—I'm going to get the history wrong—I think the tool is named after a group of basically hippies that moved out to Oregon in the 60s to be on tree planting crews and they developed this tool, you know, or they named the group after the tool. But I think it was the other way around. Anyways, one or the other. But the hoedads were a cool group of kids back in the day. And so on steep terrain you might have basically looks like kind of a long pickaxe with a blade at the end. But usually, yeah, it's just like a 16 inch long, narrow shovel.
Margaret
Okay, and then what if someone's trying to plant trees a little bit more DIY, whether getting them from a nursery? Or even, like, is it feasible for people to try and plant from seed with trees? Like, I really don't know much about gardening. I feel almost bad, this podcast is like not focused on food. But I would like to.
Simon
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And again, this is where connecting with people locally and understanding what things need to grow locally is so important, right? We don't use a lot of seating for trees and shrubs just because we have a well-developed network of nurseries that grow these seedlings. And it makes maintenance a little bit easier to be able to know exactly where the seedlings are. So you're not mowing something that's, you know, an inch tall. But trees grow from seed, you know. And definitely, you know, one of the things that I've done is on a project where we've had to remove alders, they were going to see it at the time, and we just ground that up into mulch and the seeds that were developing on the tree were part of that mulch, and then that just got spread around on the site. And then we had like, thick stand of alders just pop up. And they were mulch, basically, from the bodies of the parents.
Margaret
Oh wow.
Simon
In some cases you can also use natural processes to get those seeds to establish on their own. Like another example would be the cottonwoods locally, which a lot of my restoration is of kind of cottonwood galleries along rivers. They time their sea drop to happen after the river is just dropped, you know, the spring floods have receded. And you have all these, this exposed mud and exposed ground so the seeds can take advantage of that exposed ground. And so, of course, because we have hydroelectric dams on a lot of the rivers here, you don't have that flooding anymore and you have weedy grasses and things. But if you clear that ground at the right time of year underneath the trees, you can get a response of seedlings dropping all around and among those trees. So the remaining mature trees will kind of sprout a forest if you just, you know when those seeds drop, you know when the natural time is for them to emerge, you can use that to your advantage.
Margaret
How do—you know it's, like, okay, so you work on restoration and reforestation and things like that. But then, of course, as you pointed out, we're also losing a lot all the time. Right? And it's kind of two questions. And one is—sometimes I worry about, you know, my work as an environmentalist or even as, like, with encouraging preparedness, like how much am I just, like, in some ways, like, allowing the system to continue. Because if I'm mitigating—as an activist, if I'm mitigating the worst effects of a system, then in some ways I'm allowing it to continue, right? And like, you know, charity is particularly famous for this of, like, basically just, like, well, industrialized capitalism wouldn't work without charity because it doesn't—you know, like, people need that or there wouldn't be a workforce anymore. And yet, at the same time, this act of redistributing resources is very good, right? And so in the act of physical resources we'll talk about, you know, mutual aid instead of charity. And I wonder about, like, something like reforestation. Where do we cross the threshold? Is it just a matter of scale of crossing the threshold from, like, being a release valve for the worst parts of industrialization versus, like, gaining ground ecoligically.
Simon
Yeah, right. I don't know. I don't know how to assess that, like, on a global scale. But what I can know is that—you know, circling back to talking about resiliency—if you're doing something to the best of your knowledge to improve your local natural environment, you are—you're counteracting some of those negative effects. Whether it's enough, I don't know. I mean, there's lots that we need to do aside from climate change, I think, to like, start gaining ground instead of just halting it. And the history of the environmental field, or of conservation of natural resource management, is starting with that, oh, we just need to halt things, right, we need to preserve land. And that's super important and still needs to happen. And restoration was kind of people thinking, well, we need a next step, right? We've preserved a lot of land but, like, a lot of its degraded. But of course, we're still building new subdivisions. You know, we're still converting small farms to industrial agriculture. These processes are still happening. And so the answer is, I don't know. I mean, it's hard to know what action is going to have like the best total positive difference. I think maybe organizing to stop a new subdivision is going to be a more effective use of your time, or just more impactful, than reforesting an area that's already natural, that is just degraded. I really don't know, and part of that's going to depend on what you're valuing. You know, what are you most concerned about? Is it habitat—is a total, you know, is it climate change? Is it total loss of green areas? Is it shade as we're talking about, you know, local climate mitigation? These are all things to consider, I guess. And, yeah, I don't know when we reach the tipping point in the other direction, but I know that, for me, if it's directionally—if it feels directionally good, then maybe I've just chosen not to think about it beyond that, because otherwise it's too hopeless.
Margaret
No, no, I totally understand that. I mean, it's like a thing that I wrestle with when I'm doing activism, but it doesn't make me stop doing activism. You know, I'm like, okay, like, we're still gonna—we still need to do these things even if it isn't yet at a critical mass at which it, like, is winning or whatever on this larger scale. I guess I've always been a big fan of, like, sort of why not both approach [inaudible] girl asking why not both. Because, like, I've always been of the, like, stop/demolish the institutions of destructive—or, you know, like, stop oppression while also building liberation as like, you know, both things are so necessary and I guess I can accidentally sometimes get caught up in that false dichotomy of, like, building up the things we want versus tearing down the things that are destroying the world. I guess, coming towards the end of this, but I wanted to ask—because you were talking about how the work you do, you know, kind of relies on idealism and hope. And I think that that's something that's in short supply right now. And despite my last name, and despite the fact that I run a podcast about the end of the world, I believe very strongly in hope, at least as a strategic thing. You know, it's like, you can't—you can't win unless you fight to win, and you can't fight to win unless you envision the fact that you could win or at least, you know, have a better time along the way to losing or whatever. And so I guess I want to ask you, like, what gives you hope? What—because most of us don't know that much intimately about the ecological impacts of climate change. It's just scary, right? And I know that what you're talking about, about biodiversity giving us a better shot, that feels really hopeful. But I'm wondering if you have other ideas.
Simon
I would say, one of the most beautiful things I think about being in the field that I am, building forests, a lot of the time is that you are hopefully creating something that's going to outlast you. There's sort of an awe that I try to maintain. And it's not always easy, but some of these organisms that we interact with that might be a couple years old, and they plant it, it could have a lifespan of, in my region, 500 years. We can talk about a coast Douglas fir. And we can't know what the world is going to be like. And it's not really about making your impact, because no one's going to know, oh, I designed, I built this cathedral. You know, it's not like that. But it's, like, you're humbled by the experience of working with something that's so big and so vast in size and in time. And I think that's a really—I think it's a really beautiful thing. And it's a cliche to say, oh, go plant a tree as like an environmental action. But participating in restoration locally—which there are ways to do, hopefully, and people should try to if they have the ability—it can give you that sense of awe. And then if you're able to go back to that place that you helped, you know, 10 years, in 20 years, it's really humbling and it's really amazing. So it gives me hope that things outlast us, you know, that the world kind of goes on, and that also that we can be a positive part of the natural world. It's not just oh, humans are are bad and we're screwing everything up. It's—we can be intentional and how we interact with nature. And I think introducing that intentionality into how we impact the natural world is just so important, and feels good when you do it.
Margaret
Yeah, I wonder if one of the single most important things we can do is fight this idea of, like, humanity as a cancer or whatever, right? Like, you know, humanity itself, like humans are not inherently flawed in this way. Like, we're not inherently going to destroy everything. You know, it's—there's certain organizational systems, both economic and also larger structural systems, that do this thing, you know, and we end up participating in it. But there's other ways that we can live, have lived, do live, will live, you know?
Simon
Yeah. And a lot of times we think about nature as something that we affect incidentally. You know, we do a thing that we want to do for some reason, and then we accidentally have an effect on the natural world. And I would like people to maybe think about it as, we can choose how we affect the natural world, and we can be a positive force, and we can be, you know, get very hippy, but we can be one with it. You know, we're not separate, as you said. And it just, it's I think just a much healthier way to view ourselves and nature. Just go do something positive. You know, be specific in how you want to impact the natural world, in the same way that you would be intentional about how you want to impact your community and your relationships with your family and your friends.
Margaret
Yeah, I like that. I like that comparison and it feels very—it's almost, it's like not even a metaphor. It's just literal. You know, there's like the human and the nonhuman communities that were part of, you know?
Simon
Yeah. And it's not just having less impact, it's having good impact.
Margaret
Yeah. Instead of the—you know, it always struck me as, like, trying to just reduce your impact upon the world was always, like, what's the point of that just so that you can feel better about yourself, you know? Like, actually doing something positive feels way better and way less, in some ways, like, obsessive, right? Because if you're just trying to make sure you have no impact on the natural world, you're essentially just trying to negate yourself. Yeah. Was there—is there a question I should have asked you or something that you really want to bring up that you think I or the listener should hear? I wanted to ask you all this stuff about riparian zones and flooding, but that was entirely selfishly because I live on quote/unquote 100 year floodplain that thanks to climate change is a 4-5 times a year. But I'll ask that another time.
Simon
Yeah. I mean, I think we covered some interesting ground. I would say, connecting with people locally and building that local knowledge is the main thing that I can leave people with. Because that's—I can't tell you what to do if you live somewhere else, or even if you live near me. You know the problems that you face better than anyone, and people in your community probably do as well. So that's, yeah, I can't think of anything else.
Margaret
Okay. Well, thank you so much for coming on. And do you have any—you know, I don't know whether you're trying to have strangers ask you questions on Twitter or if you'd like to shout out anything about how people can either follow your work or learn more about what you do, or if there's any other organizations or anything like that that you're excited about that you'd like to shout out to people?
Simon
Yeah. I would say, if people want to follow me on Twitter, it's plant_warlock. And as much as I talk about, you know, environmental issues and projects that I'm working on that may be interesting to folks. Again, reforestation and dam removals and things like that. I have to admit, I also just talk a lot about how terrible our mayor is and things like that. But I would also say for people local to Portland, if they're interested in tree planting, we have a great organization called Friends of Trees that does tree planting projects in neighborhoods and also a natural areas. And it's a great way to kind of get your foot in the door and see if you enjoy doing this kind of work. And if anyone just has questions or, you know, wants advice on things in the natural world, I may at least be able to point them in the right direction. So feel free to contact me.
Margaret
Okay, thanks so much. And does that organization in Portland—do you all, like, take donations? Can I try and direct people to give you all money?
Simon
Yeah, they do. I'm not affiliated. I just know it's an easy way for people to get involved. But they certainly take donations, and they are always looking for volunteers. That's not, I know that's slowed down and been different during COVID times, but I think they're taking volunteers again, and people can certainly donate to them.
Margaret
Cool. Okay, well, thanks so much.
Simon
Thank you.
Margaret
Thank you all so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell people about it. This is the kind of the only way that people find out about this podcast is through word of mouth. And I'm incredibly grateful for everyone who, like, you know, shares and retweets and posts to their story on Instagram and blah, blah, blah, like feeds the algorithm and tells their friends about it. And of course, anyone who tells people about it in person. Well if you don't like the episode then don't tell people about it—unless, actually, if you—if you don't like the episode, you should tell people about how much you don't like it because that will still also drive engagement. That's my favorite thing when people do. And you can also support the show by supporting me on Patreon. Eventually, it'll be supporting a whole organization on Patreon, which is basically what you're doing if you support me on Patreon because other people are very involved in this podcast at the moment and we're going to expand out to other podcasts and shows and things like that. Oh, speaking of which, I now have a YouTube show. The channel is called Live Like the World is Dying. You'll be shocked to know that. And you can find it on YouTube. I only have one episode up as of this recording, but who knows how many I have up by the time it's released. In particular, I'd like to thank some of my patreon backers. I'd like to thank Sean and Hugh and Dana, Chelsea, Eleanor, Mike, Starro, Cat J, The Compound, Shane, Christopher, Sam, Natalie, Willow, Kirk, Hoss the dog, and Nora. I really can't thank you all enough. I mean, I don't know, I guess if I did too much no one would listen anymore. If I just said just names over and over again in a weird pleading tone. So I won't do that. But I will say that I hope everyone is handling all this as best as they can and I will talk to y'all soon
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
You can find more information about Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, including the zines and resources Jimmy mentioned, a list of mutual aid networks, and social media pages, at https://mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/.
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.
Margaret Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the End Times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and on this episode I'll be talking to Jimmy from Mutual Aid Disaster Relief. And we're going to be talking about what is involved in setting up and maintaining a mutual aid network and also what disaster relief looks like. Because, obviously, that's something that's on people's minds for some strange reason. And this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. Da duuuuh!
Jingle What's up y'all? I'm Pearson, host of Coffee with Comrades. Coffee with Comrades is rooted in militant joy. Our hope is to cultivate a warm and inviting atmosphere, like walking into your favorite coffee shop to sit down with some of your close friends and share a heart to heart conversation. New episode premier every Tuesday, so be sure to smash that subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss an episode. We are proud to be a part of the Channel Zero Network.
Margaret Okay, so if you could introduce yourself with your name, which I guess I already said, and your pronouns and I guess your affiliations as relate to disaster relief.
Jimmy Yeah, my name is Jimmy. I'm with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, any pronouns are fine. Um, and yeah, I've been part of Mutual Aid Disaster Relief since, you know, about five years ago. Um, and Mutual Aid Disaster Relief is a people-powered disaster relief network based on the principles of solidarity, mutual aid, and autonomous direct action. And we work with communities especially, you know, the most marginalized, to assist folks in leading their own recoveries. And this network is a permanent network from below to respond to disasters, building off of the history and the legacy of Common Ground in New Orleans after Katrina, Occupy Sandy in New York after Superstorm Sandy, and other solidarity-based mobilizations. And we, we seek to provide some level of continuity for the larger movement of which we're only a small part. And then also, um, you know, continue to build off of the lessons learned so that we can, um, you know, build off the successes and avoid the mistakes of previous iterations of doing this type of organizing.
Margaret Okay, could you give some examples of situations that you all respond to?
Jimmy Sure. Yeah. So, you know, this last year we've been responding to COVID. You know, before that, um, you know, a lot of hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, fires, things like that. And we also, to a smaller extent, respond to what we call invisible disasters. So, you know, even though, you know, for example, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, it's not a hurricane that knocked out power or made it so people don't have heat to run their homes, it's the legacy of colonialism, you know. So, um, you know, we've tried to respond to disasters like those as well as the very visible climate-related disasters of hurricanes and fires and floods and things like that.
Margaret Okay, so y'all are nationwide then?
Jimmy Yes, we are.
Margaret Cool. Um, I guess, so, I want to ask—one of the things that comes up a lot when people talk about, well, mutual aid networks, especially ones that are, say, nationwide rather than, like, specifically rooted in the communities where the disaster is happening, what does that look like for you all—like, are you outsiders coming in? Are you invited in? How do you all navigate that kind of tension?
Jimmy Um, so yes, we, you know, we are—we're national, but we're also local. You know, so all of us are from local communities and involved in local mutual aid projects and movements, you know, for justice and liberation in our own local communities. You know, so Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, rather than trying to supplant or replace local spontaneous manifestations of mutual aid, whether organized through a local mutual aid group or just, you know, the people impacted, you know, assisting each other, we try to amplify that and support that and provide, you know, this ongoing organizing and backup for those, you know, for those mutual aid efforts. So this can look like, um, you know, um, uh, you know, like getting bulk supply donations, or help with clean up, solar infrastructure or water infrastructure. Um, you know, wellness, you know, either wellness checks or setting up Wellness Centers after disasters. We try to be really flexible and adaptive to whatever the self-determined needs of the impacted people are. We borrow the Zapatista principle of leading by obeying, you know, so, you know, both to, you know—we listen to impacted people directly, and respond to their self-determined needs, and we listen to, you know, local mutual aid groups or local solidarity base, you know, justice-ro0ted efforts, and listen to them, you know, and go from there and respond to, you know, and assist however, we can. However, we can leverage our ongoing organizing, and, you know, we have a number of different mutual aid survival programs, um, you know, so we have, you know, like, the Rebuilding a Better World which involves, like, debris cleanup, or, um, you know, cleaning up flooded homes, you know, that's our—we, with our local partners on the ground in Michigan are doing that right now, with the floods up there. Um, you know, with COVID most recently a lot of our efforts—we have been responding to impacted people directly when we're able to, when they reach out to us. But a lot of our focus with COVID has been supporting local mutual aid efforts. There's been a beautiful outpouring of mutual aid globally with COVID-19. And so Mutual Aid Disaster Relief has, uh, you know, supported and amplified and backed up those local mutual aid efforts whenever possible and however, we're able
Margaret To take a step back, what is mutual aid? That's just charity but done by young idealists, right?
Jimmy No, charity is top down. Charity doesn't question—it takes for granted the unjust power relationships in our society, and it at most provides a band aid. Whereas mutual aid or solidarity, it addresses the immediate survival needs of the people while simultaneously raising consciousness and advocating and being a part of these movements for long-term structural changes. So it both meets the survival needs of the people, and in that way, you know, um, you know, we get out of our silos and echo chambers and meet the people where they're at, you know. And also it's connected to a long-term vision for radical social change. And so mutual aid and solidarity, it's about sharing resources, um, but it's also about sharing power. You know, so people who are impacted by disasters, or—you know, whether it's, you know, climate-related, or the disasters of capitalism and colonialism—they have more at stake in their own survival and wellbeing than well-intentioned paternalistic givers of charity. And what we're all longing for, you know, when a crisis hits, is to be part of a communal recovery. And that's part of our healing process, part of how we cope with crisis or with extreme events. And so, you know, just because somebody is impacted by a disaster doesn't mean that they are passive consumers who are just like empty vessels to be filled with blankets or canned goods, you know. People, you know, have skills, have networks, have, you know, a lot to offer. And so one thing about mutual aid is that it's reciprocal. There's no this for that, there's no requirement, but it's, you know, we're giving what we can and receiving what we need. And all of us are, you know, whether it's, you know, people who are supporting, you know, or people who are impacted. And also those two, you know, are not mutually exclusive, they're usually overlapping. You know, so, um, you know, like, one thing that I'll often do is drive around a box truck with, you know, pick up supplies and drop them off in neighborhoods that are impacted. And so, you know, I'll be, you know, going all day, you know, passing out water, food, cleaning supplies, whatever I can get my hands on. But then also, you know, the local community, you know, they'll see that I'm, you know, in go mode, and they'll, you know, come out with an ice cold water, you know, which, you know, after a power outage and nobody has a fridge, it's like gold, you know, and, you know, and so, you know, that kind of mutuality, is, you know, really a key part of mutual aid. And also, there's also a component that I didn't learn until looking into other people's language and experiences around mutual aid and solidarity, is that, you know, with charity there's this emotional distance. There's, you know, like, oftentimes, you know, it's like a traditional, you know, client/service provider relationship, you know, and with mutual aid that is overturned. That, you know, there's an authentic relationship, there's authentic friendships, you know, that—you know, we're not isolated from each other and we get to know each other, we get—we become friends, we become, you know, close to each other. And when we understand, you know, that, you know, predatory landlords are, you know, evicting our friends, you know, we, you know, we join with them and resist, you know, and, you know, mutual aid is also about relationships. And so, um, you know, it's—and relationships are where power is. You know, oftentimes people think in terms—with regards to disasters—in terms of, you know, stockpiling or hoarding, you know, that's the popular imagination around disasters. But in reality, what almost unequivocably happens in almost every location after disasters, people come out of their houses, sometimes meet each other for the first time, and spontaneously come together to meet each other's needs. And oftentimes building off of the relationships that already existed before the storm—or before the disaster. And so, you know, one thing that we talked about a lot in our popular education trainings is that community organizing is the best form of disaster preparedness, and disaster relief is just another form of community organizing.
Margaret You know, one of the things that we talk about a lot on this show is that even if sometimes I can get focused on like, you know, here's gear, or here's skills to learn, or whatever, is that people are the best resources and relationships are, like, not only one of the most important things to stockpile or whatever, but more than that just like being around people is actually really good in times of crisis and, like, which is the opposite of the right wing prepper mindset, you know. And, with the solidarity and mutual aid stuff, one of the things that—I've been trying to think about things more and more in terms of—so a lot of communities are extracted from, right? In the same way that a colony is extracted from, resources are extracted from it and brought to another place. A lot of communities are extracted from on a regular basis and therefore, like, need help, right? And charity is this way of like bolstering the extractive process. It's like this way of, like, watering the plants that you plan on harvesting, you know, it's a way of making sure that the extractive process can continue. And the way that I've been more recently thinking about mutual aid is this, ideally, a method of beginning to like reverse the extractive process instead of buffering it up. I don't know.
Jimmy Absolutely, no, at its root mutual aid is radical care, you know, it is loving each other. And in a patriarchal capitalist colonial white supremacist and other, you know, innumerable forms of domination and oppression, to love each other, to love ourselves and to, um, you know, take care of each other is a radical act.
Margaret Yeah. Could you talk about—I really like hearing, like, more, like, specific examples like what either, you know, like specific examples of disasters that you all responded to and how that worked, or just specific examples of when you felt like you knew that you were doing mutual aid instead of charity, like, not just like necessarily, like, gratitude of people, but in terms of what it looks like to have a mutual aid organization, if you could give more specific example.
Jimmy Yeah, um, so one thing that I want to highlight, you know, just to begin with, is you don't have to have it all figured out all in the beginning. You know, so, um, you know, there's a story that Rebecca Solnit talks about in A Paradise Built in Hell, her book, that, you know, after the San Francisco earthquake, people started a community kitchen with one can and one spoon, you know, and then it just grew from there. Similar to that, you know, we, um, you know, sometimes it can feel impossible to start a hospital or a whole Wellness Center. But if we just set up a first aid station, and then have people rolling in and out, and then somebody says, "Oh, yeah, I'm a massage therapist." "Oh, yeah, I'm an acupuncturist." "Oh, yeah, I'm a nurse." "I'm a medic." You know, then it snowballs and takes on a life of its own. Same with, you know, like, maybe the idea of a whole warehouse of supply distribution seems far off, but if we start with a community fridge, or community pantry, just, you know, taking what's in our cupboards and sharing them with our neighbors and then giving, you know, making sure people have the awareness that they can put in too, that they can share as well, you know, that can easily you know, blossom and grow into something a lot larger. You know, Hurricane Irma and Maria hit Puerto Rico, pretty bad. And, um, you know, there was this colonial occupation that—I mean, Puerto Rico's been occupied for, you know, a long time—but it was ramped up, you know, after Hurricane Maria. And there was a beautiful explosion of mutual aid organizing throughout the island. There's [inaudible] that are still active that, you know, they took over a governmental buildings that were part of the Oversight Board, the Promesa. Former schools, former government buildings, and they turn them into mutual aid community centers. And out of these centers they have acupuncture, they have computer access for the kids, they have food kitchens, and one thing that we have assisted with for the last couple of years is the solar and water infrastructure. So especially solar, we've been able to access, you know, solar panels, and then, you know, the inverters, charge controllers, battery backup, and help install solar infrastructure at these mutual aid centers to bring them, you know, with, you know, our partners down there, to help with autonomous infrastructure and sustainability. And so one thing that we did in the beginning, um, you know, soon after Maria hit, you know, we were in Florida, we had already had active mobilization for Hurricane Irma in Florida, and so many people who were involved in that mobilization, you know, some of them had family ties and friend ties down to Puerto Rico. And so a delegation went down there. And one thing that we noticed real quick was, you know, our teams down there, was supplies were sitting in FEMA warehouses and not getting out to the people. So one thing that our folks did was they rolled up to the FEMA warehouse and said they're here for the 8am pickup. And the person that the the windows said, oh, we don't see you on the list. And they just insisted, we're here for the 8am pickup. And eventually they were allowed in, they flashed their Mutual Aid Disaster Relief IDs, and they were allowed in and were able to pick up a box truck and carloads full of supplies, and then get that out to the people. And then also, you know, before they had—before they left the island, we made Mutual Aid Disaster Relief badges for local community organizers so they could continue that supply hook up and, you know, continue to try to, you know, liberate those supplies, you know, from sitting in warehouses, to get to the people where they're actually supposed to go. That's one example of how, you know, through our ongoing organizing and just being willing to take risks, we can leverage, um, you know, our access to resources or status as Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, to support survival of the people, but also the local mutual aid organizing of the people as well.
Margaret Okay, and welcome back, which you all won't even notice as a cut. But we lost connection for a moment. And it's funny, because one of the reasons that I don't know how the sound quality is going to be for the listeners, we have a good audio engineer, but I'm no longer—I recorded most of these at home. But now that the trees, now that the leaves are really coming in it blocks my antenna on the top of my house that boosts my cell phone signal enough to do a hotspot enough to do interviews. So now instead I have to go into town near a noisy office and road. So I just think it's ironic. There have been a couple interviews that I haven't been able to do because of my internet at home getting suddenly so much worse. But anyway, so that's why there's a strange break in the conversation. Do you want to talk about the history of mutual aid, whether the history of it like using that word, or the history of it as like a concept, and/or where ya'lls specific lineage comes in. I suppose those are three different questions, but if one of those appeals to you.
Jimmy So mutual aid is—there's, um, I think—called Kropotkin who wrote a book called Mutual Aid. And it was kind of written in opposition to the Darwinian theory of, you know, like, survival of the fittest, that was misused by people. So what Kropotkin did was articulate and give voice to an organizing principle of life. Um, you know, like, what Kropotkin saw with plants and animals, with, you know, like indigenous societies, was that how people survived and thrived was not through competition, it was through cooperation. As far as Mutual Aid Disaster Relief. Um, you know, I personally, and other people who are also involved and helped found Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, were part of the organizing in New Orleans after Katrina, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and surrounding areas. And there was a call from Malik Rahim, a former Black Panther, in the neighborhood of Algiers. There were white vigilantes that were roaming the streets shooting and killing unarmed black men. And Malik Rahim had a history of organizing in that community, you know, through the Black Panther Party, and then later through other, you know, movements for peace and justice and environmental justice. And, you know, so at this time it was, um, you know, there were these white vigilantes and also, you know, people stranded out the Superdome. People were trying to cross the bridge to safety and dry land from the east bank to the west bank and they were stopped by Gretna police to turn them back with rifles. And in this context, Malik sent out a call—Malik, you know, and Scott Crowe and others—you know, sent out a call for solidarity and support. Many of us who were involved in movements like Food Not Bombs, or street medics at global justice demonstrations, or indie media, radical independent movement-based media, um, you know, we had some experience with setting up community kitchens, we had some experience with, you know, doing medic work at demonstrations or setting up media centers, you know, for these, you know, big mobilizations against global capital. And many of us responded to that call. There was a blending of the wisdom and legacy of the Black Panther Party, you know, through Malik Rahim and the survival programs. You know, there's the most famous of their programs was the free breakfast program, but they had numerous survival programs. They were doing pest control—community-wide pest control—they were doing a free ambulance program. They did sickle cell anemia testing and education. You know, across the board they were meeting the survival needs of the people, and that's actually what made them the biggest threat to the FBI and to colonialism. They did have an armed component, but what was really the threat was that they were mobilizing the people in a mass way. And Malik Rahim continued that legacy and and then that was translated and melded with the legacy of the global justice movement, you know, where, you know, we were active with, whether it's Food Not Bombs or street medic organizing, and, um, you know, that coalesced in New Orleans after Katrina with, you know, a lot of vibrant mutual aid efforts, and it gave our movements some cohesion. You know, so even people as ideologically far apart as say, like, Michael Moore, the documentarian, or the writers of The Coming Insurrection, they could see what was happening in New Orleans after Katrina and be like, that's actually what we're for. That's what we're about. That's what the world that we're trying to build. And, you know, there were, you know, there was a at least one agent provocateur FBI informant who used his position of power to undermine the organization and take advantage of women. You know, there's a lot of conflicting feelings for many of us who were involved in that in that effort. And we saw again after Superstorm Sandy, you know, where Occupy Wall Street transitioned to disaster response. And again, this solidarity-based network model outperformed the top-down charity model.
Margaret Can you explain that? Like, in what ways does Mutual Aid Disaster Relief do better than than top-down intervention?
Jimmy So Naomi Klein talks about this term disaster capitalism. Disaster, capitalism refers to this idea of how the powerful will use shocks or disasters or crises to reinforce their privilege and power. They put in transformations to the economy or society that reinforce their privilege status. And in parallel to this, there's disaster colonialism. So after a disaster, there's a lot of guns that show up. And, you know, there's, you know, authorities, you know, with guns, the army, the National Guard, Blackwater, you know, similar mercenary type groups, and their general response is not, how can we help the people survive? Their general response is, how do we maintain order and keep people in their place? The nonprofits, the top-down nonprofit industrial complex, goes hand in hand with that militarized authoritarian response. The nonprofit's, they undermine local spontaneous manifestations of mutual aid and make it into this thing that is not reciprocal, that is not participatory, that is not power sharing, where people just wait in line and receive a few items and then, you know, are, you know, go back to being oppressed by their landlords or, you know, the, you know, police or the, you know, the state authorities.
Margaret But what would you say to someone who, like, isn't ideologically committed to mutual aid and is looking for the most efficient response to disaster. Like, regardless of the—I mean, I believe ideologically in mutual aid, but I think that it's worth pointing out the ways in which the the actual just like straight up efficiency of decentralized movements can be so much greater and I was wondering if you can talk on that part of it.
Jimmy Yes, absolutely. Um, a story I heard about with Occupy Sandy, that, um, you know, there were some people involved with FEMA that, you know, they got—they heard about this elder And they didn't have heat, they, you know it was getting cold and um, you know, these people, you know, in the FEMA organization had their hands tied because it's, there's so much bureaucracy, so much red tape, so much hoops to jump through. Even though they wanted to help this person, they could not do anything because the top-down nature of it is not participatory, is not liberating for those impacted or those, you know, involved in the relief efforts. So what they did, these people involved with FEMA, was they reached out to people with Occupy Sandy and people with Occupy Sandy weatherize the house, got them—got the elder situated and, you know, what they needed to survive. And then also, after that mobilization, the Department of Homeland Security issued out a report highlighting how movements like Occupy Sandy that are decentralized, that are people powered, network based, solidarity based, are actually more effective than their command and control top-down model. And these are the same people who regularly infiltrate our movements and undermine almost everything we try to do through infiltration, through agent provocateurs, you know, and even they, you know, have owned up to the fact that their top-down model is not as effective as our mutual aid model.
Margaret Yeah, there's a—it's been going around Twitter lately—a leaked or, you know, declassified document about how to infiltrate leftist organizations and, you know, the behaviors that make leftist organizations less effective. And one of them is like, basically, like, put everything to committee. And like, basically try to stop autonomy within the organizations, try to stop people from acting on the organizations without, like, putting everything to the larger organization and everything to little subcommittees and shit like that. And I thought that was really interesting, not that the people who do that thing are inherently, you know, agent provocateurs, or whatever. But we always have this conception of infiltrators as these people who are, like, go there to like break things or instigate or escalate, right? And that does happen. But it really was telling to me that the main way they know how to fuck us up is to go in and get us stuck in endless meetings and get people to not just do things. And the thing that is our strength as people who practice direct action and people practice mutual aid is our capacity to just do things and then coordinate about the things we're doing rather than centrally plan all of the things that we're trying to do.
Jimmy And that is the organizing principle of Mutual Aid Disaster Relief is almost everything is done through affinity groups, through working groups, rather than through centralized planning or organizing. We have, you know, regular, you know, signal threads and conference calls and things like that. But it's mostly to provide updates with each other, um, rather than to do the nuts and bolts organizing. We, similar to the Zapatista principle of leading by obeying, there's this idea of subsidiarity, which means you devolve decision making to the localest scale possible. And so, with our organizing, we encourage everybody to be involved in, you know, affinity groups and local collectives and local mutual aid groups, and then partner with Mutual Aid Disaster relief. And, you know, oftentimes, you know, like, if your local affinity group or your local mutual aid group is unable to cover something after a disaster, maybe Mutual Aid Disaster Relief could, or vice versa. You know, there's some things that a local collective or affinity group or mutual aid group could do that Mutual Aid Disaster Relief couldn't. you know. And so, we kind of work in tandem and hand in hand, you know, and we combine both collective decision making and checking in with each other with respect for autonomy and direct action and self determination.
Margaret I mean, it sounds good. And I've seen some of the work that folks associated with you all have done in eastern North Carolina and have always been impressed by, yeah, the non top-down structure organizing, but still the ability to get a lot of stuff done. To go back, there was like thoughts I was thinking about—I was like taking notes as you're talking about mutual aid and, you know, I remember reading this article in a science magazine in probably like, 2008 or something like that about mutual aid and gay birds. And it was—there had been this like thing that—I actually, as far as I understand, Darwin would not have appreciated social Darwinism, or maybe even didn't appreciate social Darwinism, like, the like, survival of the fittest thing, like, wasn't even the Darwinian concept of evolution. But then Kropotkin was, you know, most famously an anarchist. But well, at the time, he was also very famously, I believe, a naturalist and a scientist. And, you know, all of his work was around saying, like, oh, no, animals just take care of each other. Not always, right, there's like, you know, I mean, obviously, animals eat each other and shit too and like, there are animals that fuck up each other's like chances of reproduction or whatever. But people would sit there and they'd be like, why gay birds? Like, why are animals gay? And, I mean, I think, me as an animal know I am gay. But, you know, this is the kind of thing that rightwing thinkers will bring up all the time, right? And like Alex Jones, like, always freaks out about the gay frogs or whatever. And this article basically points out that it was like, well, the gay birds like do an incredible amount of service for the larger community of the animals and therefore, like, continue to propagate the species as a whole, even if they don't individually reproduce. And it was basically this realization that science was finally catching up—and maybe it had—pop science, at least, was finally catching up to the fact that Kropotkin was right about evolution and the, like, mutual aid theory of evolution is, like, as far as I understand it, predominantly the theory within evolution at the moment, and that it's not this, like, you know, war of one against all that people present. But—sorry, this is a rant I've been thinking about for a while. I do appreciate that it's like, mutual aid wasn't invented by kropotkin, right. And like, Kropotkin didn't think mutual aid was invented by Kropotkin. He was observing it, and he was observing it in, you know, the animal kingdom, plant kingdom, and also in the human, like, all, you know, different human societies all over the world have been practicing mutual aid largely before, essentially, like, various forms of colonization including, like, the internal colonization of Europe and things like that.
Jimmy Mutual Aid predates anarchism. And it also is not a European ideology. It's how life survives and thrives. And it's something that, you know, mutual—Kropotkin noticed and gave voice to, you know, in his book. But also, you know, like, um, there's also a vibrant indigenous mutual aid network that has been growing, you know, over the last year plus. And I feel like their approach to mutual aid and solidarity organizing is also somewhat an antidote to the Eurocentric or ideological-based, you know, European-centric, you know, mutual aid organizing, you know, more broadly, that all of us, you know, involved and devoted to mutual aid and a better world, you know, should be engaging with and learning from and communicating with. Because, you know, indigenous people on this continent, Turtle Island, have centuries of experience surviving catastrophes and living through apocalypses. And there's a lot of wisdom there that those of us, you know, in the cities or, you know, involved in, you know, mutual aid that doesn't have that focus, you know, there's a lot that we can learn from, you know, there's a lot of interchange that can be, can be had there, that we can be attuned to.
Margaret Yeah, and even anarchism as a concept. You know, one of the things that really interests me about this mutual aid revelation from Kropotkin's point of view is that anarchism, as a concept, as a Western concept, was basically just Western people figuring out, like, rediscovering something that so much of the world already knows. And so it wasn't like—anyone who presents like anarchism or these ideas as invented by the people who called themselves anarchists in France and Russia or whatever, right? It wasn't an invention, it was a rediscovering and an applying of things. You talked at the beginning about lessons that you've learned. So I'm really interested in how you all are providing continuity across—hm, how to I want to say this? It's like there's been this huge explosion in mutual aid groups in the past year since COVID started, right. And that's actually the most hopeful thing about the whole fucking crisis, from my point of view. And, you know, it's like the only thing at the beginning of it all that was giving me hope, was watching this mainstreaming of mutual aid. And obviously, with mainstream comes a lot of danger and a lot of people calling things mutual aid that might not be mutual aid. But on the other hand, that also seems to me the only hope because, I mean, I believe in a society that the economic system is essentially mutual aid rather than, you know, anything else. But you—I—one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you all is because you all predate this current explosion of mutual aid. And I was wondering if you could talk about what that explosion means, and like lessons that you're able to bring to people who are coming in this, like, newer group of mutual aid organizers, but also things that you've learned from the newer people who might be coming from a less ideological position, or just are younger,
Jimmy We're totally inspired. And we've been, you know, sowing the seeds, you know, of mutual aid and watering them these past several years. And we all—we would always talk about how, you know, like, if we have a hope for survival, it's not gonna come from the state, it's not going to come from the nonprofit industrial complex, it's going to come from each other and these relationships of support, you know, that are horizontal, and participatory and, you know, from below. And I think still, though, even though we were already responding to disasters, and, you know, there's still an element of, you know, like, that, you know, we're talking about the future survival of humanity, you know, with this explosion of mutual aid with regards to the COVID, there's been over 600,000 people killed just in the United States alone, you know, from COVID. And, um, you know, there's evictions looming, mass evictions looming right now, I feel like we've all lost loved ones or lost, you know, or have friends or have family who have lost loved ones, and for both the climate and, you know, the pandemic, the future is now, you know. There's overlapping constant disaster, one crisis after another and, you know, these local mutual aid groups are, you know, they're carving out laboratory spaces and coming up with new ideas about how to meet people's needs, articulating their vision for social change. And it's hard work. So there is, you know, some stumbling in the dark while we—while people figure it out. And that's normal and that's to be expected. You know, with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, one thing that we've, you know, oftentimes—you know, previously with a hurricane, or a flood, or a fire or tornado, a lot of our efforts were in person, direct to people impacted, um, you know, face to face. You know, going to the neighborhood that was impacted and, you know, dropping off supplies, and then seeing what else they need, you know. And then, um, you know, with this explosion of local mutual aid groups it's, um, you know, shifted things somewhat of how Mutual Aid Disaster Relief has responded in that we are still meeting people's needs directly, you know, when needed or when we are able, but these local mutual aid groups are rooted in the community and they are able to respond in ways that, you know, sometimes a national network is not able to. You know, we've learned a lot, and one thing that we try to do to provide some level of continuity for this larger movement is be a clearinghouse of information and resources. So if people go on the website mutualaiddisasterrelief.org you can see a ton of resources, both about mutual aid in general, how to start a mutual aid network, what is mutual aid, you know, disaster response, and, you know, report backs from different mobilizations, different zines, news articles about the mutual aid responses for disasters. And so, you know, there's 1000s of different resources on there, and some of them we created, but many of them, you know, others, you know, local mutual aid groups, partner organizations and networks created and we, you know, help share because we see that that wisdom is valuable and needs to get elevated and out there more. So we try to, you know, offer a library online about disaster response and mutual aid, you know, for the larger movement. On there, one resource specifically that we put out last summer is our Lessons Learned zine. And so people can visit that, there's a dozen different lessons learned both, you know, like, ideas like moving at the speed of trust and at the speed of dreams. Um, you know, and also things to be aware of, you know, such as the savior complex or disaster patriarchy, and ways to, you know, maintain our principles and values while being responsive to the needs on the ground of those most impacted.
Margaret Okay, let's like take some of those. You know, the moving at the speed of trust and the speed of dreams, what is what does that mean?
Jimmy Yeah, so the speed of trust, you know, refers to this idea of, we need to be building bonds with each other. One of the most revolutionary things that we can do is find each other and build meaningful relationships, you know, that are, um, you know, based on care, based on mutual respect and a shared vision and affinity for that better world we know is possible and are trying to build. Um, it's hard to, you know, as a mutual aid network, whether local or national, to act if you don't have a level of trust and a level of connection, and affinity and love for each other. That basis of trust, um, is the foundation, you know, that we can build off of. We encourage people, mutual aid groups, to, you know, if you don't already have core values or guiding principles or foundation, like principles of unity, something like that, to take the time to come together and articulate that collectively. You know, there's so much that is, you know, adaptable and, you know, flexible, you know, in disaster response, oftentimes we need, you know, some principles or some core values to go back to ground ourselves. And, you know, like that, for us in Mutual Aid Disaster Relief that was, you know, a key part of building that trust initially, um, you know, so that we are coming at it from—we know that we are coming at it with a shared vision of what we're doing and where we're going. And then also this idea of the speed of dreams, it comes from, you know, the Zapatistas. It's this idea that when we put our hands and hearts and bodies in service of our dreams, they can manifest themselves exponentially. Far from being, you know, something that, you know, like, we plant seeds and then, you know, generations, they sprout and grow, we see the effects by moment to moment, you know, day to day and year to year when we are true to our principles and values and we, you know, are devoted to an ethic of solidarity and justice, it can be almost disconcerting, you know, how quickly our dreams can manifest into reality. It's that, you know, snowball thing I was talking about earlier is, you know, we can start with just the tiniest bit of liberated space or mutual aid, you know, organizing, and then as we cultivate it, it's amazing, you know, how quickly that can grow and blossom in 1000 different directions.
Margaret Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that—one of the reasons I've always loved direct action as an organizing principle—sorry about the siren in the background if you all can hear it. One of the things I've loved about direct action as an organizing principle is that it involves actually like starting to solve problems. Like, you know, thinking of these examples that you talk about, about like Occupy Sandy going and winterizing someone's house. We often get so caught up, like, especially right now, when all of this bad shits happening, right? When we think, how do we stop climate change? And in some ways, how do we stop climate change is the wrong question because, while we need to stop climate change, it probably looks like solving specific problems along the way. It might be, how do we create a microclimate in this environment that is more resistant to the fires that are going to come? Right? Because we're not going to actually stop climate change. You know, we can stop the worst of it. And so it reminds me of one of the problems that I see lock up a lot of people in general is any given thing that you have to do, it's really hard to be like, well, I'm thinking about the entire problem and how do I solve the entire problem? So you just don't do anything. You know, whenever people are like, well, how do you write a book? And like any writer who's written books is like, I don't know, you start writing a book, and then it's shit so you go back and change things. And then the third time you write a book you, like, plan it out ahead of time better because you know what you're doing. But it really just starts with doing it. You know, there's the whole anarchist cliche that the secret is to begin. And that's one thing I've always loved about mutual aid organizing is like, yeah, I don't know how we—you know, people are always like, oh, what do you anarchist want or whatever. I'm like, look, I can't tell you everything about the economic system of the society that I want to create. I don't even think that would be a good idea. Because what I want to do is feed myself and feed the people around me who I care about, and then build up from there. And so that's one thing I really like about the work that you all do is that focus on, you just start doing it. And it's what, as you were saying, that's what people do is they're like, oh, shit bad's happening, I guess we should do something, you know?
Jimmy Absolutely. And our mutual aid organizing his movement infrastructure. So, you know, there's this idea of dual power, to be simultaneously, you know, building up our own prefigurative resources and institutions and, you know, power from below, while also challenging, you know, the forces of oppression and occupation and colonialism and capitalism and contesting. You know, there's an element of mutual aid organizing that is, you know, all of us are involved simultaneously in mutual aid organizing and the other movements that are contemporaneous for, you know, the movement for Black Lives, or for the Stop Line 3, or the Dakota Access Pipeline, you know, and so, you know, when we build power from below for mutual aid, we're also building power from below to resist extensive resource extraction or, you know, attacks on indigenous sovereignty or on, you know, homeless sweeps. Mutual aid organizing is fertilizing, you know, the movement of ground beneath us to be stronger the next time, you know, we need to be out in the streets or be in front of the bulldozers at a pipeline camp.
Margaret Yeah, and they all tie together, right? Because the only way that we can like really consistently save ourselves is by also stopping the machinery of destruction that is destroying the climate and destroying communities. Because it's like, well, we can, we can provide tents, to people who are currently without houses, but we also need to, like, stop the people who are stealing their tents and stop the system that leaves them without housing in the first place.
Jimmy Exactly. And, you know, one thing that we talked about in our popular education is audacity is our capacity. You know, so, you know, oftentimes we're just limited by our imaginations, you know, we think something is not possible, so we don't try it. You know, but as soon as we shake off that sense of powerlessness and act, then, you know, we're filled with the sense of possibility and then, you know, things that were impossible, or we thought were impossible, are no more.
Margaret I really liked that. And I think that might be a good note to end on. Besides, of course, the obvious joke about audacity as the primary thing that podcasters use that is suddenly spyware. So I'm avoiding making that joke. And you all should be very appreciative of this inside joke I'm not making that only—anyway. What—how can people find out more about your work or support you? Or are there other things like either final words, or, you know, plugging all this stuff that you all do and how people can support it?
Jimmy Yeah, so people can go to mutualaiddisasterrelief.org to check out our website. We also have on there links to many other local mutual aid groups that you can also be involved in, we encourage people to do both—be involved in Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, and be involved in other locally-rooted mutual aid projects and organizations in general. We have a Facebook page, we have a Twitter, we have Instagram, Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, you can find us on all of those. And also, um, we often share a quote from Buenaventura Durruti. Durruti was an antifascist during the Spanish Civil War. And one thing that he said was that our opposition might blast and ruin its world before it exits the stage of history, but we're not in the least afraid of ruins because we carry a new world here in our hearts. And all of us who dream of a better world are carrying that new world in our hearts. And we're going to create it, it takes takes lifetimes. Um, but you know, we're a part of that growing world and we know your listeners, you know, everybody listening to this is part of that growing world. And we're excited to see what we're able to build, you know, together.
Margaret All right. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening. And I hope you enjoyed this episode. And also, you know, after we hung up Jimmy pointed out that basically everyone doing, you know, Mutual Aid Disaster Relief is not as much an organization as it is a movement and that all of you listening who are working on preparedness and are working on mutual aid and things like that are all part of this thing we're all doing and just wanted to extend that thanks. And I would also like to extend that thanks. Not just for listening, but for talking, not just about this show, right, that's a tiny part of it all, but but talking about this stuff with people around you. So thank you so much. And if you'd like to support the show, you can do so by supporting me which will soon be supporting Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness which is an old zine collective that is now kind of rebooting to also do podcasts and YouTube channels—YouTube shows and all that shit. You can do so by supporting me on patreon@patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. And in particular I guess I'd like to thank Nora and Hoss the dog, Kirk, Willow, Natalie, Sam, Christopher, Shane, The Compound, Cat J, Starro, Mike, Eleanor, Chelsea, Dana, Hugh, and Shawn. And also tell people that there's now a YouTube show of Live Like the World is Dying. So far there's only one episode, if you want to see me talking about the emergency kits that I make and distribute, I determined that video would be a better format for that than doing a whole podcast where I just like talk to myself or Jack or someone about, you know, and then in my kit is a whistle. And, you know, like, I think that the video format worked better for that. And it's been a good reaction. So don't worry, I'm not gonna abandon the podcasting format. I personally listen to podcast more than I want YouTube because I like listening. Everyone's always like, "Oh, I don't have the attention span for podcasts." And I'm like, "I don't have the attention span for video." It just depends on your own mindset and also like where you like to consume content, I think, which is definitely stuff you were wanting to know my opinion about. You really wanted to know my opinion about the difference between podcasts and YouTube. So let me tell you more about—no, I'm not gonna tell you more about it. I instead want to say, again, thank you, and do as well as you can. And I hope that all of the things aren't so overwhelming. And if there's one lesson I'm going to remind myself from this conversation, it's that start with the small things, you know. We—it's so easy to get overwhelmed thinking about the magnitude of crisis that we're all in, everyone on the planet Earth is in and to various degrees, of course, I'm not trying to claim that my position is as bad as many, many other people's positions. But all we can do is we can take something we can do, we can think about what can I do? What can I do today? You know? I can go get hot hands, like hand warmers, and have them around or distribute them. Or I can learn how to build a campfire, or I can go talk to my neighbor that I don't talk to much and kind of get a sense of who she is and how we could support each other if things go wrong. Or we just do things one at a time and hope that collectively—because there's a lot of us on this planet, and if we all do things—well, we all did lots of little things and that caused the destruction of everything. So what have we all do lots of little things in the other direction? And I'm not talking—god, this sounds like I'm fucking talking about straws and shit, like fuck straws. I don't care one way or the other about individual consumerism that causes this issue. Anyway, I guess I'm done with the podcast. Thank you for listening and I will talk to you all soon.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.
The guest Guy recommended people support the Gray Coast Guildhall on Patreon to support a small town community space: https://www.patreon.com/graycoastguildhall
This is an updated transcript, replacing the machine-generated one which was initially posted with the episode.
1:05:45
SPEAKERS Margaret, Guy
Margaret Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the End Times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and I use she or they pronouns. Normally I do this like whole intro thing that I record after the conversation. But this is a special—a special episode that I'm just doing as quickly—as quick turnaround as I can because of what's going on in the Pacific Northwest with unprecedented heat. And I want people to have information as soon as possible. So please forgive audio quality on my end, I'm recording this from the best place I had access to internet, which is right next to one of the busiest intersections in all of the tiny town of Asheville, North Carolina. But anyway, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And normally I put in a jingle here, but I'm not going to. Instead you should just go to Channel Zero Network. I don't even know the website, you just Google it. I mean, come on, who's actually going to type in URL and you can just type things into the search bar. Go check out the Channel Zero Network, there's a ton of shows that might interest you. Okay, so would you like to introduce yourself with your name and your pronouns? And then a bit of your background as relates to heat related illnesses?
Guy Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me on. My name is Guy, I use he and him pronouns. I live up in the Pacific Northwest on the Olympic Peninsula. And my background related to this, I have been a wilderness educator and backpacking guide for many years, especially working down in the Grand Canyon for several years. So a lot of exposure to heat there. And I also instruct wilderness medicine courses. And so I teach and think about bodies and how bodies adapt to stress, particularly heat stress in this context. Yeah, that's me.
Margaret Hurray. I'm so glad that your skillset is about to become very useful away from the Grand Canyon and in the Olympic Peninsula. The rain forest that I believe is not—is it—is it normal for you all to have 109 degree weather? Or is that abnormal?
Guy That is definitely abnormal. Yeah. We sometimes we’ll cross 100 or triple digits over 100 for one or two days in the summer, usually in late July or August. I cannot remember a time when we hit 108 degrees, and certainly not in late June. It is pretty hot.
Margaret Yeah, I've—I'm from the Mid Atlantic and now I live in the south on the east coast. And I've, the only time I've been in—I mean, I've been in triple digits. I don't think it ever got hotter than 103/104 the whole time I was growing up. And only time I've been in 110 degree weather was in Death Valley. So I'm worried about you all. So that's why I'm—I don't, yeah, we're going to talk at a later point with someone that you co teach with about more wilderness first aid. But it seems like wilderness first aid is suddenly might become urban first aid in a way that we're not—I'm not really used to and maybe you're not really used to. I guess to start with, do you want to talk about, like, what are the dangers of heat?
Guy Yeah, so I'll preface this by saying a couple of things. The first is that human—the human body is actually really adaptable and resilient if it has time to adapt to a changing environment. So people can handle really extreme heat if they have time to acclimatized to it. But if we get these big spikes of heat coming in a place where people aren't used to it, we're jumping from the mid-80s, one week to 108 another week, then that becomes a lot more stressful on body. And then add on to that, right, up here in the Pacific Northwest as a culture, as a society, we're not adapted to experience heat. Most people don't have air conditioning. Most people's houses aren't particularly well insulated because, in general, it's a fairly temperate climate. So there's just not the—either the time to adapt on a physiological level or to adapt our environment to really manage and handle this heat. So that said, a few different things happen when we get too hot. So, our body, right, we we sweat, we produce sweat, and that's the primary way that we cool ourselves off. And evaporation is is actually a very effective cooling mechanism. If we have enough sweat, and particularly if there's a breeze that is able to allow that evaporation to continue to cools us off. As our body gets too hot and we start to lose our ability to thermoregulate, we end up seeing a lot of different side effects. And so we used to think of this really clear progression from what we call heat exhaustion to heat stroke. And now it seems more like there's just a lot of different clusters of symptoms that appear when people get too hot. So things like nausea, vomiting, feeling really tired, feeling a little bit disoriented, feeling irritable, some muscle cramps particularly related to exercise, sweating, excessive sweating, but then also maybe some more like chills or pale skin, clammy feeling, as our body just doesn't tolerate the heat extremes very well. And all the symptoms, all those symptoms are unpleasant but fine. And the real danger is when our internal temperature starts to cross 104 or 105 degrees Fahrenheit. And at that point, our brain actually starts cooking. And so we see our mental process change, we don't think as clearly, our personality changes, and we're actually doing long term damage to our brains, and they won't survive that for very long.
Margaret When you say very long, like what are you talking about there, like five minutes, an hour?
Guy Oh, no, definitely in the in the hours realm. But the longer that persists, the more damage—the more permanent damage can be done to our brain and to our bodies. Depends on the heat extreme. And then once we lose that, once we start losing that ability to thermoregulate altogether, instead of maintaining a temperature that's elevated but not too high, we just kind of start to run away, and we can't cool off at all. And then—and then we need help from from other people, we need a change of environment, we need to be cooled down really, really quickly.
Margaret One of the—I asked social media right before this interview, like what advice people had and also what questions people had. And the thing that you just talked about, about how we used to see it as heat exhaustion versus heatstroke is very different. That is one of the things that most people were bringing up is, like, make sure you know the difference between heat exhaustion and heat stroke with the idea, I guess the prevailing knowledge—what I had known prior to five minutes ago when you said otherwise—would be that heat exhaustion is the like, oh, this fucking sucks and I should probably get somewhere cold real quick. And maybe someone can help me get somewhere—not real cold, but like colder real quick—versus heat stroke is like, you know, call a paramedic, like, get taken to the emergency room or whatever because you're about to die or something. Right? And you're saying that the line between these two is not only not a clear line, but it's not even necessarily a specific progression as much as, like, you are just different clusters. Can you tell me more about that?
Guy Yeah. So heat stroke, heat stroke is really clear. And maybe that I misspoke a little bit there.
Margaret I might have misheard you.
Guy Yeah, so so heat stroke is very clear. That's when our internal temperatures reached 104/105, the proteins that our brains start denaturing we start doing—we start getting cell death in our brains and permanent damage. And the easiest way to recognize that in someone is a change in their personality, or change in their thought process. Someone who was previously grumpy and maybe a little irritable, or maybe a little hot, or maybe they were just fine, now they're saying or doing things that don't make any sense. And that's because their brain is not functioning properly anymore. So heatstroke is pretty clearly delineated. The distinction is that there's not necessarily a progression from one to the next. You don't necessarily get this long warning sign of heat exhaustion, and you're feeling bad, and then you feel worse, and then you feel worse, and then it's heatstroke. That happens in some people. But in other people it can just go directly to heatstroke without this preliminary experience of feeling a little bit crappy and under the weather and nauseous and faint.
Margaret Okay. So what do you do in each of these situations? Whether you're alone, or whether you're with someone who's experiencing these symptoms, like what do you do for someone who's suffering from heat exhaustion symptoms versus heatstroke?
Guy Yeah, so, so in both cases, the problem is that someone is too hot and so the solution is to cool them down. So heat exhaustion, this cluster of nausea, muscle cramps, I just don't feel good, fatigue, maybe some vomiting, that person wants to be cooled down. So we should get into the shade, we should try to move to a cooler environment, change clothes. But we're not necessarily—we have time to do that. Heat stroke, as soon as we see that change in personality or mentation, we want to cool that person down as quickly as possible. And so the fastest way generally to cool someone down is through some amount of cold water immersion. So—
Margaret Throw them into lake.
Guy Throw them in a lake, but probably not throw them because if they have this altered mental status, they can't think as well, we're worried about their ability to swim, right? But get them in running water, get as much of their body in the water as we can while protecting their airway to cool them down quickly. And if we don't have a big body of water we can put them in that's nice and cool, the next best thing is get them as wet as we can, and then fan them. Because that sort of cooling consumes a huge amount of energy, which then cools the body fairly quickly. So if you think about, you get your hands wet, they don't feel that cold, and then you get a breeze moving across your cold hands or your clothes are wet, you get cold really fast, because evaporation takes more energy then simply being immersed in water.
Margaret Okay, how does, um, how does being in a humid environment, impact evaporative cooling and dealing with this sort of crisis?
Guy Yeah, humidity is a real challenge here. And that's the thing that we're fortunate about here in the Pacific Northwest where our summers are usually pretty dry.
Margaret Okay.
Guy But the the more humid the air gets, the less effective evaporative cooling will be. And that means both that just getting someone wet and fanning them won't work as well. But it also means that our body's natural mechanism for cooling, which is sweat, also doesn't work as well. And so there's this concept of the wet bulb temperature which is, rather than looking at what is the temperature on the thermometer, you put a thermometer inside a bulb and you cover it with a damp cloth—now they have mean fancier tools to do this now, but the principle is the same—cover it in a soaking wet cloth. And then they measure what is the temperature that that thermometer reads.
Margaret When you have a bowl or a bulb.
Guy Yep, wet bulb temperature. Bulb.
Margaret Oh, you get the—oh, you put it inside a light bulb is that?
Guy Any bulb, any sphirical object, right? It's covered in a damp cloth.
Margaret Okay.
Guy If the humidity is lower than 100%, the temperature that that thermometer reads is going to be lower than—lower than the air temperature, right? Because there's some amount of evaporation which is cooling the air inside.
Margaret Interesting. Okay.
Guy And so this is a way for us to understand what the actual threat of any particular temperature is. Because once we get to 100% humidity, the temperature inside that bulb is going to be exactly the same as it is outside because there's no longer any evaporation occurring and no longer any cooling. And the challenge there—and so this is how wet bulb temperatures are measured. You can look up tables that will tell you relative humidity and temperature and you can find the wet bulb temperature at that intersection. And once we hit about 90 degrees at 100% humidity, or a 90 degree wet bulb temperature—which we could get with either higher temperature and lower humidity or lower temperature and higher humidity—once that wet bulb temperature hits about 90 degrees, humans can no longer effectively function in any kind of meaningful physical exertion outside.
Margaret Okay.
Guy And even completely at rest without any exertion people will start to die within hours once you hit about 95 degrees wet bulb temperature.
Margaret Which is what it would be at like 100% humidity if it was 95 degrees out.
Guy Exactly. Yeah.
Margaret As someone who the inside of my house is regularly 90 to 95% humidity during the summer. I know I'm not supposed to be worried about myself today, I'm still mostly worried about y'all. But it actually is changing a little bit my sense of the heat that y'all are facing.
Guy Yeah.
Margaret What—I mean, okay, so if it's like—do you have a sense of, like, when they're like, it's gonna be 109 degrees, 111 degrees, 116 degrees in the Pacific Northwest this weekend, you know, or maybe you're listening to this three weeks later, I don't know, whatever. But do you have a sense of, like, what kind of wet bulb temperature that is likely to be for people?
Guy Yeah, so our humidity usually here in the summer ranges between like 20 and 40%, so not particularly high. And so I ran a couple of numbers before this show and who was looking like this Sunday, when we're supposed to hit about 108 degrees during the peak of the day, that'll probably equate to something around a 75 or 80 degree wet bulb temperature, which doesn't sound that hot, but actually is pretty darn hot and really hard for the body to tolerate.
Margaret And so what that means is not that everyone is fine, it means that the means by which we can fight this with, like, cold water immersion and fanning and things like that actually have a chance of working is what you're saying?
Guy Exactly. In places with low humidity, water and evaporation works really well to cool you down. The problem with this, and this is what a lot of climate scientists have been warning about for a long time, is that the tropical parts of the world, as we start to get increases in temperature, which are already close to 100% humidity during the hot season, will get so hot that there's no effective way to cool down. And then we'll see a lot a lot a lot of heat related deaths, because these parts of the world also don't have air conditioning and evaporative cooling is completely ineffective. And so in some ways we're lucky up here so far, because our summers are dry.
Margaret Yeah, and there's—I mean, a lot of people listening don't have access to air conditioning. But I, but there's—there might be like, you know, I know that some cities are setting up cooling centers and things like that. So there is some access to air conditioning in the northwest. So when you talk about like not exerting yourself and things like that, like you're basically saying, like—basically, because when you exert yourself, your body heats up and that's bad. So it's, like, one of the main things people should do is, like, chill the fuck out and, like, not exert themselves as much as possible.
Guy Yeah, exactly. That's one of the best things that we can do is, right, stay out of the sun as much as possible, try to stay as cool as possible, and just don't do—don't exert yourself, don't do physical labor. Don't go for runs, try to get out of your job if your job involves heavy, heavy physical labor during these hot temperatures—or organize with your other workers because it's literally putting your life at risk.
Margaret Yeah.
Guy To be working in these conditions.
Margaret Yeah, okay. And then. So if this kind of—not fully covers—but but gets at the idea behind like heat exhaustion, heat stroke. The other thing that at least is on my radar to worry about as relates to intense heat is dehydration. And that's kind of a separate threat, right?
Guy Yeah.
Margaret Can you talk about dehydration, also, our mutual friends as you have a good story about dehydration?
Guy Yeah, I have a lot of rants that I could go on about dehydration. And it's more evil twin, overhydration, also known as hyponatremia. So, hydration is important. Our bodies function better when we're well hydrated. But luckily, our bodies also have this amazing built-in mechanism to help us maintain adequate hydration, which is our sense of thirst. And so, generally, people should drink when they're thirsty, and they should drink a little bit more if they're exercising or if they're in hot weather. And if you're well-hydrated, then you will, you will tolerate heat better and you will be more able to adapt. That said, hydration doesn't prevent heat exhaustion and hydrating doesn't fix heat exhaustion or heatstroke either. The problem is, once you've hit that point, the problem was just that you're too hot and you need to cool down.
Margaret So it's a separate problem.
Guy Exactly. They go hand-in-hand. Humans do tend to sweat more, lose more fluids in hot weather and need to replace them. The place where people get into trouble—we have this cultural myth of dehydration as the big killer. And, like, you've probably heard people say "hydrate or die," and there's all these stories about people who—athletes who didn't drink enough water and they died. And that's actually not really the case. Most people stay hydrated enough most of the time. They are getting dehydrated and they have access to water and then don't have vomiting or diarrhea that's sucking water out of them, they can maintain adequate hydration pretty decently. The problem, the area that we actually see a lot more deaths and a lot more severe illness is the opposite. This problem over hydration. And so for the last couple decades until well, like, through the 90s and early 2000s, there was a lot of rhetoric in sports medicine about the importance of hydration, and you have to hydrate and drink, drink, drink, and you have to drink Gatorade, and you have to drink electrolytes because if you don't, then you're gonna die of dehydration. And actually, what we were doing was people were drinking too much water. And that changes the electrolyte balance in our bodies, and it ends up making our cells swell up. And we started getting swelling in the brain that can be fairly rapidly fatal. And so most, most of the exercise related deaths like ultra marathoners, hikers, that we used to think were linked to dehydration, most of those deaths are actually linked to what's called hyponatremia, not enough salt. But the real problem is that you've drunk too much water and you've diluted your salt.
Margaret Oh, god, so we're telling people exactly the wrong thing to do. Being like, all of those other hikers died, so you better drink more water?
Guy Yeah, so you'd have to drink a lot. But when people get these benchmarks and they hear like, oh, I should drink, I should drink a liter of water an hour. I should drink two liters of water an hour. I should drink a Gatorade at every stop in this race. People are basing their hydration on some outside metric rather than their own body's sense of whether they need fluid or not. Then we tend to see hyponatremia which is much more deadly and much harder to treat than dehydration. So, like many other things that Western medicine has done, we have invented a problem where there used to be no problem because humans generally are good at knowing what their bodies need and taking care of them.
Margaret Yeah. Okay. And like—like, I've never drank electrolytes on purpose in my life. Right? Like, I mean, I drink Emergen-C in the morning, but I think I do it for like vitamins, which might also be bullshit, but I don't know. Um, and people are always, like, talking about the importance of drinking electrolytes. And, I mean, this obviously sounds like it ties into it, like, do you avoid hype—hyponatremia—I was gonna just avoid pronouncing that actually. But I failed at that. Do you avoid that better if you are also drinking electrolytes and, like, eating salty snacks and things like that? Is there like—like, how important are like our electrolytes and all this?
Guy Um, so the answer is twofold, like many things. So electrolytes are important. We should have salty snacks. And our body needs electrolytes to function well. That said, there's just no correlation between drinking electrolyte solutions and a lower onset of hyponatremia. There's plenty [inaudible] of extreme athletes, ultra marathoners in hot places who are drinking mostly electrolyte solutions. And the real risk factor is just the volume of fluid—the volume of fluid drunk. So if people like electrolyte drinks, they should drink them. I drink them sometimes. And it makes me feel better, I think.
Margaret Yeah.
Guy But not to prevent hyponatremia and we shouldn't think that we're fixing the problem of low electrolytes by drinking electrolyte drinks, because what we're actually doing is just adding too much more fluid to a system that's already over hydrated.
Margaret Okay, so just trust your body and drink—is this like how, like, one of the main things you learn in like street medic stuff is that just water for everything? Like, you know, it's like chemical weapons and you fix it with water.
Guy Yeah, water's great. It's amazing. So just water and not too much of it. If you're thirsy uou should drink a little more if it's really hot out. You should eat salty snacks.
Margaret Yeah. Okay. So if you want to focus on electrolytes, focus on salty snacks instead of Gatorade.
Guy I mean, you can drink Gatorade, if you like sugar which is what Gatorade is, and other electrolytes drinks are fine. It's not like they do harm—unless you drink too much of them and you think you're helping problem. Yeah.
Margaret Okay. Now this is—I'm really glad to like be, like, mythbusting in or whatever and like getting past that, like, stuff you can quickly Google on the internet, you know? So I have a lot of other questions from people. This is—I think everyone's—I already said this, everyone's really worried. Um, what um—and actually, we've been talking about this a lot. We've definitely been talking about things primarily from the point of view of, like, not having access to, you know, air conditioning and things like that, right. Oh, actually, before we leave dehydration, what do you do about it? What do you do if—both where there is a doctor available and where there isn't a doctor available for both dehydration and the problem that shall not be named?
Guy Right? Yeah, hyponatremia. Or we could just call it overhydration which is—
Margaret You call it hyponatremia and I'll call it over hydration.
Guy Right. That's perfect. Um, so dehydration, the problem is those not enough water and so the solution is they should drink some water.
Margaret Okay, cool.
Guy And the way that—and the tricky thing here, right, is that we see people, and it's hot out, and they've been exercising, and they say they've got a headache, and they feel kind of nauseous, and they don't feel good, and they're kind of grumpy. And we think, oh, you must be dehydrated, I'm going to give you water. It turns out that the symptoms of hyponatremia are pretty much exactly the same as the symptoms of dehydration with a few exceptions. And so we really actually should be talking to our friends, talking to the people we're interacting with, and asking them some basic questions. How much water have you been drinking?
Margaret Mhmm.
Guy Oh, you had two liters this hour, two liters the hour before, a liter before that, you've had six liters all day and you haven't been doing much. That's a lot of water. Probably shouldn't give you more water. So the treatment for hyponatremia in its mild form is just withhold water. A couple of the things that we could look for an ask about is someone who's over hydrated, who has hyponatremia, is likely going to have pretty clear urine, and they're going to be peeing a lot. They're going to say, yeah, I just have to pee all the time and I really got to drink water, it's really important to drink fluid and I'm peeing and all the time. That's a good indication to say, you should stop drinking water.
Margaret Okay.
Guy Until you're no longer peeing all the time. Dehydration, that person wants water. That's the problem is there's not enough and so they should drink some water. And, right, we might also inquire about the urine and then they could say, I haven't been peeing very much, it's been really dark yellow, it's been smelly. Those are good indications that someone is dehydrated. On the mild side of either of these, it just takes time to fix. If you're dehydrated, you should drink water and rest. And if you're over hydrated, you should rest and stop drinking water.
Margaret Okay.
Guy Once once it gets more severe, once we see mental status change, someone is no longer behaving like themselves, that just means that their brain is angry because it's not getting what it needs. Either it's not enough water in the case of dehydration, or there's swelling and pressure building up because of this hyponatremia. And in those cases, that person really needs to go to a hospital.
Margaret Okay, what would the hospital be doing? And I know I'm not like trying to encourage everyone to do everything by themselves, but I feel like it's like useful to, like, break open the black box with like medical stuff.
Guy Yeah, so dehydration—dehydration, they're gonna be rehydrating via IV. That's a thing that we can do in the back country or without access to a hospital. We don't have IVs, but we can rehydrate someone gradually just by drinking water and reducing exertion. And as long as they're not continuing to lose fluid either through sweat or through diarrhea or vomiting, then we can probably fix that problem. Hyponatremia is—there's unfortunately not much outside of a hospital setting once it's advanced to the stage that someone's mental status is changing, there's not much that we can do. And this is one of the reasons it's more fatal than dehydration and exercise context.
Margaret We can't bloodlet them with leeches?
Guy Yeah, we can't do that. What they end up doing it a hospital is giving someone a lot of saline intravenously to change the electrolyte balance of their blood, and we just can't do that quickly or effectively orally. So we can definitely give someone salt but we should know that if they're—if it seems like a severe case of hyponatremia or overhydration, that really what they need is a hospital intervention. And we should prioritize getting them to that hospital instead of trying to do it ourselves. Because there's just not much we can do unless we're, that's right, that's way above my paygrade is measuring someone's blood pH and blood chemistry and tinkering with it and injecting different solutions into them.
Margaret And so this sounds like these are problems related to heat but the—but dehydration and overhydration are like more‚less directly the problems that we're like specifically worried about this coming weekend, because it sounds like it's like more athletes and things, like people who, like, are fucking with things in that way? Or is this, like, are a lot of the people who are potentially going to die because of a massive heatwave, is it mostly heatstroke or is it also dehydration and over hydration?
Guy Yeah, so in—globally in heat waves the largest deaths are heatstroke related, or heat stress related, and largely in in populations over 60 years of age just because as we age, our bodies just become less adept at thermo regulating, and we're having a hard time adapting the stress.
Margaret Okay.
Guy Certainly people who are really worried about the heat and think that the solution is to drink a lot, a lot, a lot of water all day long are putting themselves in danger of hyponatremia. And certainly as someone who's working outside and sweating a lot and doesn't have access to water, or maybe they're houseless and don't have shelter and don't have a place to stay cool and don't have good access to clean water quickly could see dehydration set in and be exacerbated by the heat. The major killers, statistically, are heatstroke.
Margaret Okay. What—what should someone who's listening to this who is experiencing homelessness or someone who cares about people who are do besides, like, I mean, I guess, like, pressure cities into having cooling areas, invite people if you have AC, like, inviting people in? You know, like, or are there, like, specific—yeah, what would you suggest?
Guy Yeah, so there's like, there's a couple—I mean, those are both really important and great and we should do that. A couple of other things that that we can do, that anyone can do, to to adapt to heat better, right, maintaining good hydration, but not too much. Salty snacks, all of these things will help with our water balance. Staying in the shade as much as possible and then trying to have a water source, even if it's just spray bottle and like the ability to spray yourself down. Right, spray your face down, spray your clothes down with a little, like, $1 spray bottle you get from the dollar store and you fill up and you can just spritz yourself and evaporate and that will cool you down. Right, damp bandanas around the neck, on the head, even getting your clothes soaking wet in this more dry environment will work because all the evaporation of those clothes—that clothing is going to cool your body quite a bit. Another thing that we see in urban environments is usually with all of the pavement and the asphalt and the buildings and the lack of tree cover, we'll see temperatures that are 10 to 15 degrees higher in urban centers than they are in surrounding forests or green areas. And so thinking about, is it possible to get to a park, is it possible to get to a place with trees that has shade and the plants are through evapotranspiration are helping to cool the area a little more and they're absorbing less heat than these big blocks of concrete that just absorb solar energy and radiate it back out at you? Those will make a big difference. And then thinking about—thinking about kind of the mechanisms by which we gain heat and we lose heat. And so certainly radiation from the sun would heat us up really fast and we can partially mitigate that by wearing light colored clothes that covers all of your skin. So loose fitting long t-shirt, long pants, a big hat, you're actually going to be staying cooler in clothes like that then you will be in shorts and a t-shirt.
Margaret Does humidity affect that? I have this like general conception that, like, dry heat places are all about cover yourself from the sun, giving yourself shade through clothes is important, whereas like more humid places, more tropical places, it seems like people tend to go with like just less clothes—maybe to like really make it as easy as possible to do the little bit of evaporative cooling they can do. Or am I like just totally off base about this?
Guy No, no, I think that that seems accurate to me. I think that the more humid it becomes, the more difficult it is to stay cool and the less the problem is, like, direct solar radiation and more the problem is just that ambient air temperature. All of the moisture hanging out in that air that's holding onto heat and then transferring it to you. I've been lucky to spend—well, I grew up in Indiana which was very humid—but I've been lucky to spend most of my life in places with fairly dry heat, which I much prefer.
Margaret Yeah, like, I'm just coming at this, like, entirely from this, you know, we refer to it as like, oh, it's just the Baltimore soup, you know, in August or whatever. Okay, um, yeah, a lot of people talked about a lot of different like water methods of cooling—besides, I mean, obviously the, like, get into an air conditioning building is, like, the most bulletproof means or whatever, right? But, um, like, people talk about, like, what, like sleeping on intentionally wet sheets, like spraying your—like wearing wet socks, or even damn clothes when you're trying to sleep. One person was talking about, like, wet the bottom of your curtains and leave the window open so that it, like, wicks up the water and then it evaporates. So just basically doing anything that you can to encourage evaporative cooling?
Guy Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's the kind of the biggest thing. Um, and right, it depends on if you're trying to cool yourself or your house, less energy to cool yourself. Oftentimes, here in the northwest, it's actually more effective to, as soon as the temperature starts climbing in the morning, close all the windows, trap all the cool air from the night in the house, and rely on your insulation rather than thinking that a cross breeze from outside 100 degree temperature is going to cool your house. But that only goes so far. And so there's also the swamp cooler method, which doesn't work in humid places for the same reason. But you can make kind of DIY swamp coolers by putting a wet sheet over a box fan and then blowing the air through that wet sheet.
Margaret Okay. That kind of answers one of the questions that someone asked, which is like, you know, obviously whenever bad things happen, only one bad thing happens at a time. But let's say for some weird reason, a bunch of dry heat might cause fire. And, you know, obviously, the West Coast has been blanketed in smoke for the past several years. And, like, so if smoke it means you got to keep your window shut. You're saying then you just like basically focus on air movement within the house with fans and like personal cooling through dehydration?
Guy Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Through evaporation. Yeah, like I would—so when there's, when it's not smoke season, which it thankfully is not yet, although I think it'll be coming earlier this year based on our temperatures. When it's not smoke season, I'll open all the windows at night once things cool off, because we do get a big temperature swing here, even in the summer it cools off at night, and close them in the morning and try to capture some of that cold air during the night. During smoke season, just keep it all closed. Stay inside and focus on that evaporative cooling if you need to. So get yourself wet, sit in front of a fan. If you don't have electricity, right, people have been keeping themselves cool with fans for 1000s of years before electricity. Big hand fans are really quite effective at moving a lot of air quickly without much exertion.
Margaret Okay, so the trade off would be worth it of the exertion of physical motion for the like evaporative cooling?
Guy Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it doesn't take that much work to fan yourself or a fan a friend, as long as you're able to get yourself wet, right? If you're just fanning hot air across yourself, that's not going to do any good.
Margaret Does that tie into the—one of the questions I got that I just, you know, it's like a piece of information that people have that I don't know one way or another, I've never heard of it before. Someone asked if fanning is bad and extreme heat, how do you pull yourself off? It's probably only saying it's like—you're suggesting it's probably only bad if the if you're not causing evaporative cooling, if you're not—if there's no water on you.
Guy Exactly, yeah. And I looked that one up because I had actually never heard that before. And it actually is—I think it's a CDC—it's some government guideline. I think it's from the CDC. And it's just really, it's this example of policies and advice being written in a way that's totally robbed of context and is more confusing to people than not, which often is the case. If you're just moving hot air across someone, that definitely will be worse because air—there's some amount of convection, right. But we also create a little bubble around ourselves—and this happens all the time—a little bubble of temperature of air close to our skin that's close to our skin temperature. And so it will be slightly cooler than 108 degrees outside if we're effectively sweating and evaporating some, it'll be slightly warmer in cold temperatures. And if that air is not being disturbed, then it'll help us thermoregulate just a little bit. And if we're moving really hot air across that, then that'll heat us up faster in the same way that sticking your hand or your foot in an ice cold stream or moving water, you're gonna get a lot colder than sticking that foot in the same temperature water that's not moving. Build up a little insulated layer. But that only—but you just fix the problem by adding water and then it's not a problem anymore, because evaporation is much more powerful at cooling.
Margaret Okay.
Guy Yeah.
Margaret So if people don't have much access to water, basically it's, like, get access to water. If you can't get access to air conditioning, you just need access to water. Is that kind of pretty much the deal?
Guy Yeah. I think that's the the big thing. And so it's, certainly we should have water to drink, maintain good hydration, but having water that you can use to cool yourself down—whether that's a stream or a river or a lake, or whether that's just carrying some extra water with you, know that you don't need it to drink so you can use it to wet your clothes down.
Margaret And would Gatorade be more effective for this? Like it has electrolytes in it. And I know electrolytes are good when it's hot out.
Guy Um, for cooling yourself down?
Margaret Yeah.
Guy No, no.
Margaret Oh interesting.
Guy The only good thing Gatorade is for is, yeah, lots of sugar.
Margaret You're gonna fuck up my chance for a sponsorship.
Guy Yeah Gatorade actually got us into this whole bind with hyponatremia because they sponsored sports medicine conferences from the 90s to the early 2000s and all the studies came out saying how important hydration was and we realized that people are dying all over the place because they're drinking too much Gatorade.
Margaret Oh my god, it's literally the plot of Idiocracy. Great, cool. That makes me feel really good about the world. Fuck. Okay. Oh, do you know much about, like, dealing with pets? Like, I guess, like what, like most animals don't sweat? Are we the only animals that sweat? Like, what's the deal with keeping pets cool?
Guy Yeah, I don't know as much about pets. Dogs sweat, but only through their feet. They do sweat some but they just don't—right, yhey're mostly covered in hair so they're not going to as effectively be able to cool themselves down. Cats are the same. I don't know about other animals. But, right, you're not gonna sweat if you're covered in hair because it won't be effective at all.
Margaret Okay.
Guy And so for pets, it's really, I mean a lot of it is the same. Stay inside, stay in cool, shady areas, right? Get some damp clothes or damp bandana or something on them. We could, like, wet down a sheet or a bed, like a dog bed, ust get it damp and put that on the floor for them to sleep on. I've heard of people putting a couple ice cubes in water bowls. I don't know whether that is actually effective at cooling your dog down, but they probably like it. And then avoiding exertion the same way. Yeah.
Margaret Okay. Well and okay with the cold water and maybe it doesn't help but it it tastes better to them or something, like, people have questions. I have questions. I don't know enough about this. Like it seems like, would be drinking like ice cold water kind of shock your system? Like if you're—even if, like, someone has heat exhaustion or god forbid heatstroke and you don't have access to a hospital or whatever. Is it, like, is there an ideal temperature? Do you only want it a little bit colder than their body? Or is it like, we would put them on a fucking glacier if you could?
Guy Yeah, absolutely. The big problem with heatstroke is someone's brain is cooking. And so we want to stop the cooking as quickly as possible. And we do that by putting them in cold water. And there's just not much evidence that putting someone in cold water from an overheated position does any kind of damage to them. We're not going to make someone hypothermic with 30 minutes in cold water when they've been overheated. We're not gonna—we're—yeah, they might gasp a little bit. When we get that cold water on our skin we have an involuntary gasp reflex and then we adjust to the water temperature, but it's not going to do any damage. And same with drinking ice water. The temperature of the water doesn't make a huge difference in changing the temperature of our bodies. But it's not like drinking ice water will cool us faster than drinking warm water. But I know that I'm more likely to drink water when it's hot out if the water is cold and refreshing, and so—
Margaret Right.
Guy So the way to stay adequately hydrated, ice water is great. You can stick around your forehead and call yourself down.
Margaret Yeah, okay, so—like sticky—so like getting the ice water on you is probably more important than getting ice water in you in terms of—
Guy Yeah, if you only have enough. Yeah, but I mean, I just, you know, you get that big glass of ice water and it's condensing on the outside and outside is super cold. Yeah. You could hold on to it and stick that jar on your forehead until you—til you've drink it.
Margaret Okay. So I'm not gonna get the story about dehydration out of you?
Guy Uh, well, I'm trying to think of what our friend would be talking about. The story that I do have is—and this is just more of a general warning story about tunnel vision and people who are convinced that they're right about something, and they don't look at all the facts. But I was, several years ago, I was guiding in the Grand Canyon and I ran into a couple of people who were in fairly substantial distress. And they were a day behind their schedule, they'd gone about four miles, maybe five miles in about 24 hours. And they were convinced that—there was only one person who is really having trouble. And he was nauseous, he didn't feel good, little unsteady on his feet, really classic, pale, kind of pale, clammy skin, really classic heat exhaustion symptoms. And his friend who claimed to be a guide with him was convinced that he had altitude illness because he was nauseous and had a headache and because the rim of the Grand Canyon is 7000 feet, which is not actually very high as far as altitude illness goes. But they were convinced that they had altitude illness and so they were descending into the canyon where it got hotter. And the only solution, they thought, was to keep going down because if they dropped an elevation, then they'd fix the altitude illness problem.
Margaret Okay.
Guy And so I tried to talk to them and convince them that it wasn't altitude illness and that, in fact, it was extremely hot and they weren't a climatized to the heat, because it was springtime and they had just come from the Midwest where it was 40 degrees outside and now it was 100 degrees in the canyon. And they wouldn't listen to me. And I ended up running into a couple paramedics on the trail who were hiking behind me and caught up and overtook me. And they had also encountered this person after I did, stopped them, did a full assessment, knew it was heat exhaustion, tried to convince the people to stop and rest and turn around. But they weren't having any of it. They were convinced that it was altitude illness. I ran into a ranger later on who also tried to convince them to turn around. And I don't know what happened to them. He clearly didn't die because I would have heard about a death in the canyon, but certainly didn't have a good time. And I think the big takeaway there is we, as humans, I think as soon as we think we've identified what a problem is, then we start trying to solve it. And then we ignore all of the other evidence that suggests that could be a different problem. And so I think anytime that you're feeling bad, or your friend is feeling bad, or they're feeling sick, and you think you know what's going on, it's worth stopping and asking yourselves, especially if they're not getting any better.
Margaret Mm hmm.
Guy Is it actually this thing? Is it actually dehydration? Maybe it's hyponatremia and I should stop giving this person a water.
Margaret Yeah.
Guy Is it actually altitude illness, or maybe it's really hot out and you feel crappy and you should be in the shade and lie down and rest and fan you until you feel better instead of trying to rush down to drop in elevation and, yeah.
Margaret If you had a whole group of people, we have five people, and they're all exposed to the exact same—you know, you're all hiking together, roughly the same amount of exertion, etc. Is everyone gonna get heatstroke at the same time? Or is it like fairly personal about that?
Guy There's a pretty wide range in human tolerance for heat and exertion. So yeah, it can be all over the place. I would say that, right, the hotter it gets, the higher the probability of heat exhaustion or heat stroke is. But it's, but human bodies are really amazing and they're really adaptable, right? We think of 105 degree internal temperature, like you stick a thermometer in someone's mouth, when it read the 105 we say, medicine says that heat stroke. Their brain's dying. But there are also some ultra marathon athletes who run in really hot weather who have recorded internal temps of 105. And they're totally fine.
Margaret God, okay.
Guy And that's probably because they've acclimated to that over a long time and they've actually been able to change their physiology and what their bodies used to. So people, people have really different responses. And so we should be looking at, how are people doing? And asking our friends and looking for these little telltale signs. Oh, yeah, this person's a little grumpier than usual and they're kind of ornery, and they look a little pale, and they're kind of slower to respond. We should check in, how are you doing? How are you feeling? Rather than thinking that the objective conditions are what's going to dictate when, yeah. Yeah.
Margaret Okay. Yeah, that kind of answers—or it starts to answer one of the questions that a couple people asked which is, like, basically, what do you do if you're someone who just hates heat? Right? Like I definitely have friends who like—they—you know, I'm always—I don't hate heat the same way I hate being cold, you know? You think that's, like, just like a lifetime acclamation and, like, basically, the answer is slowly acclimatize rather than suddenly have a—what's it called, like a heat hell, a heat bulb? I dunno, it's some horrible name for what's happening to you all? Don't have the bad thing happen.
Guy Is it "heat dome"? They keep inventing new names for weather phenomena that have actually been around forever. You know, not that this particular heat wave has been around forever. It's certainly new. But I just think about the, like, Arctic bomb polar vortex. Now that we're finally all paying attention to the weather.
Margaret Yeah.
Guy With all these new terms about it instead of, I don't know, stopping emitting carbon and planting a lot of trees.
Margaret That'd be a lot of work.
Guy Yeah, it'd be a lot of work. It's a lot easier to name all the problems and make some add revenue off of driving clicks to your website. But I digress. Yeah, some people don't like heat. I think that as a person who doesn't like heat and who also guided in the desert for many years, I think the acclimatising makes a big difference. And slowly, right, go to a new environment—if you're not being confronted by one of these heat waves—you go to a different environment, and you don't do your normal level of exertion. You just rest and you hang out and you expose yourself to the temperature, and then you go and you cool off. And then you do it again. And then you do it again. And you'll become more used to that, and especially if you're using other techniques to keep yourself cool. It's interesting—I think that I get grumpier with heat here in the Pacific Northwest than I ever did when I was guiding in the desert. And I think it was—I think a lot of it was acclimatising. And having an orientation of, I know I'm in a hot place here and so I need to change my behavior and I need to change how I'm managing my body so that I can stay cool. Whereas it gets hot right here and I think, I should just be able to do all the things I can normally do. And now I feel terrible. And I'm mad at everyone just because I'm too hot.
Margaret Yeah. So it's like—maybe part of the whole answer is like actually change your pattern of behavior. Which actually ties into both the "we're all gonna die because of global warming if we don't do anything," and then also the, like, what you talked about, about the person who was, you know, walking further and further down because they were like, no, no, no, no, it's climate sickness, you know, or whatever—or not climate—altitude sickness. And then like, I know that when I do cognitive behavioral therapy, like, the thing that we have to throw away first is I tell—I tell the therapist, what's wrong and then therapist, it's, like, able to specifically say, "Now I know what isn't wrong." Like, that's your narrative. That's the thing that you, like, have been telling yourself.
Guy Yeah.
Margaret And clearly telling yourself this didn't work, so... And, yeah, which we need to do as a society, we need to actually change our patterns in the same way that y'all in the Pacific Northwest should avoid exertion and, as you suggested at the very beginning, work with your coworkers to collectively avoid exertion, you know?
Guy Yeah. Yeah.
Margaret Just easier said than done from someone who's a remote worker on the East Coast but... Okay. Oh, sorry—there's one more—people talk—there's like one question left: food, drug, medications to avoid, are caffeine and alcohol like absolutely terrible anathema if you take, like, different, you know, different medications? Is this going to impact the degree to which you're sensitive, and are the things that people can do about that?
Guy Yeah, um, there's certainly some risk factors. In general, caffeine and alcohol both just don't help the body adapt to any kind of changing environment. And so cold, hot, altitude, all of these things, caffeine and alcohol aren't going to make us feel better. Whether that's a huge risk factor, I'm not convinced. I'm still gonna drink my coffee in the morning, but I'll probably make a cold brew. And, but I'm not going to drink coffee all day, and I'm not going to sit in the sun drinking beer all day. Some other medications—some allergy medications and decongestants have some linkage to just reducing the body's ability to thermoregulate and to cool down. Now, I'm definitely not a doctor. And so if people are taking medication they should look at that medication specifically and look it up and just Google that medication and heat exhaustion or heatstroke and see what—see if there's a contraindication or an extra risk factor there. We'll probably get better information from that than from broad and general statements from the—
Margaret Wait I thought this podcast is—this past guest is your doc—not just your doctor, but everyone is listening.
Guy Yes.
Margaret We are both doctors. I thought that was the basis of... okay. Okay, um, makes sense. Do you have any, like, final thoughts? Like things about, like, you know, how are you feeling about this whole thing? Or, you know, things that we missed talking about all of this?
Guy Yeah, no, I really enjoyed this conversation. I think we hit, like, we had a lot of topics. I can kind of nerd out about physiology and bodies and illnesses for a while. So it's been fun to do this with heat. I'm going to make a weird plug, which is, I really believe in umbrellas in the summer for sun protextion. So like, silver, reflective, or light-colored umbrellas, just thinking of other prevention techniques. So you can kind of carry your portable shade with you, and thinking particularly about houseless people people who can't access cool areas. Get a cheap, bright colored umbrella, and you've got your own shade, and it'll help. So I just wanted to throw that one in there. I hiked with an umbrella in the Grand Canyon all the time.
Margaret And so goth. I'm really excited about that. Well you said bright colored. But you know...
Guy Mine was silver. It was nice and reflective. But really anything that will reflect rather than absorb heat.
Margaret Could you tape an emergency blanket to on or something?
Guy Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Yeah. And then—and then beyond that, I just think that it's going to be hot here this week. People up here are, I think, probably simultaneously freaking out more than they need to and not enough. By which I mean, a couple of days of extreme heat are going to be challenging for people and we should take care of each other and look out for marginalized and vulnerable people. But we're probably not going to see a lot of deaths, huge, huge problems with a short heatwave like this. However, we should be freaking out about the fact that it's 108 degrees in the Pacific Northwest in June. And this is really, like, where we are headed as a planet. And so we need to be thinking and adapting right now and thinking about how can we—first of all, right, stop emitting carbon and lock as much carbon as possible in the ground. And second of all, how can we change our environments and our behaviors to live in a hotter world? And working 40 hours a week in an urban concrete metropolis is not going to be tenable a couple decades from now when—right, think about the—think about Texas, right? And last summer they got that big cold wave and then they last electricity and we had all these deaths because people could no longer to heat their homes. And we're gonna see the same thing with heat waves as well, where we have brownouts and blackouts, because there's too much electrical demand with the air conditioners running. And so we need to be thinking about, how can we keep ourselves cool without relying on air conditioning? How can we change our behaviors and our patterns to do that? And how can we plant a shit ton of trees?
Margaret Yeah.
Guy Because really, not only because they fix carbon, but because trees cool the environment down, the local environment. They, right, evaporation is a major cooling effect. And trees of evapotranspire huge amounts of moisture when they're photosynthesizing. And all that moisture cools an area down. And so how can we convert these giant, awful concrete metropolises into beautiful forest gardens where we can survive and have food to eat. And also so that we can cool the areas where people are concentrated down. We, right, we see this with just disparities in heat related deaths across the country, where people who are lower income or marginalized or of color live in areas that are more paved and have less access to green space, and they get hotter. And they're more exposed to environmental extremes. So yeah. We should—we should take care of each other in the coming week and stay cool. And we should plant a lot of trees and stop trying to pretend we can continue living as normal when it's not normal anymore.
Margaret I like that because it covers—you know, most this podcast is about what most of this episode has been about, like what to do in the very immediate short term, right, to solve this problem, or make it through this problem. But the solutions like absolutely have to be long term and ongoing. And I like that you tied that into that. Um, do you have—do you have anything that you want to, like, shout out, like anything you want to plug, any—I don't know whether your medic trainings are public or if people want to, like, follow you do you do social media stuff? Anything?
Guy No, not really. I'm pretty pretty nonexistent on the internet. Don't really have any social media. But yeah, we do street medic trainings on and off in the Pacific Northwest, we haven't done one in a while. Hopefully will again. I will plug, actually, because I'm in the process of moving up all the way to the peninsula. And there's an amazing new community project forming in Quilcene. People bought an old theater there a couple of years ago, the Gray Coast Guild Hall. They're just starting some big fundraising campaigns right now to replace the roof and do a bunch of infrastructure upgrades so that it can be a community gathering space and a resource, and hopefully a place that people who are all thinking about how do we how do we actually live together throughout this climate changing world in the long term can encounter each other. And so, Great Coast Guild Hall could definitely use some dollars if you Google that or look it up they have a Patreon. I don't know if they've launched their big Kickstarter fundraiser yet. But yeah.
Margaret Yeah, and one of the reasons I'm excited about that project is because it's, you know, it's a, it's a social center—will be a social center—and it's like collectively operated, and it's within a pretty small town. And so it's a pretty major percent of that town's, like, social and cultural, like, life or something like that in a kind of really interesting way. Yeah, so it's, I agree, it's absolutely worth supporting. Normally I do this whole, like, separate outro but and so I'm gonna make you stay on the call as I do my outro. So that way, all of my files are in one place so I can edit this as quickly as possible. But thanks, everyone, for listening. And if you want to support this podcast, you can do so by supporting currently me on patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. But in the very near future that same Patreon will switch over. You won't have to do anything on your end to support a larger collective effort that's going to be doing more podcasts and more zine publishing, called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. And I'm very excited about moving to a more collective structure. It makes—just, you know, many hands make light work as long as many hands don't make everyone grouchy and get in each other's way. And in particular—and also you can tell people about the podcast and that's the main way—and you can, you can thank us by telling people about it. But in particular I want to thank Sean and Hugh and Dana and Chelsea, Eleanor, Mike, Starro, Kat J, The Compoun, Shane, Christopher, Sam, Natalie, Willow, Kirk, Hoss the dog, Nora, and Chris for making this possible. And, yeah, thanks so much. And I hope everyone is doing as well as they can with everything that happens and stays safe. And it seems like maybe one of the main messages about this is that, well yeah, I guess Guy already said it: you don't have to freak out as bad about this one specific thing, but we need to freak out more about the larger things.
SPEAKERS Margaret Guy
Margaret Hello, and welcome to live like the world is dying your podcast for what feels like the End Times. I'm your host, Margaret killjoy, and I use she or they pronouns. Normally I do this like whole intro thing that I record after the conversation. But this is a special, a special episode that I'm just doing as quickly as quick turnaround as I can because of what's going on in the Pacific Northwest with unprecedented heat. And I want people to have information as soon as possible. So please forgive audio quality. on my end, I'm recording this from the best place I had access to internet, which is right next to one of the busiest intersections in all of the tiny town of Asheville, North Carolina. But anyway, this podcast is a proud member of the channel zero network of anarchist podcasts. And normally I put in a jingle here, but I'm not going to instead, you should just go to channel zero network. I don't even know the website, you just Google it. I mean, come on, who's actually going to type in URL and you can just type things into the search bar. Go check out the channel zero network, there's a ton of shows that might interest you. Okay, so would you like to introduce yourself with your name and your pronouns? And then a bit of your background as relates to heat related illnesses?
Guy Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me on. My name is Guy, I use he him pronouns. I live up in the Pacific Northwest on the Olympic Peninsula. And my background related to this, I have been a wilderness educator and backpacking guide for many years, especially working down in the Grand Canyon for several years. So a lot of exposure to heat there. And I also instruct wilderness medicine courses. And so I teach and think about bodies and how bodies adapt to stress, particularly heat stress in this context. Yeah,
Margaret that's me. Hurray. I'm so glad that your skill set is about to become very useful away from the Grand Canyon in the Olympic Peninsula. The rain forest that I believe is not is it? Is it normal for you all to have 109 degree weather? Is that abnormal?
Guy That is definitely abnormal. Yeah. We sometimes will will cross 100 or triple digits over 100 for one or two days in the summer, usually in late July or August. I cannot remember a time when we hit 108 degrees, and certainly not in late June. It is pretty hot.
Margaret Yeah, I've I'm I'm from the Mid Atlantic. And now I live in the south on the east coast. And I've The only time I've been in. I mean, I've been in triple digits. I don't think it ever got hotter than 103 104 the whole time I was growing up. And only time I've been in 110 degree weather was in Death Valley. So I'm worried about you all. So that's why I'm I don't Yeah, we're going to talk at a later point with someone that you co teach with about more wilderness first aid. But it seems like wilderness first aid is suddenly might become urban first aid in a way that we're not. I'm not really used to and maybe you're not really used to. I guess to start with, do you want to talk about? Like, what are the dangers of heat?
Guy Yeah, so I'll preface this by saying a couple of things. The first is the human The human body is actually really adaptable and resilient if it has time to adapt to a changing environment. So people can handle really extreme heat, if they have time, to climatized to it. But if we get these big spikes of heat coming in a place where people aren't used to it, we're jumping from the mid 80s, one week to 108 another week, then that becomes a lot more stressful on body. And then add on to that right up here in the Pacific Northwest as a culture as a society we're not adapted to experience. Most people's houses aren't particularly well insulated, because in general, it's a fairly temperate climate. So there's just not the either the time to adapt on a physiological level or to adapt our environment to really manage and handle this heat. So that said, a few different things happen when we we get too hot, so our body, right we we sweat, we produce sweat and that's the primary way that we cool ourselves off and evaporation is is actually a very effective cooling mechanism. If we have an up sweat, and particularly if there's a breeze that is able to allow that evaporation to to continue to cools off, as our body gets too hot, and we start to lose our ability to thermo regulate, we end up seeing a lot of different side effects. And so we used to think of this really clear progression from what we call heat exhaustion, heat stroke. And now it seems more like there's just a lot of different clusters of symptoms that appear when people get too hot. So things like nausea, vomiting, feeling really tired, feeling a little bit disoriented, feeling irritable, some muscle cramps, particularly related to exercise, sweating, and excessive sweating, but then also maybe some more like chills or pale, pale skin, clammy feeling, as our body just doesn't tolerate the heat extremes very well. And all the symptoms, all those symptoms are unpleasant, but fine. And the real danger is when our internal temperature starts to cross 104 or 105 degrees Fahrenheit. And at that point, our brain actually starts cooking. And so we see our mental process change, we don't think as clearly our personality changes, and we're actually doing long term damage to our brains, and they won't survive that for very long.
Margaret When you say very long, like what are you talking about there, like five minutes an hour,
Guy oh, no, definitely in the in the hours realm. But the longer that persists, the more damage the more permanent damage can be done to our to our brain and to our bodies. Depends on the heat extreme. But so and then once we lose that, once we start losing that ability to thermo regulate altogether, instead of maintaining a temperature that's elevated, but not too high, we just kind of start to run away, and we can't cool off at all. And then and then we need help from from other people, we need a change of environment, we need to be cooled down really, really quickly.
Margaret One of the I asked, asked social media right before this interview, like corner what what advice people had and also what questions people had. And the thing that you just talked about, about how we used to see it as heat exhaustion versus heatstroke is very different. That is one of the things that most people were bringing up is like, make sure you know the difference between heat exhaustion and heat stroke with the idea, I guess the prevailing knowledge and what I had known prior to five minutes ago, when you said otherwise, would be that heat exhaustion is the like, Oh, this fucking sucks. And I should probably get somewhere cold real quick. And maybe someone can help me get somewhere. Not real cold, but like colder real quick. Versus heat stroke is like, you know, call paramedic, like get taken to the emergency room or whatever, because you're about to die or something. Right. And you're saying that the line between these two is, is not only not a clear line, but it's not even necessarily a specific progression as much as like, you are just different clusters. Can you tell me more about that?
Guy Yeah. So heat stroke, heat stroke is really clear. And maybe that I misspoke. A little bit there.
Margaret I might have misheard you. Yeah, yeah,
Guy so so heat stroke is very clear. That's when our internal temperatures reached 104 105 are the proteins that our brains start denaturing we start doing we start getting cell death in our brains, and permanent damage. And the easiest way to recognize that in someone is a change in their personality, or change in their thought process and see someone who was previously grumpy and maybe a little irritable, or maybe a little hot, or maybe they were just fine. Now they're saying or doing things that don't make any sense. And that's because their brain is not functioning properly anymore. So heatstroke is a is pretty clearly delineated. The distinction is that there's not necessarily a progression from one to the next you don't necessarily get this long warning sign of heat exhaustion and you're feeling bad and then you feel worse, and then you feel worse, and then it's heatstroke. That happens in some people. But another people it can just go directly to heatstroke without this preliminary experience of feeling a little bit crappy and under the weather and nauseous and faint.
Margaret Okay. So what do you do in each of these situations? Whether you're alone, or whether you're with someone who's experiencing these symptoms, like what do you do for someone who's suffering from heat exhaustion symptoms? versus heatstroke?
Guy Yeah, so, so in both cases, the problem is that someone is too hot and so the solution is to cool them down. So heat exhaustion This cluster of nausea, muscle cramps, I just don't feel good fatigue, maybe some vomiting, that person wants to be cooled down. So we should get into the shade, we should try to move to a cooler environment change clothes. But we're not necessarily we have time to do that heat stroke, as soon as we see that change in personality, or mentation, we want to cool that person down as quickly as possible. And so the fastest way generally to cool someone down is through some amount of Coldwater immersion. So, throw them into like, throw them in a leg, but probably not throw them because if they have this altered mental status, they can't think as well, we're worried about their ability to write but get them in, get them in running water, get as much of their body in the water as we can while protecting their airway, to cool them down quickly. And if we don't have a big body of water, we can put them in, it's nice and cool, the next best thing is get them as wet as we can, and then fan them because that sort of cooling consumes a huge amount of energy, which then cools the body fairly quickly. So if you think about you get your hands wet, they don't feel that cold, and then you get a breeze moving across your cold hands or your clothes are wet, you get cold really fast, because evaporation takes more energy, then I'm simply being immersed in water.
Margaret Okay, how does, um, how does being in a human environment, impact evaporative cooling and dealing with this sort of crisis?
Guy Yeah, humidity is a real challenge here. And that's the thing that we're fortunate about here in the Pacific Northwest, where summers are usually pretty dry. Okay. But the the more humid the air gets, the less effective evaporative cooling will be. And that means both that just getting someone wet and fanning them won't work as well. But it also means that our body's natural mechanism for cooling, which is sweat also doesn't work as well. And so there's this concept of the wet bulb temperature, which is rather than looking at what is the temperature on the thermometer to put a thermometer inside a bulb and you cover it with a damp cloth. Now they have mean fancier tools to do this now, but the principle is the same. covering a soaking wet cloth. And then they measure what is the temperature that that thermometer reads.
Margaret When you have a bowl or a bulb. So yep, wet bulb temperature bulb, oh, you get the Oh, you put it inside a light bulb is that it?
Guy any any bulb any any any spiracle object, right? It's covered in a damp cloth. Okay? If the humidity is lower than 100%, the temperature that that thermometer reads is going to be lower than lower than the air temperature, right, because there's some amount of evaporation which is cooling the air inside.
Margaret Interesting,
Guy okay. And so this is a way for us to understand what the actual threat of a any particular temperature is. Because once we get to 100% humidity, the temperature inside that bulb is going to be exactly the same as it is outside because there's no longer any evaporation occurring and no longer any cooling. And the challenge there. And so this is this is how wet bulb temperatures are measured. You can look up tables that will tell you relative humidity and temperature and you can find the wet bulb temperature at that intersection. And once we hit about 90 degrees at 100% humidity, or a 90 degree wet bulb temperature, which we could get with either higher higher temperature and lower humidity or lower temperature and higher humidity. Once that wet bulb temperature hits about 90 degrees, humans can no longer effectively function in any kind of meaningful physical exertion outside. Okay, and even completely at rest. Without any exertion. People will start to die within hours once you hit about 95 degrees. wet bulb temperature,
Margaret which is what it would be at like 100% humidity if it was 95 degrees out. Exactly. Yeah. As someone who the inside of my house is regularly 90 to 95% humidity during the summer. I know I'm not supposed to be worried about myself today. Still mostly worried about y'all. But it actually is changing a little bit my my sense of the heat that y'all are facing. Yeah. What I mean okay, so if it's like, like, do you have a sense of like when they're like it's gonna be 109 degrees 111 degrees 116 degrees in business. cific Northwest this weekend, you know, or maybe you're listening to this three weeks later, I don't know, whatever. But do you have a sense of like, what kind of wet bulb temperature that is likely to be for people?
Guy Yeah, so so our humidity usually here in the summer ranges between like 20 and 40%, particularly high. And so I ran a couple of numbers before this show, and who was looking like, this Sunday, when we're supposed to hit about 108 degrees during the peak of the day, that'll probably equate to something around a 75 or 80 degree wet bulb temperature, which doesn't sound that hot, but actually is is pretty darn hot and really hard for the body to tolerate.
Margaret And so what that means is not everyone is fine, it means that the means by which we can fight this with like, cold water immersion, and fanning and things like that actually have a chance of working is what you're saying.
Guy Exactly in in places with low humidity, water, and evaporation works really well to pull you down. The problem with this, and this is what a lot of climate scientists have been warning about for a long time is that the tropical parts of the world, as we start to get increases in temperature, which are already close to 100% humidity, during that season, we'll get so hot that there's no effective way to cool down. And then we'll see a lot a lot a lot of heat related deaths, because these parts of the world also don't have air conditioning. cooling is completely ineffective. And so in some ways we're lucky up here so far, because our summers are dry.
Margaret Yeah, and there's, I mean, a lot of people listening don't have access to air conditioning. But I, but there's there might be like, you know, I know that some cities are setting up cooling centers and things like that. So there is some access to air conditioning in the northwest, okay. So when you talk about like not exerting yourself and things like that, like you're basically saying, like, basically, because when you exert yourself, your body heats up, and that's bad. So it's like, one of the main things people should do is like, chill the fuck out and like, not exert themselves as much as possible.
Guy Yeah, exactly. That's one of the best things that we can do is write we stay out of the sun, as much as possible, try to stay as cool as possible. And just don't do. Don't exert yourself, don't do physical labor. Don't go for runs, try to get out of your job if your job involves heavy, heavy physical labor during these hot temperatures or organized with your other workers, because it's literally putting putting your life at risk. Yeah. To be working in these conditions.
Margaret Yeah, okay. And then. So if this kind of not fully covers, but but gets at the idea behind like heat exhaustion, heat stroke. The other the other thing that at least is on my radar to worry about as relates to intense heat is dehydration. And that's kind of a separate threat. Right? Yeah. Can you talk about dehydration, also, our mutual friends as you have a good story about dehydration? Yeah,
Guy I have a lot of rants that I could go on about dehydration. And it's it's more evil twin overhydration, also known as hyponatremia. So, so, hydration is important, our bodies function better when we're well hydrated. But luckily, our bodies also have this amazing built in mechanism to help us maintain adequate hydration, which is our sense of thirst. And generally, people should drink when they're thirsty, and they should drink a little bit more if they're exercising or if they're in hot weather. And if you're well hydrated, then you will, you will tolerate heat better and you will be more able to adapt. That said, hydration doesn't prevent heat exhaustion and hydrating doesn't fix heat exhaustion or heatstroke either. The problem is, once you've hit that point, the problem was just that you're too hot and you need to cool down. So it's a separate problem. Exactly. They go hand in hand and do tend to sweat more or lose more fluids in hot weather and need to replace them. The place where people get into trouble. We have this cultural myth of dehydration as the big killer. And like you've probably heard people say hydrate or die and there's all these stories about people who athletes who didn't drink enough water and they died. And that's actually not really the case. Most people stay hydrated enough, most of the time, they are getting dehydrated and they have access to water and then don't have vomiting or diarrhea that's sucking water out of them, they can maintain adequate hydration pretty decently the problem, the area that we actually see a lot more deaths, and a lot more severe illness is the opposite. This this problem over hydration. And so for the last couple decades until well, like through the 90s and early 2000s, there was a lot of rhetoric in sports medicine, about the importance of hydration, and you have to hydrate And drink, drink, drink, and you have to drink Gatorade, and you have to drink electrolytes. Because if you don't, then you're gonna die of dehydration. And actually, what we were doing was people were drinking too much water. And that changes the electrolyte balance in our bodies, and it ends up making our cells swell up. And we started getting swelling in the brain that really rapidly fatal and so most, most of the exercise related deaths like ultra marathoners hikers that we used to think were linked to dehydration. Most of those deaths are actually linked to called hyponatremia. Not enough salt. But the real problem is that you've drunk too much water and you've diluted your salt.
Margaret Oh, God, so we're telling people exactly the wrong thing to do. I mean, like all of those other hikers died, so you better drink more water?
Guy Yeah, so you're allowed to drink a lot. But when people get these benchmarks, and they hear like, Oh, I should drink, I should drink a liter of water an hour rest drink two liters of water an hour, I should drink a Gatorade at every stop in this race. People are basing their hydration on some outside metric rather than their own body's sense of whether they need fluid or not. Then Then we we tend to see hyponatremia which is much more deadly and much harder to treat than dehydration. So like many other things that Western medicine has done, we have invented a problem where there used to be no, because humans generally are good at knowing what their bodies need and taking care of them.
Margaret Yeah. Okay. And like, like, I've never drank electrolytes on purpose in my life. Right? Like, I mean, I drink emergency in the morning, but I think I do it for like vitamins, which might also be bullshit, but I don't know. Um, and people are always like, talking about the importance of drinking electrolytes. And, I mean, this obviously sounds like it ties into it, like, do you avoid hype? hype bone night? ceria I was gonna just avoid pronouncing that actually. But I failed at that. Do you avoid that better? If you are also drinking electrolytes and like eating salty snacks and things like that? Is there like? Like, how, how important are like our electrolytes and all this?
Guy Um, so the the answer is twofold. Like many things, so electrolytes are important. We should have salty snacks. And our body needs electrolytes to function. Well. That said, there's just no correlation between drinking electrolyte solutions, and a lower onset of hyponatremia. There's plenty of extreme athletes, ultra marathoners and hot places who are drinking mostly electrolyte solutions. And the real the real risk factor is just the volume of fluid and formed the volume of fluid drunk. So if people like electrolyte drinks, they should drink them. I drink them sometimes. And it makes me feel better, I think. Yeah, but to prevent hyponatremia and we shouldn't think that we're fixing the problem of low electrolytes by drinking electrolyte drinks, because what we're actually doing is just adding too much more fluid to a system that's already over hydrated. Okay,
Margaret so just trust your body and drink is this like how like, one of the main things you learn like street medic stuff? Is that just water for everything? Like, you know, it's like chemical weapons and you fix it with
water. Now all these great, it's amazing or whatever. So just water and and not too much of it. You should drink a little more, if it's really hot out. salty snacks.
Margaret Yeah. Okay. So if you want to focus on electrolytes, focus on salty snacks instead of Gatorade.
Guy I mean, you can drink Gatorade, if you like. Sugar and other electrolytes drinks are fine. It's not like they do harm. And if you drink too much of them and you think you're a problem. Yeah. Okay.
Margaret Now this is I'm really glad to like be like myth. bussed in or whatever. And like getting past that, like stuff, you can quickly Google on the internet, you know? So I have a lot of other questions from people. This is I think everyone's I already said this, everyone's really worried. Um, what um, and actually, we've been talking about this a lot. We've definitely been talking about things primarily from the point of view of like, not having access to, you know, air conditioning and things like that, right. Oh, actually, before we leave dehydration, what do you do about it? What do you do if both where there is a doctor available and where there isn't a doctor available for both dehydration and the problem that shall not be named? Right? Yeah. hyponatremia overhydration, which is, you call it hyponatremia? And I'll call it over hydration?
Guy Right? Go? That's perfect. Um, so dehydration, the problem is those not enough water. And so the solution is they should drink some water. Okay, cool. And the way that and the tricky thing here, right, is that we see people and it's hot out, and they've been exercising, and they say they've got a headache. And they feel kind of nauseous, and they don't feel good. And they're kind of grumpy. And we think, oh, you must be dehydrated, I'm going to give you water. It turns out that the symptoms of hyponatremia are pretty much exactly the same as the symptoms of dehydration with a few options. And so we really actually should be talking to our friends talking to the people we're interacting with and asking them some basic questions. How much water Have you been drinking? Hmm, oh, you had two liters this hour, two liters the hour before liter before that you've had six liters all day and you haven't been doing much. That's a lot of water. Probably shouldn't give you more water. So the very the treatment for hyponatremia. And its mild form is just with hold water. A couple of the things that that we could look for an ask about is someone who's over hydrated was hyponatremia is likely going to have pretty clear urine, and they're going to be peeing a lot. They're going to say, Yeah, I just have to pee all the time. And I really got to drink water, it's really important to drink fluid time pee and all the time. That's a good indication to say you should stop drinking water. Okay, until you're no longer peeing all the time. Dehydration, that person wants water. That's the problem is there's not enough and so they should drink some water. And right, we might also inquire about the year and then they could say I haven't been paying very much it's been really dark yellow, it's been smelly. Those are good indications that someone is dehydrated. On the mild side of, of either of these. It just takes time to fix. If you're if you're dehydrated, you should drink water and rest. And if you're over hydrated, you should rest and stop drinking water. Okay, once once it gets more severe, once we see mental status change, someone is no longer behaving like themselves. That just means that their brain is angry because it's not getting what it needs. Either. It's not enough water. In the case of dehydration, or there's there's swelling and pressure building up because of this hyponatremia And in those cases, that person really needs to go to a hospital.
Margaret Okay, what what would the hospital be doing? And I know I'm not like trying to encourage everyone to do everything by themselves, but I feel like it's like useful to like break open the black box with like medical stuff.
Guy Yeah, so dehydration, dehydration, they're gonna be rehydrating via IV. Oh, that's a thing that we can do in the back country or without access to a hospital. We don't have IVs but we can rehydrate someone gradually just by drinking water and reducing exertion. And as long as they're not continuing to lose fluid either through sweat or through diarrhea or vomiting then we can probably fix that problem hyponatremia is there's unfortunately not much outside of a hospital setting once it's advanced to the stage someone's mental status is changing. There's not much that we can do and this is one of the reasons it's more fatal dehydration and exercise context
Margaret because what if we bloodlet people with leeches
Guy Yeah, we can't do that. They will they end up doing it a hospital is giving someone a lot of sailing intravenously to change the the electrolyte balance of their blood, and we just can't do that quickly or effectively, orally so we can definitely give someone salt. But we should know that if they're if it seems like a severe case of hyponatremia or overhydration that really what they need is a hospital intervention. And when should prioritize getting them to that hospital instead of trying to do it ourselves. Because there's just not much we can do. Unless we're, that's right, that's way above my paygrade is, is measuring someone's blood pH and blood chemistry and tinkering with it and injecting different solutions into them.
Margaret them. And so this sounds like it. These are problems related to heat. But the but dehydration and overhydration are like more or less directly the problems that we're like specifically worried about this coming weekend, because it sounds like it's like more athletes and things like people who like are fighting can with things in that way? Or is this like, are a lot of the people who are potentially going to die because of a massive heatwave? Is it mostly heatstroke or is it also dehydration and over hydration?
Guy Yeah, so so in globally in heat waves, the largest deaths are heat stroke related, or heat stress related and largely in in populations over 60 years of age on this because as, as we age, our bodies just become less adept at thermo regulating, and we're having a hard time adapting the stress. Okay. Certainly, people who are really worried about the heat and think that the solution is to drink a lot, a lot, a lot of water all day long, everybody, a danger of hyponatremia. And certainly as someone who's working outside and sweating a lot and doesn't have access to water, or maybe they're houseless and don't have shelter, and don't have a place to stay cool and don't have good access to clean water. I think we could see dehydration set in and be exacerbated by the heat. The major killers, statistically, are heatstroke. Okay.
Margaret What? What should someone who's listening to this who is experiencing homelessness or someone who cares about people who are do besides like, I mean, I guess like, pressure cities into having cooling areas, invite people, if you have AC, like, inviting people in? You know, like, or are there like, specific? Yeah, what would you suggest?
Guy Yeah, so there's like, there's a couple, I mean, those are both really important and great. And we should do that. A couple of other things that that we can do, that anyone can do to to adapt to heat better. Right, maintaining good hydration, but not too much salty snacks, all of these things will help with our water balance. Staying in the shade as much as possible, and then trying to have a water source, even if it's just spray bottle and like the ability to spray yourself down. Right, spray your face down, spray your clothes down with a little like $1 spray bottle you get from the dollar store and you fill up and you can just spritz yourself and evaporate and that will pull you down. Right damp bandanas around the neck. On the head, even getting your clothes soaking wet in this more dry environment will work. Because all the evaporation of those clothes, that clothing is going to cool your body quite a bit. Another thing that we see in urban environments is usually with all of the pavement and asphalt and the buildings and the lack of tree cover. We'll see temperatures that are 10 to 15 degrees higher in urban centers than they are in surrounding forests or green areas. And so thinking about is it possible to get to a park is it possible to get to a place with trees that has shade and the plants are through evapo transpiration are helping to cool the area a little more and they're absorbing less heat than these big blocks of concrete that just absorb solar energy and radiate it back out at you know it'll make a big difference. And then thinking about thinking about kind of the mechanisms by which we we gain heat and we lose heat. And so certainly radiation from the sun would heat us up really fast. And we can we can partially mitigate that by wearing light colored clothes that covers all of your skin. So loose fitting long t shirt, long pants, a big hat, you're actually going to be staying cooler and clothes like that then you will be in shorts and a T shirt.
Margaret Just humidity affect that I have this like general conception that like dry heat places are all about cover yourself from the sun giving yourself shade through clothes as important whereas like more humid places, more tropical places. It seems like people tend to go with like just less clothes maybe to like really make it as easy as possible to do the little bit of evaporative cooling they can do or am I like just totally off base about this.
Guy No, no, I think I think that that's that seems accurate to me. I think that The more humid it becomes, the more difficult it is to stay cool. And the less the problem is like direct solar radiation and more problem is just that ambient air temperature, all of the moisture hanging out in that air that's holding on to heat and then transferring it to you. I've been, I've been lucky to spend Well, I grew up in Indiana, which was very human, but I've been lucky to spend most of my life in places with fairly dry heat, which I much prefer.
Margaret Yeah, like, I'm just coming at this, like entirely from this, you know, we refer to it is like, Oh, it's just the Baltimore soup, you know, in August or whatever. Okay, um, yeah, a lot of people talked about a lot of different like water methods of cooling. Besides, I mean, obviously, the, like, get into an air conditioning built in this, like, the most bulletproof means or whatever, right? But, um, like, people talk about, like, what, like sleeping on intentionally wet sheets, like spraying your, like wearing wet socks, or even damn close when you're trying to sleep. One person was talking about, like, wet the bottom of your curtains and leave the window open so that it like, wicks up the water and then it evaporates. So just basically doing anything that you can to encourage evaporative cooling?
Guy Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's, that's the kind of the biggest thing. Um, and right, it depends on if you're trying to cool yourself or your house, in less energy to cool yourself. Oftentimes, here in the northwest, it's actually more effective to, as soon as the temperature starts climbing in the morning, close all the windows, trap all the cool air from the night in the house and rely on your relation rather than thinking that across breeze from outside 100 degree temperature is going to pull your house. But that only goes so far. And so yeah, there's also the swamp cooler method, which doesn't work in humid places for the same reason. But you can make kind of DIY swamp coolers by putting a wet sheet over a box fan, and then blowing the air through that wet sheet. Okay.
Margaret And that kind of answers one of the questions that someone asked, which is like, you know, obviously, whenever bad things happen, only one bad thing happens at a time. But let's say for some weird reason, a bunch of dry heat might cause fire. And, you know, obviously, the West Coast has been blanketed in smoke for the past four years. And like, smoking means you got to keep your window shut. You're saying then you just like basically focus on air movement within the house within with fans and like personal cooling through dehydration?
Guy Yeah, yeah, absolutely. To through operation. Yeah, like I would. So when there's when it's not smoke season, which, thankfully is not yet although I think it'll be coming earlier this year, based on our temperatures. When it's not smoke season, I'll open all the windows at night once things cool off, because we do get a big temperature swing here, even in the summer, it cools off at night, and then in the morning, and try to capture some of that cold air during the night variants folk season. Just keep it all closed. Stay inside and focus on that evaporative cooling if you need to. So get yourself wet sit in front of a fan if you don't have electricity, right, people have been keeping themselves cool with fans for 1000s of years before electricity. Big hand fans are really quite effective at moving a lot of air quickly. Without much exertion.
Margaret Okay, so the trade off would be worth it of the exertion of physical motion for the like evaporative cooling? Yeah,
Guy absolutely. Yeah, it doesn't take that much work to fan yourself out a fan a friend, as long as you're able to get yourself wet, right? If you're just being hot air across yourself. That's not going to do any good.
Margaret does that tie into the one of the questions I got that I just you know, it's like a piece of information that people have that I don't know, one way or another. I've never heard of it before someone asked if fanning is bad and extreme heat, how do you pull yourself off? It's probably only saying it's like you're suggesting it's probably only hot, bad if the if you're not causing evaporative cooling? And if you're not, if there's no water on you. Exactly. Yeah.
Guy And I looked that one up because I had actually never heard that before. And it actually is I think it's a CDC. It's some government guideline. I think it's from the CDC. And it's just really, this this example of policies and advice being written in a way that's totally robbed of context and is more confusing to people than not, which often is the case if you're just moving hot air across Someone, that definitely will be worse because air there's some amount of convection, right. But we also create a little bubble around ourselves. And this happens all the time a little bubble of temperature of air, close to our skin that's close to our skin temperature. And so it will be slightly more than 108 degrees outside, if we're effectively sweating and evaporating some, it'll be slightly warmer in cold temperatures. And if that air is not being disturbed, then then it'll help us thermoregulate just a little bit. And if we're moving really hot air across that, then that'll heat us up faster in the same way that sticking your hand or your foot in an ice cream or moving water, you're gonna get a lot colder than sticking that foot in the same temperature water that's not moving. build up a little insulated layer. But that only but but you just fix the problem by adding water. And then it's not a problem anymore, because evaporation is much more powerful at cooling. Okay, yeah.
Margaret So if people don't have much access to water, basically it's like, get access to water. If you can't get access to air conditioning, you just need access to water is that kind of? Yeah, pretty big deal.
Guy I think that's the big thing. And so it's certainly we should have water to drink maintain good hydration but having water that you can use to cool yourself down and whether that's a stream or a river or a lake or whether that's just carrying some extra water with you know that you don't need it to drink so you can use it to what your clothes down.
Margaret And would Gatorade be more effective for this? Like it has electrolytes in it. And I know electrolytes are good when it's hot out. Um, for cooling yourself down. Yeah. No, no, no interesting way. The only good thing Gatorade is for Yeah, lots of sugar. You're gonna fuck up my chance for a sponsorship.
Guy That Gatorade actually got us into this whole bind with hyponatremia because they sponsored sports medicine conferences from the neighborhood 1000s. And all the studies came out saying how important hydration was and we realized that people are dying all over the place because they're drinking too much. Get rid of too much.
Margaret Oh my god, it's literally the plot of idiocracy. Great, cool that that makes me feel really good about the world. Fuck. Okay. Oh, do you know much about like, dealing with pets? Like, I guess Like what? Like most? Most animals don't sweat? Are we the only animals that sweat? Like, what's the deal with keeping pets? Cool?
Guy Yeah, I don't know as much about pets, dogs, dogs sweat, but only through their feet. Do sweat. So um, but they just don't, right? They're mostly covered in hair. So they're not going to as effectively be able to cool themselves down. Cats are the same. I don't know about other animals. But right, you're not gonna sweat if you're covered in here because it won't be effective at all. Okay, and so for pets, it's really helped me and a lot of it is the same. Stay inside, stay in cool, shady areas, right? Get some damp clothes or damp bandana or something on them. We could like wet down a sheet or add like a dog. Just get it damp. And put that on the floor for them to sleep on. I've heard of people putting in a couple ice cubes in water bowls. I don't know whether that is actually effective at cooling your dog down but they probably like it. And then and then avoiding exertion the same way. Yeah.
Margaret Okay. Well and okay with the cold water and maybe it doesn't help but it it tastes better to them or something like that. People have questions. I have questions. I don't know enough about this. Like it, it seems like would be drinking like ice cold water, kind of shock your system. Like if you're even if like someone has heat exhaustion or god forbid heatstroke and you don't have access to the hospital. But whatever is it like, Is there an ideal temperature? Do you only want it a little bit colder than their body? Or is it like? No, we would if I can put them on glacier if you could?
Guy Yeah, absolutely. The the big problem with heatstroke is someone's brain is cooking. And so we want to stop the cooking as quickly as possible. And we do that by putting them in cold water. And there's just not much evidence but putting someone in cold water from from an overheated position does any kind of damage to them. We're not going to make someone hypothermic with 30 minutes in cold water when they've been overheated. We're not gonna we're Yeah, they might gasp and a little bit and we get that cold water on our skin. We have an involuntary gasp reflex and then we adjust to the water temperature, but it's not going to do any damage. And same with drinking ice water. The temperature of the water doesn't make a huge difference in changing the temperature of our bodies. But it's not like drinking water will cool us faster than drinking warm water. But I know that I'm more likely to drink water when it's hot out if the water is cold and refreshing, and so, right. So the way to stay adequately hydrated. ice water is great. You can stick around your forehead and call yourself down.
Margaret Yeah, okay, so they said like, like sticky. So like getting the ice water on you is probably more important than getting ice water in you in terms of
Guy Yeah, if you only have enough. Yeah, but I mean, I just, you know, you get that big glass of ice water and it's condensing on the outside and outside is super cold, huh? Yeah. Okay, hold on to it, and stick that jar on your forehead until you till you drink it. Okay.
Margaret So I'm not gonna get the story about dehydration out of him.
Guy Uh, well, I'm trying to think of what our friend would be talking about. The the story that I do have is, and this is this is just more of a general warning story about tunnel vision. And people who are convinced that they're right about something, and they don't look at all the facts. But I was several years ago, I was guiding in the Grand Canyon. And I ran into ran into a couple of people who were in fairly substantial distress. And they were a day behind their schedule, they'd gone about four miles, maybe five miles in about 24 hours. And they were convinced that there was only one person who is really having trouble. And he was nauseous, he didn't feel good, little unsteady on his feet, really classic, pale kind of pale, clammy skin, really classic heat exhaustion symptoms. And his friend who claims to be a guide, with him was convinced of the altitude illness, because he was nauseous and had a headache. And because the Rim of the Grand Canyon was 7000 feet, which is not actually very high. Altitude illness goes. But they were convinced that they had altitude on this. And so they were descending into the canyon where it got hotter. And the only solution they thought was to keep going down, because if they dropped an elevation, then they'd fix the altitude and less problem. And so I tried to talk to them, and convince them that I wasn't altitude illness, and that, in fact, it was extremely hot. And they weren't a climatized to the heat, because it was springtime. And they had just come from the Midwest where it was 40 degrees outside and I was 100 degrees in the canyon. And they wouldn't listen to me. And I ended up running into a couple paramedics on the trail, who were hiking behind me and caught up and overtook me. And they had also encountered this person after I did stop them did a full assessment, knew it was heat exhaustion, tried to convince the people to stop and rest and turn around. Or they weren't having any of it. They were convinced that it was altitude LS ran into a ranger later on, who also tried to convince him to turn around. And I don't know what happened to them. He clearly didn't die, because I would have heard about a death in the canyon, but certainly didn't have a good time. And I think the big takeaway there is we as humans, I think as soon as we think we've identified what a problem is, then we start trying to solve it. And then we ignore all of the other evidence that suggests that could be a different problem. And so I think, anytime that you're feeling bad or your friend is feeling bad, or they're feeling sick, and you think you know what's going on, it's worth stopping and asking yourselves, especially if they're not getting any better. Mm hmm. Is it actually this thing? Is it actually dehydration? Maybe it's hyponatremia I should stop giving this person a water?
Margaret Yeah.
Guy Is it actually altitude illness, or maybe it's really hot out and you feel crappy, and you should be in the shade and lie down and rest and fan you until you feel better? Instead of trying to rush down to drop in elevation? And yeah.
Margaret If you had a whole group of people in five people, and they're all exposed to the exact same, you know, you're all hiking together roughly the same amount of exertion etc. Is everyone gonna get heatstroke at the same time? Or is it like fairly personal about that?
Guy there's a there's a pretty wide range in human tolerance for heat and exertion. So yeah, it can be all over the place. I would say that the right the hotter it gets, the higher the probability of heat exhaustion or heat stroke here. But but it's like human bodies are really amazing when they're really adaptable and right we think of 105 degree internal temperature, like you stick a thermometer in someone's mouth. When they read the 105, we say medicine says that heat stroke their brains. But there are also some ultra marathon athletes who run in really hot weather who have recorded internal temps of 105. And they're totally fine. Okay, and that's probably because they've acclimated to that over a long time. And we've actually been able to change their physiology and what their bodies do. So people, people have really different responses. And so we should be looking at how are people doing and asking our friends and looking for these these little telltale signs? Oh, yeah, this person's a little grumpier than usual. And kind of ornery, and they look a little pale, and they're kind of slower to respond, we should check in how are you doing? How are you feeling? Rather than thinking that the objective conditions are what's going to dictate? When?
Margaret Yeah, okay. Yeah. And that kind of answers or starts to answer one of the questions that a couple people asked, which is like, basically, what do you do if you're someone who just hates heat? Right? Like, I definitely have friends who like they, you know, I'm always I don't hate heat the same way. I hate being cold. You know? You think that's like, just like a lifetime acclamation and like, basically, the answer is slowly acclimate climatized rather than suddenly have a what's it called, like a heat Hill, a heat bulb? on some horrible name for what's happening to you all? Yeah.
Guy Don't have the bad thing happen is that is that as a heat dome, they keep inventing new names for weather phenomenon that have actually been around forever. You know, I'm not that this particular heat wave has been around forever. It's certainly new. But I just think about the like, Arctic bomb polar vortex. New now that we're finally all paying attention to the weather. Yeah. All these new terms about it instead of I don't know, stopping emitting carbon and planting a lot of trees. B time. That'd be a lot of work. Yeah, it'd be a lot of work. It's a lot a lot easier to name all the problems and make some ad revenue off of driving clicks to website. But I digress. Yeah, some people don't like heat. I think that as a person who doesn't like heat, and who also guided in the desert, for many years, I think the climate Ising makes a big difference. And slowly, right, go to a new environment, if you're not being confronted by one of these heat waves, you go to a different environment, and you don't do your normal level exertion of exertion. You just dressed and you're hanging out and you expose yourself to the temperature, and then you go and you cool off and do it again. And then you do it again. And you'll become more used to that, and especially if you're using other techniques to keep yourself cool. It's interesting. I think that I get grumpier with heat here in the Pacific Northwest than I ever did when I was guiding in the desert. And I think it was, I think a lot of it was the climate tising. And, and having an orientation of I know, I'm in a hot place here. And so I need to change my behavior. And I need to change how I'm managing my body so that I can stay cool. Whereas it gets hot right here. And I think I should just be able to do all the things I can normally do. And now I feel terrible. And I'm mad. Just because I'm too hot.
Margaret Yeah. So it's like, maybe maybe part of the whole answer is like actually change your pattern of behavior. Which actually ties into both the we're all gonna die because of global warming, if we don't do anything, and then also the, like, what you talked about, about the person who is, you know, walking further and further down, because they were like, No, no, no, no, it's it's climate sickness, you know, or whatever, or not climbing, altitude sickness. And then like, I know that when I want to do cognitive behavioral therapy, like the thing that we have to throw away first is I tell, I tell the therapist, what's wrong. And then therapist, it's like, able to specifically say, Now I know what isn't wrong. Like, that's your narrative. That's the thing that you like have been telling yourself. Yeah. And clearly telling yourself this didn't work so and, yeah, which we need to do as a society we need to actually change our patterns in the same way that y'all in the Pacific Northwest should avoid exertion and as you suggested, the very beginning And then work with your co workers to collectively avoid exertion, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Just easier said than done from someone who's a remote worker on the East Coast but okay. Oh, sorry, is one more people talk about? Like one question left food drug medications to avoid our caffeine and alcohol like absolutely terrible anathema if you take, like, different, you know, different medications is going to impact the degree to which you're sensitive, and are the things that people can do about that.
Guy Yeah, um, there's certainly some risk factors. In general, caffeine and alcohol both just don't help the body adapt to any kind of changing environment. And so cold, hot altitude, all of these things, caffeine and alcohol aren't going to make us feel better. And whether that's a huge risk factor. I'm not convinced. I'm still gonna drink my coffee in the morning, but I'll probably make a cold brew. And, but I'm not going to drink coffee all day, and I'm not going to sit in the sun drinking beer all day. Some other some other medications, some allergy medications, and decongestants have some linkage to just reducing the body's ability to thermo regulate and to cool down. Now, I'm definitely not a doctor. And so if people are taking medication they should, they should look at that medication specifically and look it up and just Google that medication and heat exhaustion or heatstroke and see what see if there's a contraindication or or an extra risk factor there. We'll probably get better, better information from that than from broad and general statements from the way that this
Margaret podcast is this past guest is your doc is not just your doctor, but everyone is listening. Yes, we are both doctors. I thought that was the basis of okay. Okay, um, make sense? Do you have any, like, final thoughts like things about like, laying, you know, how are you feeling about this whole thing? Or, you know, things that we missed talking about all of this?
Guy Yeah, no, I really enjoyed this conversation. I think we hit like, we had a lot of topics, I can kind of nerd out about physiology and bodies and illnesses for a while. So it's been fun to do this with heat. I'm going to make a weird plug, which is, I really believe in umbrellas in the summer first. So like, silver reflective or light colored umbrellas, just thinking of other prevention techniques of carry your portable shade with you and thinking particularly about houseless people who can't access cool areas, get a cheap, bright colored umbrella, and you've got your own shade, and it'll help. So I just wanted to throw that one in there. I hiked with an umbrella in the Grand Canyon all the time.
Margaret And so I'm really excited about that. Yeah, he said bright colored. But you know what? Yeah,
Guy mine was silver. It was nice and reflective, really any anything that will reflect rather than absorb heat?
Margaret Could you tape an emergency blanket to on or something?
Guy Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Yeah. And then and then beyond that, I just think that it's going to be hot here this week. People up here are, I think, probably simultaneously freaking out more than they need to and not enough. By which I mean, a couple of days of extreme heat are going to be challenging for people and we should take care of each other and look out for marginalized and vulnerable people are probably not going to see a lot of deaths. Huge, huge problems with a short heatwave like this. However, we should be freaking out about the fact that it's 108 degrees in the Pacific Northwest in June. And this is really like where we are headed as a planet. And so we need to be thinking and adapting right now and thinking about how can we, first of all right, stop emitting carbon and lock as much carbon as possible in the ground. And second of all, how can we change our environments and our behaviors to live in a hotter world and working? Yeah. Working 40 hours a week in an urban concrete. Metropolis is not going to be tenable couple decades from now, when? Right? Think about the thing about Texas right and last summer, they got that big cold wave and then the last Electricity and we have all these deaths because people could no longer to heat their homes and we're gonna see the same thing with with heat waves as well, where we have brownouts and blackouts, because there's too much electrical demand while the air conditioners running. And so we need to be thinking about how can we keep ourselves cool without relying on air conditioning? How can we change our behaviors and our patterns to do that? And how can we plant a shit ton of trees? Yeah, because really, not not only because because they fixed carbon. But because trees cool the environment down the local environment. They, right. evaporation is a major cooling effect. And trees of apo transport transpire huge amounts of moisture, when they're photosynthesizing. And all that moisture cools an area down. And so how can we convert these giant, awful concrete metropolises into beautiful forest gardens, we can survive and have food to eat. And also so that we can cool the areas where people are concentrated down. When we write we see this with just disparities in in heat related deaths across the country where people who are lower income or marginalized or of color live in areas that are more paid to have less access to green space, and they get hotter, and they're more exposed to environmental extremes. So yeah, we should we should take care of each other in the coming week. And stay cool. And we should plant a lot of trees and stop trying to pretend we can continue living as normal. When it's not normal anymore. I like that because
Margaret it it covers it you know, most This podcast is about what most of this episode has been about, like what to do in the very immediate short term, right have to solve this problem, or make it through this problem. But the solutions like absolutely have to be long term and ongoing. And I like that you tied that into that. Um, do you have Do you have anything that you want to like shout out like any any thing you want to plug any? I don't I don't know whether your medic trainings are public or if people want to like follow you. Do you do social media stuff? Anything?
Guy No, not right. I'm pretty. We're pretty non existent on the internet. No, social media. But yeah, we do. We do street medic trainings on and off in the Pacific Northwest, you haven't done one in a while. Hopefully will again, I will plug actually because I am in the process of moving up all the way to the peninsula. And there's a there's an amazing new community project forming in quilcene. people bought an old theater there a couple of years ago, the gray coast Guild Hall. There, they're just starting some big fundraising campaigns right now to replace the roof and do a bunch of infrastructure upgrades so that it can be a community gathering space and a resource and hopefully a place that people who are all thinking about how do we how do we actually live together throughout this climate changing world in the long term? Can I encounter each other and so a great coast Guild Hall could definitely use some dollars with you Google that or look it up they have a Patreon. I don't know if they've launched their big Kickstarter fundraiser yet. But yeah,
Margaret yeah, and one of the reasons I'm excited about that project is because it's you know, it's a, it's a social center will be a social center, and it's like, collectively operated, and it's within a pretty small town. And so it's a pretty major percent of that town's like, social and cultural, like, life or something like that. And it kind of really interesting way. Yeah, so it's, I agree, it's absolutely worth supporting. Normally, I do this whole, like separate outro but and so I'm gonna make you stay on the call as I do my outro. So that way, all of my files are in place, so I can edit this as quickly as possible. But thanks, everyone, for listening. And if you want to support this podcast, you can do so by supporting currently me on patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. But in the very near future, that same Patreon will switch over, you won't have to do anything on your end to support a larger collective effort that's going to be doing more podcasts and more zine publishing, called strangers in a tangled wilderness. And I'm very excited about moving to a more collective structure. It makes just you know, the many hands make light work as long as many hands and make everyone crouching getting each other's way. And in particular, and also you can tell people about the podcast and that's the main way and you can, you can thank us by telling people about it. But in particular, I want to thank Sean and Hugh and Dana and Chelsea Eleanor Mike staro, Kat j, the compound, Shane, Christopher, Sam, Natalie, Willow, Kirk, Hoss the Dog, Nora, and Chris, for making this possible. And, yeah, thanks so much. And I hope everyone is doing as well as they can with everything that happens and stay safe. And it seems like maybe one of the main messages about this is that well, yeah, like Guy already said it. You don't have to freak out as bad about this one specific thing, but we need to freak out more about the larger, larger things.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Margaret talks to Parks from Appalachian Medical Solidarity about disaster relief, what kinds of medical interventions are often needed after a disaster, and how to both respond to and prepare for them.
Guest info and links
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.
49:54
SPEAKERS Margaret, Parks
Margaret Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the End Times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. I use she or they pronouns. This week I'm talking to Parks, who is a medical professional who works with Appalachian Medical Solidarity. And when I say this week I mean I recorded this interview at the very beginning of starting this podcast, which was just before the pandemic. I started this podcast in early 2020 when I had no real reason to think that COVID was going to become COVID in the way that it did. So this episode about, you know, medical things and disaster situations didn't really seem like it made a lot of sense. It's not what a lot of people were thinking about when it came to disaster and medical issues throughout all of 2020. But I actually, I still think this information is really important. And there are so many other crises that are happening now and will continue to happen. And so we talk a lot about, well, just what it means to be a responder to disaster, especially from a medical point of view, and I hope you get a lot out of it. I know I did. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of Anarchist Podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on the network.
Jingle One to two one two, tune in for another episode of MaroonCast. MaroonCast is a down to earth black radical podcast for the people. Our host hip hop anarchist, Sima Lee the RBG, and sex educator and crochet artist, KLC, share their reflections on Maroons, rebellion, womanism, life, culture, community, trap liberation, and everyday ratchet. They deliver fresh commentary with the queer, transgender non conforming, funny, Southern guls, anti imperialist, anti oppression approach, poly add and bullshit. Check out episodes of MaroonCast on Channel Zero Network, Buzzsprout, SoundCloud, Google, Apple, and Spotify. All power to the people, all pleasure.
Margaret So, welcome to the podcast.
Parks Thank you.
Margaret Do you want to introduce yourself with whatever name, pronoun, and affiliations that you would like to be known for for this podcast?
Parks Sure. So my name is Parks, I use he/him pronouns, and I'm affiliated with Appalachian Medical Solidarity.
Margaret Could you maybe start by talking about what Appalachian Medical Solidarity is, like what you all do?
Parks Sure. Appalachian Medical Solidarity is a group that is centered in Asheville and the southern Appalachian area. And we provide disaster medical interventions, particularly after hurricanes and things of that nature. And we're working on other projects around the area, we do a lot of education in the area. For example, we taught a CPR certification class this weekend, and a Naloxone class.
Margaret So one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is that you told me once—you went through the list of how people design die and natural disasters and how it's not what people think it is. And clearly preparing or understanding how natural disasters work is, like, comparable to understanding how larger disasters work and things like that. So I was wondering if you wanted to talk a little bit about disaster and what the actual, like, kind of threat models are?
Parks Sure. So there are several kinds of disasters and natural disasters, as you and your audience are likely aware. One that my group deals with specifically based on our geographic location is hurricanes. In developed countries, or countries with well-built infrastructure such as buildings and roads, deaths from hurricanes tend to come after the event itself. So the hurricane may kill less than 10 people—I'm not, I'm making up numbers there—but a small number of people will be killed by things like wind and falling trees and powerlines coming down and, you know, maybe a tree falling through their house and hitting them, that type of thing. More people die in flooding during the event than anything else. So most people don't die from being hit by a tree or blown away. They die from drowning and flooding, particularly when trapped in houses or when trapped in their cars, situations like that. So in places like the United States, those fatalities tend to be low. More people die in the few days after the hurricane. So as the power is out and infrastructure is down and people start to do things to cope with the infrastructure being down, part of the issue in developed countries is people are not accustomed to the infrastructure being down, so they're not necessarily aware of safety precautions to use when using things like grills or propane heaters or other non-conventional items, or in non-conventional areas. So people tend to die of carbon monoxide poisoning when they're using devices that need to be used in a ventilated area indoors, such as propane heaters, gas grills, things of that nature. They also tend to die after those events from chainsaw injuries, that's pretty common one, or from improper use of chainsaw, so trying to cut down trees and people being untrained to do so and having the tree fall on them. In that scenario, that type of thing. That's a much more common way to die in developed or over developed countries after disasters. People also die from food poisoning after disasters as they eat things out of their refrigerators and freezers that are going down. That's not as common, but it does happen. Sometimes people have issues with the spread of contagious illnesses inside of shelters. But here again, that's not usually causing a lot of people to die, it's causing a lot of people to have colds.
Margaret So would you say that one of the better ways to prepare is more about, like, knowing how to use your emergency equipment—like knowing, like, chainsaws and propane and all that or?
Parks I would—yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Knowing how to use equipment without, you know—knowing how to properly use a chainsaw, knowing when and where to properly use a propane heater. The other thing I would suggest is simply not using those items if you're not trained or unsure. You know, after a hurricane event, if you're a little cold, you know, put on extra layers if that's an option. If you can eat crackers and peanut butter instead of trying to, you know, make some kind of makeshift stove inside your house, then do that. You know, wait till it stops raining and you can move your grill outside. So use a little bit of common sense and forego small what are, you know, small luxuries essentially like cooking your food indoors or heat if you can, if you can live without it.
Margaret I want to ask you about Appalachian Medical Solidarity and your experiences with it and like what you've seen, or what people who are part of AMS have seen or like, I know, for example, when we had the conversation before we did this interview that you talked about while you're a medical professional, and you're often not using your, you know, surgery skills or something like that on the ground.
Parks That's true. You know, with Appalachian Medical Solidarity, I am a medical clinician and I don't end up using my medical skills very often after disasters. We occasionally will see things like people having to use insulins—types of insulin they're not accustomed to and they don't know how to do the calculation to identify the proper dose. So sometimes people need help with things like that. And upper respiratory issues. They're not usually—what we're seeing at as a volunteer community group are not the kind of issues that people are going to the hospital for. The hospitals tend to still be in place, people go to the hospital. So the things we're seeing are relatively minor as it comes to medical issues. What we're seeing more is people needing help mucking out their houses, needing help cutting out drywall, needing help getting trees out of the road or off their houses. So mostly what we're seeing is a great need for cleanup and also a need for supplies to get into certain areas. So it can be difficult with trees down and powerlines down and flooding and roads washed out to get things like clean water to certain areas or food that people can eat. So a lot of transporting supplies and the, you know, one to three days after a disaster before FEMA is able to come in ends up being something that we see a lot.
Margaret That's one of the kind of advantages that I found that—or at least people talk about, like autonomous and anarchist disaster relief and mutual aid—how this is about like the ability to mobilize quickly and maybe, like, without some of the inefficiencies of large organized structures. And I'm wondering if you want to talk about how you all organize, to get supplies and aid to crisis areas?
Parks That's a great question and it's one that we've been working on. I think we can improve our dispatching capabilities and how we identify different areas and need. At least in our recent experience, one of the things we've run into is a need to pre stage before disasters when we know a disaster is coming. So that's not always possible. But with hurricanes, we tend to have a sense that that's maybe going to hit, so getting closer to the area—or as close as you can to the disaster zone and stay safe so that you're not just adding to the, you know, people that need to have supplies brought to them. So staying in an area that's near the disaster area where you're still safe. And so you're able to quickly mobilize supplies and able to mobilize personnel into areas that are hardest hit is an important thing. We mostly do it through cell phones and, at times, driving around randomly, honestly, and looking for people. We've also watched flood maps online to see where flooding is the worst and where places might be isolated. News media pretty quickly starts to cover and tell people where isolated pockets might be, like this town is cut off, or that town is cut off, or, you know, these highways are washed out. So you can use that information to try to dispatch your personnel to those areas and to dispatch supplies to those areas. But I think that could be improved upon. So pre planning is certainly a helpful thing, you know, trying to come up with who is going to be a dispatcher, who's going to watch the news, who's going to watch the flood map, who's going to be pre staging, all of those things are important. And one of the points I think, also is that specialized personnel aren't necessarily needed in these cases, you know? Just having people who can drive, having people who have vehicles that, you know, like trucks or trailers that can move a large quantity of water. And just having people that can drive back and forth supplying water and food to certain areas is invaluable. You know, it's nice to have a nurse, it's nice to have someone who can use a chainsaw. But it's, that's not the majority of people that are really needed.
Margaret How do you get into isolated areas?
Parks That's a great question. There was one hurricane in which we teamed up with some private pilots to be airlifted into those areas. I'm not sure if airlifted is the right word, we weren't jumping out of the planes, but small planes that could land and fields or could land in small airports and rural areas would take two or three personnel and a quantity of supplies, and they were able to fly back and forth and bring supplies into places where roads didn't have access for several days. And that was invaluable. So that's one of the more fancy ways that we've been able to access folks who are cut off. Other ways are, you know, tall four wheel drive vehicles. So just having the kind of equipment or having the kind of vehicles that can withstand those kind of conditions and get into places. You know, if you have a small two wheel drive hatchback car, it's not going to make it. So having somebody available, who has the type of vehicle that might be able to get into more challenging environments.
Margaret One of the things that I'm interested in is sort of the cultural bridging that happens during disaster and crisis. And I've heard stories that there was kind of an interesting cultural difference between the types of folks who own small airplanes and the types of folks who organize anarchistically bring supplies places, is that something you feel like you can talk about it?
Parks Sure, that's absolutely the case. And I think that's a major issue in people signing up to be personnel after disasters, you know? I think people who initially are going into these areas in the first two or three days need to be people who can interface with all kinds of people, who can withstand being insulted, who can withstand, you know, different things like that, like it's not a—it's not as safe and supportive working environment in any way. You know, socially, the people who were operating the private airplanes, for example, tended to be wealthy individuals, often were white males who were wealthy, a lot of them—or possibly all of them—were Republican, these kind of things. So folks who feel uncomfortable interfacing with those folks, or feel uncomfortable building bridges with those folks, you know, there's a need to be polite, there's a need to reach out, there's a need to work together, there's a need to problem solve with people who are very different from yourself, who, whose ideas of, you know, even who should deserve help are very different than yours. So, being someone who's very diplomatic is very valuable in those scenarios. And folks who aren't as diplomatic or who don't want to interface with people, you know, that are very different than them, are possibly better suited to roles like doing dispatch, or gathering supplies, or, you know, there are plenty of roles to do. But it's important to consider that folks are going to have to interface with a lot of different people who are not necessarily being their best selves, and who are very different than them and have a different idea of reasonable politeness than they do.
Margaret Yeah. I mean, that's kind of one of the things that sort of interesting about disaster scenarios and apocalypse and all that kind of crap is that you get into this idea of a lot of different types of communities having to pull together in order to survive. And one of the things that I'm kind of trying to explore with this podcast is the sort of idea of the opposite of—instead of like a nationalist approach to disaster, where you like bunker up with your friends and you have yours, fuck you—like this, like, internationalist approach of, like, working together with diverse communities and things like that. And so it's just fascinating because usually when I think about, like, working with diverse communities, I don't think of, like, right wing libertarian types, you know? And yet, I mean, there's a certain amount of, like—and maybe I'm being overly generous—but like, okay, yeah, they may be a rich Republican, but they're willing to fly into storms and small planes in order to give people things for free. So that's kind of what we want from people. You know?
Parks I absolutely agree. You know, there's something called the disaster bug, which is where people go into disaster zones, and they, they get really fixated on it, or they really enjoy it, and they seek out that scenario again. And part of the reason for getting that disaster bug in my opinion is, you know, people are at their worst at times, but really overall people are at their best. You know, people are ready to collaborate, people are willing to do things they wouldn't normally do, like, help people, they wouldn't normally help, things like that. So watching communities draw together, watching people, you know, go to their neighbor's houses and see if they need anything, is beautiful and a wonderful thing. And, you know, you get to meet all kinds of people that you wouldn't normally get to meet—or I get to meet all kinds of people that I wouldn't normally meet. And I really value that and my experience. You know, I think it's interesting to meet the rich Republican dude that wants to fly people into a difficult flight situation and deliver food to people they might not normally think about. I think that's great. You know, it expands their horizons potentially, it expands our horizons, and, you know, ultimately it helps people and that's really the purpose. But I personally think that's great. But I also recognize that that can be a challenge for some folks.
Margaret Yeah, that makes sense. I want to talk about how have you—and if you don't we can cut this part out—have you had to do sort of disaster triage or like—like, in what way has like your—as a medical provider or whatever, how do you plan for medical care, specifically in disaster situations, or especially if you're preparing for a situation in which hospitals weren't available, but even in preparing for situations in which hospitals are harder to get to and things like that?
Parks Sure, that's a reasonable question. And I don't have a great answer to it, actually. You know, hospitals and paramedic teams and those kind of groups already have triage processes in place. So there are, for example, toe tags or tags that medical personnel will put on individuals indicating the severity of their illness. And then they will decide based on the number of casualties and the number of people needing medical care what order to treat people in when they can't treat everyone at once. So those kinds of organizations already have a system for that. I can't say that my group has had a need to triage people in that way because we simply haven't seen large numbers of injuries at once, which is fortunate.
Margaret Yeah.
Parks It would be good for us to prepare for that perhaps I haven't really taken it into consideration. But, you know, a lot of what we're seeing is needing to assist people using their own medications. So needing to help people find their inhaler in their ruined house, or find a neighbor who uses an inhaler that they can borrow, or calculate a new dose of insulin based on what insulin might be available to them. So getting people supplies, getting people on medications that they already take, you know, having people—helping people to find the medical equipment that they already have that they need, those things are helpful. And prior—you know, certainly prioritize people with medical needs in terms of transporting them to shelters or transporting them to hospitals, things of that nature. But we have not been responding in the—well, I should say, I have not been responding in the minutes and hours, you know, few hours right after a disaster during which time people may need things like swift water rescue, or may need things like airlifting out situations, where there may be people who are injured enough that they require getting to a hospital within a few minutes or within an hour. Those would be done by—those kind of rescue things will be done by specialized teams and we're certainly not trained to do those.
Margaret Okay, and maybe also the people who are more immediately already on the ground?
Parks Correct. So not only people with specialized training, but people who are already on the ground, you know. I would certainly advise any group to be well aware of what I would call scope of practice. So be well aware of what you can safely offer and what you cannot safely offer. And don't go outside of that. Don't try to offer something that you aren't trained to do, don't try to offer something that you're not prepared to follow up with, that you're not able to do all the way through. You know, don't offer someone transport to the hospital if you're not sure you can get them there, or if you're not reasonably sure you can get them there. You know, because you're delaying their getting into an ambulance, you're delaying their getting into a medical fight helicopter if you're offering something you can't follow through with, if that makes sense.
Margaret Yeah, that's actually a really interesting concept. And, like, could apply to a lot of situations, but even gets back to the, like, the chainsaw use for example of, like, you know—I've only recently started actually training with a chainsaw and I always thought it was just a matter of, like, making sure you're not in the way of the blade. And like making sure that, you know, if it bucks back, the blade won't hit you. And that's, like, that's a big part of it. But then I'm like learning that there's, like, a lot of stuff about the way trees hold tension and that apparently what kills a lot of chainsaw operators is just, like, releasing the tension on a tree and having everything go crazy. And so the scope of practice, that's a useful phrase I hadn't heard before.
Parks Absolutely. And I would say, you know, do what you can. A lot of people don't do what they can, you know? Step up, do what you can, decide you're going to help. That's the first thing. You know, assess the situation, decide you're going to help, and then help in a way that you're able to. And of course if you set up in a truck, you don't know if you're going to come up to a washed out road. And if you do, that's okay, you know, turn back, don't try to cross, you know, a flooded area you can't cross or anything like that. Don't try to offer medical care to someone who's more hurt than you can really help them with or—or do what you can, you know? If what you can do is hold their head still while the EMS gets there, great, do that. You know, do it, you can. Absolutely step up and do what you can. But don't try to do things that are outside of your abilities. And don't take risks. In a scenario where it's difficult to get people in and out of a situation, if you are a relatively healthy person who's going in to help and you get hurt, you are delaying care for people who are already hurt, you know, you're clogging up the system. And, you know, you're also getting hurt, which is a problem. But not only that, but you know, you're clogging up the system, you're making one more casualty for medical personnel to deal with, you're making it worse. You know, one of the first rules in medical care is do no harm, right, don't make it worse. And it's really easy to make it worse. It's a lot easier than you think to make it worse. You know, don't go in and say you're going to sterilize water and you don't know how and you poison someone. You know, don't go in and think you're just going to figure out a chainsaw and get hit by a tree. You know, there's lots of things that might be trickier than you think.
Margaret Yeah.
Parks So go and help but sit and think a while before you take on a project that you might be unprepared for and might be dangerous.
Margaret What are some—if people are interested in doing either disaster response or preparedness within their own communities for potential disaster, what are some of the skills—especially like first aid or medical type skills—that you think people can and should develop? Like in a more generalized sense, like what should people be learning and focusing on?
Parks Basic medical care at home is a good thing to focus on. So the number one thing that I see people not doing enough of is washing their hands and washing their hands properly. That sounds really basic, but people really don't do it enough. So learning how to wash your hands, washing your hands for an adequate amount of time with clean water, with soap, and doing it consistently when you need to. You know, if you're touching a person and you go touch another person and you haven't washed your hands, you're spreading, you know, potentially you're spreading all kinds of pathogens from one person to another and to yourself. So learning how to wear gloves, when to wear gloves, how to take them off without contaminating yourself, you know, how to wash your hands in a way that's effective. I would start there. I think those things are really important. Recognizing an infection is a helpful thing. You know, being able to look at a wound and say, within reason, if it's obviously infected or not. I mean, that's—that can be a specialized skill, but there are some things that, you know, a regular person might be able to learn in advance that may be helpful. So those things are important. I would say also water is a big thing after any kind of disaster that's gonna affect infrastructure. So focus on getting enough water, storing enough water, knowing how to sterilize water, knowing water from—knowing what source to get your water from, you know, you don't want to use flood water, for example, that's very difficult to impossible to sterilize in a way that's going to be accessible after a disaster. You know, there might be people out there with specialized skills who know how to do that, but most people are not, you know, that's not a good idea. You know, finding a stream is going to be better, collecting rainwater is going to be better. There's lots of different, you know, water sources that you can identify that might be better choices for you. So if you want to get fancy or do a little more, you might identify water sources near your home, for example, you might find out where your nearest stream is. If you're, you know, if you're living in a place that might have the kind of disasters where your water infrastructure might go down, and that's more likely in some places than others. But first and foremost, I would say water.
Margaret What, um, can you talk more specifics about, like, for example, what kinds of places the water infrastructure is more vulnerable and also, like, how people might, yeah, get water, filter water, sterilize water, whatever they need.
Parks The CDC has some good guidelines on that. As does as FEMA actually, so FEMA's website has good instructions on what kind of sources to look for after a disaster. Firstly, knowing about storing of water is helpful. It's not great to store water in your empty, you know, gallon water jug that you got from the, you know, from the store, unless you're able to sterilize it. And you can sterilize it by using a mix of bleach water, I don't remember the ratio, but shake that around in your container, empty it out, rinse your container, and store water. So prior to events know how to store water if you're going to use your own containers and know how to store it properly. And, you know, be wary of glass containers because they can break. And if your water supplies on glass containers and it breaks, you know, you're out of luck. So first of all know how to store water beforehand. And if you're able to do that, you can avoid having to find sources of water afterwards, which is ideal. You know, sterilizing your tap water is something that may be accessible to you if the tap water is not contaminated. The other thing to do is to know how to turn off the main—the water mains to your house. So if there's an announcement that the water is contaminated, you would turn off the water main to your house, empty the faucets, and you can typically still use the water that's in your hot water heater if you have one. So—and a lot of this is geared toward people who live indoors, obviously. So if you don't live indoors that's going to be a different scenario. But if you do live indoors, using the water and your hot water heater can work. And there's a, usually there's a way to empty it. There's like a faucet at the bottom of the hot water heater or something like that. You can use the water in there. You'd probably want to add bleach to it. But look up the proper ratios of bleach to water and, you know, have some bleach in your house that's fresh. Bleach goes bad after about maybe six months or a year. So make sure you have something that's unopened and not flavored or scented or—I guess not flavored, but whatever. Not scented and without like additional cleaning agents. You don't want to use, like, a tile cleaner with bleach. You need to use, you know, the regular bleach in a bottle that that's all that's in there.
Margaret What about like the kind of water purification tablets and things like that?
Parks Iodine water purification is not generally recommended. Generally bleach is recommended because it kills more of the pathogens that you're going to be encountering after that kind of disaster. You know, if that's all you have, then that's all you have. But in terms of pre planning and what to get, I would recommend bleach.
Margaret Are you talking about, like, maybe you'll get Giardia or like maybe you'll, like, die immediately? Or like what's the—what's the threat model from contaminated water like floodwater or whatever.
Parks That depends. I don't have a great answer for that. You know, in eastern North Carolina, in floodwater, there are millions of dead animals floating, you know, stuff from septic systems can be in there. So any kind of fecal oral type pathogen could be in there and, you know, think of water with, you know, human waste in it as well as rotting pigs. You know, sometimes the wastewater pits overflow, like from coal fired power plants have wastewater pits, and those can get into the groundwater or into the floodwater. So there's not just bacteria in floodwater. There's also toxic chemicals that can't be filtered out, that can't be removed with bleach, for example. So that's one of the reasons why flood water is not going to be a good option. If you can find a stream that's not contaminated heavily, you know, that's not a strange color, that's not covered with floodwater, that may be an option. Collecting rainwater is an option. You can remove salt from salt water by like taking a large pot with a—that has a lid with a handle, turn— flipping the lid over so the handle is facing inside the pot, suspend a mug or a cup from the handle inside the pot on a string. Put saltwater in the bottom of the pot, boil that for 20 minutes or so. The condensation will collect on that upside down lid, drip down the handle, and drip into your mug. You can probably find diagrams of that and your listeners might already know how to do this kind of thing.
Margaret Home distillation.
Parks Right. But some some knowledge of home distillation might be helpful. You know, I've never been in a situation where that was helpful, but I'm sure people have been.
Margaret Yeah. You mentioned how some—a lot of the advice that goes around is more helpful for people who live indoors. Do you want to talk about—do you have any information about either how to help people who are, or people who are themselves not living inside in disaster situations?
Parks If you know does that stress coming, it's good to let people know who might not already know. So some folks who live outdoors are certainly going to be in the know about, you know, things that are happening in their community. But it can be helpful to spread that information. So let people know that there's a hurricane coming, let people know that flood—flooding is going to be happening so that people can, if they have encampments, they can move them uphill, you know. I live in a mountainous area so, you know, in this area moving uphill as an option. That's not necessarily going to be an option in a lot of places. But seeking shelter, securing whatever, you know, materials that you have for housing or trying to keep dry, all of those things are going to be important. Letting people know where security—or where like emergency shelters are in case they want to go to emergency shelters can be beneficial. Just making sure people are aware in advance. You know, somebody who—I live inside, so somebody who lives outside might be able to—might be better able to provide information on preparedness and that scenario.
Margaret Off the top of your head—or, what are some of the common myths about disaster survival that that irritate you?
Parks I don't think this is a myth. But I think people are both underprepared and over prepared. Okay. Sometimes people prepare for like situations that sound more interesting, rather than situations that are more likely. For example, people might have wilderness survival skills that involve starting a fire with sticks or, you know, distilling water in strange situations or, I don't know. And while those things might come in handy at some point, things like washing your hands and knowing how to store your water reasonably safely, you know, knowing that expiration dates of foods or how to tell if your meat is spoiled or not, you know, those like less romantic, I guess, skills are actually going to be far more important and far more useful and far more likely to be utilized. So I think it's easy to prepare for, like, what are we going to do if civilization collapses? And while living in the woods, like we need all these skills on like, you know, do you—like, do you really—like in what situation are you going to, like, need to go and kill a deer because you really can't get literally anything from the grocery store?
Margaret Yeah.
Parks You know, that might, I don't know, maybe that happens. But you know, in the United States that's really unlikely to be—depending on where you live. You know, maybe if you live rurally and you already depend on killing deer or killing animals for your food then, of course, you know, you're going to continue to rely on that food source. But for people that don't already rely on that food source, you know, developing those more specialized skills is interesting and cool, but don't neglect the less interesting skills and preparations. Like it's good to have a radio that runs on batteries. It's good to have extra batteries. Do you need 100 guns? Probably not. You know, guns are really overrated. I think after disasters, you know, most people are very kind to each other after disasters. You know, if people are looting, it's generally because they need the stuff. And if you're the kind of person that wants to shoot people because they're stealing items from a store, I don't know what to tell you other than, you know, you might reevaluate your life. But, you know, I don't know how useful it's going to be unless you're planning on hunting because that's something you already rely on. You know, for a lot of folks like myself who don't rely on hunting, live indoors, you know, a gun is not actually going to be helpful. I don't think, you know, having social skills, having the ability to talk to people that aren't like you, you know, knowing how to wash your hands, I really can't say it enough.
Margaret That's gonna be the title of this episode: Wash Your Fucking Hands.
Parks Wash your hands and do it right. You know, using hand sanitizer—this is an important one—using hand sanitizer after you go to the bathroom is not effective. You need soap and water.
Margaret Okay.
Parks The kind of pathogens that are spread from the oral fecal route, so to speak, are not cleaned off your hands by hand sanitizer.
Margaret What is hand sanitizer good for?
Parks Hand sanitizer is good for anything that gives you a stuffy nose. Anything that gives you diarrhea, you need soap and water.
Margaret Okay.
Parks Not anything in the world but, you know, that's a rough estimate.
Margaret Well, okay, so you talk a bit about risk analysis. I'm really excited about what I think hackers but maybe other people coin threat modeling. And like people talking about, like, you know, okay, your internet security might be really good, but based on the wrong threat model. And, you know, a gun for example is a good tool for certain threat models, like someone specifically trying to kill you.
Parks Right.
Margaret But a very bad tool for a lot of other threat models. And so it sounds like kind of what you're talking about is that people have sort of poor threat modeling when they think about preparedness in general.
Parks I think that's a great way to put it, you know, just like if you're writing and knowing who your audience is, you know, know what you're preparing for and be fairly reasonable about that and don't, you know, skip things that you think are obvious or skip things that you think are boring. So, you know, if you're preparing—I don't know, if people prepare for earthquakes, I'm not sure how on earth you would do that. You know, they hit randomly and horrible things happen. But if you're preparing for a hurricane, if you're preparing for flooding, you know, prepare for that in a way that makes sense. And do some research, you know, it doesn't take very long if you have access to the internet or a library to do a little bit of research, and don't discount, you know, government websites. Really, the CDC offers good information and FEMA offers good information on preparedness. You're going to have to tailor that to your own specific needs of course. You know, if you use insulin and needs to be kept in a refrigerator, you need to focus on being able to refrigerate that.
Margaret Okay.
Parks You know, if that's not with a cooler, ice, or whatever, you need to prioritize ice if that's your situation. Other people are not necessarily going to need to prioritize refrigeration after that kind of event, for example. Or, you know, as I was saying, if you're planning to live in the wilderness with no contact with any kind of "civilization", then, like, your skill set certainly needs to be different than if you're trying to survive, you know, an urban setting that suddenly has no infrastructure. You know, one of the main issues—well I don't know about main issues—but one of the issues after Hurricane Sandy in New York City was people in high rises who couldn't flush their toilets and didn't—and lived, you know, on the 10th or 12th floor of a building and were unable to haul water up and down the stairs because of physical issues. And that quickly became a very, very dire problem.
Margaret Yeah.
Parks So, you know, and that's a problem that's specific to a certain physical scenario.
Margaret Yeah.
Parks So preparing for your physical scenario and preparing for the actual threat and having some sense of, you know, maybe over prepare slightly. But you don't necessarily need, like, a year's worth of food for an event that's probably going to take a week or two to stabilize.
Margaret Right. Well, if you have a year's worth of food than you have, you know, 300 peoples' day's worth of food.
Parks That's true. And there may be, you know, scenarios in which that makes sense. But in that scenario, it's still a week's worth of food, you're taking into consideration the number of people. Yeah. And if you want to be able to feed your whole town, that's awesome. You know, is it necessary? I don't know.
Margaret Yeah.
Parks You know,
Margaret You once said something something to me that was one of the best examples of risk analysis that I actually use fairly often—I came to you with a medical concern and I said, am I going to die because of this or that thing? And you said to me, well, I can't tell you that—because you're honest to a fault—you're like, I can't tell you that you won't die because that's completely possible, you could also be eaten by a shark today in Asheville.
Parks Right, I remember that. Yeah, and I think those things are reasonable to keep in mind, you know, you're not likely to be killed by a chainsaw if you're not using one after a disaster, so I don't know.
Margaret So I'm not gonna wear my chops all the time.
Parks Right, so you don't need to wear your chainsaw chaps all the time necessarily, unless you're just like them maybe, look, I don't know. But yeah, you know, think about what's likely and think about what's important. So if something is unlikely to occur but will definitely kill you, if it does you may want to be—have some preparedness for that, within reason.
Margaret Yeah.
Parks You know, if something is not likely to happen and not going to be a big deal if it happens, you don't necessarily need to prepare for that. Like, how much do you need to prepare for boredom, you know, maybe a little bit, but that's not super important. You know, it's not that likely that you're going to be stuck in your house more than a week. But if you were and you didn't have water, you could die. Humans can survive a fairly long time without food, but we can't survive more than a few days without water. So, you know, that's why I emphasize that too.
Margaret So eat peanut butter and crackers rather than tainted meat if you're only stuck for a week?
Parks Sure, yeah, you know, if you have the ability to cook, you know, if you have a grill, if it's not raining, you know how to use the grill, it's the first day after your freezer has gone down, absolutely cook all your meat, you know, and eat it and share it and all those things, that make sense. But if it's been a week, and your freezer has been off for a week, and you've got meat left, you know, and that's it, don't eat it. If it's been sitting out, you know, unless it's jerky or something like that, you know, you don't want to risk a diarrheal illness or a vomiting illness if you if your water supplies are scarce, particularly.
Margaret Probably final question: So we talked a little bit about the the kinds of people that you'd be working with to go into disaster areas. But in terms of going into communities, often as outsiders, what does that look like in terms of not been more trouble than you're actually worth, in terms of making sure that it's like sort of a consensual relationship with the people? I know, I was talking to someone who's from a Caribbean island and he was talking about how, you know, non official organizations showing up to help are often just in the way and doing all the wrong things. While, of course, also most people I know are also very critical of the official organizations who go into help because then they take resources and centralize them and disempower people and cut people out of agency and things like that.
Parks Yeah, don't go to a disaster area unless you have truly something to offer and you're able to get yourself in, supply for all of your needs the entire time you're there, and get yourself out. If you can't do those things, don't go unless you're already there in your chapter with other people, then respond accordingly. But, you know, if you're not already in a disaster area that hit where you are living, don't go on vacation to see how bad it is, you know, don't drive around in an area to gawk at the damage. There's, that's rude. Don't do that. And it's not helpful. You know, if you have, like, two power bars and one 16 ounce bottle of water, don't go into a disaster area and think you're prepared because you're not. You're going to be a drain on resources. You know, there are going to be a lot of people who already have skills in an area, you know, if an area in the United States is hit by a hurricane or, you know, some kind of disaster, there are already medical personnel there. You know, there are already people there who know how to use chainsaws, there are already people there who knows how to hunt or, you know, various things. So, to some extent, you know, keep your ear to the ground, see what people need. If you can, you know, ferry water to the edge of a disaster area and give it to someone who is already networked to distribute it or something like that, that may be very helpful. And it may be boring to you to drive, you know, 100 gallons of water from, you know, where you live to the edge of a disaster zone and then go home again, you might be tempted to like, dive in and drive around, go be helpful. But you know, driving water to the edge and going home is really helpful in certain scenarios. You know, driving in with a bunch of food that you don't know where you're going to leave it, and you're just driving around trying to give it to people who don't, you know, you don't, I don't know, you don't know where the need is. That's not necessarily as helpful. Yeah, don't become a drain. Don't go and need to be fed or housed or clothed or need water in an area that's already strained. You know, the more people that there are in a strained situation with limited resources, the less those limited resources are able to go around. So be realistic about what you can contribute and be realistic about whether what you can contribute is going to be better than what you know the people—the skills that people already there have, if that makes sense.
Margaret That does. If someone wants to learn more about either Appalachian Medical Solidarity or other mutual aid disaster relief organizations, do you have a place to point them to or anything like that?
Parks I'm not sure. I think AMS has a Facebook page. I don't actually know.
Margaret Okay.
Parks Yeah, I'm not sure. If you're in the Asheville area, you know, we do put out announcements for classes and things that, you could certainly come and talk to us. There is a team with AMS, with Appalachian Medical Solidarity, that does stuff on computers and social media.
Margaret And you're not on that team.
Parks I'm not, and I'm not on that team. And I don't use computers outside of work if I can help it because I don't like them. So I'm sorry, but we could probably find that information and add it.
Margaret I'm going to add it, yeah. I'll do an aside.
Parks Thanks.
Margaret Okay. Well, thank you so much for doing this interview. Is there any—Is there anything I missed, any like final takeaway, besides wash your hands?
Parks Just have water, wash your hands. Those are really important. Decide to help, you know, I think is what I would say, decide to help and realize what helping is and realize what not helping is in any given scenario. You know, don't let your worry about, you know, being a burden or not knowing how to help or not having specialized skills, don't let that stop you from helping. Decide to help, but help within reason. Usually—you know, find out what people need, find out what people don't need, don't guess what people need and just start sending a bunch of crap to an area, it's not helpful. You know, but find out where you can plug in, try to get reliable information on what's needed. And if you have the ability to meet any of those needs, then do it. Absolutely. But don't go outside of your scope of practice, don't go outside of what you are actually able to contribute. Contribute what you can, don't try to contribute what you can't. Okay.
Margaret Okay. Thank you so much.
Parks Yeah, absolutely.
Margaret Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell people about it. Please tell the machine overlords about it—or rather, tell them to tell other people about it by liking and subscribing and posting and following us on social media. We have—you don't even have to just follow me on social media now. Live Like the World is Dying has its own Instagram page and Facebook page, although Facebook is, besides being terrible for the world is also really terrible in terms of engagement for projects. It's actually just a garbage fire that is trying to get me to buy advertising. And then turns down my advertising? I finally like gave in and tried to give it some money to, so that people who like the like the redesign page actually see Live Like the World is Dying posts, and I was rejected. And well, fuck you, you don't like me, I don't like you either. And clearly, that's my only problem with Facebook or the algorithms that run the world is that they didn't like me personally. Anyway, you can also tell about it in person, that's even cooler. And if you want to support this podcast more directly, you can do so by supporting me, which will soon be supporting the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness publisher. But you can support us on Patreon—or currently me on Patreon—later us on Patreon, depending on when you're actually listening to this, at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy or patreon.com/I-don't-know-what-I'm-going-to-change-it-to. But I'm sure you can find it, you clever people. And there you can support us. There's a zine that goes out every month. It's very behind, but it's going to become less behind now that it's a collective project, and all kinds of good stuff. Also, if you don't have any fucking money, don't give me any fucking money. It's totally fine. We'll give you all of our ship for free. If you message me on any social media platform, I'll give you access to all of our content for free because money should go from the people who have more money to the people have less money and not the other way around. In as much as money is a useful construct, which is a different argument for a different time. In particular, I would like to thank Sean and Hugh and Dana and Chelsea, Eleanor, Mike, Starro, Cat J, The Compound, Shane, Christopher, Sam, Natalie, Willow, Kirk, Hoss the dog, Nora, and Chris. You all make this possible and I am endlessly grateful. And I also am grateful to everyone else. Because now that people actually like pay attention to this shit we have a fucking chance, right? Like, we can all like take care of each other and like live happily ever after unless everything's on fire—we'll figure it out. Right? We'll figure it out. Okay, be well.
Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Margaret talks to author and organizer Shane Burley about fascism: what it is, why it comes up during times of crisis, and what we can do about it. They discuss the ways that we organize as anti-authoritarians to confront the ultimate authoritarianism.
Shane Burley is the author of Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse (AK Press, 2021) and Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press, 2017). His work has appeared in places such as NBC News, Jacobin, Al Jazeera, The Baffler, The Daily Beast, Truthout, In These Times, and Protean. He also runs the antifascist neofolk blog A Blaze Ansuz. You can find him on Twitter: @shane_burley1.
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.
1:16:24
SPEAKERS Shane Burley, Margaret
Margaret Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the End Times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, I use she or they pronouns. And this week I'm talking to author and researcher Shane Burley about, well about fascism, about what it is and why it comes up during times of crisis and what we can do about it and the ways that we organize as antiauthoritarians to confront the ultimate authoritarianism which is, you know, fascism. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, and here's a jingle from another show on the network.
Jingle Speaker 1 Where did you get this?
Jingle Speaker 2 Your friendly neighborhood anarchist.
Jingle Speaker 3 More of an anarchist militant.
Jingle Speaker 4 People involved in social struggles. Everybody else.
Jingle Speaker 5 People have been waiting for some content. The Final Straw. [inaudible] Thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org.
Margaret So I'm here today with author and activist Shane Burley. And if you want to introduce yourself with I guess your name, which I already said, and your pronouns, and then I guess a bit of your background and how you come to know a bit about the apocalypse and fascism.
Shane Burley Sure, sure. So Shane Burley, he/him or them, both a fine. I'm based out here in Portland, and recently just wrote a book, a collection of essays sort of tying together fascism, antifascism, and the kind of feeling of the apocalypse. I've been an organizer for all my adult life, labor, mutual aid groups, housing groups particularly, and part of kind of integrated social movements on both coasts, and have definitely seen a certain kind of crisis set in—maybe a longstanding crisis—but when that really came into fruition in 2020. So the feeling of the apocalypse was something I felt like I knew really well. And it's how I became—began to kind of understand the last few years within the narrative of apocalypse, particularly kind of the religious apocalypse that a lot of us were raised with.
Margaret Okay. And that's kind of interesting to me because usually when I think about the apocalypse, and when I—when I talk about it, I actually don't think much or talk much about the religious apocalypse, like—and so that's actually a little bit outside my own purview. And I was wondering if you could expand on that, because I mean, like, I have ideas about how the current world relates to societal collapse in a secular sense. But could you explain more what you mean about religious apocalypse?
Shane Burley You know, I think a piece of it comes to how I kind of understand religion or maybe spiritual practices as a sort of folk tradition for understanding our emotions, our experiences, our relationships, both kind of small, interpersonal, but also like big social systems. And so, you know, the apocalypse is something that's such—one of those ever present—kind of perennial concepts in people's folk traditions, trying to understand themselves in the world. It can be sometimes cyclical, there's many apocalypses and many rebirths, that kind of thing could be one, long standing apocalypse. But I talk about this in my book is that, you know, I had a lot of religious terror growing up in advance of the millennium. And so, you know, I was born in 1984. So I was a teenager when, you know, what the Y2K happened. But in the years leading up to that when I was still pretty young, there was this really intensive feeling that apocalypse talk was starting to happen, particularly the kind of Christian eschatology of Revelation, the rapture, and that really sort of captivated me in the worst possible way. And something I bonded—that fear I bonded on with my mother, because she had been captivated by that when she grew up Pentecostal in kind of rural California. And so that feeling of terror about what could happen, the end of the world, that stuck with me for a very long time, and not in entirely bad ways it's—and to a degree it's kind of the narrative story I give to the emotions of feeling trapped and not sure what's about to happen or feeling like things are kind of falling to pieces. And that narrative quality sometimes helps me step back and kind of understand it. And I think, after Trump's election, a real ramping up of climate collapse, economic—just totally dissolving, watching capitalism basically begin to break apart—there was that feeling. I felt like I was 10 years old again, you know, hearing about Revelation. It felt the same. And then when I was actually putting the book together it became so obvious because when I was writing the introduction, the smoke from the forest fires out in Oregon had literally blotted out the sun. And it had this kind of sickening red glow that covered everything. And people saw photos of it, you know, they were not photoshopped, it really, really was that profoundly kind of disturbing. And so it felt like it was unmistakable that there was a continuity here, that this kind of story of the apocalypse was one that was really coming to fruition more so than it had as an adult. You know, it was ephemeral when I was a kid, it was in my mind, but this was actually coming around me, and so I started to kind of understand it in that way.
Margaret How do you think that—because I mean, most of your work, you know, when when you message me and you're saying, "Hey I, you know, I wrote this book on the apocalypse," and I was kind of like, "No, no, no, you write about fascism." Because obviously, anyone can only do one thing and obviously I'm a living example of that. But, you know, in some ways in my mind the religious aspect of it almost answers this for me in a different way than I normally think about, again, because I, I think about the world somewhat in religious terms, but I was not raised in the same kind of—I was raised a lapsed Catholic, you know, and the apocalypse wasn't something that we really talked about. I tend to think of fascism as rising in this very, very secular way. Like I think about like the material conditions or whatever, like almost like a materialist rise of fascism or something. And, and yet, I guess there's also this, well, this religious rise of fascism quite obviously. And I was wondering if you could talk about that. Why is fascism on the rise now?
Shane Burley Yeah, there's a lot there. I, I just talked about this with someone else because they had asked me why in any of my work I don't cite Marxist theories on fascism. I never do. You know, and this is like, the kind of like, well Trotsky is the kind of thing people like to cite a lot. But there's a lot of versions of this to talk about, you know, it's the splitting of the middle class, or it's the, you know, the artisan classes meet with—there's all these kind of class dimensions that are meant to kind of tell that material story. Like this, you know, A+B=C, these conditions have been met, therefore this happened. And I don't actually think in those terms. I think in not anti-materialist terms, but I actually think about it in the ways that ideology is forced because I actually think that the conditions are much more muted than had been written about, you know, it's not as specific. There's a sort of this term, I use it in the book bunch of times, it's from Robert Paxton, which is "mobilizing passion." So it's like the energy that comes from a crisis. This could go into a left wing direction, could go into a right wing direction. Generally in privileged communities that goes into a more right wing direction. And I think that that—those conditions, quote/unquote, are this simple—that's the—that is as simple as it gets. It's just that kind of crisis can lead to it. There are kind of other factors that go in and sort of geopolitics. But what I think is more important is to think about it as a crisis of identity, of breaking of, you know, the tried—attempts to return to tradition for people to kind of parse out who they are, and—I think that that story of fascism is actually what brings us continuity from interwar years.
Margaret Okay.
Shane Burley Because those conditions that happened in Europe and in a few countries. Yeah, they showed no permanent stasis for how those conditions will be carried over. What happened in Germany, what happened to Italy—like in terms of the economy and those sorts of things—aren't going to happen exactly today. But what does drive them together is this crisis sense of rebirth, the the—the reification of human inequality, those sorts of things. And so we're heading to a period of a lot of instability brought on by climate collapse, economic collapse, that kind of thing. And so I think that you're seeing that tumultuous is as much of material conditions as you need.
Margaret Yeah, that um—okay, let me pitch to you my theory about the rise of fascism and how it ties into what you're saying.
Shane Burley Oh go for it.
Margaret It's a very pessimistic theory because when people ask me, I basically say that like in the 20th century we were sort of able to defeat fascism, like, as an organized political entity on some level. Obviously we didn't defeat authoritarianism. We did defeat nationalism. We didn't defeat all of these other things. But I kind of think we never will be able to again, because—not that we can't like a beat it down. But my theory is that basically as climate change makes more resources scarce to more people, it—and makes more places unliveable, there will be mobility of people and there will always be people who respond to the mobility of people with like fear and scarcity and complete sort of ignorance of how labor creates all wealth and that more people means you can do more things. And so there's always going to be people who have like the "I've got mine, fuck you" response to crisis. And I just see that crisis deepening as climate change sets in. I don't know, does that map with what you're talking about?
Shane Burley Yeah, I think he does. And I think this is gets down to that kind of collapsing of the middle that's been used a lot—why you have the radicalization of both the left and the right. Because this kind of centrist modicum of liberal politics is built on stability, it's built on the idea that this current system—which feels like it's lasted forever but it's only been here a short period of time—that's gonna, that's going to continue. And actually, when you're having increased crisis, you actually have the edges built out. And so part of, I think—part of what I think antifascists actually bring—and particularly like radicals anarchists actually bring to the antifascist project—is a battle for who owns the edges in general. So like, you're saying, we have this crisis of migration—it's not actually crisis, is totally invented by folks who are enemies of migration. But it does create that sense of crisis, and we actually end up engaging in a war with them for how we're going to approach that. Is this period of crisis going to strengthen us as a people through a revolutionary vision? Or is it going to divide us into these nationalisms that are kind of worn out? I do think that in a way we have a choice between socialism and barbarism here, that there—like we're actually going to—we kinda have to win it, otherwise somebody else is going to. So I think, like, I half agree with the pessimism. I think that there—we could be pessimistic about this. But we actually are kind of called to question on this. So we are having the question call on us right now. Like, are we going to take the challenge of the fringes to a degree? Are we going to look at this moment of crisis and say, "No, we're going to tip over and create a new revolutionary society out of that crisis." Because we don't have a choice now, it's not a matter of pushing back the crisis and trying to retain some kind of progressively moving forward center, that just can't happen anymore. The conditions don't allow for that. So instead, we have to live in the crisis.
Margaret Okay, so basically—so maybe it's not that we can't beat them this next time, it's that the center can't beat them this time. Right. Like, like a very centrist—I mean, you know, obviously, all—anything you call centrist depends on what perspective you're looking at, right. But like, theoretically, an alliance of sort of centrist powers defeated, you know, the far right last time.
Shane Burley Yeah totally.
Margaret The tankies listening will love that I'm calling the USSR centrist. But that's more polite than what I would normally call the USSR. So and—so this time it actually has to be the radical left, it has to be socialism, it has to be the idea of, like, we're all in it together to some degree, as like the only way to actually try and keep it beaten down which then maybe—I'm just trying to repeat back what you're saying, cuz I'm trying to, I'm trying to think it through. So you're saying that the thing we have to do is that when people are leaving the center, we have to help them leave the center in a good direction instead of a bad direction? Is that kind of where you're getting up?
Shane Burley Yeah, I think—I mean, in a way it's just a call to everyday radicalism to like not abandon any communities, to offer them like a tangible vision. I mean, part of the problem here is that the left loses. And the left loses so consistently, so spectacularly, that it's hard to maintain the argument at certain times, we have a revolutionary vision to offer. We abandoned certain communities, we disregard so many types of folks. And so we actually have to build that up and have a real viable alternative and the ability to win something from it. You know, like, part of why the centrist powers—you know, the great global powers—were able to defeat fascism is that they had something to offer, they were offering, like, you know, stable homes, they were—I mean, they weren't really everyone, but there was an image of it, there's like a certain kind of, like, white middle class that developed in the 50s and stuff, and they were making these arguments. All of those promises have had the rug pulled out from under them. They're all kind of revealed to be such a fraud. And people are living with that reality now. And so we—in a way we have the ability to capture that energy, and we have to deal with like a cogent vision, something really profound to offer. And I actually think that 2020 was a good example of what we have to offer, which is we don't have money and things like that, we have each other. We have the ability to share things and do it together.
Margaret But what if instead of creating a viable alternative and creating really good visions of what we want, what if instead we create a sort of pure elite click of radicals and then anyone who doesn't totally align with us we abandon to the center and/or the right. Have you thought about that as a as an option?
Shane Burley Let's just create affinity groups and do little a like ideology test before people can join, you know, that will be the vision of the revolutionary future. It was something—someone was asking me about, like, the things that—the things that 2020 did wrong. Like, the few different things that organizers did wrong. I just—my answer was the revival of the affinity group as a model of success. Nothing felt more alienating or most more closed off, more impactful for most people.
Margaret So I want to push back against that idea. And maybe it's defensiveness, right. But I think that the concept of the affinity group isn't inherently flawed—like this concept, for anyone who's listening isn't aware, as far as I understand that the concept of the affinity group is that one of the primary makers of change that you can participate in is basically you, like, crew up with some of your friends and you figure out what you want to do and then you do it together. And you have like, really tight solidarity within that group. And it's a, it's a means that has, like, primarily been pushed towards, like, direct actions and demonstrations and things like that, right? It hasn't been leveraged as much in mass actions, and, you know, labor actions and things like that. But it has been used to, like, mutual aid organizing and things. But I don't know, this something—actually is really interesting. This is something I've been thinking about a lot recently. I've been thinking about how people do and don't come to the left, and specifically the anarchist left or the anti authoritarian left or the anarchic left or basically the "we can't, we're not going to tell you exactly what to do" left. And on some level, we can tell people like, "Hey, here's a bunch of really good ideas." And they can be like, "Oh, cool. I want to join." And we don't usually have a good system for which—by which they can join, right? Because especially if we organize an affinity groups, it's like, well, we organize with our friends and we don't know you, you're not our friend.
Shane Burley Yeah.
Margaret So good luck. We have your back in the streets, probably, maybe, if we know you. I mean, ideally, right? As compared to people who organize, like, I think both churches and to some degree the right wing—well the far right actually, I think, has some of the same organizing problems that the left does. But it immediately becomes your friend group if you go join other types of organizations, right. And it provides a sense of meaning. And I would hold that it's actually a sense of meaning and affinity that holds most people into politics, into an ideology or a culture. So I see some, like, real limitations to the affinity group. But I also don't think it's wrong that people want to, like, organize with the people that they know and they care about. And I actually think it makes us more resistant to certain types of ideological takeovers and like—
Shane Burley It does.
Margaret —strong figureheads and things like that. But I, I just, I think we need to solve this problem of like, how do you give people places, like , you know, my argument that I've been making lately—sorry, I know, that was me interviewing you and I just, I've been thinking about this a lot. I don't get to talk to humans all that much.
Shane Burley No, go for it. You're good.
Margaret I've been thinking a lot about, like, what does it mean to instead of gatekeeping on the left, like, usher. Be an usher for the left, right? It's like, helping people find the place that they belong, which might not be with you, you know? I don't know actually. Okay, so that's my like vague defensiveness. But I'd like to hear your critique of the affinity group before we get back into what is fascism and how to fight it.
Shane Burley I mean, I—I think I fundamentally agree with you and I, in all my years organizing and doing things, it is strong bonds and ideas and ideology that actually keep people there. There's this mythic idea that someone joins organizing through a perfect storm of experiences that are validated non political ways, you know, like, they were about to lose their house and the tenant union came in, they saved it and they join the movement. Now they're radical, that's the way you do it. Not, you know, I knew somebody or somebody introduced an idea to me at a party or something. Like, that's the "bad way" to come. And so no, and I also think it's important to work towards depolitisizing spaces. I don't like and I was—I've been in a number of these groups when I was younger that had this almost, like, discouraging people from being like intimately involved with each other as people, you know, as if that would weaken the project.
Margaret Right..
Shane Burley But what I'm—I think, when I'm talking about more is that there is a real lack of, like you said, moving people into things, of finding ways to get people included, to reaching out to them. So you know, over 2020 there's a lot of mutual aid projects. And I remember trying to touch base with a number of them—and this, this is something this is—this is something I've talked to other people about, I think it's a tough situation. It's partly, you know, getting older is part of this, maybe not feeling as tender to radical spaces as you get older. You know, I know that like having chronic health issues or experiencing disability, things like that will sometimes pull you out of those things. And I remember feeling like very tough to feel like I had a home space in the mass protests that were happening in 2020. And often feeling like people were moving without me or kind of chase—trying to chase those groups because the tight affinity group model was based on something that I wasn't invited to and a lot of people weren't invited to. And so that, if that's the the tight knit entry to it, it ends up I think having kind of a heartbreak for a lot of people that have not been able to find their way into it. And so that's sort of the thing is, if we have too many boundaries on it, and we haven't found that way of actually getting people to form that, it almost feels like a, like a romantic dream, the affinity group that you'll never have.
Margaret Yeah, which has, like, I've always been a, you know, perpetual outsider, right? Like, there's any group I'm in, I always am convinced forever that I'm, like, not really the—I'm not part of the core of it, you know, they like, you know, when I was younger I was like, people don't even tolerate me here. Which may have been true, might not have been true. It was kind of annoying. And then as I get older, it's like, oh, they tolerate me, because I'm, like, interesting, but I'm not part of it. Right. And I think that that's actually a very common sentiment. I've talked to a lot of—a lot of anarchists who have that feeling despite being part of a sometimes really cliquey culture.
Shane Burley Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
Margaret So yeah, that's, uh, I don't know, that's a good point. It's funny because I'm like, well, I didn't experience that that much in 2020 because I wasn't super involved in the streets like I went sometimes, right. But I didn't work with an affinity group I tested riot materials and made shields and—
Shane Burley Yeah that was great.
Margaret —ran a podcast, you know. It's like I found, I found my, like, individual ways to help. And I really like that and maybe idealize that, where it's like, oh, everyone has their thing they can do and all I have to do is figure how to like, plug all these puzzle pieces together.
Shane Burley In that way it's like, the more you need those affinity group support—and the kind of support that goes far beyond just organizational support, like the ones that really intervene in your life in a way—the more you need, that, the harder it is to find, you know. I remember years ago both my parents died in like really rapid succession. And I felt like I forgot how to talk to other people, you know, I'd just kind of stare in conversations for a really long time, much longer than people would have expected. And I think, in a way, you know, the political spaces I was doing stuff, people's reaction was that—on that—was to sort of back away from me. And to make it so that all the expectations that come along, both spoken and unspoken, I no longer could meet, therefore I couldn't really be there. You know, I couldn't travel to meetings, I couldn't necessarily be as dependable as I used to be, all those sorts of things. Really dramatically pulled me out of a shared space of mutual aid. So I spent a lot of time thinking, like, what would it mean to flip that script? What how would we create something that, like, not just, like, creates a stable mutual aid but, like, seeks people out? That kind of like grasps after them? And I don't—it's not like I have a great answer about that. But I do like the idea that that's like our mission.
Margaret Yeah.
Shane Burley Is to, like, constantly like reaching out towards them.
Margaret I think that's like one of the biggest questions that we have to ask ourselves as a, as antiauthoritarians, because we have to say, you know, it's so much easier when you can say, "Well, here's the plan. We all do this, which Joe over there told us to do, you know, and all praise Joe, and we'll get this done." You know, and then because someone is, like, lost and they don't know what to do with their life, right? It's like cults recruit that way. So do fringe ideological movements. You know, so do churches, all of these three things are roughly the same thing sometimes. And, you know, it's very effective, but it's predatory. Right? You know, it's like, I always say that, like, antiauthoritarian revolutionists, we're playing—we're playing the game on hard mode, but it's also the only way to get the good ending if it's a video game, you know? Like, if you play it on easy you actually, no matter what you do, you get the bad ending. You have to play on hard mode to get to the good ending where we don't create more tyranny.
Shane Burley This is, I mean, it's also a question of, like, organizing in general. You know, I remember being part of groups where the term "social insertion" was used a lot, you know. Which led to lots of great jokes, but like, it was this idea that, like, you know, you have an analysis, that analysis is well forged—you know, many—lots of people have got into this thing. And so you're going to go into a social movement and you're going to help shape it in a positive direction. You're inserting into this. But you're not predatory. No, no. Because you really believe in that social movement, right. Therefore, you can't be predatory. It's not entryism because you're totally well intentioned. It—now I, you know, when you look back a lot—and this is the foundation of organizing in general, you know, anyone that has like, you know, be like a union organizer talks about, like, agitational conversations. You draw people's trauma, you agitate it, and then you move it towards a path, right? Like that's the function of the classic organizing. But it does, there's a lot—like you are really going in there with the intention of moving people at vulnerable stages, moving people's projects at vulnerable stages. It's a, it's a really tough balance. And it's not one that I think is perfect. There's been a lot of times in these organized spaces where I'll see these conversations happen and I'm just like, I don't feel good about this. I feel like I was just, you know, selling somebody a Macbook or something.
Margaret Yeah, I mean, you know, it's something I think about with, like, it's easier for me to think about with like my veganism, right. I don't seek to proselytize veganism. Like, one, I just straight up don't believe it's the answer for everybody. You know, some people don't even have a question so why would they need an answer? But when people come to me, and they're like, oh, what's the deal? Why do you do this? I'm very happy to talk about it. Right? And say, like, this is why it works for me. And I kind of tried to do that with anarchism, but it, you know, but it feels a little bit more urgent, right? With anarchism. But that urgency is dangerous, right? It's the same thing as like a Christian missionary because, you know, a Christian missionary, you have to go do this because you're literally saving people from eternal damnation. And so there's this, like, similar drive sometimes into saying, like, well, there's oppression and anti-oppression, and I need to teach everyone anti-oppression. And it's true. But also, it's not going to work until people are ready to like come to it which, of course, also doesn't have any reflections within the church and come to Jesus. I don't know. Yeah, the social insertion thing always bothered me even though I on some level, right, I do it, but I do it subculturally, right. If I'm involved with a subculture I try to like stake out a presence for, like, radical ideas within that subculture that, like, come from that subculture, you know. I'll try and say, like, well, I'm involved in goth and here's all the, like, things that I reflect well with about the goth subculture that work with my values as an anarchist. And I'll definitely like tell people that. And in my head that's different than saying, like, I'm going to demand that all goth spaces be leftist. I might demand that all goth spaces be free of Nazis. But that's only to do my part to make sure the entire world is free of Nazis.
Shane Burley I feel almost like less conflicted when it comes to a subcultural space. You know, so it's like, you know, like, we've talked about, like, neofolk and stuff. Like, I am entering a neofolk space to change the rules and kick out all the Nazis totally intentionally, like, I—like they should be scared. It's a nefarious plan. We want to eliminate them from the space entirely. But, like, when someone's sort of, like, sharing their, like, human vulnerability, I feel like we need to hold that with care, you know, and sometimes that's a really tough balancing act. You know, there's, there's a lot—I mean, I used to feel uncomfortable with the radical politics-to-church analogy, but it's very true. And in a lot of ways, just common human impulses, right, to try and come together with other people figure out a solution for this mess. You know, we have our own version of eschatology. We have our own version of the Second Coming, like, all those sorts of things, in a way, I feel like maybe it's a common human story just told with profoundly different language. And so I it's—I mean, this was true all in 2020, because there was so much trauma. Just—all of the kind of political friction was built on trauma, all the transitions were traumatic ones. So the question was, how do you radicalize this moment but also, like, really holding true to supporting people through that trauma.
Margaret So this idea of how—I'm answering the beginning of what he said instead of the end of what he said because I got fixated on it. This idea of, like, you entered the subculture and you kick the Nazis out, right, and that is your, your entryism. That is your, you know, I'm trying to change this. And it's interesting because it's, that's different than saying, "I'm going to enter neofolk and make it an anarchist space." But instead it's saying, "I'm going to enter neofolk and to make it a space that is okay for me and mine and my, like, leftism, and drive out the Nazis." And so, I actually do think that's different than like walking in and saying, "Everyone needs to be this." And so that's actually, I think that reflects onto, like, antifascism as a larger movement. I think this answers the question of how to change the world perfectly and we've solved everything. Is that antifascism—you know, it's like people use anarchists and antifascism almost interchangeably if they're talking shit in the media, right? And also, like, you know, historically, right, like you know, anarchists are the forefront of antifascism and then also, if you look at the period in which, you know, authoritarian left was like not really a player on the scene for, like, until more recently again, you know, anarchism, antifascism were fairly synonymous, right? But it's different because it's saying, we want to drive out the Nazis, like, we want to stop Naziism and make it okay for us to be anarchists or anarchic or, you know, some other leftist position that is a reasonable one. And then when we do that the thing that we're united about is drive out the Nazis. And I find that that, like, naturally tends towards people being, like, "Hey, what are the alternatives to the Nazis?" And like thinking more for the—on their own, "How do I get involved in making sure I'm part of a society that has no room for Nazis, period." And then come to the left and that way.
Shane Burley It's sort of like capturing another mobilizing passion too, you know. Like, the passion of music, or of a musical space or a subculture—so there's a lot of really emotive experiences in there that somebody else is capturing. Like somebody else is telling that story. We're not there. And so it's a totally contested space. And I think there's a chapter in the book that talks about this. But it's, it ends up being a [inaudible] struggle. That's one that's like so overlooked in a lot of political groups, they look kind of down on that or don't see it as productive work because they don't want their movements and remain subcultural so they avoid engaging in subcultural struggle. The other part is you kind of have to be a part of that subculture to deal with any sicerity.
Margaret Right.
Shane Burley But it is something where you're sort of like saying, I'm not allowing these people to take energy anymore. Like we are, like, it's like a war for that energy and space.
Margaret Yeah, because I think people are attracted to subculture for the same reason that they're attracted in some ways to ideology, which is that they desire a sense of meaning. And I would say subculture is usually more about, like, aesthetic meaning, right? Which is incredibly valid, and I care about it deeply as a person. And yeah, like, subculturalism gets a lot of shit. And actually, I think it's comparable to the way affinity groups get shit, right? Because, like, if you have the cool kids and you're not one of them, then it's really natural and actually an antiauthoritarian and good urge to be, like, well then fuck the cool kids. Right?
Shane Burley Yeah.
Margaret But and I think we—
Shane Burley I've always said, fuck the cool kids, for sure.
Margaret Yeah. And then what's funny is then you end up being the cool kids who say fuck the cool kids and you're like, you can't join because you have a baseball cap, and then you're like—or whatever. I don't know what the cool kids I—well, all the cool hipster anarchist all have baseball caps now anyway. But, you know, it's like, you're like a normal guy wearing khakis, you can't join, you know, because fuck you. It's like, nah, you're actually just being the cool kids. But, so if we—people who don't like subculturalism within radical politics, it makes sense, right? If you think—if you conflate punk and anarchy, right? And you're not a punk, you therefore think, well, I'm, I can't be an anarchist. And as a—and then probably there's a bunch of dumb punks who are like, "Oh, the fact that I'm a squatter is the only good real way to be an anarchist." Right? And so then, you know, they're gatekeeping, anarchism, etc, right? And I find that the answer is not to then, like—I remember when all of a sudden all the punks, like, started trying to dress as normal as possible in order to, like, infiltrate the mainstream.
Shane Burley Yeah.
Margaret And I think some people did that to infiltrate the mainstream, but I actually think most of them did it because they actually wanted to dress normal, or dress in a different aesthetic than they were previously. And they were actually making room for you to dress in a different aesthetic within the radical movement. And so I think that's good. I think that the, like—my answer has always been we just need to make every subculture a space that engenders radicalism, you know, and we need to—and then we just need to make sure that they all, like, get along with each other where it's not, like, "Oh, well you're, you know, you're into metal that's dumb" or whatever, right?
Shane Burley You know, I think in a way—I don't know if this is a step too far—but a liberated society is a web of very collaborative subcultures. You know? Because people, people are different, they'll have different tastes, religions, like, you know, ways of living life, diets, things like that. And the goal is to allow people with different while eliminating nationalism and like those dividing lines and hierarchies. And so I respect people's subcultures. And a lot of—you know, I talked about—I have a chapter in the book called "Contested Space," and I talk about neofolk, I talk about heathenry a lot. A lot of these things like, if you—when you talk to antiracist heathens, you ask them why you do this work they're like, "Because nobody else will care. They'll just give this away to people," right? Like, people don't care about our subcultures, except for us. And to remain true to that, like, we're the only ones that can do it. So it becomes, in a way, a really essential political struggle because the struggle to, like, whether or not we have the ability to create spaces that really reflect us.
Margaret Yeah.
Shane Burley And a lot of ways like all these Nazi infiltrations into a lot of subcultures is like a direct attack on our ability to, like, enjoy life, to have like an aesthetic way of living.
Margaret Yeah. And then, so this all comes back into this thing where it's like, it's about solidarity instead of unity. It's instead of saying, like, it's not about everyone suddenly becoming the same and all having the same ideas. It's just literally about, like, not hating people for having other different religious ideas, or aesthetic ideas, or even political ideas within a certain frame. Right? As long as the frame allows for other people to have political ideas, you have a lot more freedom to accept them, right? Okay, so how would you describe fascism? And how would you suggest the fight against fascism, what it might look like? Those are probably—those are really simple questions.
Shane Burley [Laughing] I'll give you, like, 10 word answers then we'll be good.
Margaret Yeah, listicle maybe.
Shane Burley So in my first book I basically have two [inaudible] in the definition of fascism. So one is the belief in human inequality, that people are fundamentally hierarchical and unequal, for a myriad of reasons, biological or racial or spiritual. And the other thing is that identity is fixed, immutable, and determines who you are. So those identities and the hierarchies are bound together. Race is the most common one you see, but gender plays in there, sexual orientation, sometimes religion, there's other factors case—there's different versions of this that can play out. And but we use intentionally vague language so that you can include a bigger swath of types of far right movements that have that kind of base commonality. Well, part of this is a revolutionary return to a pre-enlightenment way of living or a pre kind of modern way. So you'll take kind of earlier modern racial ideas and try and bring them up to the current day by using, you know, pseudoscience, or reinterpreting spiritual values, things like that. There's a revolutionary element to it, it does seek to basically undermine the basic assumptions of society. So that it can achieve both the hierarchy and the identity models. And it has a populist element to it. And that's, I think, one thing that gets sometimes lost in this and it particularly gets lost in some of the older kind of Marxist tropes about finance capital, or monopoly capital, things like that, is that the working class does fascism, the white working class in particular does it in a really mass level. People participate in fascism, it's not just happening from the top, it actually happens in a lot of ways from the bottom or the middle. But it happens from mass complicity. And the violence is a really central part of that as well, because violence is kind of understood as the fulcrum of hierarchy and identity. It's how politics happens in this kind of revolutionary cycle. It's turning back on the center with a new revolutionary, not to turn things back to where it was, but they take the reactionary things they like from the past and modernize them, which is a very complicated series of forces. Why I think it's really hard to answer, you know, there's, you know, hundreds of hundreds of books written about what fascism is and almost none of them actually agree with one another, which makes it really, really hard to fight it. I think—so there's a few things, having a clear understanding of what is fascist and what is not, I think, is really important. And I think that has actually been built up pretty well over the past five or six years, people actually have a much more sophisticated understanding of politics, like just everyday folks, because they've been forced to do it and to really orient to it. The fundamental core way to fight fascism is to disallow its presence. And so fascism has to do all the normal organizing things to grow, it has to talk to people, it has to build sometimes groups, both formal and informal. Deplatforming is the process by which those things seek you no longer have access to other people. So breaking that chain is the fundamental core of antifascism. I think another core piece of that is having a revolutionary vision to offer people that runs counter to that, that exposes the lie for it and actually brings people together in something that really gets at their needs, you know, that really gets at the solutions to economic inequality are the feelings of alienation, the lack of community, those sorts of things. I think that's the other piece of it. Antifascism is an inherently negative thing. And I think we actually kind of caught earlier about why. It's actually a really simple proposition. We're not trying to build everything, we're just trying to stop this one place so we can exist. But when we exist, we do the other thing, right? The other thing is part of how we exist. It's like a civic life, to live a joyous life is to actually build that community. And that's how I kind of—I talked about this in the book. That's how I think of a revolutionary vision is us building something that supports us in our own image, like when we're doing that you're engaging in that revolutionary project.
Margaret Okay. Given like, so basically saying in some ways, it's actually hard to defeat it with centrism, it's hard to defeat it with—certainly anyone who's like disaffected by the status quo is obviously not going to be super attracted to the status quo. One of the things that—okay, so what about like, I'll just pitch my, like, my thing that I think about a lot with how to defeat fascism, is that I think the fascist mindset is an attraction to individual power. And, like, to be strong—maybe community power—but like, to be like strong with your buds, right? And against this thing that you're afraid of. Like, I think that—I think that essentially fascism is a cowardly position. It comes from this—and I—this is like very pejorative, I mean, obviously I love pejoratives to say about Nazis—but like, it comes from this position of fear, right? Like, these people are coming, they will therefore destroy my way of life. I am not strong enough to live my own life if these other people are around. This kind of thing. But also, like, I think people want to get high on power, and especially, like, street level—like, it seems like fascism has historically tended to have a paramilitary element of, like, you know, people run around beating up people that don't like, right? And I think those people are very much attracted to strength. And when they get beat up, it's not fun anymore. Like when they can show up in enough numbers to when it's real fun. And then when they get their asses handed to them, it's not anymore. And maybe this is like kind of leftover from some of them—the pre—like, we've learned a lot about confronting fascism in the past three or four years, right? I'm basing this mostly on my experiences of talking to primarily European, especially Eastern European, antifascists who are doing work, like, over the past, like, 10-20 years, is this idea that like, yeah, when it's not fun anymore, when when you're not strong anymore, you quit. I don't know. Does that? Am I wrong about that? Are we've been proven wrong? Or is that, how does that tie in?
Shane Burley No, I mean, there's, there's a really old through line from like Adorno and folks—like Adorno wrote, you know, "The Authoritarian Personality" about this kind of process, you know, that was really at the heart of what fascism was. I think, you know, I think there's a sort of rebellion against soft power, the idea that power is gained through consensus and compromise and lobbying and persuasion, and like a sort of return to hard power that, like, wins by force and strength, like sort of cuts out all the other stuff. Which feel as though—at least have been told to them—is how things are done now, which is why you're in x, y, and z situation, which is why your life is going nowhere, because of this kind of coercion of softness.
Margaret They can punch their way out of all this talk.
Shane Burley Right, right. And this is a deep, I think this is a deepseated thing in our culture, in general. There's this Marxist named Moishe Postone who wrote this really famous essay on antisemitism called "Antisemitism and National Socialism." And he talks about the commodity form—basically that the way that products are made sort of bifurcates labor. There's like the good labor of, like, artisans, people use their hands. And then there's like the bad labor of, like, finance, capital, or maybe like real estate people, bankers, that kind of thing. But the reality is that both of them are a part of the system, right? They're actually both a piece of capitalism. And really an equal measure. But we don't see it that way. And so we ended up experiencing a bifurcation whereby we start to resent this one type of capital, when we start to like, you know, celebrate the other type of capital. And I think there is a really deeply layered process in that where we create a false image of what's responsible in our lives. And then we look at this sort of producer's mentality of a strong person using their hands, laboring, that honest person, and that person has to be the one that's being kind of attacked by the other person, the other person is basically characterized by their, you know, greedy persuasion and their lies and their, you know, board rooms and their greasy hands and that kind of thing. And so I think we ended up having a culture that helps to build this in, that it helps to tell the story that if you were only to just be strong, and to essentially use violence, you would be able to see through all the petty perversions of society, all the things that make us so sick. If you could just overcome that and be like the artisan instead of the finance capitalist, then you would somehow come out. And I think there's a deep mythology, because what's happening is that story is being told. But then there's real impulses underneath it. People really are losing their homes and they're losing their farms. They really don't know the community, they don't have neighbors, they don't have good jobs, they don't talk to the kids. I mean, those things are real. And so I think that that process—having a real tactile experience, right? It's going out with your buddies in your goofy polo shirts and hitting someone, it feels like you're doing something, right? Like, you're really reaffirming that dichotomy. That's profoundly powerful thing. And I think that, you know, when you see people out in that kind of, those—again, I've been a lot of these Proud Boy rallies where they attack people, and not just Proud Boys, other groups—like, they are as high as people could be. I mean, there's almost like a spiritual dimension to setting yourself up for that kind of violence. It imbues so much meaning in their lives, and they attach so much meaning to it. So I think you're right, I think there's this process about claiming individual power. But the reality is, I mean, you know this, it's not like a secret that that's not power at all. That's maybe one of the weakest things a person can do. What's powerful is coming together with other people and realizing your vulnerability with them. And having the ability to actually change something. Like that's, that's a—I mean, it's infinitely more powerful. But again, we're being told that that's the slimy way of doing things in a way. That that's the, that's the coercive way. That's a soft way. That's the way of liberals and people who have gotten this in this situation in the first place.
Margaret Yeah. And then I think about—I mean, there's like, there's ways that we always have to be on guard. I don't want to say, like, antifascist is the same as fascist. It's just not true, right. Antifascist violence is like an inherently defensive quality that—on the other hand, I mean, I'm sure Nazis would say that theirs is defensive, too, about their way of life or whatever the fuck right? But—
Shane Burley They always frame it as defense.
Margaret Yeah.
Shane Burley That's, it's so consistent always. Even when—the beginning of the Holocaust they framed is self defense.
Margaret And so then it's like an interesting thing where in some ways I'm saying, well, like, the way is that if you beat them up successfully enough, they go away. And, you know, that is in some ways holding on to hard power or promoting hard power. But yet I—and maybe I'm wrong about this—but okay, there's like this story that has always sat with me. I was talking to an antifascist, an old punk from Asheville who was part of the antifascist kicking out shit, Nazi punks in the 80s. And he was like, well they outnumbered us, right? But we won eventually on some level of driving fascist organizing out of Asheville. And the way we would do it, is we gave them no rest. You see a Nazi, you jump a Nazi. And he was talking about this time where he was, like, walking home, he sees three Nazis, he's alone, and he jumps them. He jumps all three of them. And he gets the shit kicked out of him, right? But it's like—but it still breaks their sense of security and rightness. Because they're not the ones who instigated that, you know? And eventually it kind of drove people away. And, and maybe this is bullshit, but I think about how, like, theoretically—like Nazis will play the underdog card if it's all they got, right? But like, what they—their good card is claiming underdog without being underdog that's like their strong card in their deck. But claiming underdog while being underdog doesn't really work very much because only the most like deeply ideologically committed Nazis stay Nazis in that sense. Everyone else is kind of like, yes, isn't really fun anymore. And again, I don't know if this is outdated. And I wonder—I questioned my own in this case, like, insistence on hard power. And I think that there's all kinds of, like, soft power that goes behind this. And like, it seems like antifascist organizing has at least as long of a history of, like, organizing, and also like counter recruitment, and like, soft stuff.
Shane Burley You know, it—it's like those things you're indicating, those are actually approached as organizing, right? So it's like never letting you rest. And this is something I've heard from other groups. You know, when I interviewed Rose City Antifa for my last book they said they basically were able to successfully take down Volksfront—which was like a, you know, a big confederation skinhead gang in the 90s centered in Portland—just because they were so tenacious, because they never stopped, right? They made it so impossible. But that was like an organizing project. It actually wasn't just about like building up muscles and taking them down. It was about, like, you know, how do you look at a situation and find all the ways to make them totally unsuccessful, you know, to make them unstable at home and at work. So it was almost like in a way of like, those sorts of things, whether or not they're engaging in physical resistance was almost like a secondary thing to the negotiation of being like a community organizer and being like in that community and thinking—and there's the other different too is that they really are defensive. I mean, people are being pushed to defend themselves because of the violent presence of Nazis if, you know, if neo-nazi skinheads weren't out murdering people in the 80s I doubt a movement of people would have formed to take them on. Like they—their violence was so ever-present that they—people were forced to do it. You know, and I also, as much as people I know there's like, you know, riot porn videos and stuff, I never really hear antifascists doing a ton of celebrations of violence, because I don't think that there's a lot of like joy in that for most folks.
Margaret Yeah. And then I almost think that the ones that have the most joy are the sort of, like, when it's almost like you're like clowning them. Like, obviously, it is not totally the same to put a pie in someone's face as punch them in the face. It's almost like you're doing it to make sure that people laugh at them. You know, like, I just think of the Richard Spencer punch, you know. Like it wasn't, like, he got taken to the ground and, like, you know, kicked to death or something. Right? It was just like, he was talking and now he can't because someone sucker punched him.
Shane Burley Yeah, it was like a humiliate—like a public humiliation. You know, it also, it stops their continuity. I mean, like Richard Spencer could no longer just go talk to a camera anymore, right? It's too uncomfortable to do that. So the function wasn't that, like, stopping them with the fist, it was now they have the specter hangover of not be able to do x, y, and z activity. That work was—I mean, it was so clear with Richard Spencer too because he was so upfront about it. I talked about in the book, too. I mean, like, that's what stopped them was that they could not do the events anymore. So they couldn't do the practical organizing they wanted to do, their organizations really couldn't function anymore. So it was sort of like taking that to its logical conclusion, like, how do you see through the situation and like a real organizer way, which is why I think part of why the left is different—or radicals are different—because it is about a community building project. Because at the fundamental core, it's about how do we realize an actual vibrant, loving community?
Margaret I'm just, like—I mean that's probably what they say. But there's a difference just literally in whether or not ours is about, you know, ours is about inclusion and theirs is about exclusion, you know? Okay, well, how does all this tie into apocalyptic survival, right? We're talking about what is fascism? How do we stop fascism? You know, why—I mean, I know the answer to this, but why am I having you on this prepper podcast? What is—how does how does this tie together?
Shane Burley I think there's a couple things here. I think the first is acknowledging what we're actually living in, which is much more severe than I think where—what is normative to discuss. And I think part of why it, we, we don't encourage that kind of discussion is that we are afraid it would lead to apathy, we're afraid it would lead people to not fight, you know, things like climate change, to not try and push back on, like, emission standards, whatever the reforms are, you know, and I think there's a fear that pushing past that would then disallow us all the kind of both morally and practically accessible things to do. The other thing is just living with the actual reality of where we're at, you know. What's that mean, like, [inaudible] a lot, you were trained to live in a world that no longer exists. That's a really profound thing that we have to kind of sit with. And so I'm now in a situation where in the next couple of months, within a few miles of my house, the entire ancient forests that surround my city will ignite in the flames, right? And they'll blanket everything with a toxic smoke where I'll have to wear a gas mask and we have to use air purifiers. That's, that's what this is now. We can expect that, we put on calendar. That's what our life is like now for that period. We're living in an era where literally, like, people's financial investments are dominated by stuff like cryptocurrency. I'm not even trying to make fun of people, I just, this is just the kind of chaos of the modern economies, where we're heading to a place where, you know, states—while as kind of monstrous as they are—are still things that we've sort of depended on, those are starting to break down in their practical functions, they literally couldn't meet the challenges of 2020. It wasn't just they get it in a shitty way, it's that they could not do it at all. And so what that does is it sort of forces us into a counter power project where these sort of things like mutual aid stuff take on a level of importance that they didn't have for every person all the time, you know, there—I know you've been a part of bunch of mutual aid groups, I've done a bunch, you know, Food Not Bombs when I was younger, and a lot of them were really bad. And I feel kind of bad, like, drawing out the worst examples of them over the last year because I've talked about this a lot.
Margaret You mean like how we thought eggplant should be cooked in Food Not Bombs?
Shane Burley We'd like—you know, there was just times when I was like, I was like, you know, the food we're cooking is subpar. We're like two hours late because we're hung over. And just stuff like that all the time. And the reality was that the soup kitchen down the road, which we had all kinds of ethical problems with, did it much better. Like they just did what we were trying to do a lot better. That has actually in a way collapsed in on itself where the idea that there is a service space that exists and non-politicized way has sort of disappeared, and we're all that's left. And also our ability to do it has gotten better. And there's better examples historically, you know, like, survival pending revolution programs with the Panthers, there's other groups that done it really well. But we're hitting an era of capacity where we're actually in a way sort of able to take it on. And what I saw in 2020 was, you know, mutual aid groups come together really quickly around the Coronavirus, then those mutual aid groups to the protests, and grow that and create the whole infrastructure. And then that infrastructure then pivots to the fires, which then pivots to the next thing. And we're actually able to do that in a really profound way. So as this crisis is unfolding and we're living through profound prices, our ability to survive through collective action is really ramping up. And so I'm seeing these different projects as ways of not just seeing through how to survive the crisis, but what's on the other side? You know, our ability to survive now and to do it in a vibrant way is that revolutionary project that comes next. And so, when I think about the apocalypse, I don't just think about, you know, all like the kind of, I don't know, eschatological fantasies of like the Left Behind series, you know, where like, it's like fire and brimstone and, you know, people being beamed up to heaven. I think about what does it mean to bring something to an end. And I think, like, if we're thinking about collapse and things like that, that's endemic to our society now. That's not an end of anything. That's just a continuation of what we've had to a degree. What ends it is changing our underlying conditions. And so I think by responding to this crisis in the way that we're doing—and this is just the seed of it, hopefully it just grows as we create really vibrant structures of survival, healthcare networks, of solidarity networks to support people in tenant situations, all the kinds of things that we're going to need. By doing that we actually do have the ability to shift to the next stage, that we actually answer the crisis, not with more crisis, but by bringing this thing to an end so we can build something new.
Margaret Okay, so that actually answers my pessimism at the beginning of it, right, is—like, there's going to be something new. Things are not going to continue. Now. I mean, I'll be real, like, people thought capitalism is gonna fall before. I actually don't want to put all my eggs in the capitalism is definitely going to collapse basket, or even the nation states are going to collapse basket, just because they're oddly resilient. Right? But it's gonna be fucking different.
Shane Burley Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Margaret And, and it completely certainly could collapse, which people just sort of forget is possible, and then they remember it as possible. But now the Biden's president they forget as possible again. And so then, if everyone's looking at this escalating crisis, there needs to be an answer we offer. And Nazis are offering an answer, which is blame the migrants, be strong by being a fucking coward. You know, masculinity taken to its ultimate and—not even its ultimate extreme, a weird, twisted side path of masculinity. And so yeah, I guess we got to do something new instead. And that's the answer to the pessimism is everyone's going to change their mind about how society should work. So we just have to fuckin good enough answer.
Shane Burley And I actually am optimistic about it. You know, one of the, one of the realities—I think we—I have gotten historically caught up in this kind of, this under resourced space. Like, we don't have money, they have the money. We don't have the time, we're always working trying to survive. But the reality is, we have the one thing that this new model is built on, we have each other. That is all that we actually need. And the reality is I think that maybe this is the materialism of the—maybe this is the dialectic is that the conditions have met into a place where I think, like, for example, we have social media tools that do allow us to connect in ways we didn't before. We have the ability to travel and be with people in a way we didn't have before. We have the ability to spontaneously rise up in coordinated fashion that was really hard, you know, a couple of decades ago. Conditions are ripe to actually realize what it means to build a society of relationships. That is possible. And by doing it now, by living that through, it inherently challenges power. That is a revolutionary process right there. You know, it's not one that leads to a revolution, is it right there. Like, living that new society is that revolutionary process because it creates the friction and tension. And the reality is that we are, like you said, it's not like capitalism and the state are going to disappear tomorrow, but they are going to devolve even further into more outstanding cruelties. Which, in a way, puts the necessity on us because we can only survive by doing it together, that—we can always survive through a new society.
Margaret Yeah, when people ask me, you know, when people I'm—like, um, you know, I prepare for the apocalypse or whatever, like—or even like, I want to have an anarchist society or I want a totally different society, people will be like, "Well, how would you do this, that thing or the other?" And you're like, well, how do we do it now? Like, people will be like, "Well, how would a revolutionary society make antibiotics?" And you're like, well, I literally don't know because I don't know how we do it now, but there are people who do know how and many of those people might join us and tell us how, or just keep doing it. You know, and—yeah, you're right, we always fall into this idea that, like, we—I think overall one of the biggest problems is I think that, like, leftist revolutionists, anarchists, whatever the fuck, like just don't know how to, like, take themselves seriously and act big. Like, because we are so used to being told we can't do anything but, like, throw a tantrum. And now I'm not like talking shit on rioting, I think that's actually a great way of expressing power and learning to find power with each other, you know, but that—we're being told that all we can do is, like, stir things up a little bit. And, you know, we even run into this within, like, ostensibly left spaces where people are like, "Oh, well, you know, you antiauthoritarians don't actually accomplish anything." And they're actually just lying. Like, they're just, they're either wrong or lying. We have we accomplish things on massive scales constantly. Probably the most interesting revolutionary project happening in the world right now is the democratic confederalism of northern Syria, at least in terms of like scale that it's happening on, you know? And we can do that, you know? It doesn't require—I mean, it requires organization which actually gets into that soft—I don't know. Ah, man, there's just so much to fuckin think about all this.
Shane Burley In a way it gets at the problem—it gets it the reality of the problem—which is that we're not engaging in revolution because it's easy.
Margaret Yeah.
Shane Burley We're doing it because it's hard. Like we didn't—like, easy doesn't get us where we're trying to go, right? Like we just talked about earlier, it's actually the hard. You know, one of the—I used to love this, coming from a kind of authoritarian communist that would try and stack up their list of accomplishments. And I'm like, name one of those, that was a liberated society. Not one of them. Never one. Like, the reality is that like, it's just hard. And it's unlikely too. That's the other thing, it's a journey. And so we, it does require sort of throwing it all in, which used to feel scary, except we are all in all the time now. You know, like, we live in a war society now. And so it's never going to be a situation where the comforts of stability are just there that we can kind of retreat to for safety. Instead, all we have is each other, which has a volatility to it, but it's one that we control.
Margaret And there's upsides to this, like, no one thinks the normal is normal anymore. You know? Like, I don't—I never actually want to fall into the, like, "Collapse of society is good, actually." Right? Because like, yeah, the existing society was a nightmare, but like, the breakdown of it causes so much trauma, pain, and death—
Shane Burley So much pain.
Margaret —that you can't, yeah, you can't celebrate it. Like because it's also a failure. We didn't successfully, like, shift before this happened, right? But there's something nice about like, you know, like people believing that your position is a lot more reasonable than they used to believe. Like, even just stuff like, oh hey, I'm going to go to this medical training. Or before the inauguration, I'm going to spend $1,000 on trauma medical supplies and make sure that they're distributed to people. Or whatever the thing is, right? I can say that to, like, coworkers and stuff now, right? Because people are like, yeah, I mean, okay. It's not necessary, what they would do, but like, it doesn't seem as far fetched as it used to.
Shane Burley Yeah, I was talking with Scott Crow and I was working on the book and, you know, we're talking about the Common Ground Clinic, and we're talking about the real early days of being in, in the kind of Katrina—in like the aftermath of the hurricane.
Margaret Could you, could you explain for people who don't know what you're talking about?
Shane Burley Yeah, yeah. So we're talking about in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Scott Crow and number of folks came out there and worked to develop this kind of community-run clinic, this kind of mutual aid project—a number of mutual—actually it became an interlocking web of different types of mutual aid projects. And one of the things he was talking about, like, you know, you want to fight collapse. Like you want to—there's really no—nothing should be romanticize about collapse. There's also a reality of, like, things were gone. There is actually a void there now. And so in a way we, you know—he's like, what I had to offer—which felt so partial in other situations—what I had to offer was what was necessary then. It's all there was. And so in a way there's less competition for how to solve problems, in a sense. Because we've seen that like there is—there really isn't an offered solution. It's not like we can take the temporary solution that state is offering when it comes to the Coronavirus. All that was there was us helping each other. No one else is going to show up at our house and deliver medication, it just wasn't gonna happen. And so in a way, like, our ideologies and like the ideas that underskirt that suddenly have an incredible relevance for people because they actually answer the question everyone has. And I think there is that common experience makes the case better than we ever could have. It makes the case in a very sincere way. And it's one that we don't have to pump full of kind of this ideological performance. We're just there trying to exist in this kind of supportive, overcoming way. And, maybe it's just the silver linings playbook in a way, but it's about looking at a lot of these crisis happening and seeing, like, how can I be there in the best version of myself I can with other people. Like, how can I show up and live this out and try and support community and build it with the confidence that doing that is a revolutionary act, that it does actually get us somewhere? You know, in a time—I mean, like, this was, this was fucking hard. Like, this was a really hard year and a half. And coming through it, we did it with each other and we really saw a vision of what we were. And I—it comes down to—I think, you know, Robert Evans I think talked about this on the podcast. You know, people are smart and kind with each other in crisis for the most part. The non—there's an elite panic of rich people that will kind of force that crisis and stuff that survivalists, right wing survivalists often talk about. But what we see is that our ability to handle this crisis is incredibly resilient, and incredibly caring. And in a way it runs counter to every narrative and structure we have in society. So I—seeing that, it gives me a lot of hope and optimism, not just that we can make it through this incredible sense of collapse, but also that we can build something new out of it. And maybe that's the dialectic, the conditions we were always sort of promised.
Margaret I really appreciate your optimism, partly because I think I usually try to be the more optimistic person—not necessary on this podcast, but in conversations in my life, and that I sort of needed this pep talk today. So I actually really appreciate it. It actually ties into—it makes me think about—we got to wrap this up in a moment. But I think about um, you know, sometimes you work and your work and you work in a project, and it just doesn't resonate with people. And maybe you care about it so you keep doing it. And sometimes you work and you work and you work and it resonates with people way beyond, like, what you put in is—you get way more out of it than what you put in. And this podcast has actually been an example of that. My previous podcast is not an example of it. I I ran a podcast called We Will Remember Freedom which was an anarchist fiction podcast, and it had listeners and had people cared about it, right? And I put a lot of work into it.
Shane Burley Yeah I listened to that.
Margaret And I'm proud of that podcast. And then I made this podcast right before the Coronavirus and it resonated more with people. And, while both things are important to me, it actually makes sense to do these things that resonate with people, and mutual aid and rebellion are kind of what we've been doing forever—not like just you and me, but like, you know, the antiauthoritarian left—and it's resonating with people right now. And it's a really good time to let it keep resonating with people and to, like, put energy in when it's coming back. And, I don't know.
Shane Burley It's—I actually think it's almost, in a way, like what we're talking about the subculture is like people like survivalism. They want to be able to do these things and they don't feel welcome in those spaces. So there's this—I think, this idea that like, yeah, I think this is kind of cool. I'd like to be able to, you know, do edible plants or do, you know, medical training, like build self defense—they want to do all these things but then they go and look at the spaces where those are available and don't see themselves in is all. So when when someone gives them the option of like, yeah, I'm actually going to validate your desires and we're going to allow you to be yourself with it, that's like a really profound thing. I think that, but that's happening all over the place with mutual aid and survival things, with DIY stuff is having a huge Renaissance. People want to have that really hands on, tactile effect in their lives. And I think because they've seen that so many things were sort of outside of our control, and we're doing it in this way that brings us together. And I think having, combining those things and not having this isolationist survivalists fantasy allows people to really rethink, what would it mean, like—what would it mean to build community in a crisis? And I think that—it is optimistic in the end, I think it's giving people a real path forward.
Margaret And I will say to anyone who's listening, my favorite type of response that I've gotten from this podcast is—well, I mean, the most nice in my personal life is when I go to something and people are like, "Oh my god, I love your podcast." That's really fun. But overall, hearing from people who were, who weren't necessarily leftist, but just like weren't right wingers who were like, well, I like living in the woods and I have always been kind of into preparedness. And, you know, it's refreshing to hear people talk about this who don't think antifa are terrorists or whatever. Right? And, you know, and who are concerned about the rise of fascism. And, I don't know, I appreciate that so much. Because for all I'll talk about, like, I really mean it when I say, if I enter a space, all I want to do is kick out the Nazis. I don't want to tell people they have to ideologically agree with me beyond "don't murder me for being trans." You know? I don't know. Okay, but do you have like, last thoughts about fascism, apocalypse, survival? And then, if not, or at the end of, would you like to let listeners know more where they can find your books and your other content?
Shane Burley I think, you know, one of the threads in the book is that people can make apocalypses in your life, like the belief in white genocide has created an apocalypse in many people's lives in the form of mass shooting and really cruel violence. And there's no reason to believe that in the next couple of years, suddenly those forces will disappear, which I think is why community support, defense, mutual aid, is so crucial. Not just in times of trauma, but all the time. And so I don't, I don't want to have it be an optimism that's based out—you know, that doesn't see the real crisis and trauma that we're in, that could be coming, that has happened. It's about trying to do it together as much as possible. The simplest, most basic element of my politics is about being here with each other. It's hard to make it much more complicated than that. So, I think if we're able to answer that, how we do those things together, how we survive together, we'll end up answering a lot more questions than we thought we would.
Margaret Yeah.
Shane Burley Find my stuff. Yo, I'm on Twitter. I'm very online @shane_burley1. My book is "Why We Fight." Pick up AK Press if y'all want. They're the publisher, but you can also buy directly from them. And I'm doing a bunch of writing all over the place right now.
Margaret Okay. Yeah, do you still run a music blog?
Shane Burley Oh, I do. I do. So you can find it at antifascistsneofolk.com. It's called the Blaze Ansuz. I'm trying to do more interviews than I have been lately. But basically what I'm doing is interviewing antifascist neofolk and similar musicians. It's a lot of ways all over the political spectrum that they all are just united on on hating Nazis and wanting to boot out the far right from the, some sort of music scenes that they've been a part of. And we've discovered a lot of great bands, a lot of bands have come out, have come together with it. I know that there's some music festival coming up in the works. You might know more about that than I do. And there's a bunch of compilations with some colleagues over at Left Folk. They'll be putting together and doing a bunch of work over the next year promoting as many bands as possible because the numbers of bands identify as antifascist neofolk are just like, it's like dozens and dozens of dozens, just growing really fast.
Margaret Cool. We're taking over. Speaking of subcultural insertion. And don't worry listeners, if you don't know what neofolk is, neither do we. It is a very hard to understand conceptually genre. All right. Well, thank you so much for for coming on the podcast.
Shane Burley Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I really do love the podcast. So it's a real treasure to be able to join.
Margaret Oh, thanks. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode or this podcast in general, please tell people about it. Tell people about it on social media or, you know, ideally in person. And also do all the algorithm shit like rating and reviewing and subscribing and doing all that shit because it feeds algorithms. [Singing] Algorithm, algorithms, they rule the world. Okay, and if you'd like to support the podcast more directly, you can do so by supporting me on Patreon. Although in the very near future, that's going to shift over to supporting us on Patreon. But for the moment, because I'm starting with some other people who work on the show with me we're restarting a zine publisher that's existed—an anarchist zine publisher that's existed since 2005 or so called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. And I'm really excited for that project to come back to life. And it will be supporting this show and supporting a lot of other things including a monthly zine and hopefully more podcasts and all kinds of cool stuff. And my Patreon will be shifted over to become a Strangers Patreon. And if you'd like to support currently me, soon us, you can do so by supporting me on Patreon. My patreon currently is patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. If you're listening to this in the future, it might be something like strangers in a tangled wilderness, or tangled wilderness, or I don't know. Damn, this is gonna be a problem when that happens. Hooray, complicated things with computers and me talking about it at the end of my show when I should probably—I'm not even going to cut this out. I'm going to keep it. In particular I'd like to thank Chris and Nora and Hoss the dog and Kirk and Willow, Natalie, Sam, Christopher. Shane, The Compound, Cat J, Staro, Mike, Eleanor, Chelsea, Dana, Hugh, and Sean. Thank you all so much, your contributions allow this to happen, allow us to keep happening, and allow us to move—I keep promising that we're moving towards weekly but I swear to you, we're moving towards weekly, and I'm really excited about it. And yeah, I hope you all are doing as well as you can with everything that's going on and I will talk to you all soon.
In this episode, Margaret talks to Liza Kurtz about disaster studies and elite panic.
The guest, Liza Kurtz, is a a PhD candidate in disaster studies who studies the impact of disaster on society, specifically how class and other antecedent conditions make people vulnerable to disasters. She is @semihumanist on twitter, and you can email her at liza.c.kurtz@gmail.com.
The host, Margaret Killjoy, can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.
1:07:41
SPEAKERS Margaret, Liza Kurtz
Margaret Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. I use she or they pronouns. And this week I'm talking with Liza Kurtz, who is a PhD candidate in disaster studies who studies essentially the impact—well, the impact of disaster upon society. And we talk about a lot of stuff, we cover a lot of ground in this episode. But primarily, we're talking about the ways in which people do and don't respond to disaster. And basically, are trying to kind of bust the myth of that everyone runs around and, you know, murders each other or whatever. And also we get to talk about elite panic which is the idea that basically the people who are invested in the system are the ones who panic during times of extraordinary crisis. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, and here's a jingle from another podcast on the network. Da daaaaa.
Jingle Speaker 1 Kite Line is a weekly 30-minute radio program focusing on issues in the prison system. You'll hear news along with stories from prisoners and former prisoners as well as their loved ones. You'll learn what prison is, how it functions, and how it impacts all of us.
Jingle Speaker 2 Behind the prison walls, a message is called a kite. Whispered words, a note passed hand-to-hand, a request submitted the guards for medical care. Elicit or not, sending a kite means trusting that other people will bear it farther along until it reaches its destination. Here on Kite Line we hope to share these words across the prison walls.
Jingle Speaker 1 You can hear us on the Channel Zero Network and find out more at kitelineradio.noblogs.org.
Margaret Okay, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then also just kind of, like, what you do, like, what do—you know, why did I bring you on this show?
Liza Sure thing that sounds great. So my name is Lisa Kurtz. I am a PhD candidate at Arizona State University. I use the pronouns she and her. And my research really focuses on specifically heat and power outages in the southwest. That's what my dissertation will be about. But in general, I am grounded in disaster sociology as a discipline, looking at it from sort of a conflict theory lens, which is a fancy way of saying, I look at class struggle and how antecedent conditions of disaster make people vulnerable to what we perceive as these, like, natural events that cause great harm.
Margaret Okay. What does that mean? That last part.
Liza Sure, yeah. That's a good question. So basically I think we have a tendency, and certainly there's a tendency in popular culture and in the media to perceive any kind of disaster as—the term you'll hear used in legal circles, and sometimes in the press, is an "act of God," right? Like something no one could have predicted that just happens, that's nobody's fault. And it causes great suffering, but that suffering often isn't really drilled down on to see why did this happen. And so what disaster sociology and disaster studies try to do really is pick that apart and really trouble the implication that these things are just natural and just happen. Because they don't. And so if you look at who suffers most from disasters, if you look at why disasters happen at all, really all they are these natural events make a lens that that focuses and amplifies what's already going on in society. So if you have inequality, you have injustice, disaster brings all of that to the fore. But there's a temptation to think of it as coming out of nowhere, when in reality, we create the conditions that make suffering happen during a disaster. So Katrina is a great example of this. You can say, "Oh, it was, you know, a hundred-year storm, nobody could have predicted a hurricane that large." And there's some element of truth to that, but there's more elements of truth to how we built the city of New Orleans reflects, like, the racial injustice of its history and the poverty that we've allowed to flourish there. And all of that can get hidden behind the idea that this storm just happened.
Margaret Yeah. It's interesting, because one of the things that I focus on when I pay attention to disasters is actually the almost—the inverse consideration as far as it goes, as far as class—not in terms of like, clearly, people who are oppressed in society along numerous axes are far more likely to suffer during disasters. But I guess I like, I put a lot of my energy into thinking about how people come together during disasters. And the main thing that I've been learning slowly and I kind of want to talk to you about is this idea that, like, everyone except the elite come together and, like, work on shit together during disasters. Is that—
Liza Oh, man.
Margaret Is that true? Is that, like—that's my conception, right.
Liza That is certainly. Yeah, that's pretty spot on in a lot of cases. Yeah. And you're right certainly that people who suffer disproportionately during disasters, the folks who are vulnerable, who take the hardest hit, whether that's health or money or property damage, that doesn't make them not incredible at self-organizing and incredible at building community and responding to those events. It just makes—means they take a disproportionate amount of damage. And yeah, you're super right in the sense that we see—so, to really talk about this I'm gonna have to backup, and maybe this isn't that interesting, but I hope it is. I'm not sure if you know anything about the history of disaster studies.
Margaret I do not.
Liza Okay, so a lot of disaster studies came out of World War Two, like, civil defense ideas. The idea that there might be air attacks or even a land invasion of the United States by Axis forces or, right afterward and during the Cold War by Russia. And so there was this—oh, yeah, of course. Like it all goes back to the Cold War if you look hard enough, right.
Margaret Yeah.
Liza So there was this enormous interest in what the civilian response would be if something like that happens, and how we can encourage regular civilians to take the stress off of military forces that might be forced to respond by becoming self-reliant. So that's where you see this, like, advertising in glossy magazines about, like, build your own fallout shelter kind of thing. All the stuff that you see in video games now, all that was super real during the Cold War, and before that it was it was air raid shelters during World War Two. And it was really to take the pressure off of military and humanitarian forces who might be forced to respond. The idea was, you didn't want to be part of the problem. And so there was this massive wartime militaristic interest in what civilian populations would do and how we could train them to be self-sufficient. And so part of that was a ton of interest in and research into—that was funded by the military and a lot of cases—into how people would behave if something went really, really wrong. Like, would they panic? Would there be mass chaos? Would they turn on each other? And the perception that still lingers to this day in the media, if you see any bad disaster movies, and they're pretty much all bad—although some of them are bad and fun and some are just bad. If it's got the Rock, I'm there and I don't care.
Margaret Yeah, no, that's just natural.
Liza Yeah, so the perception and the expectation was that civilian populations would panic. That if there was an air raid, or a bombing, or something went wrong, there would be this mass panic. And then, as you get researchers starting to look into this, what they find actually is that people are usually pretty good at self-organizing in response to an immediate crisis. And so even though the perception is still, in the media, that if anything goes wrong it will be immediately a Walking Dead kind of scenario, as one of my interviewees put itrecently—that's not really true. Especially not among, like, middle class and lower class communities that live side-by-side with each other all the time. And we'll go into elite panic a little bit more. So that's where there started to be the seed of dispelling the myth of disaster panic was then. And that research happened in the 70s and the 80s, and the late 60s a little bit. And that has since been borne out by most of the available data, that people are really good at self-rescuing, that the real first responder is your neighbor most of the time or a family member, and that folks are pretty good at making the best of terrible, terrible situations and making life easier for each other. Now, where you see that start to fall apart is in elite panic, which is when affluent communities or communities that tend to be racial enclaves—like all-white suburbs, and things like that—get that fear of the other bite, because their perception is that as soon as anything breaks bad, it's going to be a Walking Dead scenario and everyone is going to come for their stuff. And I don't know what goes on in their head. It seems like a very, like almost a wild west, like, take your wives and children kind of mentality. Yeah. Which is really, I mean, the more you unpack that and really think about it, the more fucked up it gets. Um, and so the elite panic can be super dangerous.
Margaret I mean, on some level, I might be coming for their stuff.
Liza Yeah, well, fair. Yeah, absolutely.
Margaret Like, I might come for their stuff. I mean, you know, they have too much of it and they're not sharing. I mean, not to tie into their own fears. It's just, you know, the billionaires of this world like...
Liza No, that's real. I've never confirmed this. But there's anecdotal reports in the Balkan Wars of people who stockpiled supplies because they sort of saw things going poorly becoming extreme social pariahs and sometimes even the targets of violence because of their, their hoarding tendencies, stockpiling goods in advance and keeping other people from getting them. So apparently that was like a severe social crime at the time, although I've never confirmed that in the literature. I've just heard that anecdotally. And it's, it's easy to understand why, like, if you're taking it and not sharing, then I can certainly see something similar happening here. I mean, I often tell preppers—when people ask about preppers in my work, I tell them preppers are going to die alone in a bunker full of goods because it's great you have all that stuff, but there isn't much you can really do with it if you don't have the social connections to make social life happen. I think prepping in particular is a particular—a particularly elite and American form of the myth of individualism taken to the most dramatic extreme
Margaret Well it's interesting thoughbecause it—if it comes from this idea of us being asked to self-rescue, us being asked to be resilient, you know—I know maybe it's like I'm always, like, trying to, like, salvage what I can out of prepping because in my mind, yeah, like the the bunker mentality—which I talk shit on, and probably every single episode—because I basically find people who are, like, functionally know a lot about prepping but don't call themselves preppers for a lot of good reasons. The bunker mentality is obviously just going to get you killed, whether it's by disease or, you know, there's like—but, but it's interesting when this idea of like being resilient, being prepared, rather than being like "a prepper" maybe. I don't know.
Liza Yeah, absolutely. And I want to draw the distinction here between what I would probably call if I, in academic speak, like the practice of prepping, which is the knowledge and the goods and knowing how to do basic survival tasks if needed, and sort of the classic American dominant culture of prepping, which is that hyper-masculinized, hyper-muscular Christianity, like, it's just going to be me and my family and my guns and a bunker full of food kind of thing. So when I talk about prepping in a derogatory way, I definitely mean the culture and not the practice. Yeah, no, I think—I have a really complicated relationship with the idea of resilience because, on one hand, I think resilience can be used to recognize how incredible some communities are at self-organizing and taking care of themselves in the face not just a disaster but of tremendously difficult conditions. Like, it is truly astonishing what people can do to find ways to survive. And here especially we see that a lot. In Phoenix, air conditioning—which is where I am—air conditioning is really not a luxury like it is in many other places. It is 110%, a survival skill or a survival tool because it is not uncommon for summers to be 115 here, which is, if you can't cool off that can be extremely detrimental to health. And so the people who have to live without air conditioning, in my work, have a tremendously creative number of strategies. Now, should they have to use them? No, of course not. They should, they should be able to have access to air conditioning for equity and health reasons. But that doesn't make the things that they do any less creative or impressive in doing so. And what's interesting to me is that sometimes we talk about prepping and the failure of systems or natural hazards can sometimes invert the relationship of who is most—how would I put this—of who is, like, doing the best in the sense that in my work in Phoenix, people who live without air conditioning are far more prepared for blackouts. So they may be more at risk in the everyday scenario as opposed to having air conditioning, but if the city's grid failed, they already have the culture and practice of staying cool without access to air conditioning down in a way that somebody who like me, honestly, who can afford air conditioning and uses it all the time really doesn't.
Margaret Just as a tangent that I'm curious about, what do people do without AC in severe, like, in severe heat. Like what do you recommend to people in power outages in the southwest?
Liza Oh, boy. Well, yeah, that's a complicated question. But we've been very fortunate here in Phoenix to never have a truly widespread power outage. And so generally when there are smaller scale outages here, it's possible to seek indoor cooled shelter in another part of the city. But my dissertation focuses on asking residents what they would do during a three day power outage where the entire metro area does not have power. And I think I definitely ruined some people's days asking them that because it's one of those things that's uncomfortable to consider, for sure. But people who don't have power really talk about very, very smart ways. And what's especially interesting is they tap into knowledge that was present prior to the city having electricity. So these really old practices of things like hanging wet blankets over doorways so that your humidifying the air that comes into your house for greater evapotranspiration is one of them. Fairly straightforward things that most of us might think of, like wearing lighter-colored clothing, or staying out of the sun. But then also some really amazing stuff like knowing, you know, knowing which structures in the town are adobe and were built prior to air conditioning and are designed to stay cool. So if you're in a modern house in Phoenix now when you don't have AC, the temperature inside the house will rise very quickly. But many adobe structures were built prior to air conditioning or even, like, swamp cooling which is another thing we use here which is basically a giant humidifier prior to those being accessible. And so adobe structures will stay cool significantly better than modern buildings.
Margaret Yeah, I like—then you also have the problem how dry it is because, yeah, the thing that immediately strikes me as evaporative cooling, like, I would be like, oh, can you like, you know, I don't know, build, like, water catchment on the roof that holds water on the roof so it evaporates instead of transferring heat or whatever. I don't know. But that's dependent on a very different ecosystem. And also just some bullshit that I made up right now.
Liza I mean, if you think about it, that's how all survival strategies started, right? Like, hey, I wonder if this works? Yeah, no, water is a huge, a huge cooling strategy here. And it's funny because I'm originally from Tennessee, and I literally until I moved here did not know it was possible to buy humidifiers. I'd never seen anything but dehumidifiers. And so when I got here I was like, why would you want to put water in your house? And then my first summer I was like, oh, I get it. Yeah, water is hugely important in everyone's cooling strategies here. And that's another issue with blackouts in particular, because certainly if you go and ask many people who are responsible for critical infrastructure systems, they will tell you that power outages will not cause water treatment and pressure issues. But if you look at the history of citywide blackouts, the United States, there's almost always somebody who is having to cope without household potable water at the time. And so it seems like these systems are not as resilient as we would like in terms of critical infrastructure. And here, if you don't have access to household water, a huge number of your cooling strategy is, like, you know, just slam dunking yourself in a cold bath if you need to—suddenly become less tenable. And that can be really, really a problem.
Margaret Yeah. Let's talk about—I kind of accidentally derailed you or intentionally derailed you while you're talking about elite panic. But I'm really interested in that, because I'm really interested in this idea—like, again, the the working understanding that I've had, just from my my layman's perspective or whatever, is that during disasters, overall, people like essentially self-organize—not in a utopian way inherently, but often in a way that people kind of miss when things go back to normal. But then when everything gets really fucked up seems like when the existing power—the previous power structures attempt to reassert themselves. That's like been my observational understanding of, like, talking to a lot of people involved in disaster relief and things like that. But it seems like that ties into elite panic, this idea that people who are actually invested in the previous power relations, and especially property relations, are maybe the ones who can't handle the idea of everyone suddenly taking care of each other and shit.
Liza Yeah, absolutely. I think that's spot on. And I think you really see this sort of that—well, you might almost call it like a pivot point, or an inflection point where things could turn one way or the other in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. And you really see that reflected in the practice of disaster capitalism. So I think sometimes we overlook—because it seems so inevitable—that disasters have poor outcomes, and they do for many people. Disasters can also be an opportunity to say, "Hey, business, as usual, is what got us to this outcome. How can we do things differently?" Because there's sort of a shock to the system, whether the system is you as a resident or the household or the town or the county or the state, like, they're really, they're a shock point. And so they provide an opportunity to stop and say, like, okay, business as usual—the everyday practice of how we run things—got us here? How do we make sure this doesn't happen again? And if you really start engaging with how does this not happen again, that means transforming those everyday practices that got you there. So I think you're spot on with that idea that elites and people on the top who have an interest in preserving the status quo see the inflection point and sort of grab it and pull as hard as they can in the other direction. And so it's not just that there's, I think, a desire to go back to the way things were and preserve the power structure and the property relationships and everything else of the place before the disaster happened. In a lot of cases, they're perceived as opportunities, which is extremely messed up and amoral, but it's true that really these things are seen as, here is a great opportunity to restructure things towards a more capitalist, a more stratified, a less just system. And one of the things that I think you can see right now with that is because COVID closed public school systems, which is a good thing, like, kids don't need to be spreading COVID. Like, I'm broadly supportive of the public health need to close school systems. It provided this vacuum for all these alternatives, and these think pieces to crop up, etc. And these companies to start pitching like, well, do we really need public schooling anyway?
Margaret Oh, shit, uhuh.
Liza Can this be replaced by a different system that's more private, that's more controlled by capital, that's less interested in the public good, that is more about profit. And that's a classic, classic example of what's called disaster capitalism, where something goes wrong and suddenly it becomes an opportunity for someone somewhere to restructure things so they can make more money.
Margaret Yeah, and that's, I mean, you know, Amazon, Jeff Bezos, all that shit. Like, with COVID now, everyone buys everything online. I buy everything online. I'm terrified of COVID and I work from home. So, you know—and then you're like, I don't know, just watching. society restructure itself to buy everything online. And online is kind of, it—I don't know whether it's naturally or it's designed that way by evil people. But, like, overall, the internet is so good at decentralizing things and yet in terms of, like, commerce, it seems like it's really good at centralizing. It's like really good at having the everything store. You know?
Liza Yeah. And I don't know enough about the architecture of the internet and economics therein to say, like, if that's by design, or just a function of the way it works. But yes, it does seem to be—seems to be so good at creating monopolies in that way.
Margaret When you're talking about adobe houses, you know, and how, okay, the old houses are actually built with adobe or whatever. You know, it just—it really strikes me about how completely arrogant the colonial and industrial system is, in that it's like, well, whatever works in New England is what should work in Arizona. And it's so baffling to me, you know, because it's like, well, there's so obviously, like, a steep pitched roof exists that way to shed snow, you know, and then people were like, "Oh, we'll just put these steep gables everywhere." And like—
Liza Right.
Margaret It's just... I mean, I say that as someone who lives in a a-frame somewhere where there's no snow—well, not no snow, but not much snow. But in my defense, I actually just built it that way because it's the cheapest and most structurally sound way for someone who doesn't know how to build a house to build a house is have fewer walls, more roof. I don't know, it just, it—it depresses me to think about. Yeah, no. This the centralizing urge. Go ahead.
Oh, I just, I think you're so right. And I think it's, it's—maybe there is something to the idea that accelerated consolidationist capitalism makes everything sort of a bland universalism in much of the way that Amazon is a bland universalism. Because I do think one of the things that we've really lost that is super helpful in the practice of preparing for disaster is local knowledge. Just localization in general is such a huge thing. Whether it's knowing where in your landscape the water is, or knowing what kind of house does best without AC. And certainly here in Phoenix I have been known to just, like, scream a little bit in my car driving around because there is a massive fad for pulling out old, beautiful 50s Ranch homes and putting in—I've heard them referred to as "McModerns." So houses that take up the entire lot, that look, like you say, very much New England-y. They're often two storeys which is dumb in the desert, they have no green buffer around them at all to help cool anything, they're made of, like, the cheapest possible, like, wood and sheet rock and very little insulation, very large windows that face, you know, like east and west, often. And so you just look at these buildings that are literally the worst possible choice for this environment. And they are building them constantly and it really like it is tremendously painful to see in these beautiful neighborhoods that were originally orange groves. And so when people started building houses there, they would leave the orange trees around their houses, and so there was significant shade and food in your front yard, and then they will just rip them all out and replace them with these. And what really gets me—and this is like such a classic example of a thing people think they're doing for a good reason that is actually worse —s many of them have astroturf lawns, which I understand from the perspective of not wanting to use water or like your grass always being green. But you've replaced, like, not that I support suburban lawns, but you've replaced something that is at least a plant, even if it's a monoculture, with plastic. And sure it doesn't use water. But the thing that gets me the most is my colleagues study surface temperature, and astroturf is the worst thing you could put down for heat.
Margaret Yeah. Okay.
Liza Like, it's worse—you might as well have paved your yard.
Margaret Yeah.
Liza And it's also carcinogenic. And so there's this, like, pseudo-greenwashing that's actually just absolutely the worst thing you could do for everyone involved, all these horrible McModerns that are the worst thing you could build for the desert. And we have—and I think it really all just comes from a desire for, I want to live in a place that looks like every other place. And we've come so far from, like, the localized knowledge of knowing adobe is better and xeriscaping is better and all of that.
Margaret Xeriscaping?.
Liza Oh, sorry, X-E-R-I. Xeriscaping is desert landscaping. So it's the practice of planting your yard in a way that is congruous with, like, the natural environment of the Sonoran Desert that we're in here.
Margaret Yeah, it's this arrogance that I almost can't handle. Because it's, like, if you build your life around, I assume that I will always have a gas line and a power line and, you know, I will always just have as much electricity as I could possibly want. You know, it's like, now that I live somewhere where I generate my own electricity—I mean, a solar panel generates the electricity for me. It, which isn't, you know, carbon neutral, either, you know. But I'm so aware of, like, how incredibly not necessary wasteful AC is, because you kind of need it in a lot of circumstances. It's not a waste. But it's not exactly this, like, low power device. You know? And, I don't know, just the things that we take for granted, it confuses me sometimes.
Liza For sure. And you shouldn't have said solar panel, because in my head it was just you biking furiously on like a bike generator to keep the computer on while we do is so you could have had me there. No, absolutely, I think—yeah, I mean, an AC is one of those things where, I don't know, it's almost like putting a band aid on a bullet wound here a little bit in the sense that I'm not going to argue that centralized air conditioning is the single most effective intervention for saving people from dying from heat, which is a huge problem here. About 500 people in the state died last year from heat-related causes last year, which is not an insignificant number. And actually, extreme heat kills more people in the United States than any other weather-related hazard. So you know, when you worry about hurricanes or tornadoes or things like that, it's really heat that's the major killer of people. And so I would never say, like, don't have central AC for ecological reasons, because it is a huge and immediate public health intervention that saves lives. But also, it doesn't solve this fundamental problem which is, part of the reason we need AC so badly is we built the city in a really stupid sort of 70s-thinking kind of way, which is there's tons of uncovered pavement, and really tall buildings that, you know, like, the urban heat island here is very, very real, it doesn't cool off overnight. And so the need for AC is great, but the need to think beyond AC and think about how do we look into the future and actually reduce the need for this, like, immediate public health triage of just get in a cool environment so you don't die right away?
Margaret Well, okay, so the the need to fundamentally restructure huge parts of our society seems very apparent and increasingly apparent to more and more people, especially as, you know, climate change barrels down on everyone, even if you were willing to ignore all of the systemic oppression that people face. And I think sometimes—and I know I do this, and I wonder whether—you talk about how capitalists look at disaster as opportunity, and that's a problem. And I'm like, so do revolutionists, and so do people who want society to be fundamentally different. Because you have this, some level of like wiping the slate clean, and there's a certain amount of opportunity to restructure society. And it seems like very often capitalism is better at this than us. But there are also these, like, you know, like watching mutual aid networks pop up all over at least the United States last year in a way that like—and I wouldn't, you know, I don't want COVID to have happened, right? But when people look at that and say, well, we actually need to learn how to take care of each other and build these, like, networks by which to take care of each other. To me, that's the beauty of it. But then it's—now I wonder whether I'm doing the same kind of ambulance chasing that capitalists are. Do I let myself off the hook just because I think what I'm doing is good and what they're doing is bad, right? Like, they think the opposite. But I'm right.
Liza Well, yeah, I mean, I don't think it is—if it's ambulance chasing, you're only chasing the ambulance, to help stop the bleeding as opposed to charge the patient. So I think that there's a fundamental value difference there. And so yeah, no, you're you're absolutely correct in the sense that they're are opportunities, and there are opportunities, whether we want them to be or not, so we might as well seize them. But I think part of the problem is about how—not just in media, but even to each other-how we storytelling around disasters as, like—it's very hard to hold the tension in your mind. Like with COVID, it's very hard to hold the tension in your mind between so many people, particularly people of color and otherwise vulnerable folks have paid this horrible price for our inability to cope with an epidemic. And at the same time, this sort of—and that's, there's nothing good about that, that is massively negative. And at the same time, we are being presented with this opportunity that could allow us to build something better, like these mutual aid networks that you mentioned. But it feels–it's very hard to talk about, in a way that feels respectful and honorable—to say like, this is an opportunity for something better to be born out of the ashes of this enormous tragedy. And so I think it's easy for those conversations to get derailed, one because of how we talk about disasters as, you know, like always negative with the panic and everything like that—the mythology around disasters makes it hard. And then two, the difficulty of respectfully talking about this. But I would certainly argue that if we want especially—and I'll use COVID, as the example here—if we want to honor the people who died unjustly of COVID, there is no better way to do so, than taking this opportunity and seizing it to make a system and a world where that won't happen again.
Margaret Yeah, that's a—that's a good way to put it. And I wonder, you know, it's like, I mean, what we should be trying to do—and what people do try to do is just that the systems of power we're up against are rather good at what they do of maintaining their power—is do this anyway. You know, it's like, there's been mutual aid networks for—well, ever, obviously—just assigning a word to it in the 19th century, or whatever. But, you know, we need to restructure things anyway. And if you were to take Phoenix as an example, it's like—I mean, I kind of, I have to admit, I look at Phoenix as like this just grand arrogance in the desert, that, like, probably shouldn't be there. And I know that that's not fair to the actual individual people who live there, you know. And so I don't want to be like, get rid of Phoenix or whatever, right. But like—but instead it's like, well, probably the slow, hard work of restructuring needs to happen anyway. Like the slow, hard work of figuring out how to rebuild the city in such a way that it isn't just, like, waiting for disaster. I don't know.
Liza Oh, yeah. I think you've touched on something there that I always try and challenge people with when they talk about Phoenix as a grand experiment in inevitable failure—building I think at this point the fifth largest city in the United States—or the fifth largest metro area, actually—in the desert which is—I don't necessarily disagree that that is not an immediately intuitively good idea. But now that it's here, I like to think of Phoenix as the perfect testbed and sandbox because it's the hottest large metro area in the United States. And if we can turn this thing around, and we can make Phoenix in the next 30 years cooler and more livable and more just and more sustainable, than it can be done anywhere. We're the edge case, and so this is the perfect place to find those solutions, and then take the lessons learned and the things that worked and export them to less extreme environments where they might be useful. So in that sense, even a little victory in Phoenix might be a big victory in somewhere else.
Margaret Yeah. Okay. So, to go back to disaster studies, we've talked about how the mainstream, like, certainly the media conception of disaster is, you know, the Walking Dead scenario is the everyone running around, like, you know, everyone for themselves scenario. And—but, but disaster studies, it seems like even though it came from this, you know, kind of shitty background, it seems like—have the people who study disaster academically, have they kind of known this entire time, that's bullshit? And if so, why isn't that getting out? Like, why aren't more people aware of the fact that everything we know about how people respond to disaster is wrong?
Liza That is a great, great question. And I'm not sure I have, like, a perfect answer for you. But I can certainly offer some thoughts. So yes, you're right that disaster studies, even though it came out of this very militarized and military-funded background, really starting with a wonderful scholar named E. L. Quarantelli who was active in the 60s to the 90s really started questioning those views and pushing on this idea of panic and other things like that. And so, disaster studies in general as a field—not all of it, but for a long time—has been very justice-oriented in its approach. So if you've heard the words "social vulnerability," a lot of that is coming out of disaster studies. If you've heard the words, you know—or heard talking about the concept of resilience as applied from the top down being a way of almost victim blaming—which certainly it can be, you know. Like, why aren't you—it's a repackaging sometimes of the idea of like, why aren't you self reliant? Why are you making us help you? Kind of thing. All of that is really coming out of a disaster studies. The problem is, unfortunately, that you almost have two separate silos of disaster studies, because disaster scholars are not the people who respond to disaster. They're not the people preparing for it. They're not the people deciding what mitigates it. Those people are part of what I would broadly call sort of the emergency management class, at least here in the United States, they are. And many of them are emergency managers, but that also includes things like crisis communications and information officers, or Public Information Officers, and fire chiefs and firefighters, and EMS first responders, and in many cases public health officials as well. And that is a professional class that has existed for a long time—and this is slowly starting to change—that has really stayed rooted in that military idea. So it's not directly connected to the military, although sometimes it is. But it's a militarized service. It's very about hierarchy—so I was a firefighter, I was a volunteer firefighter in Tennessee for about two years. So you have a commanding officer, you know, it's structured like the military, basically. In a lot of cases it works very closely with law enforcement and the military, like National Guard, for instance. Here in Arizona, I think it's very indicative that our agency is DEMA, which is the Department of Emergency and military affairs. And how you became an emergency manager, or fire chief, or someone who is really directly involved in the world of preparing for and responding to disasters, was you started as, like, a frontline law enforcement, frontline fireman, frontline-and I say men because they generally are, although starting to change too—and you worked for 20 years. And eventually you worked your way up the chain, much like the military, to becoming someone who was making all of these strategic decisions, etc. And so, disaster studies has a very hard time talking across the gap to practitioners. And it's a little disheartening sometimes how white and male disaster practitioners still tend to be, and how stuck in a particularly militaristic frame of mind. And that's something that's really been troubling me lately and something I've talked about colleagues with because—I don't know if I've said this publicly yet but I've certainly said it to colleagues—as a queer woman with a trans partner who is deeply interested in racial and social justice, even though my degree sets me up for it, I don't feel like at this point I can, in good conscience, take a standard Emergency Management job.
Margaret Yeah.
Liza It's too wrapped up with law enforcement and militaristic ideas of what disaster response means and who deserves what and why people do things and where aid goes. And it's just—and, you know, like, FEMA is still housed in the Department of Homeland Security, which is a whole other issue that we could talk about for another hour—which really no one who studies disasters is—or very few people—really support that model. It offers tremendous problems. And so you have this gap. And so that's part of the reason these things still exist is the practice of emergency management really looks pretty similar to the 1950s in some ways, and the study of disaster is much more radical, much more diverse thing.
Margaret Okay, so hear me out. If already in terms of disaster management you have the militaristic system, the official governmental system, and then you have these, like, incredibly complex and interesting disaster relief organizations—especially the, like, the nonhierarchical, the mutual aid focused ones, right. So you all should just get up with those peoplea nd basically, like, I don't know, I get really excited about this, like, okay, so like, create a counter structure, right? Like, and these—that already is starting to exist increasingly. And so I think we call if y'all got up with them, and maybe you all already do. Yeah, one of the—okay, so like thinking about the terrible ways that people manage disaster, like the government's managed disaster or whatever, I am curious if you know of this: I've been hearing this phrase from people I know who do disaster relief, especially coming from anarchist spaces, that there is a specific written thing that the priority of the government in disasters above all else, including the actual rule of law, like the application of laws, is COG—is continuance of governance. Basically, like, this is the justification for like shooting looters and things like that, because it's absolutely illegal to shoot looters, right. Like, by the existing right structure. But the reassertion of control as, like, the absolute baseline priority. Does that hold up with your understanding? I know it's now in a different silo than your silo but...
Liza Yeah, so I would be surprised if that is specifically written down anywhere in that way. Certainly Continuity of Operations as it's called—COOP plans—and Continuity of Governance—COG plans—exist. And they play a very important role in how, on paper, we prepare for disaster as, like, large government institutions prepare for disaster. It is certainly not supposed to be held above rule of law. Now, is it? Probably quite a bit. And things like shooting looters is really hard to unpack because you have things operating on so many different levels. So first off, people who—like you have the personal prejudice level of the people doing the shooting, right? Like that particular person or police officer or resident might be especially racist, as you saw in Katrina. And it might be, like, if a Black person comes through this neighborhood, I'm going to shoot them. Certainly that happened a lot. You also have policy that structures itself in ways that we know is not necessarily reflective of reality. So you may have contingency plans that place law enforcement officers to prevent looting, for instance, when actually law enforcement officers need to, like, exacerbate the situation, right? And so you end up creating these situations which lead to other bad situations. So really, there's so many operational—and then you have the storytelling mythology level where, like, because even among people who do this professionally, you will still find the myth that mass panic is going to happen. You have the drive of, like, well I'm expecting it and therefore I overreact when I see something that might be it. And that's even leaving aside the category of who is a looter and who is resourcefully scavenging resources. There's been a lot of studies done—again, mostly Katrina, but in other contexts as well—about how media presents people taking survival requirements like water and food from stores and how the economic status and skin color of those people really determines the headline they get. Which is, you know, perhaps not a surprise, but it's good to have that data. So you have all these things building on each other to create—if you'll pardon the disaster-related upon—sort of a perfect storm situation where everything works to prop up the system. But whether there's a single origin point of policy pushing for that in writing, I don't know. And I would be surprised if there is. I think it's more complex than that.
Margaret Okay. Yeah, that—it makes sense to me if, like, basically, like, a COG or continuous governance or whatever was like part of this larger framework, and then just gets exaggerated. One of the things that gives me hope is all of the, like, the weird human element parts of it when it actually hits the ground of, like, you know, I remember hearing from a friend who worked with the Common Ground Collective in Katrina in New Orleans basically talking about how, like, National Guardsmen would, like, give the anarchists supplies. Because they would be like, well, if I take this where I'm supposed to take it, it's gonna sit in a warehouse for two weeks, and it's needed right now. And it's just like, I don't know, I get—the things I've talked about before on the show—the stuff that makes me like the most hopeful is when certain unbridgeable chasms are bridged between different types of people. And—
Liza Yes.
Margaret But then on the other—you have the exact opposite of the, like, yeah, the people who seem to go wild. The people who seemed to go the wildest in Katrina seemed to be the white racists. But, yeah.
Liza Yeah, I think there is... Man. And it's hard to talk about and frustrating to talk about incremental progress, because I think there has been some recognition in the system that things are not working, and that you need to rely on local expertise and local knowledge and local abilities to get things done—which is sort of the bigger scale version of the guardsmen giving supplies to anarchists because they know they're going to sit in a warehouse and anarchists can get them into the hands of people who need them right away. The problem there is, it's a little bit like being, I don't know, like a mouse trying to steer an elephant. Like we have built this system of disaster response that is so large and so cumbersome, that it's really beyond any single person's ability to fundamentally change. And so there's a lot of attention being paid—or more attention than there has been previously anyway, I don't know, but a lo— to the idea that we need to be supporting communities at, like, the higher level institutions—that macroscale institutions need to be supporting communities and the work that they're already doing. We just need to enable the anarchists to have more stuff to go out and distribute that kind of thing. Now, whether or not that's going to make a significant difference in the long run definitely remains to be seen. But certainly there seems to be more interest in that. Now I personally have some mixed feelings about that because in a lot of cases here in Phoenix when we're talking about especially like heat relief, or disaster relief, or who's going to help you pay your power bill if you can't, there's been a significant—I think we all know that since the 80s, there's been a significant replacement of state services with more localized things. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But a lot of the localized assistance now is through churches. And to me that raises some troubling questions about, like, who gets helped? Who gets left out? What are the conditions of help reliant upon? And so we've sort of replaced this ineffective state aid with this may be more effective but differently discriminatory aid that's at the local level. And so I think you really have to pay close attention to the idea of localism as a panacea as the remedy for all injustice because sometimes localism just means enacting injustice on a smaller scale. Like handmade artisan home grown fuck you instead of like a fuck you from the state.
Margaret Okay, well, so that ties into something you were talking about earlier at the very beginning when you're talking about the history of disaster studies, was kind of to create a culture of prepping—as in, to get people away—to take the power—take pressure off of the elites who, like, ostensibly should be providing our needs, by having us provide for ourselves, but in a way that doesn't actually fundamentally free us. It's kind of an interesting trap around—it's something that I've seen mutual aid groups struggle with for years is like, well, we always say, we're mutual aid not to charity, right? And like Food Not Bombs, you know, with it's, like, free food program that's been going on for decades. And now, I think that, like, there are just ways to do that local level stuff without like—like Food Not Bombs, like, unlike a, most church feeds that, you know, I'm aware of—most church feeds it's like, take a number, stand in line, like, you know, it's very—it replicates a lot of disempowerment, right. And, you know, like Food Not Bombs is ostensibly more like, it's a picnic in the park and you're invited, because you exist. And of course it's gonna have its own informal problems, right? I'm not trying to claim it's perfect. But there's always this worry about how much do activists make—like, how much do we empower oppression just by solving the problems that oppression creates? You know, like, if we're feeding—
Liza Oh, boy.
Margaret Yeah. And if we're feeding people without fundamentally challenging the system that has left people without food... I don't know. For me it's just, like, you just—I think that the answer is that the problem with this bespoke oppression that you're talking about, the localist oppression, is it just needs to be tied into challenging things at a larger scale. Wh I say just, it's easy. Everyone could just do this, it would fix everything. No problem. No one will have any.
Liza This is a problem I'm intimately familiar with on a personal level because when I graduated from undergrad and suddenly the stress of college was no longer upon me, I discovered that I am a stress junkie and I needed something to do because I was going out of my mind. And so I joined the local volunteer fire service thinking, like, oh, this will be, like, I'll learn skills, I'll be able to help people, and I'll be stressed out enough to be happy. It turned out even that was not enough and I had to go to graduate school, but that's a story for another time. And this is like the fundamental tension of a volunteer fire service. I mean, think about what that means, right? So the city I was in had a professional fire service because it was considered a population density sufficient enough. But the county, which is a very large and populated county, was all volunteer-run. And it's sort of the same problem, like, you don't want people's houses to burn down, so someone needs to go put them out. But at the same time, if you're rural, you are fundamentally getting a worse class of service than the professionals. And the volunteer fire department enabled its own perpetuation by the fact that eventually most people's houses got put out. And I always used to joke, like, don't have a house fire between the hours of 8am and 5pm when we're all at work. Because it was one of those things where, if people's houses had just burned down, there probably would have been significant push to have a professional fire service. But at the same time, then you have a bunch of people's houses burning down, and maybe they die in the fire too and that's awful. But because there is sort of an ad hoc fire service, there wasn't the push to have a professional one. Even though—andI don't think people knew this, right. But we were using equipment that was out of date, that hadn't been tested. I think our jaws of life for rescuing people out of car wrecks were like some of the first models ever made from the 80s because we didn't have funding. And it's like, you know, we were saving lives but also perpetuating the system that was probably really harming people. So what's the trade off between, like, that long term harm and the short term, everybody's house burns down, but people get a professional fire service in the end? And I don't know what the solution is besides, as you said, sort of making sure we're plugging into troubling the larger structure and advocating for larger structure. The fire service is a particularly tricky one because people's lives depend on it so immediately. For something like Food Not Bombs I would say it's possible they're already doing some of that work by having people show up and having that picnic in the park feeling and just letting people know that receiving assistance doesn't have to be total drudgery and shame. And so maybe for things like that, where there can be joy and comradeship and true connections on social scale, maybe the next person that—the next time that person needs to go to a church handout line or an unemployment office, there is that seed of like, well, why isn't this like that? I think sometimes you can really—you can plant the revolutionary seed in people by showing them joy just as much as by showing them tragedy.
Margaret Yeah, that's a really good note I think maybe to kind of wind down on—to think about. What—I guess the questions I want to ask to kind of close this out. One, I kind of want to ask, what do you worry about personally? What do you prepare for? What is—how is working with disaster studies—how has it influenced your own life?
Liza Sure, yeah. Well, I will say I worry much more about long term trends than I do about any particular single incident. So for Phoenix, I'm worried about what the temperature profile of the city looks like in the next 50 years, because I might—I might be like one of the few people on record ever saying this—but I really love Phoenix. I think it's got a really cool art scene and there's wonderful people here. And it has a surprisingly revolutionary spirit and a fighting spirit for being a blue town and a very red state. And also, it's nice to be in Arizona, because in many ways, we're at this political tipping point. So if you're here and you're willing to get engaged, you can really make a difference. So I don't want to see Phoenix fail. She like there's a lot of people who do to sort of make a point about climate arrogance, but I'm not one of them. And so for me, I worry about these really boring things that unless you're in the weeds, you probably don't think of. So I worry about what are our overnight temperatures going to be in the next 50 years, because we know that overnight temperatures have a significant effect on human health, they're a really good indicator of the urban heat island. And one of the things that's hopeful is that thus far the science shows that if we really buckled down and redesigned the way we did the city of Phoenix, we would be able to offset most of the regional and global climate warming in the region through localized efforts. So Phoenix in 50 years could be cooler than it is today. There's nothing that's stopping us from doing that. But we have to raise the political will and reach out and seize that opportunity. I don't worry as much about our regional—or rather a city-wide blackout, even though that's what I talk to people about—partially because I know our utility companies and how they function and that is something they're thinking about. It's—I worry more about it in areas that don't think about extreme heat on their grid. Like, we have it so often, it's regular here, that I think we're better prepared than many other places. So in that sense, extreme heat could be worse in, say, like, the Northeast of the Northwest than it could be here because those grids are not regularly stress tested in the same way.
Margaret Right.
Liza And then I also worry about—and this kind of ties back with what we're talking to you about disaster panic—I worry about—its maybe—and this is—at the end of the interview is the wrong time to bring this up, but this is fun. It's not completely true that there's never violence and looting after disasters.
Margaret Right.
Liza It does happen, and primarily where you see it happen is after some blackouts. And it tends to be blackouts in cities that are already have a very wide divide between rich and poor and are undergoing a lot of racial tension. And you can really see, like, why. One is they aren't perceived in the same way as an act of God because blackouts—it's easier to see human culpability. Like, the electricity company that I pay to maintain my power has failed in their job and I am angry about it. And then also, they're perceived as an opportunity of, like, the system is failing us, we should go out and express that it is failing us and we are angry about it and take advantage where we can of the opportunity to gain more resources. So it's all extremely understandable. But I really—I worry about our next disaster—next major US disaster—acute disaster, I should say. Because COVID is a disaster, it's just a slower moving one. Our next acute disaster response, because of growing injustice, because of factionalization in society, because of this awakened beast of white rage in the nation—I worry that our next disaster response is going to look more like the cops at Black Lives Matter protests than mutual aid groups.
Margaret Yeah, I bet it'll be both.
Liza Probably. And yeah, of course mutual aid groups will be they're doing what they can, but I really worry that we're creating a perfect storm for disaster response to be hyper militarized because cries for justice are perceived as unrest.
Margaret Yeah. No, it's interesting. And yeah, there's a lot to dig into with you more some time. Okay, my final question is just, where can people engage more with your work? Or do you even want or have any kind of public profile around the work that you do?
Liza I do. I am on Twitter. I'm at semi humanist, S-E-M-I-humanist on Twitter. I love chatting with people about my work and things like that. Everyone's also free to email me and you can put this in the show notes if you like at liza.c.kurtz@gmail.com. I do speak at academic conferences. But if anyone is listening and really wants me to come talk a little bit in a digestible way—hopefully about what disaster research says—to a mutual aid group or an anarchist book club or any of those fun venues where knowledge can be a little freer than stuffy academia sometimes, I'm really always happy to talk to those folks. I think probably the most important work I do is closer to things like this than academic publications, which circulate to other scientists, which is very personally satisfying to engage with other scientists, but not—probably not tremendously socially helpful. And it's also just a great check of, like, I think it's easy as an academic to get wrapped up in such a way that you can talk to other academics but not people in your field. And I try hard to avoid that at all costs.
Margaret Yeah. I found everything that I've—you know, from talking to you before we did the show—very approachable. So I highly recommend anyone who's listening to take Liza up on that. Alright, well, thank you so much for being on the show.
Liza Oh, yeah, no problem. Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell people about it. Tell people on social media. Tell people about it in person from six feet away, unless both vaxxed or whatever. Tell people on—by liking and subscribing and writing reviews and all of that algorithmic shit, because it has a wildly disproportionate impact on how things get viewed. And if we're trying to make our content and our media reach more people, that is an unfortunately effective way to do it. So tweet about it and stuff. Also, you can follow us now on Instagram instead of just following me as Margaret Killjoy, there's now actually a live like the world is dying Instagram because—oh, that's the other fun thing. Live Like the World is Dying is becoming an increasingly collective project and pretty soon you'll probably hear more than just my voice on the mic, although at least for now I'm going to probably continue to be the host. But Jack is now the, essentially the producer of the podcast, and is doing all the audio editing. And it's really fun to talk about people when you're recording, when you know that they have to listen to you talk about them, and then edit it. But you can't edit this part. You have to leave this in. Anyway. If you want to support the podcast more directly, you can do so by supporting me on Patreon. My Patreon is patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. But that money actually does go out collectively to the people who are helping make this possible. And, well, to people who are putting in the direct labor to make this possible. The people who are making this possible though are you, the listeners, who write about it and review it and tell their friends about it, and also who support me on Patreon. And if you can't afford to support me on Patreon, don't do it. If you live off of less money than I make on Patreon, don't give me money on Patreon. There's some content that is, like, paywalled there or whatever. But if you just message me, I'll give you access to all of the monthly zines and all of those things for free. But if you would like to support us, please do. And in particular I would like to thank Chris and Nora and Hoss the dog, Kirk, Willow, Natalie, Sam, Christopher, Shane, the Compound, Cat J, Staro, Mike, Eleanor, Chelsea, Dana, and Hugh. Your contributions sustain this. They pay for the transcriber, they pay for the editing, and a lot of the other costs associated with this content. I've gone on way too fucking along about the money involved in this project now. Hooray! Well, I hope you're doing reasonably well. If the weather's getting warmer in the part of the world that you live in, I know that I really enjoy watching the leaves come in, even if it means that the sun will no longer dry my clothes on the line because the sun will no longer reach my close line because I built my house in the forest because I'm a very intelligent person. It has good passive cooling qualities too, though. And that is definitely not what I'm supposed to talk about. What am I supposed to talk about? I think I'm supposed to end the episode. So thank you so much for listening, and I hope you're all doing as well as you can with everything that's going on.
The guest adrienne maree brown can be found on twitter @adriennemaree and instagram @adriennemareebrown. The book we are discussing the most is Emergent Strategy.
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.
Margaret 00:14 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. I use she or they pronouns—and I'm sorry that it's been a minute since an episode has come out and it'll probably stay a little bit slowed down for a little while, it might be an episode a month for a little while. It's not that I've run out of people to interview or subjects that I want to cover, it's that it's hard for me to get anything done right now, which I think might be something that might—you might identify with, as well. I've kind of said that the only thing I've managed to accomplish so far in 2021 is talk shit on the internet and not die. And I'm doing very good at both of those things. I've have honed my talking shit skills, and I'm reasonably good at not dying. One thing that people don't talk about enough with off-grid life and things like that, I spend an awful lot of my time just maintaining the systems that sustain me. I spend a lot of my time trying to fix broken water pumps and learning that—the thing is, when you do everything DIY and you're not particularly skilled, the first time you do something you probably do it good enough, but good enough often means that it will fall apart before before too long. So I've rewired my electrical system probably seven or eight times. It seems to be holding good now. My plumbing system, I'm going to be crawling under my house and rewiring my plumbing system a lot. I've had a lot of things freeze and break. And there's just a lot of—a lot of uphill learning curve, especially to do alone. This week's guest is Adrienne Maree Brown and I'm very excited to have her on the show. We talk a lot about—well, about Emergent Strategy which is a conception of strategy, of political strategy, that embraces change and embraces the fact that, well, you can't have one strategy now can you? And we also talk a little bit about her work as a podcaster with the podcast How to Survive the End of the World, which is, yeah, as she points out that maybe the closest thing there is to a direct sister podcast or sibling podcast to this show. This podcast is a proud member of Channel Zero Network of Anarchists Podcasts, and here's a jingle from another show on the network.
Jingle 02:48 One two one two, tune in for another episode of MaroonCast. MaroonCast is a down to earth black radical podcast for the people. Our host, hip hop anarchist "Sima Lee The RBG" and sex educator and crochet artists "KLC" share their reflections on maroons, rebellion, womanism, life, culture, community, trap liberation & everyday ratchetness! They deliver fresh commentary with a queer, TGNC, fierce, funny, Southern Guhls, anti-imperialist, anti-oppression approach. "Poli (Ed.) & Bullshit". Check out episodes of MaroonCast on Channel Zero Network, Buzzsprout, Soundcloud, Google, Apple, and Spotify. All power to the people, all pleasure.
Margaret 03:40 Okay, so if you want to introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then I guess kind of a brief introduction to you and your work, especially around Emergent Strategy.
Adrienne 03:51 Okay, my name is Adriennne Maree Brown, I use she and they pronouns. I am based in Detroit and I'm the author of five books including Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, and almost everything I've written is in some way inspired by Octavia Butler or in touch with Octavia Butler, including Emergent Strategy. So, yeah.
Margaret 04:18 Yeah, that was one of the—one of the many reasons I wanted to have you on this show was that if there's one book that keeps coming up over and over again on this show—and pretty much anyone vaguely on the left who cares about what's going on in the world—it's a Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. And one of the things that really struck me about your work with Emergent Strategy the—not just the book, but the kind of the concept of emergent strategy that I want to talk to you about—is basically, the thing that I loved—I mean, I loved a lot about Parable of the Sower and Parable of Talents. But the idea of creating this essentially religious way of interacting with chaos and change and like embracing those things and learning to use them as our strengths, whether because it's nicer or because it's our only choice, it really appealed to me. And then learning that someone was taking that out and developing it further into essentially a strategy both for like political change, but also personal development. I got really excited about it. So I was wondering if you could kind of introduce the basic concepts to listeners who might not know what the hell I'm talking about.
Adrienne 05:31 That's great. Yeah, so Emergent Strategy is, it's rooted in many, many things, I think it's the way that the world works. I feel like it's strategies for getting in right relationship with change. And once you understand that change is constant, and that you can either be thrown about by change and see it as a, you know, wild chaos that you can never get your footing in. Or that you can partner with change, you can begin to shape the changes that happen in your life or in the era that you live in. Emergent Strategy is for people who are ready to be responsible for shaping change around them. And some of the key lineages of it are the scientific concepts of emergence. So emergence is the way patterns and the way—like basically all these patterns arise out of relatively simple interactions. And they're very complex patterns, but each of the interactions or each of the relationships are relatively simple. So I think of like a flock of birds, a huge murmuration of birds, moving through the air, avoiding predation. And it looks like the most complex, choreographed, beautiful thing. But it's actually this simple system where each bird is paying attention to the five to seven birds right around it and following the subtle cues that they're sending each other: it's time to move, left, dip, rise, move, right. One of the core questions of Emergent Strategy was, what would it look like if our movements and our species could move in that way? What would it look like if we could murmur it together? How would we have to trust each other? So adaptation is a big part of that, is what does it look like to adapt with intention. Not just react to the chaos, but really adapt in ways that keep moving us where we want to get to. And then there's a lot about interdependence: what is the quality of relationships between each of the parts of our systems? Between you and my, between the people in our communities? How do we attend to the relationships? How do we think about decentralization? And I feel like one of the big lessons I've had, both in recent years and in looking back at movements throughout history, is that those that centralize are those that are not able to live as long as they need to live in order to do their best work. The centralization—something about gathering everything around one mind, one idea, one way of being—actually weakens us as a species. And nature shows us the biodiversity and creating more possibilities is actually the way to survive. And so now I think that's a lot of my work is, what does it mean for us to be biodiverse in a fucund and world? What does it mean for us to decentralize how we hold power and how we hold responsibility for what happens in our communities? How do we adapt well?
Margaret 08:28 I love all of it. I just eat up all this stuff. I've been thinking a lot about what you're saying about murmurations and the way that—the way that animals move in nature and the way that, you know, flocks move, and things like that, I was thinking about—I've been having some conversations with a couple people around the riot or the insurrection or whatever the hell people call it on January 6 at the Capitol, and the way that the rightwing crowd moved. And it's so funny to me, because like, there's like jokes on Twitter where it was like, we know it wasn't Antifa because there wasn't, like, a group of gay folks handing out sandwiches. And like, there wasn't a medic tent set up and stuff. And people present it kind of as a joke, but I realized I was looking at it and I was like, I've been terrified of people being trampled at demonstrations. I've been in militant demonstrations a lot of times, and I've never seen it happen. And watching that happen, I was trying to figure out what it was. And I think it has to do with what you're talking about, about our side at its best embraces interdependence and chaos and change and, like, and isn't there as a group of individuals. Like people talk about—sorry, this is something I think about way too much recently—
Adrienne 09:40 Yeah, no, go off.
Margaret 09:42 People have been talking about—I grew up being told the left is like The Mob. It's like the big mass action where everyone loses their individuality and it's bad chaos and everyone gets hurt. And then that just hasn't been my experience at all in large demonstrations. And then I look at what the right wing does when they all gather to go try and do this thing, and that's what I see. So I don't know. Yeah, I just, I've been thinking about that emergence stuff a lot as relates to that.
Adrienne 10:10 Yeah, I think that your—what you're speaking to is, like, extremely important distinctions which is, when a group comes together who have all been deeply socialized and have bought into their own supremacy, right? Supremacy is a disconnecting energy. It's like you can belong, as long as you play along by these rules, which are that we are better than everyone else and we're constantly reinforcing that betterness. But better, you're—then you have to constantly be reinforcing and finding new ways to be better than, better than, better than—even to the point that like, I've got to get to the Capitol door before you do, even if that means stepping over your body in the street. And you pair that with capitalism which is also the constant growth, constant bettering, constant one-upping, right? Constant showing what you have. There's so much—trying to think if you have—what the word is—like that sense of, like, this is just ours. This is mine, this is—you know? And I feel like when you go to spaces that the left has organized, there's such a care at the center of it. Like we're there not because we're just, like, I'm here to fight somebody, or I'm here to dominate, but we don't even necessarily believe it's like our way is "the right way." It's more like, we want to find a way to be loving and caring with each other. We don't think we've ever gotten the chance to experiment with that at scale, as a species. At the current scale that we're at, everything we're doing is constantly trying to defend ourselves and care for ourselves under the conditions of oppression. And it means that when we come together—I always see the same thing. I'm like, are we going to be safe? But then people are taking such care of each other, from the street medics, to the people who are watching after the kids, to people who are like, I brought for extra signs so everyone would have something to carry. People—I always notice is that people bring extra water and extra food and, like, one of my favorite things, and one of the reasons why I've always been such a stan for direct action is that those spaces tend to be such active spaces of love and care and precision and, like, let's attend to each other and attend to the work we're up to. And, you know, we can go overboard with how attentive we are to everything. Because I think is part of our responding to the trauma of living in a society that's so actively does not care for us. And so watching those people who actively don't care try to come together and assert themselves as victims and, you know, it's not funny. It's actually quite sad, you know. It's just sort of like, you have so much power, you abuse it—so much so that you end up abusing yourselves and you're you're continuously cutting yourself off from what is the best part of being alive, which is the nature of togetherness. That's what I want to study is like the scholar—I've called myself a scholar of belonging. What does it actually look like to belong, to be part of something larger than yourself, of ourselves? And in that belonging, to take responsibility for our survival, for how we do—how we be with each other?
Margaret 13:20 I'm so glad I brought this up, then because you just managed to finally articulate this thing that me and my friends have been trying to wrap our head around for—since we saw it happen on January 6th. So you mentioned trying to—trying to do this at scale, and how that's something that's somewhat unprecedented by human society and that—go ahead. I just want—how do we—how do we do that? And one of the things that really interests me about your work and about the work that I care about, is that it's embracing diverse strategies, rather than saying, like, this is the one way that we do it. So obviously when I say, how do we do that? I don't mean because you are our leader, but you know, instead—yeah, like, how do we—how do we learn to weave different strategies, different ethical systems, different ideas about how to change things? How do we weave that into a coherent force?
Adrienne 14:17 Yeah, I mean, this is the question of our lifetimes, I think, you know, is like, how do we do this thing? This is why I'm, you know—when Walidah Imarisha created that term visionary fiction I was like, "Yes, that's what I'm about is trying to figure out how we do everything that we've never really experienced in our lifetimes." The best I have so far is what I witnessed when bringing people together for the Emergent Strategy immersions, or bringing people together for a process of, like, how do we do community together? Beloved community. Like, what does it actually look like to practice that? And some of the elements of that are that people are really invited to bring their whole selves into wherever they are. That there is a sense of organized care. That we don't just leave it up to, you know, hoping everybody just figures it out. But there's a—there's a real ability to name, here are the needs in this community: the access needs, the food needs, the water needs, the timing needs—we need breaks, we need gender-liberated bathrooms—here's all the things that we need in order to fully be here. And then we have to let people unleash what they have to bring to the table. And this is where I think, you know, when I started writing Emergent Strategy I was onto something that I'm not sure I even had articulated fully to myself. But it was my critique of how movements and Nonprofit Industrial Complex was playing out, which is, we were often trying to bring people into space where only a portion of them was welcome. And where we weren't asking them to truly bring their offer. Like we were like, "Can you just come be a number in the strategy that we've already figured out? Or can you come play your position?" Like you show up in the debate exactly as we expect you to, and we'll say what we expect to say and we'll move forward with the lowest common denominator of a solution, which no one's actually passionate about, and like, nothing will actually change. Philanthropy will keep paying us. It'll go on and on forever and ever. And for me, I was like, I'm really not interested in playing the game anymore. I really want to see what happens when you unleash people to come together. And what I see is—what I've witnessed is people very quickly are like, how do we hold really authentic, effective accountability processes in real time together? How do we offer each other the rituals we need to really relinquish harm and trauma that has built up in our community? Here, we have tons of ways to care for each other. We created this exercise—and when I say we, it was one of the groups that was participating created this exercise that became something we did at everything else we ever did. And it was healing stations, where we just said, everyone gets 10 minutes. Go to your bag and pull out whatever you find to be healing, and create a healing station with your small group. And 10 minutes later, the room would have transformed into this place that felt like we can do anything, because we've got vibrators and cigarettes and Tarot decks and incense and medicines and tinctures. And like, anything, you know—and I was like, y'all just walk around with everything you need. So many books, you know, so many ways that people are like, this is how I care for myself and I want to offer it, I want to leave it here for other people to access and have contact with. That kind of—those moves, watching how quickly community did know, not only how to take care of itself, but how to hold each other accountable, and how to stay together. I was blown away. So I think a lot of the answers, we need to actually be willing to get into smaller formations and really practice being with each other. And let that proliferate, right? I think so often we're oriented around, like, how do we build a mass movement that's all thinking the same way to strike and to have this impact. I really love the idea of united fronts where people are all in their political homes united around some common organizing principles, but allowed to be their own weird, magical way of being and care for themselves where they need to. So that's why I identify as a post nationalist because I do think that the American experiment is literally at a scale that doesn't function. Like there's, it's—the scale is too big for there to be any kind of real, you know, something that's not just a brand of togetherness, but that's an actual practice of togetherness. You know, 70 million people or whatever are committed to voting for white supremacy in the country.
Margaret 18:50 Yeah.
Adrienne 18:50 Like, that's not, you know, that's not a viable strategy for how we move forward at this point. I love the idea of secession radical secessions. I love the idea of the Zapatistas claiming territory within territory with indigenous leadership would be like, a dream come true to me. I love, you know, people who are living off the grid and finding ways to divest from the American experiment already. So, you know, I think all of those are some of the ways.
Margaret 19:21 Yeah.
Adrienne 19:21 And I think right now with the pandemic unfolding, I think a lot more of us are like, "Oh, I do need, like, literal community." Not social media community, not conference community, but I need, like, literal people I can call on, that I could walk to their house, that I can count on to hold boundaries around safety. Like, we need those things. And I think that's the answer. I always think community is the answer.
Margaret 19:47 No that—that makes sense. And that's one of the main focuses on like, the—one of the main points of this show is to talk about how preparedness is more of a community thing than an individual thing.
Adrienne 19:56 Absolutely.
Margaret 19:56 So one of the things you were saying about—
Adrienne 19:58 Yeah, cuz individually, we just hoard.
Margaret 20:00 Yeah no, totally. Yeah. One of the things you're saying about—because earlier pointing out that direct action is a really good way to create a sense of belonging. And that's something that I've been watching happen in a lot of people who've been kind of radicalized to the left within the last year, since the uprisings last summer started. And what you're talking about, about creating these moments of belonging, I definitely, I think for my own experience, it has been those moments of, you know, facing down a very powerful force together and the way that—the way that you figure out who has your back when, like, literally—just to tell a random bullshit story, at one point I was, like, part of some march and, you know, the cops wanted to arrest me because I may or may not have been burning an American flag and things like that. And I thought all my like—yeah, I thought all my, like, punk friends were going to protect me. And then half of them were just gone. And then all of these people I'd kind of written off as like—this is a while ago, I was young—I'd kind of written off as hippies. Like some of the, like, older—I was like, oh, they're probably liberals or whatever—just surrounded me and were like, "Hey, just so you know, we're here to physically protect you from the police arresting you. They're definitely talking about arresting you." And it was just this nice moment of, like, realizing that in moments of conflict or even not unnecessary conflict, but moments of tension, you find out what community looks like. And maybe that's what COVID is unfortunately doing for all of us about how we have to suddenly develop mutual aid networks at a scale that we never did previously in the United States.
Adrienne 21:40 Absolutely. I absolutely agree with that. And I think that Octavia Butler taught us this. In all of her works it was like, you'd never know who you're going to be in the apocalypse with. Like, you have plans, you think you know what they look like and feel like, but you really don't know who's going to have your back under that pressure. And in some ways, I think it's because people don't even know themselves if the—what they'll be capable of under the pressure. And, you know, this pandemic has revealed for people so much about what they're like under pressure, because some people under pressure have really turned inward and disconnected from community and are, you know, really in a deep, lonely, isolated place. And I see that happening with people that I didn't expect it from, you know. And then I see other people who are really finding ways to weave themselves into community. And there's not a right or wrong here. It's just very fascinating to see who turns towards others and who doesn't. And what we need, right? I thought—I was like, I'm a loner, I like to be by myself you know, I'm a—that part of Octavia Butler's life always appealed to me because she just was by herself, like, just chillin and writing sci fi. But I spent a few months all alone. And I was like, I don't like this, I want to be with the love of my life, I want to be with my friends, I want to be with my parents, I want to, like, be with people who can lay hands on me when I'm sick. And, like, have my back, you know, physically rub my back.
Margaret 23:08 Yeah.
Adrienne 23:09 I just was like, I—that part, physical touch felt so important to me. And I'm watching our communities now. I'm like, there's mutual aid but there's also just, like, the need of being a body alive in this time. And like, what do we—what are the very fundamental needs? Which I also love about Octavia's is writing. Like, what—there are some very fundamental human needs that we share. And then there are beliefs, destinies that pull us forward. And what you're looking for in your community is the folks who can balance those two things, who are like, we can find ways to attend to the very non-negotiable physical needs. And we can align ourselves around a destiny. And it doesn't have to be a perfect alignment where we all say the same words and we're all coated out. But there has to be substance of like, oh, I want to be in communities that hold each other accountable. I want to be in communities that are abolitionists where we're not trying to dispose of or lock anyone away. I want to be in communities that really love the earth, like, at a primal, this is home level, you know? And so on and so forth. And I'm like, I meet those kinds of people, actually, more often than you think. And writing books has been my way of, you know, go "Hoo de hoo!" Like, who is out there that is potentially my people? I feel very excited right now by, like, just—I'll say this: the other day was Valentine's Day. And I often, like, ignore that completely, capitalism, whatever. But this time I was, like, you know, there's a lot of lonely people out there. Let me just try something. And I had a dream about it that was like posting a "looking for love" post but it was basically like for Emergent Strategists anP pleasure Activists and people who, like, really are like riding on this like Octavia way, right? And it was like over 1000 people wrote in and they're like, "I'm looking for love and those are the kind of principles I want at the center of it." And it made me so excited because I was like, this is what we—there's enough people now that are at least looking at each other, like, I may not, you know, stamp Emergent Strategy on my forehead, but I do want to be in right relationship with change, and I want to be in accountable relationship with pleasure, I want to claim, you know, my power in this lifetime, I want to take responsiblity for community. I'm like, there's enough of us now that we can fall in love with each other and, like, have, you know, radical families, and like, all that kind of stuff. Just, you know, we are a generation too. Like, we come from generations that held the ground for something outside of capitalism, something outside of nationalism, something outside of colonialism, militarism, all those things. And now we're that generation. It's just articulating ourselves again, and again, and again. Like, we're here, we love each other, we're taking care of each other. And as this added—you know, I think our folks are so brilliant, because they're like, this is not the first pandemic. This is not the last pandemic. You know, like, we have our folks who came through the HIV AIDS pandemic and are now here and teaching us inside of this moment, and we will teach people the next one and—
Margaret 26:12 Yeah.
Adrienne 26:13 Right? Like, we keep going.
Margaret 26:16 Yeah, one of the things that people I've talked to have brought up a lot that I've been really excited about is—excited about is the wrong word—but the fact that, like, the apocalypse isn't an event as much as like this cycle, ongoing process, thing that comes and goes, like, you know—and actually, I mean, even just to talk about Octavia Butler's work again from a fangirly point of view, like, one of the reasons that her work was so important was, in my experience, I'm not incredibly well read, it was the first slow apocalypse in the kind of still recognizably an apocalyptic story of people leave their homes and go on the road and figure out how to start a new society. But it was a slow apocalypse. And that's something that I think we need more of just out of—one of the hardest things that I've struggled with, in my personal life is—and this is awful, because I sound like Chicken Little—but it's trying to convince people that we are in an apocalypse. Like we are in a slow apocalypse right now.
Adrienne 27:17 Exactly. We're in it.
Margaret 27:18 Yeah. And people are waiting for the bomb to drop. So they're like, "Oh, it's not the apocalypse." And I'm like, well, but what—what do you need? Like, failed infrastructure? You know?
Adrienne 27:31 How badly does it have to be? Yeah.
Margaret 27:33 And I'm actually curious.
Adrienne 27:35 Yeah.
Margaret 27:35 I've been meaning to try and ask people—well, actually, no, I want to bring it back to the Octavia Butler stuff and then—you also write fiction, and you also focus on—I've seen a lot of your work around trying to present visionary fiction and present futures. And that's something and‚I'd like to hear more about. I'm just always trying to ask people about—because obviously it's very close to me personally—but how do you—
Adrienne 28:03 Well you write them.
Margaret 28:04 [Chuckling] Yeah. What it—like, what is the—what is the importance of writing futures? Like, what is the importance of imagining futures?
Adrienne 28:15 Yes. You know, I just listened to—I got to read a bunch of Octavia Butler's work for this NPR Throughline podcast. And they include a lot of interview with her. And she's talking about how important it was for her to write herself in. She was like, "I wanted to write myself into the narrative, into the story." And I think for so many of us, when we look back, we can see either stories of our trauma or stories—or like the gaps, the erasure, where our story should be, and they're not. And I live in Detroit, and Detroit, you drive around and if you know what you're looking at, right, if you've seen like maps or pictures of what it looked like 40 years ago to now, you can see that it's a city full of gaps, full of spaces where there used to be homes. Like literally on a block it'll be like, "Huh, this is kind of random. There's just two houses on this block." It used to be seven, right? But time and the economic crisis and other things disappeared those homes and I feel like history can look like that for those of us who are queer or trans, Black or Latino, Indigenous, etc. can look back and be like, "Where were we? Where were we?" And white supremacy and nationalism, other things, errased the full story of us so that we are left with just the trauma that we've been able to unveil. And so writing futures—writing ourselves into the future—is to me a way that we go ahead and stake a claim. Like, we are here now imagining ourselves. And in the imagining, we are creating room for something different to exist. And whenever I am engaging in fiction writing as a practice, I really feel like I am up to something that—the biggest thing maybe that I'm ever up to, is understanding that the whole world that we currently live in came out of someone's imagination. All of the constructs, the way that I experience my own gender, the way that I experience my skin, the way that I experience my size, the way that I experience my desirability, my worthfull—worthiness, you know—there's so many fundamental aspects of myself that are just miraculous, because that's what everyone is. But they've been so complicated, and I've had to fight to feel like I deserve to exist. And that fight is because someone imagined that I did not. And they imagine that, you know—I was this morning thinking about all the Black children that we've lost to police violence, and like, they're all dead because someone imagined that they were dangerous, you know. Imagination is a very, very powerful drug, a very powerful practice. And, to me, I'm like, if we want something new, we have to actually imagine, what does it look like? When I say defund the police, what am I imagining happens when there's a domestic violence incident on the street? And does that mean—am I imagining myself willing to go down and intervene? Am I imagining myself calling community mediators to come on over right now, something's going on? You know, what do I imagine happens? Because if I can't imagine it, I'm definitely not going to be able to invite tons of people who are used to the putative system to come join me on another path. The imagination to me is how we create the future that we want to be, and how we make sure that we're not absent from it. So—and I have to give a lot of props here to Disability Justice communities because I feel like I've just now starting to understand how much I learned from Disability Justice communities around this. But they're like, if we're not in the room and y'all plan something and it doesn't have a wheelchair ramp, and it doesn't have an accessible bathroom, and it's like chemical scent overload or whatever, it's because we weren't in the room. So you didn't even imagine us there. You didn't not imagine us, you just didn't think about us at all. We were just not part of it. And as a facilitator, the number of times that happened was like, "Oh, I'm sorry, like, I just didn't." And it's like, no, that's not acceptable. Like, now I'm like, how do I make sure that people are in the room where imagination happens? How do I make sure that they're in the pages where imagination happens? And because then you end up with a future that is accessible, that is equitable, that is pleasurable, and is sustainable, right? Because we're all there dreaming it.
Margaret 32:37 Yeah, the—this happens sometimes when I interview guests and I'm like, instead of having like a good—especially my year of reasonable isolation, I've lost some of my social skills. So people say things, and I'm just like, thinking about it. You know? Instead of having like, an immediate response.
Adrienne 32:52 I'm like—I would love to do a study on the social skills we've all lost.
Margaret 32:56 Yeah.
Adrienne 32:57 Because I just like, yeah.
Margaret 33:00 Yeah. [Laughing]
Adrienne 33:01 I'm also having—I have that experience all the time these days where I'm just like, everything moves slower now.
Margaret 33:06 Yeah.
Adrienne 33:06 And I'm thinking about it.
Margaret 33:07 Yeah. And then, you know, in some ways I'm, like, glad because I'm like, well, I don't have an immediate response to what you're saying, because I'm just thinking about it. I'm like, I just want to sit with that. Like that's, you know, that touches on something that I've thought about before, but I haven't—and I've tried to address in my own work, but I haven't succeeded at yet. And I haven't given enough attention to.
Adrienne 33:28 Yeah.
Margaret 33:28 To talk about something else. I very embarrassingly, after I named my podcast Live Like the World is Dying, googled—I was like, "Well, what if I called it something like How—" Because I always do things that are like "how to" or like, you know, whatever. Yeah.
Adrienne 33:42 How To... [Laughing]
Margaret 33:42 And um, do you want to talk about your own podcast with a very similar title?
Adrienne 33:47 Yes. I mean, our podcasts are definitely siblings in the territory of content.
Margaret 33:51 Yeah.
Adrienne 33:53 Yeah. So I have a—I have two podcasts. Actually now I have three podcasts.
Margaret 33:56 Oh wow, okay!
Adrienne 33:57 I'm an unstoppable podcast machine. So I really love the art of podcasting. You know, there's something beautiful about just sitting and having a conversation, listening to a conversation. So my first podcast, my longest running one, is called How to Survive the End of the World. And it's with my sister Autumn. And we're both just obsessed with Octaviam obsessed with apocalypse and like how do we turn and face the fact that we are in apocalypse, and that we have been through many, and that apocalypse is actually a moment you can harness for change. And it's actually quite a powerful portal if we harness it that way. So there's a lot of philosophy and theoretical conversations mixed in with, like, hard skill offers. So that one is is kind of a blast, you know. It—for me it felt very liberating to just turn directly and face apocalypse and just get to be in conversations that are all, like, related to what is. And then I do the Octavia's Parables podcast with Toshi Reagon where we're reading the Parable of the Sower chapter by chapter. We just finished that first season. Now we're going to head into the Parable of the Talents, and then we'll keep going with Octavia's work just—we're like, even though only two of her books are called parables, they're all parables in a way so. And then Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute just last week launched our podcast, which is the three kind of core collective members take turns interviewing different people who are, what we see is like living Emergent Strategy in the world. And we're just examining, like, building basically a set of audio case studies for people to listen to. Like, what does it look like to practice Emergent Strategy and all these different realms of movements?
Margaret 35:46 Okay. I admit the How to Survive the End of the World one—people have been, you know, that—more and more, I think, people—for some strange reason everyone's really into prepping right now. It's hard to figure out why. But I actually—
Adrienne 36:04 No idea why. Mysterious.
Margaret 36:07 And I like that there is—that there is other stuff out there. And I was wondering if you had—
Adrienne 36:13 Oh, yeah.
Margaret 36:14 —your own thoughts about, like, where people can find stuff about whether individual community or social preparation? Or like, how else people can get—
Adrienne 36:23 So we have brought on a series of guests. Last year, I was away on sabbatical and my sister did, I think, the best episodes of the entire podcast without me, which were—it was apocalypse of survival series. And each of the guests are people who have their own work and their own lives. But there's a group called Queer Survival—Queer Nature. They basically blew our minds. Blew our minds. And it was just very tangible stuff on, like, how do you think under the pressure of crisis? And they do trainings, they do offerings. And then Leah Penniman came on from Soul Fire Farm and was really talking about, like, how do we reorient our relationship to food? Because, you know, what happened when the pandemic went down. Everybody was like, run to the store, buy everything frozen and canned, stick that in your house. And like—I'm like, so basically, you're prepared to give up even having access to any organic, fresh food. And that's your plan for how you're going to survive. Like, what does that mean? Right. And I feel like, listening to someone like Leah Penniman, it's like, what is it instead look like to begin to organize ourselves around farms, around food growth, around the cycles of planting and gardening and growing. I'm hoping that that becomes one of the next iterations that emerges from this pandemic crisis is that people are like, okay, we were not fully ready to actually be growing and thinking about food as a community. That's something we want to be orienting ourselves towards. I know that for me that's something I'm thinking about is, do I have the first clue about how to grow my own food if I wanted to? [Laughing, inaudible] How would I do that? You know? So I just started, I'm now growing cilantro and lavender, which is not something I could survive on but it is, like, a move in the right direction. And I have aloe and I have other things. But I'm like, what does it look like to actually, like, think about a season and put things in the ground? And how much food would it take for me and my partner to live? How much will we be able to contribute? One of the things I love, that I feel like I learned from the conversations with Leah, but with other farmers, Black farmers—Derek Cooper, other folks—is like, everything that we grow is actually immediately abundant. If you're doing it, if you're in right relationship with whatever it is you're growing, you end up with more than you could ever need. And that's why so many farmers end up doing all kinds of cooperative efforts of sharing their food out to other people, because you get so much. I love that as a problem and as a challenge for us. It's like, could we deal with the abundance that would come if we actually all gave a portion of our time and attention to growing food directly from land? So that's one of the things I'm—that's like one of my next horizons is, like, inspired by this Soul Fire Farms community is, like, what does it look like to actually get our hands dirty in a different way.
Margaret 39:23 Cool. Yeah, I um—when all this happened I was like, I live on land that is technically a farm. And I consider myself to not have a green thumb at all. And—
Adrienne 39:36 Yeah.
Margaret 39:37 —and I've like, you know, the few times I've tried to grow food, it's failed. So I've convinced myself that I will never successfully grow food. And so—
Adrienne 39:43 You're like, see, I can't. [Laughing]
Margaret 39:44 Yeah, exactly. Which is funny because I think that I'm capable of, like, almost anything because I'm so obsessively DIY that I like—I'm, you know, in a house I built and I've learned plumbing and electrical since the pandemic started so that I could make my house meet my needs and, and all of these things. But I'm like, I'm convinced that growing food is entirely just magic that is beyond me. And what I've decided to do personally is I'm going to start mushroom cultivation because I'm like, well, this fits my like, "I live in the forest." Everyone else lives in, like, you know, elsewhere in the sun. And I'm like, "I'm in the forest, everything is dark and rainy." And, you know, trying to play to my strengths while still—but then there's the thing where it's like, I don't even envision—as much as I talked about my isolation, I still live with land mates, right? I'm, and I imagine that, come crisis, we continue to help each other. And so I'm like, well, I live with people who know how to grow food. So— I will focus on learning how to fix the rainwater catchment and things like that.
Adrienne 40:36 Exactly. Exactly. Like there's a way to be of use. And I mean—well, two things are happening right now. One is, I have my first mushroom log out on my deck. So we, you and I are mycelium familia. And I'm very excited about it. But same thinking is just like, I can grow mushrooms, like, I'm in a place where, like, there's enough condition for mushroom growing. And then I feel the same way, right? That I'm like, even if I never get great at growing food, if I'm in community with people who do grow food, but I have other skills to bring to the table, then that's great. And one of the things I'm always worried about is like, is my only skill talking? Like, do I still do I have other—you know, like—and then, you know, like, no, facilitation is a skill. Mediation is a skill. That's something you can offer to a community. I do doula work, that's a skill. But I'm always looking at like, you know, I'm of value in the current conditions, how would I be a value in future conditions. And I want to make sure that whatever I'm developing myself, I would be a community member that people would be like, "you're of value to us."
Margaret 40:44 Yeah. Yeah.
Adrienne 41:47 And not just because of what you do, but how you show up how you are, right?
Margaret 41:50 Yeah.
Adrienne 41:51 Like, I would love to have such value to my community that even if I can't do anything—because I have arthritis that it's just getting worse and worse and worse and worse—so Toshi and I talked about this often that, like, if the community all had to run for it, we wouldn't be running for it. So we would be like, okay, we'll sit and hold down the fort and, like, distract them and point them in another direction and that'll be our usefulness. Or whatever it is, like, you know—but be—I think everyone should be thinking about that question. How can I be of use in community? How do I understand my usefulness? How do I understand the relationships I'm in? Not transactionally, but in a sense of mutual aid and a sense of, we all need, we all have to give, how do we do that well with elegance, with grace? Yeah.
Margaret 42:34 Yeah, the usefulness question, it comes up so much when we talk about disability and the apocalypse, like you're talking about, and I really liked the way that you phrased—you phrased it, how you come to interactions is also part of our usefulness. And, you know, and—and then there's even stuff around like, you know, I've friends who, through like, sort of, like no fault of their own, or whatever, have... let's go spiky personalities. Right? And yet, we—I think it's like, partly it's a challenge to figure out how we can be useful, but it's also partly a challenge to figure out the usefulness—like, what people around you bring to you. And so like, for me, it's like, okay, my friends who are, like, maybe really hard to get along in a facilitated consensus meetings because they're opinionated and angry. And like, often because the world has done horrible things to them. And yet, like, for me, I kind of secretly enjoy, like, learning to help those people point themselves. Be like, ah, you have all of this anger. Here's this institution that needs destruction. How would you go about destroying it? You know.
Adrienne 43:09 Like, how would you do it? I love that, Margaret, because I—I just turned in the final draft of my next book, which is called Holding Change, the Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation. And there's a whole section on there, like, quote/unquote problem participants. And one of the things I was noting in there is like, every single person who shows up in the space as a problem—whatever kind of problem they are—if you can harness the energy that they're bringing in, they're often the most effective people. They're coming to the space. Right? You should be able to harness and move that energy somewhere. But particularly the grumpy, grouchy, curmudgeonly, flat, you know, this isn't working. Often those are the most visionary people in the room. And what's happening is that they are hurt by how it's all going down. You know, they're like, why are we not free yet? Why is it going like this? Like, why aren't we doing a better job? And like, harnessing that energy could free and save the world, right? So I always keep a couple of curmudgeonly, grumpy people close by. [Chuckling] Just keep me honest and to keep me like motivated.
Margaret 44:47 I think we're running up on time. How can people find out more about your work?
Adrienne 44:55 You know, go to akpress.org to buy the books there. I prefer people buy them straight from AK, which is an amazing people's press. And I'm on Instagram, that's where I'm like a person, you know, on social—the place where I—I mostly put pictures of things that I think are beautiful or cool. And then I have a website, adriennemareebrown.net, where I blog and I keep an archive of the interviews I do. So this will eventually live there. Yeah.
Margaret 45:31 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, or any of the other episodes, please tell people about it. Like, first and foremost, the way to help the show is to tell people about it in person or online. And, you know, I always go on about the algorithms that run the world and how we can influence them. And, you know, and that's kind of shitty to just sit around and try and influence algorithms. But if you like, or subscribe, or post about this, or review it, or whatever, on whatever platforms you listen to it, it helps far more than it should. It helps bring it up into other people's feeds and it helps people more find—more people find out about it. And all the support that I've been getting for the show, especially seeing people post about it on social media and things like that. And, you know, people I know telling me that they like it is kind of the reason that I'm continuing going with it right now. I'm very low energy these days, and that'll swing back around, I'm sure. But hearing that it's useful to people is—matters to me and it makes me feel like I'm not wasting my time. So thank you all. And also you can support the podcast more directly by supporting me on Patreon. My Patreon is patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. There's not a ton of stuff that you get, like, that exclusive, except that I do ostensibly a monthly scene that I mail out to people. It's also very far behind. I point to, you know, the world, and hold that up as my excuse which is getting kind of old for myself, but so it goes. And I do try and post up there as much as I can and also try and send out presents to my Patreon supporters as much as I can. In particular though I would like to thank Hugh and Dana and Chelsea and Eleanor, Mike Satara, Cat J, The Compound, Shane, Christopher, Sam, Natalie, Willow, Kirk, Hoss the dog, Nora, and Chris. I—I'm overwhelmed by the amount of support that I've been getting. And I've been able to use that to hire a transcriptionist. And now also potentially get more help, like the show might end up collectivizing, who knows, we'll see how it goes. In which case, me having bad mental health times won't be as much of a hold up. And that'll be good for everyone. And so thank you to my supporters for helping that make—helping that look like it might become a possibility. Anyway, I hope you all are doing as well as you can with everything that's going on and I'll talk to you soon.
Cici can be found on twitter @postleftprole. The IAF-FAI can be found on twitter @IAF__FAI and through their website iaf-fai.org. The Javelina Network can be found on twitter @JavelinaNetwork.
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.
For an overview of radio from an anarchist perspective, check out the zine For An Anarchist Radio Relay League.
1:32:19 SPEAKERS Margaret, Cici, Eepa
Margaret 00:14 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. Are use she or they pronouns. This week I'm talking with two people who have a lot of experience with different radio communications, mostly HAM radio and other means of two-way radio communications. Their names are Cici and Eepa and they work with the Indigenous Anarchist Federation and/or the Javelina Network which is a network of—well, they'll explain it. And we're going to be talking a lot about radio communications, and they actually do a really good job of breaking it down—a subject that could feel very technical. I know I get very overwhelmed when I try and understand radio communications. They break it down in a fairly non-technical way that, well, I'm excited for you all to hear. So this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And usually I lead with a jingle, but this week I'm going to do something slightly different and first I'm just going to say welcome to the Maroon Cast. I don't believe they have a jingle yet. But there is a new podcast on the network called the Maroon Cast and it is absolutely worth checking out. And the jingle—they actually call it a commercial—that I am going to play is from the Institute for Anarchist Studies who are offering grants. And here's that. Hooray. Hey radicals, anarchists, and all of you liberatory leftists. Are you a podcaster, video maker, multimedia artist, or writer? The Institute for Anarchist Studies wants to let you know we have grants available for projects focusing on Black and Indigenous archaisms, police abolition and alternatives, and mutual aid. For details and how to apply visit anarchiststudies.org and click on the grants application post on our main page. That's anarchiststudies.org. Anarchist-studies-dot-O-R-G. Applications close January 31, 2021. Spread the word and tell your friends. Okay, so if y'all could introduce yourself with I guess your name, your pronouns, and then any political or organizational affiliations that makes sense with what you're going to be talking about today.
Cici 02:32 So my name is Cici. I do she/her pronouns, I also do they/them pronouns. I don't really have any organizational affiliations at this time. I am—I have some experience with radio in a like a certain area, but in other areas I'm still learning and I'm trying to get up to speed. I am a licensed radio operator which helps a bit. But obviously, like, you don't have to be licensed to do stuff with a radio. And that's I guess enough about me.
Eepa 03:13 All right, [I didn't catch a lot of this except Eepa] and I use he/him pronouns. My affiliations, I'm with the Indigenous Anarchist Federation and I'm a part of the newly formed Javelina Network. And basically, I am fairly new to the whole communication world. But it's one of those things that I've become very passionate about building up people's knowledge that way in communities for mutual aid, you know, both in disasters and just for general preparedness. We have ways of communicating that don't rely on, you know, corporate infrastructure or government infrastructure.
Margaret 04:02 Yeah, so I guess one of the first things that I want to ask you all, for people who are, like—so this will probably be in some ways a slightly more technical conversation than some of the—some of my shows, just because, at least, there's an awful lot of acronyms and weird technical stuff that comes along with learning about radios. And I think it's worth—I'm going to ask you all a lot about that stuff. But I guess I was wondering if you all could start with kind of like a pitch for why we should care about radios. Like, we all have cell phones. Shouldn't we just use cell phones? Like what are some of the advantages of understanding and having an experience with radio communication?
Eepa 04:40 So one of the things that people should consider whenever they're using—whatever type of communications you're using on a daily basis, that could be using email through ProtonMail or using Signal or WhatsApp, or just using your regular cell phone service—these are things things that are controlled by somebody. So the infrastructure that makes them possible is controlled by either corporations, or they're controlled by corporations and regulated by the government. They're subject to warrants and data collection and they're subject to a lot of other, you know, less security-related, but more just infrastructure in general. You know, if, as we saw in hurricane Maria, when hurricanes come they knocked down cell phone towers and if you don't have cell phone towers, your cell phone just becomes a, you know, a box with whatever photos you have on, it doesn't become very useful for communications. And the same thing goes for emails, when you are logging on to your, you know, ProtonMail account which is, you know, a great service and everything—if those servers go down in Switzerland, then you're out of luck—that that means that communication no longer exists. If the United States government decides to block a certain app that—that could basically cut off your service and take away all of your context. So it's a very fragile thing that we have, you know, during normal circumstances cell phone services is great, it's convenient. And honestly, it should still probably be your primary means of communication because of its ease of use. But there's a lot to be said for having all of the infrastructure you need to communicate in your own hands without needing any external infrastructure, aside from a community of other people who are likewise equipped and trained to communicate with.
Cici 06:42 I think that's an excellent answer. In addition to what Eepa said I would basically just add on, like, yeah, there's—it's hard with the infrastructure that people usually use—cell phone towers, servers, routers, or at least, you know, commercially available routers and phones and everything. People don't have—people in, like, their communities don't have a lot of control over it. One of the things that I'm actually—I need to do way more study into it, because it's rather technical. But if something were to happen and the internet were to go down, either unintentionally, because—or, you know, not because of a—because like it's natural—something natural happens like a hurricane. Or because the government has shut the internet down for the express purposes of, you know, preventing people from communicating. One of the things radio can do is it can actually mimic a internet, I should—I may say mimic but it's actually a true internet protocol. So you can actually get an internet running up in your community. Those are the kind of things that I think radio is great for. I would echo what Eepa said where it's not really a—in terms of people saying, "Well, I have a cell phone what's, you know, what is radio offer to me?" I'd actually say, yeah, I don't think that just being able to say, "Hey, I communicated with somebody in another spot." Like, that's not really the attraction necessarily for learning a bunch of radio things. I would also note for a lot of people who are just doing off-grid stuff, there's a lot of places where your cell phone just, there's just no signal, it's too far away from cell phone towers. You can still get out with a radio if something were to help. A lot of people are like, well, you know, I'm not gonna be setting up a another Wifi internet system. But, you know, if you're ever hiking or you're doing stuff that's just not close to a big city or whatever, it can still be useful if something happens, you get hurt, you're not out in the middle of nowhere with no cell phone signal needing extreme medical attention immediately. So I just like to point that kind of thing out where it's useful on an individual level, but it's also useful on a community level.
Margaret 08:58 Yeah. Yeah. I mean—
Eepa 09:00 I think that that's probably one of those—I think that's one of those misconceptions that people have about radio, just in a general sense, is they think that it's two people on walkie-talkies talking to each other. But there's a whole realm of radio use that includes, you know, sending messages, photographs, even videos utilizing radio that people are probably not aware of.
Margaret 09:24 I only learned about that really recently when someone was talking about how you can take your Baofeng radio and—I think it was, like, get a photo from the international space station on your cell phone by having your, like, cell phone listen to what's coming out of your radio?
Eepa 09:46 Yeah.
Margaret 09:48 That was a good moment of like, "Oh, this is some scifi shit." And I'm like, "Oh, and I mean it's some like 1970s scifi shit." But it's—that's so fucking cool. Yeah, I mean, okay, so like, I'm rudely guessing that a lot of people who are listening, if they have much experience like, say, direct action stuff, they're probably their only real experience with radios might be walkie-talkies. Right? And so I was—I was wondering if there's like a way to, like—the thing that really intimidates me when I look at radios is that I look and then I'm, like, okay, there's high frequency, very high frequency, ultra high frequency. There's walkietalkies which use FRS. There's MURS. They're CB radios, there's GMRS radios, there's the Business Band, there's a HAM radio. There's AM/FM, SSB, contint CW, like, there's like all this shit, right? And so I guess I kind of wanted to like start and try and kind of break some of this down if you all can, like, maybe talk starting with like—maybe you'll have a better pedagogical sense of like where to start or something. But in my head, I would ask you first about maybe, like, Family Radio Service, the walkie-talkies, that people might be used to, like what they can be used for and kind of build out from there. Or if there's another way to introduce all of this that you all would like to use.
Cici 11:18 I can't actually speak too much to the Family Radio Service. I'm glad you mentioned that there's a lot of different modes. What tends to happen is there's very few people that know all of that, or if they do they're a dime a dozen. At least from my experience talking to other radio people, they tend to focus in areas that they think are interesting, or areas that they think are useful, or whatever. So for instance, you mentioned Family Radio and you mentioned, I believe it's GR-GMRS, I actually have like no experience in those. I mentioned in the introduction that I'm licensed. What I meant by that, or I probably should have been more specific, is that I'm licensed as an amateur radio operator. If people have ever heard someone talk about HAM radio, that's basically what I'm talking about. HAM is just another way of saying an amateur radio app. I'm an amateur in the sense that I don't get money. I'm not like a radio station. I'm not commercially broadcasting, like, the radio you might listen to music or whatever. So that's all that means. Amateur doesn't necessarily mean you don't know a lot or that, you know, it just means I don't get paid. And that my license basically says I can't get paid to broadcast. So that's kind of my experience. So yeah, I don't know if Eepa would be able to talk about the Family Radio Service. Some people have heard CB radio. I believe that's—it's similar to amateur radio but it's it's still very different. I actually associated with truckers doing stuff in the, like, I know, that's kind of an old association, doing stuff in their cars. As far as modes, I know Margaret, you mentioned things like single sideband which is that SSB. That's a voice mode. You mentioned—I guess I should start with the—you mentioned high frequency, very high frequency, and ultra high frequency. Usually people will shorten that to the individual letter. So like very high frequency they'll just say VH, VHF. Those just basically are a shorthand way of talking about how far you can talk. So for instance, people that have Baofengs are often going to be using very high frequency or ultra high frequency. Very high frequency is usually going to be a line of sight, maybe a little bit further because radio waves can actually see a little further than, like, the way we see the horizon. But for instance, if you and a friend both had Baofengs and you lived in the same city, depending on your antenas, that a bunch of other technical stuff, you should be able to hear each other. A lot of times the type of radio also use a repeater. The repeater is basically something that will send the signal further—it's it's own equipment but it will send your signal further than if you just had it by yourself. So when people hear that I just want them to think, "Oh, that's just distance." My interest is in very high—or, excuse me, is in just high frequency, just HF. That tends to be very far distances. So like that's usually talking to people in other countries, or talking to people across, like, a country, like a big country like the United States, or the so-called the United States. I'm in the Midwest, I can use high frequency to talk to someone in California which is obviously not line of sight or, you know, horizon. So that's all that means. I don't—a lot of times HAM radio and radio in general uses these terms that make stuff sound really technical and really like scary, but it's actually just a—there's an easier way to understand it. So that has to just do with distance. That's all I'll say about that for now. I don't want to overload but uh...
Eepa 15:01 Yeah, and so basically what I'll add to that is there's two basic things that somebody who's new to radio needs to do to understand what their radio is going to be used for. And so like Cici was talking about with the frequencies: Frequency is one of the two things that you really need to pay attention to when you're a beginner, is frequency and wattage. So wattage is just how much power is actually being emitted from your radio. So one of the ways that you can think about frequency—we'll start with frequency first—is it's basically wavelength. And so the shorter your wavelength, the smaller it is, the smaller the distance—or the frequency or sorry, the frequency. So ultra high frequency, very short distance. Very high frequency is going to be kind of a medium distance. And then high frequency is long distance. Now what the Family Radio Service radios that you're talking about, they broadcast on very high frequency. But what makes them not very good for communicating at distance is they have a low wattage, so they're legally not allowed to go above a certain wattage. And so that means that they can only communicate at like a very, very short distance. Basically, these radios were designed so that way parents and kids could have radios or, you know, a family convoying on a vacation—this is in the days before cellphones—could have communication with each other. And so they didn't need very high wattage, and they didn't want these radio frequencies to be basically blocking other radio traffic. So it's a low wattage, very high frequency and that means that it's going to be a very limited distance. So even with like ultra high frequency, if you have a low wattage, you get even less distance. What amateur radio opens up to you is higher wattage, and it opens up more frequencies. So that's the key thing there.
Margaret 17:09 Okay, yeah, I took a bunch of notes about this right before. Right before we started I was trying to like map out all of this because I've been learning about this some for a while. And I was just trying to map all of this out. And what I came up with was basically like three types of, in the US, unlicensed types of radios, and then like two sort of types of licensed radios with HAM radio being kind of like the big—or amateur radio being like the big open one. And it was kind of interesting to me because I learned, like, for example, like I was reading about, like, what the hell is the difference between CB and FRS, and between walkie talkies and trucker radios as I always kind of saw it. And yeah, so I guess if CB is high frequency it needs—it can go further on lower wattage—or I don't know if it goes through a low wattage, but it can go—it bend—the the frequencies like bend around the horizon and hills and shit better. But apparently it takes like a much, much more of an antenna and it doesn't like going into buildings and shit very well as compared to like—
Eepa 18:17 Yeah.
Margaret 18:17 UHF, which is like much more—I don't know, in my head it's almost like piercing rather than, like, you know, it doesn't go very far but it like goes through things a little better or something? And doesn't need as much of an antenna. I don't know, that's what I—what I—so I guess—like, what I came up with as the things that you can use unlicensed are—well, I mean, you can theoretically use anything—well anyway—actually, I'm gonna ask you some about some of that stuff and a little bit, what you can get away with. But unlicensed, you can use FRS which are like the walkie talkies, you can use CB which has like a slightly higher wattage limit and is shortwave only but requires more of an antenna, and then something called MURS, M-U-R-S, Multi Use Radio Service, which is, like, a little bit better. And then, I think, in terms of licensed radio, I'm actually—I'm running this past youu so you can like tell me if I'm wrong. But also if I'm right then I'm just expressing everything that I learned to the audience. In terms of licensing, there is one type of license you can get without taking a test, you just give the US government 70 of your dollars. And it's General Mobile Radio Service, GMRS. And it's, like, still substantially more limited than amateur radio, right? But it allows more—I don't know, it's a little bit—it's nicer than than family radio service. It's nicer than a walkie-talkie. It's like a fancy walkie-talkie. And you don't have to take a test, versus amateur radio, which I guess you have to in order to—you have to pass these very intimidating tests in order to start using it, or in order to legally start using it. And I guess—I dunno, does that match up with with—does that seem correct? This is just like what I put together right for the show.
Eepa 20:08 Yeah, so if people wanted to just get on the radio, like, tonight, if you could just go down to the store and pick something up and get on the radio. Basically, what you outlined is spot on, you know, Family Radio Service is probably the weakest kind of radio that you can get. And, again, if you're within, you know, eyesight of the person you're talking to those kind of radios will work for you. CB radios are larger, typically they're mounted in like a vehicle. So they are a little bit less easy to keep on your person but they do carry further. So this is what nowadays you tend to see, like, off -oaders and other things like that use whenever they're going out in the desert and off-roading. Again, you have limited channels on both of those. So you have, like, you know, theoretically there's a bunch of channels in there, sub-channels, but it's very limited. So if you're in a city or something, you could find very easily that all of those channels are occupied and being used by people. And so that could just make things really confusing and really challenging. CB radios are kind of known as, like, the wild west of like the radio world, because you can say and do anything on that radio channel without any kind of punishment. So it's full of very not great things. And, again, it's a very busy radio channel because it's used by a lot of unlicensed people to communicate. Now, when you're talking about basic commercial radio, which is that license you're talking about for those handheld, the GMRS, that is going to be something that usually requires that you show you are a business. So you need to have an LLC, a nonprofit, some kind of designator, some kind of, like, you know, tax ID or whatever, to tell the FCC that yes, I'm a business. They will assign you a little tiny frequency of the spectrum that none of the other businesses in your area have and then you're stuck with it. So that means that you might have a few channels on your radio, but that's all that's going to be available to you to legally use. And you're having to pay money on a regular basis to keep that license.
Margaret 22:23 Okay.
Eepa 22:24 The one upside to that is you do get to use a slightly more powerful radio that—I mean, they are designed for, you know, like, mines and construction sites and factories, that's typically where these kind of radios are used. So they are more powerful and they also have the legal ability to be encrypted. So you can actually get encrypted radios, which is not legal on any other radio service. The only way you can do that is through the GMRS. But you have to go through a major company to get your encryption service which means if somebody wants to de-encrypt your radio, all they have to do is get in contact with the company and find out what your encryption keys are and then they're in. So this is also something that you see a lot of law enforcement that had switched to is this style of radio, just a modified one that are, you know, higher power and use repeaters. So these are all legal non-testing options, but they're purposefully designed to limit you. They're designed to basically reduce your capacity to communicate beyond line of sight in a way that, I mean, the amateur radio community would say the reason why is because, you know, you can't have people running rampant on the on the air, there needs to be, you know, law and order on the air. So that's part of the reason why the amateur bands are more thoroughly regulated, is to basically make sure that there's a system of accountability to the government.
Margaret 24:00 Okay.
Cici 24:04 Actually, I'm really glad that Eepa shared tha. I have—my information outside of HAM radio is very limited so I actually learned a lot listening to that. The only different thing I would like to say is there's actually a lot of changes coming with the—not with the testing, but the FCC—this is extremely recent. Like, I think the actual report from the FCC is, like, was dated like December 28—of like a few days ago, like last month, basically, it'sless than a month old. But they did actually say they're going to start charging people for HAM radio licenses. This is extreme because it used to—like, as of right now it's completely free. You have to take a test, but you don't have to pay any money. Sometimes if you look online you'll see people saying they want $15. That doesn't actually go to the FCC, that goes to the people providing the test itself. Those people are actually just HAM radio operators. It's, one of the interesting things is that the FCC actually has a very decentralized, like, they basically let HAM radio operators test each other and that's—they just send the paperwork to the FCC to get your callsign. So if anyone's at home thinking, "Oh, I was thinking about getting licensed and I think I'm ready." If you don't want to pay the FCC $35, like, I would, I would say, like, do what now. Along with that, they actually cut the GMRS license to $35 as well, it used to be $70. So they actually made getting a GMRS license and getting a HAM radio license the same price. HAM radio—people on ham radio, very upset, like, they—one of the big things is, oh, we need to attract people to HAM radio. So, like, the community in general is not happy about this change. It hasn't taken effect yet. The report doesn't actually say exactly when it's supposed to take effect, like, it's supposed to take effect the month after the report, but then it has to go through a bunch of bureaucracy. If I had to guess I'd say they're probably going to try to do it sometime around February/March. But it might be sooner, it might be more after that. As far as my experience, I—that's correct, you do have to take a test to get into HAM radio. Even in HAM radio, the first—there's three levels. Basically you have to pass each test to get to the next level. So like you can't just, like—so the levels, the first one you have is technician—technician level. The second one's a general level, that's actually where I'm at. I have a general level license. And then the highest one is called amateur extra, a lot of people just say "extra." That's—extras basically have the most privileges on the HAM radio.
Margaret 26:36 They all sound inverted. Like, if I was to come up with the hierarchy, I would be like amateur, general, technician.
Cici 26:44 Yeah no, they're like actually, like, holdovers from older—like there used to be advanced, there used to be a novice and, like, they've changed—the FCC is the one that's in charge of making these levels. And it's like, it's changed a lot. It used to be kind of like five or like three and a half kind of, and now it's basically just the three. Sometimes you'll run into a really old HAM who's like, "I haven't advanced license," and it's, like, what the hell is that? But it's basically like an old, depreciated license that they don't issue anymore. So yeah, I'm at the middle level. You can't just jump straight to, like, one of the levels. So like, if you're like, "I think I know enough to get an extra license," you can't just go and say, "Give me the extra test, I'll get an extra license." But you can take them all in one sitting. So like, if you're like, "I'm pretty sure I could do the extra," they'll give you a technician test. If you pass it, they'll give you a general test. If you pass it, they'll give you an extra test. The extra test has more questions, it's—I'm actually studying for it right now. It's very technical. It's kind of like what Eepa was referring to. There's kind of a culture of HAM radio. And it's, there's this idea that you basically have to earn your privileges on the bands by knowing what you're doing and all this type of basically hierarchy type of ideas. But I mean, it is helpful to know some of the things that are in the test. I've actually learned a lot, just from having to study for the technician or the general test even though I've forgotten some of it. The licenses are good for 10 years. So you do have to actually renew them every 10 years. So yeah, after a few years I'll have to renew mine, and pay them this stupid fee that didn't exist when I first got it. But yeah, also something I want to put out is if you—you only need a license if you want to transmit. By what I mean by that is if you want to send a signal out. That's important if you're, like, if you're in an emergency situation, you're probably going to want to send a signal out. If you're trying to communicate with people that are not near you, you want to send a signal out. But if you just want to listen you actually don't need a license, you can actually go grab a radio tonight, tune your radio to HAM radio bands and just listen all day long, as long as you don't transmit. And technically you're not supposed to interfere. So you can't, like, jam other people's signals. But, like, if you're not transmitting, you can listen, like whatever. Like there's no license to listen. So that's something interesting I want people to know: if you just want to listen to stuff, you don't actually need a license.
Margaret 29:05 What do they talk about around you? Because around me, like, I got a scanner and, you know, it doesn't transmit any way, right? And I set it to listen to HAM radio channels, and I mostly heard like a 70-year-old talking to maybe a 15-year-old about like how to cook hot dogs and how to get trucks unstuck in mud, and then started explaining a story about snakes that I found very improbable. And that was about the most interesting thing that's happened, like, all of the many hours I've, like, just had the scanner on in the background. I don't know. I'm curious what you all have heard people talking about on these things.
Cici 29:45 So for me, I actually don't do that much listening. Going back to kind of like different areas of different—I guess that's something called "rag chewing." In the HAM radio world that's if you hear someone say, "Oh, you're rag chewing," that's basically you're getting on the radio, you're just listening to other people. A lot of times people will make—I don't want to say a game, game probably sounds—is the right—is the wrong—but people will actually do this as a contest. Like, sometimes people will try to contact as many people as you can in a certain amount of time. You've heard of people called "contesting," that's what they mean. You'll hear some people "de-exing," this is better if you have that—so if you're in the high frequency, you try to get people as far away from you as you can. A lot of that, actually, you don't say much. Because you want to get as many contacts, you'll actually have this very non-conversation. It's basically like your call sign, like, some necessary information and that's it. Some people actually automate it. It's interesting. So you don't actually say a lot when you're doing that. However, I know we mentioned ultra high frequency, the UHV—or excuse me UHF, I'm sorry—UHF earlier, and somebody might be thinking, "Why would I want to even talk"—like they're very short, like, distances. They can penetrate into buildings which is helpful. So someone's like, "Why would I want to do that? If somebody right there, like, what's the point?" I mentioned earlier, one of the things you can do is you can create your own WiFi networks. Those actually operate. And those vary—or excuse me, not very, but ultra high frequency. 13 centimeters is about where that happens if people are able to look at a band plan and, like, see what links go where. If you were trying to set up your own—like, even like the commercial WiFi networks operate in that same thing. That's why your router is generally limited to your house and just outside your house and why you can't pick up a router like a mile away. So that's kind of like—I know, this is getting away from the question of what do people talk about around you.
Margaret 31:50 Oh, no, no. Go on. This is a better tangent.
Cici 31:55 It's like you don't have to necessarily even if you—there's a lot of people that have radios and they hardly ever listen, they don't ever rag chew. One of the things I'm trying to learn is it's basically Morse code. I don't know why I said basically, it is Morse code. It's called—for technical reasons it's called "continuous wave" in HAM radio. So if you hear people saying CW, that's Morse code. One of the attractive things in Morse code—because someone's like, "Well, why would you want to do that, that seems way more, way more like technical and you have to learn a whole thing and then"—it gets out when nothing else can. When I say that is a radio signals take up a certain amount of space, basically, in the bigger—the more space it takes up—bandwidth is how, I guess, the technical word for that. But the more bandwidth it is, the harder it can be to get that signal out. This is particularly pression, as Eepa was saying, a lot of times you're limited in how many watts you can put out. So if you're running something that's not a lot of watts—especially you've got like maybe an antenna that you've made or an antenna that's not extremely efficient—if you can do something like Morse code, it might get out, when if you were trying to do a voice code wouldn't get out. Now you have trade-offs with that, like, you know, you have to, you have to have equipment that will use it, you'll have to have somebody on the receiving end that can listen to it. But actually a lot of people use automatic—something, I forget what it's called. But it's basically something where when it comes up to your computer, or your radio, depending on if your radio is nice enough, will just automatically translate the Morse code for you. So you don't necessarily have to know it. In the HAM culture it's kind of like, well, that's cheating, you know, like you're supposed to like actually learn it and whatever. But if you're using it as an emergency thing, for instance, it can be really important. Another thing is if you don't really want to listen to what people around, you have to talk about, like I don't want to care—I don't care how people make hot dogs. The jokes is actually that if you are actually—a lot of it's just what gear do you have, what radio do you have? And like, "Oh, how nice is your radio?" And it's just, like, this is not information I need. One of the things, you can actually send out images? Which seems kind of like, "Well, I've got a computer, why do I care that I can send out images and like actually receive them?" This can be key if you're in a place where the government's actually shut down on purpose, you know, your your internet or your cell phone stuff, because they're doing things that they don't want people to know. For instance, I don't actually, I don't know if it's still happening. But I remember in the northern region of India, there was a blackout there a year or so ago. The Indian government was doing just, we don't really know because nothing could get out. But if you had a radio that could send out—there's fast scan and slow scan—TV is what it's called. But if you could send out an image without the government knowing, you could potentially let people know what's going on and in a situation where it's otherwise impossible to get communication out. So I mean, that's something that I—basically my answer to the question, "What do people talking around me?" is, "I don't really know." I'm not listening to people around me so much and I'm not a I'm not rag chewing, basically. But that's just to give people examples of what you can do if you're like, well, I'm really antisocial, I don't want to talk to anybody around me about just random stuff. So...
Eepa 35:14 Yeah, for like around me, one of the things that—I actually do listen. I'm actually still in the process of getting licensed. The tests are themselves are, you know, intimidating and challenging but you can develop a lot of interesting insights, basically, by listening. And, I mean, around where we're at it's simple stuff, like, they have little game shows where you can, like, call in answers to trivia questions. And they have, like, little social meet and greets. They've got like a technical night where if you're having a problem with your radio, you can call in and they'll help you troubleshoot what's going on with it. And this is all done via repeaters, which means you could use a UHF or VHF, you know, like a Baofeng basically, to talk to somebody in Ohio. Now, again, these repeaters are run by local radio clubs which means, you know, you don't control the infrastructure, which means if those repeaters were to go down or, you know, the government was to take them over or something like that, you could lose access. And that's one of the reasons that I'm very interested in HF because HF is a self-contained communication system where you're able to do everything on your own. The IF's in contact with some of the people—some of the anarchists in Ethiopia. And during the recent civil war in Tigray that was one of the issues that they were running into and something that they had wished that they had basically prepared was people who could actually send out images and send out news reports on the radio from within Tigray because a lot of the news was only coming from the Ethiopian state forces. And there were, you know, reports and rumors of massacres and other things like that. But there were no images, there was nothing really to substantiate what was happening. And so just touching on that, the ability to send images and things like that is really nice. But just when it comes to listening, I think that's actually something really critical to think about when you're looking at radio from a prepper kind of standpoint, from a—the idea that you are trying to get into communications because you want to be a part of community awareness. The primary thing that you will be using radio for in a situation where communications are shut down through normal means, and that could mean just a grid down, you know, Hurricane knocked out the power grid or something like that. Or it could be something more sinister where, you know, the government is purposefully denying people access to communication. The primary thing you're gonna be doing on radio is listening, is intelligence gathering. It's figuring out what all the other HAMs that are on the radio are talking about, what are they seeing, you know. Are they seeing, you know—are there rumors of, you know, troop movements to the north? Are there rumors, that there's a food shortage in the town that's north to you or that, you know, they're sick people really concentrated in a certain area? That intelligence gathering is something that you can do with really cheap equipment. You can—one of the things that we recommend on our site is to get a shortwave, you know, receiver or something that can listen to all of these different bands. And just use that as a tool in your community to get people the ability to listen and learn because information is absolutely critical for survival, it's the central thing you can have in a situation where stability has crumbled, is to have information awareness on the ground. So listening, even when you're, you know, not licensed, can do that. It also can kind of give you an idea of what your local HAM community is like. Because one of the things that you will very, very rapidly learn, if you're a minority and you're involved in HAM, is that the community is blazingly white. And sometimes they can be fairly reactionary. And you can actually start to take notes of people that are actually kind of cool on the radio and people that you never want to talk to you again, just based off their call signs because they're required to give those. And that can help you decide in the future how reliable somebody information might be, or what kind of perspectives they might be providing in a disaster situation. So that kind of, like, finite information gathering is an important skill to develop even before you consider transmitting, you know, that's something you can work on right now.
Margaret 39:59 Yeah, that makes sense.
Cici 40:00 I'm actually really glad he mentioned that. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, Margaret, I'm sorry,
Margaret 40:04 No, go ahead.
Cici 40:05 I was just gonna say like, I—I'm gonna preface this just legally by saying, don't ever do anything illegal on the radio. But one of the things that I don't think people necessarily realize is that the FCC isn't—they don't have the manpower to sit and listen to like every single band. So like, generally, if you're doing something say, untoward, or you're not necessarily licensed, it's not the FCC that's going to like find out. It's the other HAMs. HAM radio is largely kind of self-disciplined. It's self—like, for instance, we do our own testing. Like, it's not like if you do—if you do something someone's—the band hammer is gonna come down. It's basically if you piss off enough HAMs or if they know, they'll— they're the ones who's going to report it. Eepa had mentioned earlier in our conversation that in HAM radio you can't send encrypted communication. However, you could send—and there's kind of a formality of how you send information via HAM radio—but for instance, you could say what they would expect you to say if you were doing a regular HAM conversation and it could mean not what they would necessarily expect it to mean. So for instance, one of the things on—I don't know a lot about voice because I actually am trying to focus more and Morse code, but one of the things that you're supposed to do on Morse code to call a another radio is CQ, CQ CQ. And then someone will be like is, you know, are you looking for someone? You can use those codes to mean for your intended audience whatever you want them to mean. So it's not encrypted. But it's also something where the other HAM radio, if someone happens to be listening, has a HAM radio, they won't necessarily know what's going on. Again, you should never do anything illegal on the radio. I just want to let people know that it's not like there's a radio police that sits and actively listens, like, it's really just other HAMs that are gonna report you. Also, that's something to know. If you note that you're in kind of a, you know, maybe you live in a really remote area and there's just not a lot of other HAMs, you're listening on the air, and they're just not a lot of other people, you don't hear a lot of other people. That also might mean there's not really a lot of people listening, which means there's not a lot of people that could report you to the FCC. So that's something to keep in mind as well. If people were, you know—also something to note that even in a licensed situation, for something that's considered an emergency, and this is actually one part of the test, you can break HAM radio protocol and laws in the case of emergency. And that's actually something that's acknowledged. So like, if something were happening where it's like, this person needs immediate attention, you're not expected to follow all the—like, you can get on the air and be like, "I'm not licensed, but I need help," and most HAMs are gonna not, you know, they're not going to get on you. Like, that's allowed. So that's also something I want people to know, like, if you just want to radio for emergencies technically you should be licensed and it's good, because you'll have experience and you'll know what you're doing, but if it's something like this is like four death, or this is extreme, other HAMs aren't gonna report you. Like, people are generally, you know, and also that's allowed. So even if they did report you other HAMs would be like, well, that's allowed in the rule. So something I just wanted people to know.
Margaret 43:44 Yeah, that actually helps.
Eepa 43:45 So if you break your leg out in the woods, go ahead and get on your Baofeng and start honking.
Margaret 43:51 So I feel like at this point, I should probably tell the audience what a Baofeng is. Which is, as far as I understand—because that's actually, that's how Baofengs were introduced to me, right is like, "Oh, yeah, I got a Baofeng." Like, "Oh yeah, there's radios over there, they're Baofengs." And like, everyone like talks about it, like, "Whoa, like, this is the fucking coolest thing ever," right? And it's just a really cheap radio that can do a lot of things. And it can do a lot of things that are legal like transmit at low wattage on FRS. And it can do a lot of things that would only be illegal if you were licensed. But it's just kind of like, what, a $20 or $30 radio you can buy on the internet and you can like swap it out with a nicer antenna? And it's just kind of like—it's become, like, kind of like a thing in this sort of like tactical and prepper and whatever worlds is like Baofengs is, like, the thing. But actually what you were talking about, about how you can use it in emergencies. That's kind of how I've always seen, like, I have a Baofeng, right? I don't really know how to use it. I've pretty much just used it to listen to things. But I'm like, okay, I could theoretically transmitted an emergency if I needed to. And, you know, for a $20 thing that can transmit in an emergency, that's cool. It's also cool that it's a tool that, like, isn't limited, like, I hate when I buy something and it's like, this is locked down to make sure that you can't do the things it's supposed to do. Just the things that you're allowed to do. You know?
Eepa 45:23 Yeah.
Margaret 45:23 I hate that kind of shit, I—there's a, just, I don't know, whatever. I'm clearly an anarchist, I—there's—I don't really have to defend this position very hard.
Eepa 45:36 Yeah, and so like, those Baofengs are basically like, I mean, the the way that you can think about it is, like, your first, you know, foray into radio if you are, like, just—what I generally recommend Baofengs for is if you're actually interested in doing like, computer stuff with it, if you're interested in doing programming, they can be really fun to play with. Also, if you're interested in a radio that the cops can confiscate and you're not going to miss it because it's not that much of an investment, that's another really good reason to get a Baofeng. But if you're a beginner and you're serious about getting into radio, I do think that there are better options for just ease of use, because Baofengs can be very difficult to program, sometimes, they can be very finicky to use all of the functions of it. And so something like, you know, an Alinco, or a Yaesu, you know, these types of like, you know, Japanese radios can be a little bit more easy to use and they're going to be much more durable, you know, as far as like weather proofing and things like that. But again, that's something you have to weigh the pros and the cons of, you know, is this something that's gonna be confiscated at a protest, I probably don't want to spend a lot of money on it. Whereas if you're something where this isn't my go bag, I need something that's going to survive no matter what, then you might want to invest more money in something that's going to be easy to use and is going to be durable. So I mean, yeah, the Baofeng s ubiquitous, because it is cheap and there are better options that are still affordable.
Margaret 47:20 I feel like the Baofeng is like such a perfect way to introduce someone to help goddamn convoluted radio looks, like, you know?
Eepa 47:30 It can't—that's one of the issues with it is if you were—if I was to hand you a Yaesu. Like if I was to give you just like a Yaesu FT4X you would be able to program that without plugging in into a computer. It's much easier to use. You can just run to the menu, everything's right there. It's not convoluted and complex. And I think that's one of the issues with the Baofeng is it kind of—if you're not used to radio it can be very, very intimidating if you see that as your first introduction to radio. At least that's been my experience. I do have Baofengs, I was that typical person where I went out and I, first thing I got was, you know, a four-pack of Baofengs that I split amongst some of my comrades. And we were, you know, learning how to use them. But it was much more challenging. And the first time I used a radio with a nice, smooth, easy operation interface, you know, a nice, easy menu system. It really—it made it a lot less intimidating.
Margaret 48:35 Now you sold me. I mean, yeah, like, I basically look at my Baofeng and I'm like, I'm an idiot. And I'm like, I know how to program a computer to some degree, like, I've been doing technical shit for very long time. And I just look at it, and I'm like, I don't have enough time to dedicate in my life. Actually, this ties back to something I don't remember—I think it was Cici who was saying it but I'm not sure—earlier about how like, you know, Cici's like well, I actually very involved in this community, right, but then you're like, but I only know about the stuff that I'm interested in. I don't necessarily have to know everything about everything. And that is one of the things that's so hard about radio is when you look at it from the outside, it's just a string of letters that you're supposed to know how to make sense of. I mean, it honestly reminds me of like when you get into guns or something when everyone's like, "Oh, yeah, well if you don't have this thing go attached to this thing and the other thing and then this thing, then you're just gonna die." Well I don't wanna die.
Cici 49:32 I mean it's actually—yeah, I'd say with guns it's a good analogy. Like, there's very few gun people who, like, their experienced with revolvers, and they're experienced with like the latest pistols, and they're experienced with like lever guns, and their experienced with black powder, and their experienced with like—yeah, like, if people are—I don't know if listeners, if your listeners would have a good sense of like how guns are. I know you've done some episodes on firearms, but generally people tend to know more about certain aspects of firearms and they do other aspects, even though—even people that have a broad knowledge will know more about stuff than others, like black powder is very specific. A lot of people don't—who know a lot about guns, still don't know a lot about black powder, or vice versa. In the same way radio is kind of like that. There's very few. And I mean, like, I haven't met anybody who's, like, I know everything about every aspect of radio. That's, like, a crazy person. Like, or I should say, a person who's like, you know, they might be an engineer or something or that's their job.
Eepa 50:33 Yeah, yeah.
Cici 50:34 So for most people, like, I actually don't do too much what I would call local radio stuff and be—that'd be the very high frequency and ultra high frequency. I am interested in mesh networks, which would be the setting up those WiFi networks, but I haven't actually done a lot with it. What I'm interested in, the stuff is usually called high frequency, it's more long-distance, it's very different from the ultra high frequency. So I'm still learning a lot about setting up a mesh network and how to do a decentralized WiFi. I'm still learning a lot about that. What I guess my interests lie more in something called, I mentioned Morse code over there. There's another aspect of radio called QRP. So yeah, QRP is just a fancy way of saying low power. Generally, when people talk about radio they're gonna be talking about wattages. So we've been talking a lot about Baofengs and I know Eva mentioned the Alinko radios, Yaesu radios, these are generally going to be handy talkies. They looknkind of like what people might think a walkie-talkie would look like. The type of radios that would be a base station, they'll look very different. They look kind of like a—basically a box. It's a real, if it's a nice space station, that might be a really big box. Generally those are going to be at 100 watts or more, but those are also going to be extremely expensive. They're going to also generally require kind of semi-complex antenna setups, a lot of room to set up some type of base station like that. The stuff that I'm interested in for low power, the difference is that it's much cheaper. And a lot of people look at radio and they're like, I don't have an extra $1,000 to just drop on like a nice radio, I don't have an extra—especially if you want to do long distance stuff. That was kind of my interest. That's actually why I have a general license. If you get a technician license, it actually kind of limits you to very high frequency and ultra high frequency. You can do some stuff on the longer distance, but it's very limited. So yeah, you to even do stuff with long distance in a general sense, you have to get a general license, but a QRP is a way that you can not spend a lot of money—or at least spend less money, it still might be a lot of money, relatively speaking. But um. What'd you say?
Margaret 52:58 And QRP means low powered, right?
Cici 53:01 Yeah, low power. For Morse code, that's five watts or less. For voice modes like single sideband, that would be 10 watts or less. Actually, a lot of HAM radios kind of poopoo it because they're like, why would you use, you know—it's just, it can be difficult because you're using such little power, but you get a lot of benefits with it. A lot of benefits is you can use a radio that doesn't—or you can use an antenna that doesn't take up a lot of space. If you live in an apartment, that's huge. If you live in a place where, you know, like, you don't—you're not supposed to set up outside antennas or something, that's huge. I already mentioned that it's very cheap, or cheaper, I shouldn't say very cheap. But it's cheaper than doing other types of radios that use much higher power. Also, one of the big things is that you can make your own radios. We were talking about earlier how one of the benefits of radio was that it's decentralized, like, you're not about to go make your own smartphone.
Margaret 53:55 Mm hmm.
Cici 53:56 At least I can't. I don't know anyone who can. But you could make your own radio. And you can make your own antenna. In fact, a lot of HAMs encourage people to make their own antennas because it's—antennas are actually kind of expensive to go buy. It's actually cheaper to make them. So like a lot of HAMs will just learn how to make antennas out of, like, nothing. Like a lot of people make them on a tape measure and stuff, like it's very—if you're kind of that person where it's like I want to experiment and I want to kind of just make stuff with found materials or stuff that's, like, I have already at my house. Like, that's a huge benefit. Also, we didn't mention this earlier, but RF safety kind of is a related to the amount of—it's related to a lot of stuff, but it can be related to the amount of watts you're putting out.
Margaret 54:39 What is RF?
Cici 54:41 Oh, sorry, RF is radio frequency. It's just—it's the type of energy we're using for radio.
Margaret 54:47 So what is—how does it tie in to safety? Sorry, I'm just like...
Cici 54:52 Oh, it's okay. So if you're using something like 100 watts or more and you're transmitting. Like, for instance, you should never touch an antenna at that many watts that's transmitting. You're gonna get an RF burn. It's basically something that, like, it can get kind of complicated. But—and there's—I don't want to like scare people or anything, like, it's not—I'm not trying to be like, "Oh, we didn't talk about safety." But the lower wattage you use the less you have to worry about that, basically, especially if you have an indoor antenna or something. Like, if you have an indoor antenna, you really want to keep your RF, like, levels lower so you don't—part of it is actually practical, like, we haven't talked a lot about interference. But if you have a really, really high, like, wattage, and today—it can cause interference. And it can be something where your neighbors are trying to like use their electronics, and they hear all sorts of weird stuff, they hear all sorts of clicks and whatever. That's because you're using like a really high power radio. So, like, your neighbors just might get mad and be like, "You're, we see this antenna outside your house, and it's doing this thing and blah, blah, blah." So using a less power, it can be—it can cause less interference. But also it will just cause less RF like fields, which means that it's safer to operate inside. And someone might, like, might be thinking, "Well, why would I want to operate inside? If I can operate outside, shouldn't I?" Well, it depends. Are you doing something where you don't necessarily want people to know you're operating. A big antennas, like, if you have a huge antenna outside your house, or even just kind of a moderate one but something that's obviously an antenna and not a TV antenna, it'll be like, well, that person's a radio operator. Not everybody wants that immediately known if they were to walk by their house. I'll just say that. It's something that, if you're using QRP, it's much easier for you to not cause interference, to operate from completely inside, and to be able to make your own equipment.
Margaret 56:51 It's really cool honestly. Like, talking to you makes me want to learn how to build radios.
Eepa 56:58 I mean, it's like, there's some benefits to, like, QRP, like low power HF radios for prepping especially because they're mobile. You can literally put one of these—you can put a full QRP setup—a low power radio, power source, an antenna, and like an antenna tuner—in your purse. You could put it in a very small satchel and be able to talk to somebody states away. So these can be really compact and really mobile solutions that still give you access to autonomous email, like, still give you access to, you know, listening to all of these different bands, transmitting all these different bands. So from a preparedness perspective, that is a huge benefit. The low wattage basically allows you to use less power from your battery so you can use a very small solar panel that folds up and into your backpack to recharge your battery when you need. And so that just has tremendous benefits for mobility. And one of the key things to think about from a, maybe, a situation where you have any type of adversary. So that could be, you know, a lot of white supremacists militia types have created radio nets and have radio training. They're—they've been working on preparing this for years, they have pre-designated frequencies and nets, they've got all these different things set up. And one of the things that they can do is they can track you. So it's extremely easy to triangulate and locate the source of a transmission. So if you are needing to transmit something that is sensitive or that will identify you, as politically opposed to people that might be interested in finding you, you're going to want to transmit from locations away from your place of residence and also in a way that doesn't, you know, create a big circle on the map around your house. You're going to want to choose random locations to transmit from, and you're going to want to use, you know—low power helps with that a little bit as well. You can reach the people you need to without giving away your position too much. But as soon as you click the transmission button, you're opening up the world to find out exactly where you're at. So you can transmit what you need to, pack up, and get out of there if you need to. That's the nice thing about those low power rigs. So that's something to really think about when you're getting into radio. And, yeah, you can build your own, you can build your own antenna. There's some awesome antennas that you can literally just launch up into a tree with a slingshot and it's—all it is is one giant long strand of speaker cable, speaker wire. That's it, that's an antenna. Nothing more is needed. You just need a little antenna tuner to hook up to it and your radio and you're good to go. So those kinds of things are—they open up the whole world to you on a very, very—on a lower budget than you would be if you had a base station. One of the things that we talked about with the article that we released the Javelina Network is that handheld radios and QRP HF radios are very good for transmitting on the go and that was our main focus on that. You can do base stations which is like based out of your apartment, based out of your co-op or your bookstore or whatever you want to do. But again, that's a known location, that's a fixed location, that means that you have to be much more careful about what you're transmitting. And if you're transmitting outside of legal areas, the amateur radio committee has a whole community of amateur snitches that their whole thing—they get their jollies by tagging people on not having licenses and stuff. So it can happen. You just got to be careful about what you do.
Margaret 1:00:53 That's actually one of the questions that I—when I asked around basically being like what should I ask these people? One of the questions that came up a couple times was how real is—I think—it was presented to me that's called fox hunting? Like, the hobby of tracking down on licensed operators. What a great culture, what a wonderful culture where their whole thing is just snitching on people. But so, yeah, my question was, like, how real is that? Like, how much do people—especially like, let's say if you're not—I mean obviously if you're doing something where people are—where the people around you are politically opposed to you, and opposed to what you're saying, obviously that will increase the odds. But if you're just, like, coordinating some random bullshit like picking up lumber or something like that, how much do you act—do people—how real is this? How much do people actually get kind of tracked down?
Eepa 1:01:52 So from my experience, basically, fox hunting—I'm sorry, I've got a ICE helicopter flying over me right now. The—as far as fox hunting goes, if you go to any type of, like, HAM Fest or HAM convention or HAM con or, you know, whatever you want to go to, they will all have fox hunting competitions. This is something that, you know, people really enjoy doing is just like, you know, hunting down signals. Now, what this is typically used for is not going to be tracking down the guy who's saying, "Hey, I got lumber," or, you know, the person who's like, "Hey, you know, I need to pick up a quart of oil from you," or something like that, or the gal that's, you know, "I've got eggs for sale," or something like that, you know. It's not typically going to be stuff like that. It's usually like sources of interference that people are going to be tracking down. So if you're causing a lot of interferenc, and it's pissing people off, then they will fox hunt you down, and they'll find out what's going on. So if you have a jammer or something like that, which are illegal, and you operate that jammer and it makes people mad—if you operate it for long enough, people will find it and they will make sure that that is put to the stop. And so you have to be careful if you do utilize jammers and things like that, that you're not using them when you don't need to. So fox hunting in, like, day to day circumstances is a little bit less of a threat. If you know kind of what radio people sound like—and, again, do this at your own risk. This is something, again, that, you know, is illegal. But if you had like a fake callsign and you just follow the standard protocols of calls, you could basically get away with it as long as you didn't accidentally have some callsign that somebody there knew as being somebody else. So generally it's not going to be an issue if you're just talking between two people, you select a frequency, you listen to it, nobody's on that frequency, nobody's been on that frequency for a long time, and you just use it to call each other to coordinate something. Just kind of sound like you belong and you'll be okay. As soon as you get into an adversarial situation, that's when you do have police operating like stingers and other devices that will track down cell phone data, they'll track down radio data, everything—any kind of frequency that's being emitted, those things will be able to track down the source of so just be very aware of when and how you're transmitting, and be safe about it.
Cici 1:04:29 Absolutely. And I would actually add to what Eepa says: If you're going to use a call sign, first you want to absolutely know who—you know, if you're licensed—So, okay, so for people who are like what the hell is call sign?
Margaret 1:04:43 Yeah I was about to ask.
Cici 1:04:46 For HAM radio, what—basically what happens is you take this test. Assuming you pass they'll—what the license actually—the most important thing that I guess the license gives you is a call sign. I actually have a call sign. I'm not going to say it. The reason I'm not going to say it is because for anybody that says a call sign, it's instantly look up-able. When you take the test you have to give like an address, it's supposed to be your home address, of where you live. And basically that data is publicly available. So like, if I were to say my call sign right now, anybody listening to this podcast could go look it up online and find out exactly who I am—or at least, I shouldn't say exactly who I am. They could find out the name that I gave to the FCC, which is my real name. They could find out the address I have listed. You're supposed to updat it, like, you know, every time you move or whatever. A lot of people don't necessarily but like if they find out, like, that can become an issue. So for instance, let's say you just found a call sign. Nobody's using it. Cool. Somebody happens to look it up—and they might actually do this innocuously, a lot of people want these—they're called QSL cards. It's basically a little card that say, "Hey, I contacted you." And it's like a postcard that 's like, oh, cool. So they might just look it up just thinking, "Hey, I contacted you, I want a little postcard," and see that, you know, that call sign's registered to somebody in Texas. You were transmitting from, like, Washington. Like, they might be, like, well, that's kind of weird. That's not necessarily a tip off. Because, you know, you could be traveling. It's not like you have to change your call sign when you go traveling, you're on vacation, whatever. But if you're constantly—like, if you live in Texas and you're constantly transmitting from Texas and you never transmit for Washington, but that call sign is assigned to someone in Washington, like that's gonna tip somebody off, like, is this person really who they say they are? Also, you might—this gets a little dicey, too. But if you're using voice modes and, you know, your call sign says tou're this 58-year-old guy and you don't sound like a 58-year-old guy, like, that might start making sound like, you know, is this person who they say they are?
Margaret 1:06:57 Is it gonna be like four random letters or something? Like is—or is the call sign, like, this is like, I don't know, Phoenix Rising, I don't know...
Cici 1:07:06 Oh no, they're random letters. Like, for instance, I'm not gonna say my call sign. But, for instance, I'm reading this book, HAM—like HAM radio people generally love sharing their call signs, like, they'll put it on books. The call sign of [inaudible] from this guy that I'm reading, it's G0KYA. And actually, the G in the beginning means that he's actually from the UK. So not only are they location-specific, but they're country-specific. So like, if you just made up a call sign, like, people can generally tell if it's real or not. They're supposed to be a certain length, they have certain—like, for instance, in the in the US, generally if you get a call sign, it's gonna start with K or W. So like, that's something, if you're going to do that, you should know that these are things. Now of course this could all be alleviated just by getting an actual, like getting licensed and getting an actual whole sign. Still be careful who you share it with, you know. Like, maybe don't just go around telling everybody what your call sign is like most HAMs do. Just because, you know, maybe there is that really reactionary guy at the local HAM and, like, he gets a whiff that you're not, you know, you're not—your politics upset him. He knows your call sign. Also, if you're broadcasting you're supposed to actually say your call sign every 10 minutes. So it's not like, "Well, I'm just never gonna say my call sign when a broadcasting." You're supposed to. You're not just gonna keep it secret so that's something to think about. As far as fox hunting, yeah, there's this whole thing where HAMs will set out a radio, they'll hide it, and the whole game is to try to go and find the transmitter. This is actually something you don't even need to be licensed to do, you're just listening for this transmitter. So like, technically, you wouldn't even—you don't even need a license to go fox hunt. Anybody could track it down if they're just listening to you.
Margaret 1:08:48 That honestly sounds fun.
Cici 1:08:50 Also—I would also mention, that's actually something I'm interested in doing. We're not the only people at Radio Stash, obviously have radios. And if you know how to foxhunt and you note that there's this—or maybe there's just this guy in your local HAM community. If anyone's interacted with HAM, it tends to be very old, white, retired dudes. Like the average age of HAMs is probably something like 60 or 70. Like, it's very old. Like, it's people that have the money to buy like $1,000 base stations usually. So like, maybe there's a guy there that's, you know, he's always got a Blue Lives Matter shirt on. Or maybe, you know, he went to, you know, he went to DC recently, or something. And maybe you don't know his, you don't know his call sign, or maybe he's using a fake call sign or something. But if you can triangulate your signal, you could probably find out where he's at least transmitting from. Whether or not that's his house is, you know, it's a different thing. But you can actually use a lot of this stuff—the stuff that they use against us you can also use, like, to help us as well.
Margaret 1:09:56 So I'm impressed that we made it an hour and eight minutes before we brought up the fact that the fascist attempted to stage a coup in the United States yesterday. Sorry, anyway, what were you gonna say?
Eepa 1:10:11 Oh, no, I was gonna basically just add that when it comes to that security culture around call signs, that's really important. I've remember going to a protest of a basically a bunch of white supremacists, you know, ethno-nationalists or whatever. And there was a guy there who had his FRA sticker and his call sign on the back of his truck. And so I just went online, I looked at the call sign, and I showed him a picture of his home address. And I said, "Do you live here?" And he's like, "Yes." And then I showed him a picture of his little earth and his truck sitting in his driveway of his house, I was like, "This is your house in your truck, right?" And, you know, his face went white. And it was just like, either you put the call sign on the truck, or you put the the FRA sticker, but you'd never put both.
Margaret 1:11:02 Yeah.
Eepa 1:11:02 And typically, it's just don't even put your call sign in your vehicle. Because if you show up to an event, police will be able to look that up, fash will be able to look that up, anybody who knows about that can look it up. So that's just a really basic piece of security culture to do. And I can guarantee you that there are people who were in DC that had their call signs that the FBI are going to be looking up as we speak to go and arrest them. So don't snitch on yourself.
Margaret 1:11:31 Yeah.
Cici 1:11:32 Yeah. So no, I mean, like, be very diligent who you share your call sign with. Talking about repeaters, anybody could call into a repeater. So if you're using a repeater and you know that there's people in the area that you don't want them to know your call sign, like, either don't transmit longer than 10 minutes or, you know, just be aware of that you don't want it to be where there's a situation where you're constantly saying your call sign and now people you don't really want to know where you are, either know where you are, or they find out you have a call sign, or something like that. I do want to mention that if you're doing a data mode—there's these things called data modes, which are basically not voice modes. It's, you know, it's not your voice. Also Morse code obviously isn't your voice, it's just a series of beats dits and dots. It's harder for people to tell that's not necessarily you—not in the terms of location but in the terms of like, dits and dots. So like, if you have a friend that lives close to you and you know, their licensed, and and they said it's okay—you should never do anything illegal on the radio, by the way.
Margaret 1:12:35 Yeah, that would be wrong.
Cici 1:12:37 For someone to tell that, oh, that's not you doing dits and dots. I mean, they could maybe? Like maybe your friend transmits at a certain speed and you never transmit at that speed. But even then you could use a keyer which just puts it in automatically. And then like lots of people use keyers, like, that could be—like someone would have to really know, like, I know that dude and I know, that's not how he sends code. Like, that's a really specific situation. But if you're not using voice you have a little more... I don't know. Don't ever do anything illegal on the radio. But also, you don't have to use voice.
Margaret 1:13:12 Yeah.
Cici 1:13:13 Just gonna say that.
Margaret 1:13:14 And I mean, like, it's funny because like, I actually think that—go ahead, go ahead.
Eepa 1:13:18 No, no, no, no, go for it.
Margaret 1:13:21 I actually do think that, like, I think it would be great for us all to get licenses. Like it would actually be like, you know, I mean, it's like—do I think it's like ethically necessary that people have licenses to drive cars? No. But do I, like, want people who are driving cars to know how to drive cars? Yes. Right? And it's not the same thing, right? But like, I would say that, like, I intend to slowly work towards getting my license, right? And, you know, anyone who's interested in radio, it seems like a really good way to do it. And so—but yeah, no, I appreciate that sort of nuance of the conversation around, like, here's how you can choose to access radios while you're still working on them in emergency situations, etc. You know?
Eepa 1:14:06 Well, and I would say, basically, when it comes to getting your license, I think that is actually an important step for people to take because one of the things that allows you to do is to get lots and lots of practice. Practice is going to be the most important thing for you to actually be effective in a, you know, grid down or a, you know—in a sensitive situation, you don't want to be figuring out how to do new modes, how to, you know, what the bands are in the area, what your radio can operate at. You don't want to be figuring that out on the fly. And so if you spend a lot of time with a license interacting with other people in the community, even going and learning from some of those old white codgers who, you know, know how to build, you know, nice antennas or mobile rigs or things like that. You can do that and you can learn—you can learn a lot. And so that's the upside to the license is that you're going to be able to develop and nurture the skills that will come in handy later. Because one of the things that I'm very interested in is a program called JS8Call. And what that does is basically it creates a network of people that, you can be off the radio, and somebody can send you a text message. And the next time you get on the radio, other radios have stored that and when you get on, it'll send you that message. So it's just like an email, or just like a text message.
Margaret 1:15:32 Cool.
Eepa 1:15:33 In that whenever your radios on, you can get those messages. So the other nice thing about that is they have individual rooms. So you could set up a room in JS8Call just for your local mutual aid thing. And if somebody logs in, you will know that they have logged in from your group. And if somebody logs in who's not from your group, you will know. So it offers you a little extra level of security over just general voice transmission and things like that. So, but learning the fineties of all of these different things and learning what your niche is, because again, everyone has different interests and different talents. The best way to explore that is going to be with a license. Now, the second things go south and you need to be using your radio for revolutionary purposes, you also need to know how to operate securely without your call sign, and how to, you know, vary your location, how to vary your signal strength, how to use transmission that actually bounces off of the ionosphere instead of line of sight, and things like that. There's all kinds of cool tricks you can learn, but you really need to practice them and refine them and make sure you know what you're doing before you get to a situation where you're going to be asked to be the expert. And it can be very intimidating, technically, to be like, you know, there's all these different things that I can learn, I can do all this, I can do all that. One of the things you can do is if you are one of those people, like, you know, us, that's very interested in radio and thinks that it's like really interesting and cool, is become extremely proficient at something and then develop simplified protocols for people who aren't extremely interested but want to have communication. We have, one of the members of the Javelina Network is a veteran who used to be a radio operator overseas. And basically, you type the numbers in, you push the button, you call. And that's basically the level of complexity. And that enables large-scale coordination of logistics, of people movement, of intelligence, of all kinds of stuff like that, just having community members that know how to make those transmissions. So if you are the kind of person who's excited and interested in radio, and you're developing those skills, your other role is to act as a teacher about just basic stuff. You pre-programm the radio and you give it to somebody and you say, "Okay, this is how and when to transmit. This is why you transmit. This is how you stay safe." You just give them the basic instructions and that way, they don't have to worry about programming, they don't have to worry about all of the minutia that, you know, you can get easily lost in. And that's the way we can we can lift each other up. That's part of, like, what the Javelina Network's all about.
Cici 1:18:11 Absolutely. I love that. Also, I would say to people—so yes, HAM radio is generally—it's going to be more reactionary as a general rule. You're going to generally be dealing with old white dudes. But it's not—I don't want to paint them as all bad people. Like there are—some places are better than others. I liked what Eepa said earlier about just kind of listen and see what kind of people are there. Some HAMs, some like people in HAM radio, they love teaching new HAMs, they love trying to—there's this kind of subset of HAMs that we always need to be like getting more people into this. It's like, if you just show up and you're just like, "I don't know anything," or you know, I don't know anything, but I need help. There's, depending on the club or the culture that exists in your area, there might be somebody there that's like willing to just take you under their wing. That's actually a word in HAM culture for people that teach. It's kind of hard to find these people actually, but they're Elmers. An Elmer is actually supposed to be a mentor for you. They're supposed to, like, help you. You know, you don't have to be super political and you don't have to tell these people what you think or whatever. A lot of HAMs, you know, a lot of HAMs actually won't tell other people what they're thinking either. They're there just to have fun with the radio, they're not trying to necessarily tell people all of their business either. So yeah, you might have a guy that, you know, we were talking about access to equipment can be a huge limitation to this hobby. If you find an Elmer, and a lot of these guys have old equipment or they have just, they've accumulated equipment, they might just give you an old radio they're not using anymore which could be huge, you know, and you can develop like these relationships that they don't have to be, like, your best friend, like—or you know, maybe they are your best friend. I don't know. Like, they can, you know, they don't—not all HAMs are like out to get you or trying to like find all the—they're not all just trying to find the person messing up so they can report them to the FCC. There's actually, with a license change, I've been reading a few things in HAM radio community and one HAM was so upset that he was like if I hear somebody transmitting and they're made up a license, like, I'm not going to report it. Because he's, like, he just doesn't think people should pay $35 to the FCC. So I mean, like, not everyone is not everyone in the HAM community is like, "Oh, we're gonna get you." But also, yeah, I would also say, share what knowledge you have. One of the things that I think, like, if you are somebody that does have a little bit more money, or maybe you do have a little bit of, I don't know, you could buy 10 Baofengs, you can give them out, teach people how to tune them into the police station—a lot of police have, they basically have it where you can actually listen to them. A lot of people actually do this, not just for political reasons but just to, you know, they just want to know why there's a million sirens going off. As long as you don't transmit and as long as you don't jam the signal, you can listen all day long. And that can be helpful. Listen, see what's going on, call your friends being like, this is where they're going to be at or this is what's happening. As far as the licensing goes, part of the reason people get licenses is so they don't accidentally do stuff. For instance, like if you were listening into like a ambulance, or like a health—like something for, like, EMTs—you don't want to accidentally interfere with them. Like, obviously, they're going to go help people who are in like medical distress. So like, you want to make sure that you know how to use the Baofeng but that's kind of what Eepa was saying. Like, if you have access to where you can get equipment to people, and you can teach them. "Look, I've already programmed this for you. I've already set it up to the frequency. This is how to change the frequency if you need to. But in general, like, just listening and if youm you know, want to let somebody know what you hear just, you know, call somebody." That's great. Like, no one is expected to know everything in this hobby. So like, yeah, if you can help somebody who—I actually don't know a lot about Baofengs. I've been focusing on other stuff. So like, I'd love for someone to help me do things that are more like VH VHF type of technologies. So...
Margaret 1:22:18 Well, do y'all have any—we're kind of running out of time and it's funny cuz there's so much about radios that I can easily talk with us forever. But are there any last thoughts that we—or things that we haven't covered that you want people to know?
Cici 1:22:35 Ah, I didn't mention this earlier, but I'm actually a volunteer examiner. I mentioned earlier, like ham radio people are the ones who actually give the exams. If people are interested in getting licensed, either now or in the future—I don't know I didn't put out any contact information, but feel free to let get in touch with me. I'm actually currently studying for the extra license. I want to do it before they have to pay the FCC $35. But once I get the extra license—one of the things the licenses actually let you do is test other people to get licensed. So maybe you're in an area where, again, the HAM club sucks, they're really reactionary, they don't want to help new HAMS, they're just mean, whatever, but you still want to get licensed. If you have a friend that can help, like, basically a—you need three VEs to do a test. But like, if you have three people in your community who could basically be those VEs and help you get tested—
Margaret 1:23:32 What does that mean? Oh, a volunteer examiner?
Cici 1:23:35 Oh, yeah, volunteer diameter. Yeah, sorry, VE. That can help tremendously. One of the things that pandemic's actually done is that you used to have to do that in person but now there's actually a whole system of people doing this remotely. So you can actually take your tests on Zoom, you don't have to show up anywhere. So that's great if you're, you know, you're homebound, or you know, it's a pandemic and you just don't want to leave your house because you're quarantining. So yeah, that's actually one of the benefits that's happened recently. Like, this is recent in terms of, like, I think, April they—the FCC authorized like 14 groups to give remote exams. So yeah, if people have questions about getting licensed, questions about QRP which was the low power stuff, questions about Morse code, please get in touch with me. It can feel very overwhelming but I want people to know that they're not—they don't have to sit there and struggle. I'm actually also trying to learn how to do antenna stuff—antenna stuff's just one of the coolest things. But yeah, I guess that's my last little bit.
Eepa 1:24:40 Um yeah, for me, basically, I want to encourage people to check out the Javelina project. This is something that we have launched together, basically a bunch of decolonial, anti authoritarian kind of people who are interested in building autonomous communications, building networks, creating ways for us to basically keeping in touch and to get information in and out of places as time goes on. You know, we want to be the kind of people that help, you know, next time there's a Standing Rock or Wet'suwet'en and actually set up indigenous communication networks in and out. So that way, you know, when you're frozen out of any type of other media, you can still get media in and out. And we're trying to create resources for, you know, like, a how-to guide of how to set up digital modes on your Baofeng, that's gonna be an article that's gonna be coming out soon.
Margaret 1:25:30 Cool.
Eepa 1:25:31 We're going to be doing an article soon about pirate radio, how to set up a pirate radio station. We're going to be doing articles about, you know, like JS8Call. So I definitely encourage people to stay tuned for that. We already have a guide up on the Indigenous Anarchist Federation website called Skills for Revolutionary Survival: Communication Equipment for Rebels. And that has information, all the basic information about what radios are, what radio you need depending on what situation you expect to be in, recommendations based off of price and like weatherproofing, things like that. And then video resources that you can watch to not only start studying for your test if that's what you're interested in, but also to look at kind of the logistical side of communication. So those videos are a part of that article as well. And basically, you know, just get out there and you can start working with a very cheap radio very fast, use a shortwave radio scanner and start listening to all your local channels. If you want to be the person in your, in your little anarchist cell or in your community who's, you know, next time there's a big storm system that comes through and you want to listen to weather bands, you can learn how to do that. Learn how to listen to it on your radio. And that's a skill you can start developing right now. So there's no time to wait. You can always start the next day that you have access to it and get involved.
Margaret 1:27:00 Yeah. Okay. And then how can folks find you all online?
Eepa 1:27:05 So for the Javelina Network, our Twitter literally just got launched. And it is @JavelinaNetwork which is spelled like the animal: J-A-V-E-L-I-N-A-Network. We decided to go with Javelina because, you know, instead of being hams from Europe, we're the Indigenous little pig so. We're the Javelinas is on the air.
Cici 1:27:36 I love that, by the way. I didn't even think about like people contacting me.
Margaret 1:27:43 You don't have to say it if you don't want, but you just—you said earlier that people should contact you. So I'm giving you a chance if you want.
Cici 1:27:49 I guess Twitter but, like, I don't know if people should contact me on Twitter. I'll go ahead and put my Twitter, why not? I think @postleftprole I think?
Margaret 1:27:59 That sounds right.
Cici 1:28:03 Yeah. Get in touch with me I guess. Just, I guess, request to send me a DM. I guess you can't like to send a DM if I haven't friended you or whatever. But just send a friend request be like, "Hey, I listened to the podcast, I'm curious." I'll, we can talk further. So. I'm not always online but uh, I try to respond—I'm actually on Twitter a fair bit so I guess I'll try to respond. I'm not always on Reddit, or at least I'm not always checking my messages on Reddit. So Twitter's probably more reliable. Right now I'm not a—I don't have any official channels. I should probably think about that. In the future, actually, I hope to put up some videos and stuff to help people do radio stuff. So if people want to get in touch with me to see if when I get that going, like, I'd be happy to let people know.
Margaret 1:28:55 I'm really excited about that work.
Eepa 1:28:56 And you can contact both of us. I was gonna say basically you you can contact both of us at javelinanetwork@protonmail.com. That's an email that all of us that are part of the Javelina Network more generally have access to. And so, like, if you're interested in something as well, that's a—if you're just want to use email, that's a good way to get in contact with us as well.
Margaret 1:29:20 Cool. All right. Well, thank you all so much for your time, and I've been I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. And I—you've really helped break the, like—I'm like, okay, I was like, I came into this with practically a spreadsheet being like, "Alright, this thing maps to this thing. And then this thing has 40 channels and blah, blah, blah." And then you're all like, "No, no, no, you just, you find something you're interested in and you go with it. " It's brilliant. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed that, or at least got something out of it. And if you want to support the podcast you can do so by telling people about it, you can tell people on the internet, you can even tell people about it in person, although you should tell them from far away—so you should probably shout about it from far away. Like walk up to strangers and scream, "Hey, Live Like the World is Dying!" That would actually be pretty cool if it became the new YOLO... because everything is YOLO. Anyway. But yeah, people have been doing an amazing job of telling people about the podcast, and it's been really wonderful bringing in new listeners. It makes doing this podcast feel worth it. And if you want to support me more directly, you can do so by supporting me on Patreon. If you support me on Patreon, it's how I pay for the podcast. My Patreon is patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. And I put up zines ostensibly every month but I am very far behind because of the pandemic and my resultant complicated ability to interact with my own mental space and the amount of work I have to do—which I'm sure no one else is dealing with, it's a thing with the pandemic that actually only affects me. I'm the only person who is dealing with it. [chuckling] Anyway, sorry. But yeah, and you can support me there. And if you live off of less money than I make on Patreon, don't support me there. Just contact me and I'll get you access to all of the information, all of the stuff that's behind the paywall of Patreon, I can give that to you for free. But in particular, I'd like to thank Eleanor and Mike and Satara and Kat J and The Compound, Shane, Christopher, Sam, Natalie, Willow, Kirk, Hoss the Dog, Nora, and Chris. Thank you all so much for making this possible. I never expected to get as much—anywhere near as much support as I do get from people. And I've been able to start passing that along and, you know, hire a transcriptionist to keep this podcast more accessible and hopefully start looking into other ways to expand this content beyond just me in the near future. So thank you. Thank you all so much for listening, and I hope you're doing as well as you can with everything that's going on.
The guest, Philip, has compiled this list of further resources and encourages people to check out look into them because there are a lot of good lessons about how counterinsurgency has operated historically that can help us resist today. Know Your Rights trainings are available from the CLDC and ACLU [including the Live Like the World is Dying episode on the subject] For the history of police and state repression
Government resources on counterintelligence
The host, Margaret Killjoy, can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy, instagram @margaretkilljoy, and on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.
Margaret 00:14 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and I use she or they pronouns. This week I'm talking with Philip who, among many other things, teaches security culture trainings. And I first was introduced to Philip's work on it when we had a conversation about the complexities of security culture. Security culture—we'll go over in this episode—is basically the idea of creating a culture of security, a culture of a way—creating a culture by which people don't get caught as much for the types of things that they may choose to want to do in order to advance, you know, their desires. It's for activists and revolutionaries and shit to not get fucking caught. It has lot of good tools around how to do that kind of culturally. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And—but for this week, and next week, I'm going to do it a little bit differently, and instead of running a jingle for another show on the network, I'm just gonna tell you about another show on the network because I don't think they have a jingle yet. And basically say that the Maroon Cast is now a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and I'm very excited about that. And you all should go check it out. Also, the Institute for Anarchist Studies is an organization that gives grants to people who—well, I'm just about to play a fucking jingle for it. So I'll just fuckin play the jingle for it—da daaaa!
Jingle 01:40 Hey, radicals, anarchists, and all of you liberatory leftists: Are you a podcaster, video maker, multimedia artist, or writer? The Institute for Anarchist Studies wants to let you know we have grants available for projects focusing on Black and indigenous anarchisms, police abolition and alternatives, and mutual aid. For details and how to apply visit anarchiststudies.org and click on the grants application post on our main page. That's anarchiststudies.org. Anarchist-studies-dot-O-R-G. Applications close January 31, 2021. Spread the word and tell your friends.
Margaret 02:24 Okay, so if you could introduce yourself with whatever name you want to go by, your pronouns, and I guess kind of a little bit about what brought you to this work of teaching and security culture trainings?
Philip 02:35 Yeah, my name is Philip, I use they/them pronouns. I'm living in Suquamish Territory and the Salish Sea. I've been involved in a lot of solidarity work with Indigenous liberation movements and Black liberation movements that have exposed me to a lot of frontline experiences and experiences with state repression, both immediately and down the line. And in response to those encounters with law enforcement with legal repression, and with the effect that that has on our movements, me and a lot of friends and comrades have dived into learning about security culture, learning about the tools and the techniques that we can all use to keep each other safe. And also learning about the ways that the state works to isolate our movements, to discredit our movements—basically, to disempower us—so that we're able to be more informed about how to take care of each other. So I'm definitely deeply indebted to a lot of Black and Indigenous liberation movements for developing these skills and passing them on. And I'm here to just try to contribute now what I've been taught and foster a conversation about how we can be moving into this, like, pretty unprecedented territory in the world of new state surveillance, expanding state surveillance, more encounters with police, but also with right-wing vigilantes, paramilitary groups, white supremacists, and some of the tools we can use.
Margaret 04:07 That makes sense. Yeah, one of the reasons that I wanted to have you on in particular is a conversation that we had about the nuances of security culture, and I'm really excited to get into that stuff. But for people who have no idea what we're talking about, could you introduce the concept of security culture?
Philip 04:26 Yeah, that's a great question. I feel like there's a lot of intersections between security culture and a lot of other topics that you've had on this show or that you might have on in the future. Ultimately, I think of security culture as this big framework. And it's a framework that helps us reduce risk for ourselves when we're engaging in social movement work, basically by protecting sensitive information. So one definition might be: It's like a mix of interpersonal and organizational and technical practices that help us be more resilient to state repression. It's a shared set of customs, that helps us minimize risk by explicitly naming some norms, over our boundaries and over our communication and that helps us lessen our paranoia, reducing ambiguity, and feeling more secure as we're engaging with the inherently risky work of challenging unjust power systems.
Margaret 05:31 So what are some of the examples of that when you talk about, like, changing social norms in order to accommodate security culture? Like, you know, what comes to mind with that?
Philip 05:43 Yeah, well, I think that the first thing to say is, intentionally or unintentionally, we all have a set of security practices that we do as human beings. We all have boundaries with each other, intentional or unintentional. And the point of security culture is really to be explicit about those boundaries. I, you know, I really want to do a shout out that a lot of people already practice security, culture, and situational awareness in their daily lives, you know, especially trauma survivors, people who are targeted by police and state surveillance. But some of those specific boundaries and norms that we might use would be having, you know, a clear idea of what information is sensitive, and then not sharing that information with people who don't need to know it, to protect yourself and to protect them.
Margaret 06:37 Like so concretely like—
Philip 06:38 That—
Margaret 06:38 Go ahead.
Philip 06:40 Yeah, so that would, you know, a big, obvious one is like, don't talk about illegal activities that you have done, or that you're thinking about doing or asking someone else if they've done it. A big thing might be like, "Oh, yeah, I thought I saw you at this protest the other week doing this illegal action. Was that you? How does that feel to you?" That's a big thing that we wouldn't do. That's a pretty clear violation of norms and boundaries over not wanting people to expose themselves in that way.
Margaret 07:09 But what if you want to change your profile picture to, like, you throw in a brick on, like, Facebook?
Philip 07:15 And that's another one, you know, it's not only the explicit things that we share with each other, but also what is available to the outside world, to law enforcement, or to right wing groups through our social media presences, through, you know, just things that are immediately perceptible like bumper stickers or, like, the Antifa uniform that we're wearing. Being aware of the information that we're communicating, even if it's non-verbal.
Margaret 07:45 One of the—
Philip 07:45 Though I do wanna say— One of the main things is we should be aware of the sensitivity of the information and limit the information that's sensitive. And then the flip side of that is not stressing about information that is not sensitive. So it's not only, you know, being discreet and confidential about things that could expose us to legal targeting, but also then shedding the worry and anxiety of, "Oh, do I need to be lying to everyone in my life because they asked me what kind of coffee I like, and they're trying to build a case against me?"
Margaret 07:47 Go ahead. Mm hmm. Yeah, that makes sense. I—you know, it's like, when people first started talking about security culture around me, I ran into a lot of—we kind of all ran into a lot of issues of it with it, where it would cause, like, a lot of paranoia and then also a lot of like bravado and, like, it definitely, when practiced poorly, can be kind of not a very pleasant culture to be in. Like, it can become a culture of paranoia. But one of the things that I always really liked doing, you know, okay, so it's like—Alright, if you engage in a culture where you just don't talk about crime, like, you kind of have the sense that everyone around you is doing crime and that's cool (assuming they're doing cool crime, because lots of good things and bad things are crime). You can kind of just like—like, one of the things that I try and tell people is just, like, assume that everyone is a secret badass. Like, the shitty kid has been like sleeping on your couch for two weeks and like, doesn't do her dishes enough or whatever. Like, maybe she's getting up to, like, really wild shit. Or maybe she's on the run, you know, and kind of just assuming that everyone is up to something cool. And therefore you just don't need to know it. I don't know. That's something that's always worked for me. Yeah. Yeah, and I think there's absolutely something to be said there about—it takes a lot of intentional work to sort of decouple these practices from some of the, just the other cultural norms that we all have. And that being a big thing of social clout.
Philip 10:00 Of, you know, wanting—especially in a movement space—to be able to, like, celebrate the badass shit that we're doing. And one of the awkward things about security culture, or that makes it a little counterintuitive to people who are just learning it is that a lot of times the things that maybe have the biggest impact on our lives, or that we're spending lots of time or energy working on, or that were these really activating, or traumatizing, or fun and exciting experiences we had, we can't really talk about with other people, both for our safety and their safety. And so it's really nice, then, to think, not only, you know, is that something that we shouldn't do, but then also allowing us to think about, well, what are some of the positive ways that we can still be fostering community connection, and, you know, healthy, strong relationships and trust with people where we're not having to communicate about risky things that could implicate us in, like, all sorts of legal entanglements, but instead we can be still be building vulnerability and trust with each other. And that's a really big, important part of security culture that I think gets missed by a lot of people is that this is a great opportunity, actually, for us to think about what are our community norms around communication and interpersonal dynamics? And what are some of the ways that we can shape those intentionally to, like, really build trust and group cohesion and the ability to make us all feel like we're able to do the things that we need to do to survive in this world while staying safe?
Margaret 10:00 Yeah. Okay, so what are some of those things?
Philip 11:32 So I think a big one is that building trust with each other is an active process that we all need to be doing, especially in movement work. One of the big things that I think is really important is being able to, you know, talk about harmful and difficult dynamics that come up about conflict that comes up, about addressing accountability, and how much of state repression is able to impact movements by fracturing us along pre-existing tensions that we aren't able to work through. So there's a lot of examples in that historically, of state targeting movements, basically, where there was already distrust that was unable to be resolved, and fracturing movements by encouraging people to distrust each other because they weren't able to work through conflict.
Margaret 12:25 So you're basically talks about how the way that the state will essentially, like, bad-jacket or fed-jacket people, like, in order to sow distrust. Like basically, like, pick apart, like, so-and-so is unpopular, or maybe so-and-so actually caused harm, right? Like, so-and-so abuse someone or assaulted someone or is, you know, in accountability around it, or evading accountability around it, basically like sowing distrust about therefore, like, that person doing state work? Or what do you what do you mean by that?
Philip 13:00 Yeah, I think that is one popular example. We can definitely talk about that—about both how the state uses false accusations, you know, maybe to break trust—but also how real continued harm, real accusations, are then downplayed when we're existing in this like defensive, reactive space of being, "Oh, well, if, you know, we're going to be talking about these things then it's obviously a bad-jacketing." And so our movements are put in between a rock and a hard place because of just the widespread norm that exists of not being able to address the conflict when it comes up. But another way that that also happens is just how not only direct state intervention can fracture movements, but even the perception of state intervention, the fear and paranoia that gets spread through knowing that we're surveilled, through knowing that there's all these historical examples of actual state harm and us imagining then that we are being actively targeted at that time and us fracturing under that stress, even when there's not active state repression happening to our specific movements. And so it ends up that we almost start policing and repressing ourselves. And we're doing the state's work for it.
Margaret 14:20 I guess, like, one of the things that I think about this is I try to use history and awareness of that connection to actually—hm, how to I want to say this? It's like, I assume everyone's a cop and that makes me not paranoid. And I feel like there's a right way and a wrong way to do this. But for me, and the security culture that I practice—and this might be wildly unpopular—I just I assume that a decent portion of the people that I'm friends with and am close with, so possibly people I've been known and working with for decades, might be state agents. Or I've certainly had a lot of friends, a lot of people very close to me, become state agents, become informants in different cases. And because I'm able to do that, it kind of doesn't break my trust. Because I know that I'm, like, firewalling, all the information that I'm putting out there, right? I'm thinking about what I say to whom and because of that, you know, when someone turns out to be a state agent, I'm like, "Well, okay, like, I didn't trust them anyway so I was careful about what I said to them." And, you know, and obviously, this can be done in a very bad way. But, I don't know, I find it really useful to study basically, like—like, we can look at the history of COINTELPRO and it can, like, you know, drive us into a lot of fear and a lot of, like, just looking over our shoulders constantly, right? Or we can look at it and be like, "Okay, this is the situation that we may or may not be in, and what are the right steps to take if that's the situation we're in." And I think, for me, I mostly watch this be much harder on people for whom it's a shock, for people who come in and are like, "Wow, we're all doing this wild shit together and this is so great." And then it turns out that you're all being surveilled, or, you know, two of you are cops or something like that. And it's kind of heartbreaking and causes more fear as compared to if you just enter it knowing that that's going to be the case.
Philip 16:36 Absolutely, and I think you highlight two things there that feel really important to me in a security culture practice. So one is just having those proactive boundaries and that discretion, and just making that part of your everyday life—part of your way of relating with people and not this whole other mindset that you're adopting just in moments of direct action. Basically assuming, like, I just don't want to publicly share anything that I don't want read back to me at a grand jury hearing.
Margaret 17:10 Right.
Philip 17:12 I think another thing that is really important with what you just said is how important learning from history and looking at the concrete and well-documented examples of state repression that we can learn from prepares us to be able to be more resilient. And that that is an actually really important part of being able to evaluate risk and being able to care for ourselves and being able to know what's coming down the line. And that that should be something that we're constantly doing. And it's a lot of work but I think that's one of the things that I've been really excited by, it's just thinking about all these different resources and tracking the terrain of state repression and being able to then sort of stay ahead of the ball as best we can with thinking about what sort of terrain we have to be working in, and the actual tools and maneuverability that the state has, or that right-wing groups have to be interfacing with us. You know, it feels—not to minimize the very real risks that many people are experiencing by confronting white supremacy and capitalism and state violence.—but thinking about this on a little bit more exploded of a level, it feels like we're, you know, kind of playing this like big elaborate board game. And that state repression isn't functioning in the way of just pure unbridled force being exacted on any sort of social movement. There are absolutely moments of that. You know, we have seen assassinations, we have seen brutalization, there are many historical examples, you know, bombs were dropped on the MOVE collective in Philadelphia, police assassinated Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers while he slept in his bed. There are big examples of that. But by and large, at least as far as, you know, the material that is publicly available to reflect from, the way that state repression happens is more by controlling dissent through these sort of like light touches, by erecting the container that social movements and public opinion exist in, and trying to have that subtle touch, you know, that sort of negotiated management or that controlled management, similar to a lot of ways of how street protests are handled by police. Now, instead of it just being an outright brutality, it's more of negotiating with movement leaders, shutting the terrain, and if we're able to track that and we're able to keep a good tab on where public opinion is at, keep a good tab on what sort of restraints the state has for interacting with us for not trying to move public opinion towards supporting popular movements, you know, we're able to then track the sort of tools that we have available to be able to challenge these systems and have a little more strategy, a little more creativity, you know, thinking outside of the box and really engaging with this in a very adaptive and flexible and, like, spontaneous way. And I think that's one of the greatest strengths of decentralized movements is being able to be really flexible and responsive in a way that the state and other authoritarian or hierarchically-organized systems aren't able to keep up with.
Margaret 20:25 To keep asking you kind of the same question over and over again, but can you give examples of that? Like, what is it about decentralization that gives us that kind of advantage, like, or what are some examples of people using that advantage?
Philip 20:40 So I mean, one great example is just looking at the trove of documents that gets produced through surveillance of movements, and realizing how little these different analysts and intelligence agencies actually understand about social movements and about organizing. And so one example of that is specifically, there was a great series published by The Intercept after Standing Rock about this intelligence agency, Tiger Swan, and all the surveillance that they did on the Standing Rock movement. And this is an enormous cache of documents. You know, the state spent millions of dollars surveilling and compiling networks and trying to understand how these movements were working on the ground to be able to contain them and neutralize them. And yet, at the same time, the state just didn't seem to fundamentally understand how it was possible that such a large movement wasn't operating along, like, traditional military structuring. They were naming people who were, you know, a media spokesperson, or someone who had a popular Instagram feed who was documenting a lot of it, as the leader of the movement or as supplying arms, when that was so clearly not the case to anyone who was able to participate on the ground. And so that smokescreen of the state not understanding the organic flows of movements or how it's possible for things to exist in a [inaudible] fashion, it creates this haze that allows us to kind of keep, you know, the specifics of how we're relating with each other protected from that surveillance and allows us to remain safe.
Margaret 22:23 Yeah, I had a—Go ahead.
Philip 22:25 I mean, the counterpoint to that is just when states—when militaries are engaging with traditionally organized enemies, you know, whatever might be a centrally-commanded military unit, it's really easy to, you know, be able to identify the central command and eliminate it. Versus, you know, states, armies, militaries engaging with irregular guerrilla warfare is a very difficult situation to be able to differentiate between combatants and non-combatants. And, you know, I really love to point at the example of the United States military losing to the Vietcong, you know, the greatest military empire power on the planet losing to some communist guerrillas in the jungle who, you know, were able to operate in a way that this empire was just not able to respond.
Margaret 23:21 Yeah, so that's like, one of the things I like about security culture is it helps create that smokescreen because—and I like the way that phrasing it as a smokescreen—where they have a hard time seeing what a decentralized movement is doing. And a lot of times we don't understand what a decentralized movement is doing. It's like, I feel like whenever I'm engaged in a very chaotic and organic situation, I spend about half my time just trying to figure out what's going on, right? And—in order to understand what's happening so I can figure out how to best engage with it. But on the other hand, I like how a security culture—it's like, I don't know which of my friends are up to things besides what they talk about. And I don't need to know and it also it helps—it helps to minimize—I mean, like, you brought up earlier about the like social clout and, like, I think one of the things that destroys movements is social capitalism, is the idea of, like, everyone's trying to gain clout, everyone's trying to, you know, I mean, to say it cynically, you know, like, have the coolest podcast and get everyone to support your Patreon or whatever the fuck, right? But—and even if you're trying to do that for the best of reasons, even if you're trying to do that in order to like, you know, get out good ideas or whatever, social capital ends up playing a lot into it and social capital games are really dangerous. and way more than like being a cool podcaster or whatever, being a cool militant is like—to the people who know—that's like extra cool. And you get way too much say and what's going on if everyone like is, like, "Oh, yeah, like, she's doing all this like crazy shit," right? And it's kind of this thing, it's like a little bit hard, but you kind of like learn to just accept like, "Oh, alright, well, like I'm a secret badass and no one knows." Well like, not me, but like, you know, maybe when I was younger, I don't know. But like, I don't know—you talk about the smokescreen thing, it's just like, I literally don't know who's up to no good, you know, and that's great. It feels really good. I'm like, I literally can't snitch because I have no fucking clue. One of the things that you were talking about earlier, or that we were talking about earlier, that I feel like is worth breaking down for people who are, you know—I mean, obviously, this podcast is about preparedness, right? And I believe that revolt is an important part of preparedness. But people might not necessarily know what we're talking about when we talk about, like, snitch-jacketing, fed-jacketing, bad-jacketing, you know, which are like, slang terms or terms that we've come up with because this just happens over and over and over again and we want ways to be able to identify it quickly. But what the fuck did those mean? Are you able to break that down?
Philip 26:05 Sure. Yeah. Um, let me first—first, like, explicitly name some of the tools of state repression. I think that might be a helpful thing.
Margaret 26:14 Yeah. Explicit stuff.
Philip 26:15 So in my like conceptualization, ultimately, we have to recognize that challenging and unjust power system, that power system has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. So as we're challenging white supremacy, capitalism, militarism, you know, we are putting ourselves in a position where those systems are going to want to then minimize our ability to change them. And we get our power through working together collectively. And so I kind of see that fundamental tool of state repression has been isolation. A quote that I always go to of how clear that is from J. Edgar Hoover, who was the director of the FBI during the counterintelligence program against the Black Panthers, where his main objective—he, you know, writes that it's to expose, to disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and otherwise neutralize the activities of these black nationalist organizations. So there's a really intentional, conscious push from these state actors to isolate us and to neutralize us. And the ways that they do that historically has been through surveillance, both to gather information, but also as a sort of intimidation, you know, show of power through arrest, whether that's legitimate or illegitimate, through grand juries and legal intimidation, through smear campaigns in the media and discrediting movements, or, you know, saying these protesters are bad because they engage in these types of tactics, through disinformation and spreading paranoia within movements, promoting infighting, blackmail, infiltration, entrapment, threats, and you know, again, all the way up to police brutality and outright assassinations. But so a big way has been by planting informants, by planting undercover agents and those undercover agents either provoking people into committing acts of the state is then enabled us as justification for repression—so we've seen that with the RNC, the Republican National Convention, where an undercover agent encouraged two people to try to use Molotov cocktails and then that resulted in them getting arrested and facing lengthy prison sentences through federal court. But undercovers and informants also can be there to just spread misinformation to break trust, to disrupt group dynamics. And that's just been a really clear way that popular movements have been repressed historically. And so I think that's a reason that it's really easy for us now, as we're worried about security, to say, "Oh, there must be an informant," or like, "Oh, I know that this has happened in the past and so I'm extra aware of this possibility." And one of the outcomes of that is that people who are suspected of being involved in movements with bad intentions can be labeled as an informant, or as a snitch. And so that's basically snitch-jacketing is when you say, "I think this person is working for the police or is providing information," without having clear evidence. And this is something that's really personal to me because I, you know, I've learned a lot of my security practices through trial and error, and there's been error and I've messed up and I've hurt friends and I've hurt movements that have been a part of through dynamics just like this. And I think that's, you know, something I want to hold a lot of humility and hold a lot of accountability for is that I'm saying all these things, but these aren't easy things to implement.
Margaret 30:05 Yeah.
Philip 30:05 You know, the response to snitch-jacketing, or the response to thinking that someone might be a snitch, isn't to snitch-jacket, but to confront them directly with your concerns and be able to establish, you know, some way of trying to work through that conflict. Being able to address other people with your concerns, with your direct concerns, not things that you're assuming or projecting, and, you know, being able to name things directly, as they are. So saying, "Oh, I am skeptical of this person, because they are sketching me out by taking photos in times that I think are really inappropriate," or "Because they're always asking questions that kind of seem to be digging at trying to expose illegal activities," or "I'm not really sure if they are who they say they are because they're never telling me any information about where they're from or what they do."
Margaret 31:01 Right.
Philip 31:02 And so, therefore, this person clearly must be working for the FBI and is here as a plant to disrupt our movement. Therefore, this person is a snitch, and I mean, yes, sure, that has happened historically. But in my appraisal, labeling someone is a snitch does probably just as much if not more damage than just name—than that person actually being a snitch. Because it's all of a sudden creating a huge atmosphere of distrust.
Margaret 31:29 Right.
Philip 31:29 It's creating paranoia. It's exposing huge divisions within the movement. And so even if that person isn't a snitch, by labeling them as a snitch, you've essentially just done the state's work for them of spreading distrust and isolation within movement,
Margaret 31:45 Which is cool because then you can say, "Oh, that person's snitch-jacketing people, they must be a fed." You know, because if you're doing the state's work... Obviously don't do that. And that's called "fed-jacketing." The idea of saying instead of—it's the same fucking concept. It's like, you know, someone's probably a fed instead of—
Philip 32:04 Yeah.
Margaret 32:05 Yeah, one of the ways that I've always heard people talk about it that I've always appreciated is just: judge people by their behavior, not whether or not, like, they're a cop. Like, so rather than assuming, "I think that person's a cop," just be like, "This person is doing something that is making us all less safe." So address that, you know. Address the fact that this person is taking pictures at inappropriate times. Address your distrust of someone, right" But not by saying, like, "I think they're a cop," unless you have hard fucking evidence that they're a cop, you know?
Philip 32:41 Yeah, I really go back time and time again, in thinking about security culture, and seeing really clear intersections between security culture and harm reduction, and transformative justice and conflict resolution. You know, I think, in our society, we aren't given a lot of tools for working through conflict and that is especially aggravated by being in this very intense atmosphere that a lot of activists are existing under. But if we were able to—proactively, before engaging in movement work together, as much as possible—generate, what those norms are and what our shared agreements for how we're sharing space with each other are, then we're able to set the container. And then when someone steps over those boundaries, we're able to hold them accountable more directly. And that's ultimately what security culture is, you know, it's culture as a set of shared practices that are embodied, that we're using all the time. And I think it's really important, again, to just make that explicit. And I know that's not always possible, because sometimes we're working with people that we just met. But as much as we're able to, I really like to think about what it would look like if we were able to generate explicit norms and boundaries with each other, and then be able to hold each other to that and say, "Hey, you're making me uncomfortable right now because I told you earlier that I wasn't interested in talking about my historical involvement in that movement, and you're asking me a lot of questions about it. And so I'm just going to ask that you stop asking me those questions."
Margaret 34:20 Yeah.
Philip 34:21 Instead of saying, "Oh, well, this person is now a snitch."
Margaret 34:23 Right.
Philip 34:24 But that level of direct communication is challenging, and it's really challenging especially when we're all working in adrenalized frontline environments, or when we haven't gotten a lot of sleep and we're just existing up coffee and cigarettes. And it really speaks to me of just how much there needs to be this intentional push of like building in, like, a feminist ethic of care and of group cohesion and saying, like, we are going to work through this together.
Margaret 34:56 One of the things when you talk about holding people accountable to these new social norms that we create, this sort of brings up kind of the dark side of security culture, which is cliquishness. And, well, it's tto things: when I think of the downsides of security culture—I'm clearly a proponent of security culture, I'm trying to do an episode on it. But when I think of the things that we need to be aware of as we attempt to implement it, the two biggest downsides that I think about is creating cliquish, closed off social circles and basically making, you know, obviously, we would never want to be called a Vanguard, but you know, a revolutionary clique. And also, basically making ourselves ineffective. Those are the two biggest concerns that I have. And one of the things that I would say about it is that, like, if we hold people—and it's, actually what you're talking about is great for this, because you talk about, like, trying to set these social norms explicitly, instead of just having them be implicit, right? Because when we hold people accountable to social norms that they don't know about, like, that's not a good way to build a movement, you know? If people that come in and they act in ways that are totally normal for them and, like, you know, their culture, which isn't, like, cool kid anarchy or whatever the fuck, it's really quick—it's really easy if we take these—if we—if these social norms and if these boundaries are so important to us, and, you know, many of them should be very important to us. But if we see them as, like, something that of course people should just know and respect, then we just kick everyone out and get fucking nowhere.
Philip 36:41 Yeah, that is a really important thing to bring up. And, I think especially talking about security as this adaptive changing field, the practices we have in the way that we approach this work needs to change as the moment that we're organizing in changes. And I personally learned a lot of my security culture norms and practices through the lens of an anarchist punk subculture, specifically through the lens of frontline forest defense and other land defense campaigns. And the sort of tools and cultural norms that came out of that are ones that evolved really to protect people who were working in small groups or by themselves, engaging in very risky actions—you know, generally like under the cover of night, so to speak—and so it did lead to a set of practices that had a inherent cliquiness to them. I think we're in a really different historical moment right now. I think we're in a moment where mass unrest has spread all across the country in a way that I think is pretty historically unprecedented within the United States. And our security culture norms should change to reflect this mass moment we're in. So it's no longer the same situation as it was in the late 90s or early 2000s during the Green Scare. And one of the most important things that our movement can and needs to be doing during this time is being accessible to people who are newly becoming politically active, who don't have those sub cultural norms, and are coming into movement spaces for maybe the first time and are excited to be part of this huge uprising.
Margaret 38:33 Yeah.
Philip 38:34 And so something I've experienced a lot of the time is, just as much as there's that social clout of, you know, being the badass militant, I think there's also social clout of being the super secure militant.
Margaret 38:47 Oh, yeah, totally.
Philip 38:48 Who doesn't answer any questions and it's super dodgy and you don't know anything about them. And that's, I think, a really alienating experience for people who are just coming to movements for the first time without having that sort of background, and it's almost as much of a risk as the state repression itself for isolating our movements. You know, we're not existing solely in a static confrontation with state repression. But the terrain is changing a lot. And so we need to be evaluating what the different risks of our actions are. And if the risk of state repression because our security culture is too weak is lower than the risk of isolation because our security culture is too strong, then we need to be changing our security culture.
Margaret 39:42 Yeah. Yeah, I um, you know, the less directly involved I am in the streets, the more I read history-which is sort of a classic getting older move, which I'm not super proud of, but whatever-and one of the things that I'm like learning more and more as I read through different revolutionary history is that, like, sometimes the only way to be safest is fucking win. Like, and there's the quote, shit. German person... I don't even remember what revolution it was from, it was like before the 1848 stuff, but it was—this revolutionist has a quote, 'Those who make half a revolution dig their own grave." And, you know, and that person watched their friends die in jail, right? And, like, because if we—if we go half way we're just gonna fucking lose and—or die or, you know, whatever. Like if, I don't know, I think about it a lot like this—in the current moment, like to just be like really concrete and to not—I am not giving advice at all. Like, I just I literally don't know what the best thing to do is, but I think we need to have a conversation about it—is that like, okay, so on one level, taking pictures of burning cop cars is a really good way to get someone sent to prison, right? Especially if you take pictures of people who are setting cop cars on fire, which I think you just shouldn't fucking do. But if it weren't—
Philip 41:19 Absolutely. For all listeners, don't take photos of people doing illegal activity.
Margaret 41:24 But it's also the pictures of cop cars on fire that are causing the revolt to spread, right? And a movement that says, "No journalists," or you know, certainly, like no, no—and I am not trying to fucking weigh in on this. I am way too armchair on this particular uprising because I live somewhere where it's not particularly conflictual. But it's not as simple as like, just like, no one ever take pictures of any of this, ever. No one talks about what's happening, ever. Because if people don't know that this shit is happening, no one's going to get inspired. And for me, that is always, that has always worked out to mean, take a picture of, like, the broken window rather than the person breaking the window, you know? There's like,
Philip 42:19 Yeah.
Margaret 42:22 But it's...
Philip 42:24 Which is aa security culture tool right there of, your recognizing the different risks inherent in each activity, the risk of someone getting legally implicated through a photo, or the risk of your movement getting drowned out in the media cycle because there isn't popular media representing what we're doing.
Margaret 42:45 Yeah.
Philip 42:45 And then specifically, you're talking about our intentional ability to choose how to navigate those risks, and doing something that gives us the benefit of having our own popular media, of being able to build the movement while doing our best to protect people from the like actual legal evidence of, "Oh, here is this photo of you doing such and such action."
Margaret 43:07 Yeah.
Philip 43:07 And again, it's hard to know specifically what kind of photos might lead to incriminating evidence, hypothetically, but we can make educated guesses. And really, it is all about risk management and knowing the risks and it's not a one-sided risk. It's not, there's just the risk of state repression. You're absolutely right, that the risk of isolation and of getting swept under the rug is going to be a huge thing. And I, you know, again, it feels difficult to try to talk about this in an hour-long podcast because it feels like so many very large, important intersections between security culture and all these other fields that you could, you know, have an entire 'nother interview about. But I think one important one is movement strategy. And, you know, so being another armchair philosopher with you here. Looking at the historical moment of Biden about to enter the White House, you know, for the last four years, there's been this coalition of middle class liberals aligning themselves more actively with antifascist and radical left movements because there's been this clear enemy in the eyes of a Trump presidency. And I think historically we can see that once there's a return to quote/unquote "normalcy," you know, to attempt to reestablish the neoliberal order, there's going to be a move by the Democratic Party, by the centrists and the liberals, to separate themselves from the radical anarchists, the radical left, the militant component that has been supporting their return to power in some ways by being positioned against Trump. And I think it's really important to think about what that means for us practicing security at this time, of trying to weigh the pros and the risks of maintaining that relationship. And trying to use this as a time to continue to build power and not sort of go back to the edges of the social sphere because there's a Democrat process. Again, I'm not providing any concrete recommendations, but I think we should think about the implications of our actions. And, you know, one big place of this is thinking about how, in different contexts, militant actions can be really inspiring, or they can be really alienating for the rest of the population. And there are times that militant action can totally fractionalize and destroy a movement. And, potentially, this could be one of those times. You know, again, I'm not trying to say that people should or shouldn't do anything, but I think we should think about the coalition that has been being built for the last four years and how we can try to use this time to strengthen it and try to build more collective power with people who are shifting further and further to the left from the centrist position, instead of holing up in our militancy, in our purity of our anarchist movement, because that is going to leave us high and dry to fascists and then to state repression. And so it's going to be a good cop/bad cop of the liberals and the fascists against us.
Margaret 46:20 When you talk about, like, there are times when militant action will inspire people and their time where it'll divide people, I think about, like, people often make one claim or the other, you know? They'll say like, "Oh, violence alienates people," or, "Fighting the police alienates people." And it's like, first of all, it's like, yeah, probably alienates certain people but there's other people who certainly are like, "Oh, these people are, like, actually fucking about it and they're willing to, like, defend themselves and each other." And that's really inspiring, right? It's gonna be different with different people. But I think about it when I, like—just talk about survival bullshit that I think about way too often—when I'm building a fire in a precarious situation and you, know, building a campfire in a precarious situation, there are times when if you blow on the fire, it goes out. And, but also, if you never blow on the fire, you'll never have a fire and it'll go out. And, you know, that's the main metaphor that I think of when I think of that shit. When—you just have to know the right moments. You have to know the right moments, both like sort of on a tactical level of like reading the crowd around you, and also on a strategic level. I personally think that the main way to not go back to the margins is to, like, not be fucking shy about what we believe in, and that it's a reasonable thing to believe.
Philip 47:44 Yeah.
Margaret 47:45 And to like—
Philip 47:46 Absolutely.
Margaret 47:47 —avoid cliquishness. And it even gets into some of the security culture stuff you're talking about arlier. I was thinking about it where it was like—like, I have these like fucking Nazis. Hey Nazis listening to this show. Hello. And I'm just so impressed with the fact that people might hate listen to a podcast. And you know, and like one of the things that like Nazis always try and do when they doxx people or whatever is their like, they're gonna, like, tell people, right? They're gonna be like—and like, you can't fucking call my family and be like, "Did you know your daughter's an anarchist?" You know? You can't even call the local cops and be like, "Did you know Margaret Killjoy is an anarchist?" Right? And I'm in a different position than most people, right, because I intentionally do a lot of public facing work. But still on like an interpersonal level, just fucking be about what you're about and don't be ashamed of being about what you're about without shaming other people for being about what they're about. And that's how you find common ground. And that's how you, like, one of my goals is I want people to be like—like, I know, people who don't shit on the anarchists when all this stuff started because they, like, know some good anarchists who are nice to them.
Philip 48:54 Yeah.
Margaret 48:55 And so a lot of people want to hide the fact that they're anarchists or whatever other given, like, radical leftist position. And sometimes that's necessary from a security point of view. But you brought it up earlier when you were talking about how there's certain things you do have to keep hush hush, right? Like, like, no one should specifically know, like—actually, it's funny. I just like basically don't commit crime. But no one should specifically know I, like, you know, graffiti-ed to building in 2002—which I actually didn't do. But, like, they don't need to know that. Right? But I'm gonna be like, "Yeah, I was involved in anti war movement in 2002," or whatever the fuck to date myself, you know. And like, it's useful, and I don't know. It's just stuff I think about way too much. And the other part of it that you were talking about that I want to bring up is that when I first got into anarchism my friend was, like, "Oh, anarchists, you're the berserkers of the peace movement." And I was like, "What?" And he was like, "Yeah, when they need people to go run at the front and die, that's you." And he was talking shit. But more and more I see that like radicals have a high risk tolerance, right? And anti-authoritarians in particular have often been willing to build coalitions with people and willing to put ourselves at risk for broader movement goals with people who turn around and, like, turn their backs on us and let us go to jail or whatever. And I don't think that means that we shouldn't be risk tolerant. I don't think that it means, like, in some ways this is our advantage. But we do have to learn how to not be useful idiots. I don't know.
Philip 50:47 Yeah, and especially right now as there's a nationwide conversation about defunding and abolishing the police, it feels like such an important time to be putting these anarchist perspectives forward in a way that's actually contributing to people within the broader community being able to see us publicly and proudly, showing that we can live our values in this way. And it also, I think, is worth noting that different people have different stakes, whether that's based on social location, or the activities were involved in, the types of projects we're doing. But, personally speaking, as a white person, you know, I've got different social privileges and resources that I'm able to use. And so being able to mobilize a lot of the social capital I have and then add that with a layer of saying, "Oh, and actually I do fully believe that we should abolish the police and abolish prisons and implement transformative justice frameworks." Doing that doesn't really pose much of a risk to me. And it makes this entire project a lot more legible. And I do feel like there's been a big concern I've seen in a lot of anarchist communities about being authentic with our politics. You know, there's sort of been an emphasis that I've experienced of people, maybe downplaying their politics and trying to more just live their politics directly through the actions they do. And that's important. Of course that's important. But I do think that we're in a very different moment right now. And you're right that I think it's a bit of a sink or swim time.
Margaret 52:24 Yeah. Yeah, I think that we even see this—like, to take anarchism out of it for a second—like Antifa Or, you know, antifascism. Like, they really tried to Red Scare that shit really fucking hard in the past couple years. And it clearly worked for a large minority of the population, right? Antifa is like, code for terrorists to a huge chunk of the population, but only a minority of the population. And I think it's the reason is only a minority population is that so many people of all walks of life were just like, "What? Yeah, that's normal. It's totally normal to be against fascism." And like, watching Richard Spencer get punched and then having the whole world just be like, "Ya know, that tracks. I dunno. Punch white supremacists. That make sense to me," And so when we refuse to—when we when we're about what we're about, like, I think it fucking helps. Yeah.
Philip 53:30 Yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, again, I want to just go back to security culture having risk management as one of its core goals and aims. And I come from a background of doing a lot of, like, large management-type projects, where I interact with all these sort of tools that get developed in like the business world or the nonprofit world for making decisions. It's actually a really helpful, like, resource bin to go and get stuff from. And one of those tools is a risk matrix. So it's basically a graph where you have likelihood of something happening on one side, and then severity if this thing did happen or, you know, negative impact if this thing did happen. And then you can kind of plot different scenarios on their, on how likely they are to happen versus the negative impact. So the likelihood of the problem versus the severity of the problem helps us make decisions about how to approach all those problems. So like one thing would be driving is something that we do every day, it happens very frequently, and the possibility of you getting into a car crash would have really high, you know, potentially lethal consequences. And so as a result, car companies put all of this energy into safety mechanisms and airbags and all that. So thinking about this in security context situation, by actually quantifying, by explicitly naming the different potential outcomes of the work we're doing and the risks associated with them, I think it helps us visualize it more. And so the risk of us being authentic about our politics, and of then experiencing state repression, seems like a very high impact risk. And so we are risk adverse to that, or I historically have been risk adverse to being authentic about my politics. But the much higher likelihood—although lower risk—much higher likelihood outcome, is that being isolated, and not being able to build our movements has resulted in anarchism being socially isolated historically and, you know, of neoliberalism or centrist regimes being able to just marginalize them invisiblize these groups. And I know that these are things that we've already been talking about, but I think that that same sort of risk matrix can help us similarly with maybe smaller decisions. If we're making a decision about what types of actions we feel comfortable personally engaging in during a campaign, you know, we can think about, okay, these are the different frameworks that we have for what capacity the local police have, the amount of surveillance that we feel we're being under, the likelihood of this action succeeding, and actually being able to graph all these things can help us make informed decisions in a way that just thinking about or just talking about it, sometimes you can get lost.
Margaret 56:50 Yeah.
Philip 56:53 Another tool that I really appreciate using a little bit is kind of on that same note, it's the spectrum of risk. I think it came from CrimethInc, but it talks about different vulnerabilities of actions to state repression. Or like different levels of, like, illicit-ness of actions. So, you know, from the most mainstream and acceptable of a permitted march to, you know, the most nefarious, evil, militant anarchist thing you can imagine, and a whole spectrum in between them. And then for those different actions or activities, there's a different accompanying level of security discretion that we can use where with the mainstream march, you want to be as public as possible about it, because your objective is to get the message out, to get people out to make a big strong showing. Whereas with the evil, nefarious nighttime plot, you don't want any public attention on it whatsoever until it's completed.
Margaret 57:56 Right.
Philip 57:56 Theoretically, you know, whatever the objectives are. And again, a whole spectrum in the middle. And so, especially at this time, is showing us the strength of popular movements getting hundreds of 1000s of people out in the street, I do think that we're leaning maybe more towards the wanting to be public side of things. And if we're using security tools, if we're using discretion that limits the reach, then we're actually inflicting harm upon ourselves by being overly cautious. And so we are then engaging in, again, the isolation that counterintelligence is trying to inflict on us the whole time.
Margaret 58:37 Yeah, and then—sorry, it's like every—I'm thinking about all this shit wile are you talking about this stuff. I was gonna make a joke earlier while you were talking about how, like, what, no, we shouldn't just make decisions about what crimes to commit based on peer pressure. And then I kind of, like, get lost in this rabbit hole, where I'm thinking about how like so much of our movement historically bases its decisions on what crimes to commit, basically, by peer pressure, which you could also call social capital, or whatever, you know. And I was thinking about in the context of, like, you know, you and I addressing the fact that like, "Hey, anyone listening to this, like, don't fucking take our word for it." Like, I really like that the way that you're describing security culture is a set of tools that people can use to make their own decisions about what risks they want to do—they want to tolerate personally. And I actually think that a security culture tool might be basically, like, if you feel like you're being peer pressured into committing a crime, that's a huge red flag, right? Like, so many of the different infiltrations that have happened, you know—the FBI fucking loves infiltrating radical movements of different types, especially at the moment Islam, you know, like, what it considers, like, Islamic movements or whatever—and manufacturing criminals to then, you know, persecute, right? You know, there's been so many instances of a lot of the actions that people go down for were always the FBI idea in the first place. And one of the main tools, I think, that that happens through is social pressure. And basically, like, I'm now turning this into the ad of like, where like, the kid walks up and is like, "Come on, man, don't you wanna be cool and, like, do drugs or whatever?" Like, no do drugs only if you want to do drugs, and if you want to do drugs, that's fucking cool. If you want to commit crimes, like, you know, whatever, think about the ethics of your actions. Make your decisions based on ethics and risk, not based on crime. Crime just affects the risk part of it. And I don't know, yeah, just like fuckin—like way too often when I meet, like, younger radicals, I just kind of want to be like, "Look, like, I'm not saying be careful but, like, be a little bit careful. And like, don't jump off a bridge because your best friends that you met two months ago are doing it." You know?
Philip 1:01:12 Yeah. And I think a healthy way of doing that is really cultivating a good self-awareness of what your skills and your experience and your acceptable level of involvement is with different kinds of activities and of what you are willing to participate in, you know, ahead of time as much as possible. And being really secure in that and not feeling peer pressure. And again, I think it's easiest and healthiest if we're able to do this in our movement of making that norm established from the get-go in a really clearly articulated way of we're respecting each other's boundaries over what they do or do not want to participate in. And we aren't going to encourage people to do things that they're not comfortable in. But also being able to know what feels right or what feels wrong, having that situational awareness of, "Oh, this feels off to me." And being able to trust our gut instinct, or at least—or at least listen to our gut instinct—at least, you know, give it the time to think about the impact. Because, you know, because—and I do want to again say that, um, you know, I've made poor decisions, solely listening to my gut instinct and not thinking about the other power dynamics that were at play. And that's a real thing, too. But situational awareness and tracking how a situation feels is a big way that our bodies intuitively know to manage risk. I mean, we're living creatures who have existed in a risky world. And we do have ways that we know how to move through that world and keep ourselves safe. And obviously, we're in a totally different context. But trying to tap in to our intuitions is a really helpful way. And I think, you know, again, that goes a lot back to people already practicing security culture on a regular basis, especially people who have experienced trauma or who are targeted by violence and brutality, having a heightened awareness of their surroundings and of the risks that they're being exposed to, and making decisions in a much more intentional and active way than someone who is not at all needing to think about those things because they come from a social location and a privileged background that has insulated them.
Margaret 1:03:36 Could you—like basically saying that, like, if you're a rich kid, you're a lot more—you're a lot safer from—a rich kid, or white or, you know, have different sets of privileges, you're less at risk with the decisions that you're making is that...?
Philip 1:03:52 Um, well, a little bit. I mean, I am saying, if you're a rich white kid, you should go commit crime.
Margaret 1:03:56 [Laughing]
Philip 1:03:59 I am saying that people who have experienced marginalization and brutality, you know, oftentimes will have more situational awareness and will have just like a more natural set of security practices that they're doing to keep themselves safe than someone who hasn't experienced those things. And so being able to cultivate that awareness of what we're interacting with, with who we're interacting with, with our read on the situation, if something feels out of place, if there's a car parked behind the march with unmarked license plates, that looks brand new, and it's got tinted windows, and "Oh, that seems out of place. I wonder if I should keep an eye on that because it's either an undercover cop or a right wing vigilante who's about to drive into the crowd."
Margaret 1:04:49 Right.
Philip 1:04:49 You know, that is security culture and cultivating that awareness of who we're interacting with and how we're interacting with and the different risks is an important tool to just integrate into our everyday practice.
Margaret 1:05:05 No, I like tha. I like this idea that being, like, conscious—like as like a personal security culture technique or whatever—being conscious about what's happening and being conscious about your own choice in the decision or whatever... [Sighs] What am I trying to say? It's like, the people who do shit because they're swept up in it—it's okay to be swept up in what's happening sometimes, right? And I'm not trying to say like, never, like, go with the crowd. Because sometimes also, like going with the crowd'a literally the safest thing. Like, even if like—like, sometimes when all your friends are jumping off a bridge you should probably fucking jump off a bridge. Like, because if you chose your friends carefully—like sometimes I pick—I think about how I like pick my friends very carefully. And so therefore, sometimes I trust their judgment more than my own. And sometimes solidarity, like, requires that. But if you're doing shit just because you're swept up in it, especially a crowd of strangers, especially something you're new to. It's not as good of a scene. And also like the people who do that are like literally more likely to roll. Like, you know, some of the people that I've seen turn state's evidence after, you know, felony arrests or whatever are the people who were just, like, kind of in it for the social capital, they were in it as a social scene. They were, like, you know, like, "Oh, I guess all my friends are an anarchist so I'm an anarchist too," or whatever the fuck, you know? Which is a great way to start getting involved in radical politics is, like, pick cool friends. And, you know, they do cool shit, break the law, breaking the laws, cool. I think I'm allowed to?—I don't know, whatever. And, but the people who don't mean it, I don't trust them as much. And I worry about, like, expressing who I do and don't trust on this show because, like, I just don't trust anyone. But that works for me, but apparently it doesn't work for most people. So, but okay, to run with this paranoia thing for a minute: Like, one of the reasons I think that way is that, like, you know, when I first got involved in political activism or whatever, you know, I was involved in forest defense community in the Pacific Northwest. And I went to some of the last meetings of this particular forest defense crew. And they were just like, tree sitters and shit, right? It was like, it was illegalism but it's, like, above ground illegalism. Like people who sit in a tree are, like, "Hey, I fuckin sit in trees." You know? Like, that's like, one thing I'll like admit to, right? I've like sat in trees. And so it's not—they're not, like, the super sketchy arsonists or whatever running around at night. They're not the ELF. But they certainly were infiltrated as though they were. And I went to some of the last meetings of this organization because I joined it near the end of its time. And then during a FOIA request—a Freedom of Information Act request where you send off to the government and say, "Please give us information about this." Or maybe it was during court discovery, I can't remember which—it came out that, like, I think about 3 out of 8 or 9 people in that meeting were informants or cops of one style or another. And so it's just like, okay. 30% of the people in this movement are informants, you know? And that is, like, the wrong sample to pick from, right? Very few movements—there certainly have been movements that have been as heavily infiltrated as this—but most social movements are not as heavily infiltrated as the environmental movement was during the early 00s. But... I don't know. I don't know why I'm talking about that. I'm not specifically—
Philip 1:08:56 No, that's, um, that's an important point of—I mean, tracking, that not only is it the immediate moment, that you're doing whatever action you're trying to protect through security culture, that discretion is important, but that it's something that you're then carrying with you forever.
Margaret 1:09:16 Yeah.
Philip 1:09:18 And, you know, whatever we want to say about statute of limitations or not, the point is that once you do something that you don't want to talk about, you should be fully prepared to not talk about that forever.
Margaret 1:09:32 Yeah.
Philip 1:09:33 Forever. And I think that's part of the process that maybe gets overlooked. Again, when we're checking in with ourselves about what our boundaries are, what we're comfortable doing and what we're able to do sustainably, think about, am I able to do this and am I able to then hold that with me and not be able to express, you know, "Oh, this specific thing that I did at this specific time gave me this lasting feeling that I really want to process through." And I think that's a really important and so so so frequently overlooked part is that we need to be prepared to be continuing our security culture practices indefinitely onwards.
Margaret 1:10:16 Yeah.
Philip 1:10:16 And so building in some rituals or some practices or some ways of being able to process through the intensity of what happened or to process through grief or honor that experience is I think, a really cool possibility to see emerge out of security culture becoming more sustainable.
Margaret 1:10:38 Yeah. Yeah, because it can—otherwise it can kind of sit in you and just make you, like... Yeah, I think that people don't recognize that when you make certain decisions you make are—especially younger people, she said, sometimes don't realize that, like, actions are permanent, you know? Or, like, decisions you make have permanent impacts, which actually, we forget about in the other direction, too. I think sometimes we forget that, like, the fires we light today are beacons for the future, you know, whatever. Don't start fires do whatever—I'm not trying to tell people what to fucking do. But like, it can—you know, it's like interesting to realize that you're also, like, part of fucking making history too, you know. And so the decisions we make have permanent impacts in positive and negative and more complicated than that ways.
Philip 1:11:39 Absolutely. And I think that's something that I lean in frequently of using security culture in the most dry, analytical way possible, of just thinking about this as a tool to mitigate risk. And that's such a cool thing to also be thinking about the activities we're involved in in the totally idealistic and romantic and visionary ways that they also are. And so security culture, by being so methodical and being able to give me that basis of security to act from, then allows me to be able to like fantasize about the world that I want to be a part of, and not be enmeshed in anxiety or paranoia over how the state is going to respond to me enacting that.
Margaret 1:12:26 Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I think that having good security cultural practices is a good way to—well it's like prepping in general, right? Like, I have my to go bag or whatever. And it's not so that I can sit around and, like, freak out about what to do if the forest, I mean, catches fire, which is the most likely scenario by which I would need my go bag, right? But I now mostly put the thought of the fear of that out of my head, because I've done roughly the best I can. I have roughly what I would need, if that were the case. And in terms of, like, you know, having the pretense of being a revolutionist or whatever, just inherently by calling myself an anarchist, I—there's a, there is a certain amount of risk, like, you know, I remember trying to explain it to someone that I was like, yeah, if Antifa is designated a domestic terrorist organization or whatever, like, even though I don't do shit, that could really directly impact me personally, because I'm very public about, you know, my beliefs, right? And—but I can't worry about that. And so what I can do instead is come up with my best practices, put them into place, and then be like, you know, not wash my hands of it, but like, basically be like, "Alright, I'm doing the best I can on that front," and, like, yeah, if Biden lives up to his campaign promise of, like, prosecuting anarchists, like, that might impact me, you know. I don't know, we'll see. Like—but that's not within my control. And like, I—what's within my control is to just, like, you know, know who knows about when I graffiti-ed something in 2002, which I didn't do. I literally didn't. It's just a—I'm just trying to come up with a bullshit thing I can say on the show.
Philip 1:14:21 Yeah, but to just drive it home all the time. I mean that's, and that's great. And what you're doing is you're alleviating that possible concern or anxiety over not being prepared for the forest fire by just always being prepared for the forest fire.
Margaret 1:14:37 Yeah.
Philip 1:14:37 You know, you're just mitigating that risk ahead of time. And that's opening you up to being able to do what you really want to be doing safely and not being concerned about all the time because it's just your standard operating procedure.
Margaret 1:14:49 Yeah. Yeah. And then the other thing too with like security culture is just like we also have to make sure it doesn't give us a false sense of safety. And I think you brought this up earlier, but if there's like a point I want to like drive home as we're probably, you know, winding down or whatever is just, like, this isn't safe, right? But honestly, like, choosing to believe in revolution feels like the better when I look at the, like, the cost/benefit analysis. Like, it's safer to—like, we're more likely to survive to be old if we fucking overthrow capitalism and like halt climate change, you know? Even if it, like, brings with it short term risk.
Philip 1:15:36 Yeah. It's up to us to live.
Margaret 1:15:39 Yeah.
Philip 1:15:42 I guess I want to just end on some very specific, concrete things to do for security. This has been really great to talk with you about the overall picture, which I think oftentimes is missing. But it would feel a little remiss to not say some specifics like—
Margaret 1:15:58 Yeah.
Philip 1:15:58 One, don't cooperate with the police. Don't talk with law enforcement. You know, you have a right to remain silent, you have a right to a lawyer, don't answer questions, don't answer questions about your friends. Just be silent.
Margaret 1:16:13 Yeah.
Philip 1:16:14 And a great way to get more comfortable with that is to practice, you know, practice not answering a direct question from police. It's socially awkward, it takes energy. Also, you know, researching know your rights trainings, which are readily available online. And being more informed about some of the safeties that you do have, or some of the ways that you can interact with that is really important. That just feels like the foundational thing: don't talk to cops. Another simple thing would just be, you know, with so much going on digitally because of the pandemic, there's just been a lot going on through Zoom and Facebook and Google. And you should just always assume anything going on over social media or over a large email server is publicly available to right wing vigilantes and to the police. So, as best as you can, try to normalize using encrypted messaging like Signal, or encrypted email like Riseup or Proton Mail just for everything, not just for your activism. And even then don't share things online or over Signal that you wouldn't want read back to you in a courtroom in a criminal hearing.
Margaret 1:17:31 Right.
Philip 1:17:32 And, you know, ultimately I think that just staying abreast as much as possible and reading about counterinsurgency and about state repression and learning about how movements historically have responded is probably the best way to set yourself up. And so I compiled a bunch of resources that I found very helpful historically. Maybe you could list them in the show notes for people. But there's some great—there's some great manuals, both constructed by the state about how to implement counterinsurgency and how to manage popular movements, and then also lots of great books just looking at how social movements have resisted that and continue to win.
Margaret 1:18:15 Okay, is there any other—any other thing that we didn't talk about that we should have?
Philip 1:18:23 You know, there's a lot of talk of operational security in the prepper world, which is kind of the closest thing I found to right-winger security, culture, and timing and time again I'm just so surprised how, at the end of the day, their solution to security risks comes through stockpiling ammunition and being prepared to shoot your way out of any situation. And the thing that I love about being part of this community is how much of a focus we have on relationships and on community. And ultimately, I do think we get our security from each other. You know, we're only as strong as we're able to be with each other. And being able to work through conflict and being able to work with each other safely to create the kind of world is so much more transformative than stockpiling ammunition and dehydrated food in your basement.
Margaret 1:19:18 Yeah.
Philip 1:19:19 And, you know, at the same time, there's a lot of great stuff to be found through right-wing and prepper communities on operational security. That's especially a huge topic in military intelligence realms and is well worth researching. Also, again, looking at situational awareness tools and techniques, which is another big hub used by various prepper and right wing groups. Looking up different risk management tools, which is, you know, a huge field developed by like business leaders and techies and nonprofits. There's a lot of tools out there and we can apply them to do the good work that we need to be doing.
Margaret 1:20:01 That makes sense. Yeah, one of the—you know, just like reading about, um, just to continue with the like, the only way out is through kind of concept sometimes is I read about—when you're talking about how, like, the main way to stay safe is relationships, right? Like solidarity has always been our strongest weapon. And in a very, like, practical, direct way, even down to like when revolutionists all go to jail for trying to have a revolution, the main thing that gets them out of jail again is that when other people keep trying to have a revolution, and whether that revolution wins and frees the prisoners, or whether, basically, the existing system is like, "Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. Maybe if we let some of these people out they'll like, you know." With the Frederick Douglass quote, "Power concedes nothing without a demand," you know?
Philip 1:21:01 Yeah.
Margaret 1:21:02 And yeah, just not abandoning people when they're inside or not abandoning people, just period, is our best bet even as individuals to stay safe.
Philip 1:21:20 Yeah, absolutely.
Margaret 1:21:22 Okay, so final thoughts?
Philip 1:21:26 I'm just happy to be able to be on here and share some of the tools that I've learned. But I really want to say I'm not an expert. And if you're in a different situation than me, you've got different tools to use, you've got different lessons to learn. You know, this is what we make of it. And I'm really excited to see the ways that people are going to continue to adapt these tools for their own circumstances.
Margaret 1:21:47 Yeah, totally. All right. Well, thanks so much for being on the show. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast you should tell people about it, because it's not a security culture that—I was supposed to try and make a joke about how it's, like, security culture as relates to telling people about things about the podcast, but I don't know how to land it. So I won't tell that joke. But you can tell people about the podcast and that would mean a lot. And people have been doing that and that means a lot to me. If you want to support the podcast more directly, you can do so by following me on Patreon. My Patreon is patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. And if you support me at any level, you get a bunch of access to zines and music and me writing, "I'm sorry I'm late on the following things" notes to you all that are painfully earnest and heartfelt. And if you support me at $10, I'll mail you a zine. If you support me at $20, I'll shout out your name in a minute like I'm about to shout out people's names in a minute. But also, if you live off of less money than I make on Patreon, please don't give your money to me. Give your money to yourself, because you need it more than I do. And if you want access to the content that I make that's behind that pay wall, just contact me and you can have access to that. You can contact me in general. You can contact me on Instagram, which is Instagram @margaretkilljoy, or I'm @magpiekilljoy on Twitter. Don't follow me on Facebook. I have—I hate Facebook. I use it. But it's weird. I don't know. I mean, they're all weird. You're not really waiting for me to talk about social media, you're waiting for me to end the episode. So in particular I would like to thank Eleanor and Mike and Satara and Kat J, The Compound, Shane, Christopher, Sam, Natalie, Willow, Kirk, Hoss the dog, Nora, and Chris. Yeah, you all make this possible in a way that warms my heart and the aforementioned embarrassingly heartfelt and earnest ways. Anyway, thank you all so much for listening and I hope you're doing as well as you can with everything that's going on. And we keep us safe.
The guest, Dibs, runs a website called dibsfitness.com and can be found on Instagram at @dibs_pt.
The host, Margaret Killjoy, can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy, instagram @margaretkilljoy, and on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.
Transcript:
Margaret 00:14 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast where it feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and this week I'm going to be talking to Dibs who is a personal fitness trainer in Montreal. I'm going to be talking with them about personal fitness, obviously, I guess that's the name of the episode that you clicked on. And they have a lot of really useful and concrete tips for how people with different relationships to their body can engage in personal fitness and training. And of course, well, it's worth pointing out that this episode does come with a content warning. We do talk about eating disorders, and we talk about relationships to eating and fitness and the way that they can become obsessive. So—and that that question is pretty clearly marked. It doesn't come out of the blue. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's a jingle from another podcast on the network.
Jingle 01:12 Gooooood morning slaves! Looking for relief from the steaming hot plate of bullshit served up on the daily by the mainstream media? Are you thirsting for solid and reliable information to escape the mind-numbing vortex of corporate news and Trump tweets? Are you ready to check out every time you hear a despacito on the radio one more fucking time? Then tune your dial to sub.Media, a mouthwatering hub of infotainment and subversion that'll make you want to quit your job and join the motherfucking resistance. Dive into our newly designed website and gorge yourself on one of the 500+ videos and audio tracks from our vast library of anarchist films, hip hop, and riot porn, or choose from one of our original shows like Trouble, Burning Cop Car, A is for Anarchy, Video Ninja Reports, and the Stimulator. Fuck Netflix, watch sub.Media.
Margaret 02:07 Okay, and Dibs, if you would like to introduce yourself with your name, which I guess I just said, and your pronouns and any, you know, what you do for work, any political or organizational affiliations that make sense with what you're going to be talking about today? Also maybe, like, your identity as relates to some of what you're going to be talking about today?
Dibs 02:26 Sure, so I'm Dibs, my pronouns, they/them, I am a certified personal trainer or fitness instructor some might call it, so I have my certificate 3 and 4 in group fitness and one-on-one training. I identify as transgender, and I have ADHD, and I am sort of still recovering from an eating disorder. So I guess that's relevant to probably what will come up, maybe?
Margaret 02:57 Yeah, that actually-that is a lot, like-and that's actually something I'd love to talk to you about what we're talking about this is like food and our relationships to food. So I wanted to have you on because I spent a while looking around, I was—I wanted to get someone on who is a personal trainer. And, of course, one of the problems with personal trainers, not personal trainers themselves but the fitness industry, is that it is very ablest, very centering of cis people, very centering of like thin people, and also centering of the weight experience, and just has a lot of problems. And then you came highly-recommended through our mutual friend as a personal trainer who specifically works to kind of counteract that stuff. And the reason I want to have someone on is talking about personal fitness: one is just sort of selfish. I'm like, "Oh, I'm getting older, and I need to worry about this stuff more." But you know, it's like—okay, it's a weird tangent to start with. But the first time I really ever thought about this stuff was years ago I was playing accordion and Amsterdam and a friend of mine walked by, and he was this older, like, super tough anarchist guy. And, you know, maybe in his 40s or something—actually might have been much younger than thatb ut when you're young, everyone seems old—and he said, "Oh, what are you doing?" I was like, "Oh, I'm playing accordion." And he said, and I said, "What are you doing?" He said, "I'm coming home from the gym." And I was like, "Why are you at the gym?" Because I was an idiot. And he was like, "Well, because we want to have a revolution and we need to be stronger than the police." And I was like "Shit."
Dibs 04:34 Great answer.
Margaret 04:35 I'd never thought about it from that point of view.
Dibs 04:38 Yeah.
Margaret 04:40 And that's kind of where I'm coming from personally about a lot of like fitness goals. And I think that a lot of people are looking at this, as the world becomes more conflictual, they might be more interested in personal fitness. As the world gets a little crazier, they might be more interested in personal fitness. Would you be able to talk about your own experiences where you're coming from about personal fitness and kind of what got you engaged with it?
Dibs 05:04 Yeah. I mean, I've always been an active kid. I definitely have, you know, some symptoms of ADHD just have many hobbies, try all the things, like, as a child in like primary school, I did everything from like tap dancing, to soccer, to softball to netball to guitar lessons. Like, I always had, like, something that made me need to want to move. And then, so I played team sports for a while. And then when I left school and I became an adult, that's sort of when I looked at the gym for exercise. And at the same time of leaving school is when I started to think about my gender. And I've spoken about this to many people with, like, how my sort of gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia is very much intertwined. And so I don't know, you know, what led me more down the path of wanting to lift weights and stuff. But, you know, wanting—having—being transgender and wanting to change your body. Before I started HRT, and before I had top surgery or anything, like, my only option or what I saw was to train so I started doing weightlifting. And then my dad passed away when I was 19 from heart disease. Suddenly, just one night, he went to bed and didn't wake up. And that scared me.
Margaret 06:29 Yeah.
Dibs 06:30 And I was like, well, I, you know, I want to live longer than 44 maybe. I mean, now I'm not so sure. But, you know, I was like, okay well, these are the things that led to that for him. What can I do to change my lifestyle? And yeah, and then I went from gym to gym, and I've done the fad, you know, lose nine kilos in six weeks, I've done those dumb challenges a couple times. And I've done—you know, and then I became a personal trainer and I found a gym to work at and that was a whole—that's a big story itself. It was very culty and so toxic and weird and straight and suburbian—suburban, sorry. But uh, yeah. So that's sort of where my journey—my fitness journey in a nutshell.
Margaret 07:20 No, that makes sense. And it brings up a ton of things that I'm really curious to ask you about. Because I've had some of those same experiences of like, you know, when I would go and study martial arts, I would go and study martial arts like, "Hello, fellow cisgendered men," and like, it would never really work, you know, like, people couldn't quite figure out what to make of me. And usually, I didn't get along very socially in any of the martial arts gyms that I've trained in. So, for listeners who are just starting to want to get into personal fitness, I guess, where do you begin? And I know that obviously, like, hiring you, for example, would be a good way to start. But that isn't going to be available for everyone. And, you know, like, how do you begin? How do you assess where you're at? How do you start building program that works for you?
Dibs 08:19 Yeah, it's, uh, it's tough. Like, I think the overwhelm is in the choice because anyone can go on the internet and look up, you know, "home workout program," or "three day home workout program," or whatever. And there's so much free stuff out there that's just copy and paste, cookie cutter bs that, like could work for some people, but it's not going to work for the majority of people. So I guess, like, start—there's a lot—there's so much on social media right now that's for queer people and for people of all different bodies and abilities, especially like on YouTube as well, you can find little communities of people who were various abilities and various backgrounds showing what you can use with just your body or like very cheap pieces of equipment. So, you know, using the internet is great, but then where do you start? And then if that's overwhelming you, I guess like, if you've done something in the past and you've sort of fallen off the wagon, you can go back to that thing. So like did you use to cycle? Did used to swim? Did you used to play team sports? What about that sport did you like or what muscle groups did you like working the most, you know? Like, was it your agility and your hand/eye coordination if you're playing tennis, and what can you sort of relate that to? That's another thing that you can start practicing if you don't necessarily have a tennis court near where you live in, you know? So it's like, you have to be—start slow and be really kind to yourself to not expect too much too soon. And the act of just making something a small habit that you maintain through, you know, half the year or year is a massive goal in massive achievement in itself. So, you know, if you don't know—if you really want to learn how to squat or do a push up, you can—there are so many articles on working your way up to a push up or working your way up to a chin up or something like that. Everything can be broken down into much smaller steps in fitness. But my sort of mantra is—what I what I like to promote to everyone is joyful movement, and you find the movement that brings you joy, and you're going to do it, and it's not going to be like that daunting task that hangs over your head.
Margaret 10:35 So rather than like, you know, screaming, "I'm doing this for Sparta!" and then doing like 50 pushups every morning or whatever, like...
Dibs 10:43 Yeah, like—because yeah I know, like so many people, like, "Oh, I just do 20 push ups and 50 sit ups before I go to bed every night." And that's—like, my mom says that. She's like, "I do my 20 sit ups before bed and like 20 squats, and that's how I'm gonna keep my belly fat away." And I'm like, oh my God. Like you don't—and that's not fun for her. She doesn't like doing it. She just thinks that's what she has to do to look hot for her boyfriend. And, you know, like you—but now she plays—or well, before the pandemic—she played adults all-gender soccer. And she—that was what she was what she thought was fun, because she played with some people from that she worked with so she got to see her work colleagues, she got to, you know, have fun in a non-competitive teamsport environment. Like, yeah, basically—I mean, I know, even if we are doing this for serious business, because we want to, you know, fight off police and survive the apocalypse. You can still, while the world is still [inaudible] have fun. Find the thing that brings you joy and, you know, make light of it. Because that's the only way you're going to commit to it before the end times when you're like, "Oh, shit." You'd rather be prepared—this is the whole point. Yes. You're preparing now.
Margaret 12:01 Yeah. Oh, that's actually that's really interesting because I, you know—um, before COVID and things like that I would go boff, I would run around in a park with foam swords and shields and—actually turns out that learning how to fight with sticks and shields is way more of a life skill than I expected. But, um, but you know, that's not happening right now, because of COVID. And a lot of, like, team or group exercise stuff obviously isn't happening right now. And what are some ways that people can find joyful movement in isolation or in greater isolation?
Dibs 12:40 Yeah, so I guess if you're one of those people who is really just not leaving your house at all for—unless, you know, you need groceries, or even then you're just getting someone else to send you stuff and you're stuck at home: I've been leading online aerobics dance classes, which are quite fun. Or, you know, if you can't find one of those and you don't know—if the time is not good for you—like, put on some music and dance because cardio is so important, like your cardiovascular health is gonna—that's what's going to help you run and keep running and not stop. So dancing for, you know, an hour non-stop, like, that is a hardcore workout. People who have gone to raves, I'm sure you know how sore your body is the next day. Like, dancing is really, really good for you and it's going to help you build stamina. So that's one thing. Just putting together a little routine at home is quite easy. I like to tell people, there's a form of exercise routine called an AMRAP: as many rounds as possible. And so I say, you know, find five exercises that you know, you've been taught before, do 20 of them all in a row as many times as you can in 10 minutes, or 15 minutes, or 25 minutes. So say you're doing 20 squats, 20 push ups, 20 mountain climbers, 20 burpees, 20 lunges, and then go back to the top of the list and keep going, top of the list, keep going, work your way through until your timer goes off on your phone, and boom! You've done a workout. It's—there's so many different ways that you can do it and to keep you motivated and to remove the thinking out of it. You don't have to make it complicated. It can be quite simple. And, you know, if you can't do push ups, do them on your knees. If you can't do knee push ups, lean against the wall and do them on the wall or the door until you build up your strength or lean on your kitchen counter or your couch or something. There's so many things you can do just at home to-you know, or follow along YouTube workouts. If you just type on YouTube "follow along workout." I know they're not the best because they're always just demonstrated by people who were ripped in bikinis. I'm gonna try and put some out online to try and show some diversity. But, you know, there's different ways at home that you can find-or like find your favorite person on the internet. Copy what they're putting out. But yeah, like, dancing is my favorite. And then creating your own routine and, you know, maybe put on a podcast where you're doing it or put on music that you like and work through your 15 minutes, and then you're done.
Margaret 15:12 Okay, that makes sense to me. That's, um, that's like stuff that I feel like, on some level, is like what I was subconsciously drawn to when I was trying to become more in shape. I was like, "Oh, I'll just, I'll dance more, you know, while like working at a standing desk I'll, like, play music and then, like, walk away from the computer or something." But then, as I find myself being like, "No, I must be serious about fitness" instead, I kind of find myself moving away from that kind of stuff and more back into the, like, you know, "I must do yeah, 20 squats every morning" or whatever.
Dibs 15:45 Yeah, yeah, it can come in whatever shape you want. Because even within dance, you know, if you're dropping it low, you're doing a squat. Like, there are many ways to do the typical fitness movements like the patterns that you use, like a push, a press, a squat, a deadlift—there's so many ways to do that, that are not, like, regimented and formal in everyday life, like when you're cleaning or you're gardening. Gardening is great exercise, as long as you keep good posture and you're not hurting your back. Like, that's another way to get those movement patterns in.
Margaret 16:22 So that's—that brings up something that I think about a lot. Most of my exercise at the moment—obviously, everything—I think about everything through the lens of myself, but whatever, that's totally normal, you know, it's not like people listen to this. Um, okay, so like, most of my exercise comes from construction and building and crafting, right? Because I live, you know, in the woods alone. And so, like, I feel like most of my exercise is like carrying heavy shit up the hill to my house, right? And I often wonder to what degree I'm like getting exercise and to what degree I'm just like hurting myself. And, like, when you're talking about gardening and being good exercise as long as you maintain good posture, like, it seems like maybe that's useful across the board is like—where is the line between getting stronger and more fit and wearing yourself down?
Dibs 17:18 Yeah, it's—that's a hard one, especially if you're doing something out of necessity, like, if you're building stuff and you need to get the materials, you know, before it rains or whatever, like, you're not going to stop when when you reach that limit, you're just going to keep going. So then you just have to know how to look after yourself afterwards. Like, the line is different for everyone depending on, you know, depending on what you've built up before and you're—like, I love that that's how you get your exercise because I love functional fitness. I've been, you know, rummaging through curbside trash way more often than the last three months that I have in my entire life. And I've been—I've found four cinder blocks in the last four weeks and I've carried them home like four blocks to my house because I wanted to make a bench seat out of them. And like, you know, I—by the third one that I found, I figured out the correct posture and the way to hold it that wasn't going to make my biceps feel like this snapping off. So sometimes it's trial and error. But, you know, and sometimes you pay for it afterwards and you just have to make sure you rest or stretch correctly. But the—it is such a fine line between totally wearing yourself out. But I guess, if you're doing something functional fitness-wise and it's taking you the whole day, like, you know, people who do landscaping and they're just slugging it out for six hours, eight hours, all day. And a lot of them have bad backs. But you can avoid that if you're using the right tools, like if you have things that help you lift and wheel things like a wheelbarrow or dolly or whatever. You just have to make sure you're taking breaks intermittently, like think—stop and think. "How am I holding this? Like, where's the weight? Where can I feel the most strain? Is it in my back? Is it in my biceps? Is it in my core?" You really want to feel things in your abs the most when you're holding them rather than your back. And then, you know, if one bicep is straining more than the other change the bottom arm and the top arm so you're evening yourself out. Cuz you just have to be more attuned to your body and take time and do a little scan and think, "Where am I feeling this?" I know it's hard because when you're in the moment and just want to get stuff done, you're not going to stop, but I find that difficult as well. And then maybe when I get home I realized that I was carrying it wrong. But to people have a much better attention span than than me, that's something that you can do is stop, scan your body, where am I feeling this? Can I readjust? Can I change hands or or change my stride somehow or change my posture? Do I lift it closer to my chest? Do I hold it down below my legs? Do I lifted it up above my head with my elbows locked out if it's light enough to give my back a rest? Those—you just carry things in a different way each time to give different body parts the load.
Margaret 20:02 Okay. Yeah, it's funny, I have—there's sort of a joke that, you know, if you're like punk past 30 you have to like pick between your options and it's like CrossFit, or knitting, or whatever. And I didn't pick either of those, I guess I picked podcasting and that's probably on there too. And sometimes my friends who do deadlifts and stuff, I'm kind of jealous because I'm like, "Oh, I should probably know how to do that really well because I like, later today I'm going to go have to drag my 50 pound generator to a different spot and hook it up to a 20 pound propane tank to get enough power to, you know, edit this interview. And I don't know, this is like cliche, right? But what I was like younger, I didn't really think about this stuff. And now I'm, like, I always make sure I put down heavy things, not on the ground but have thing's at about waist level.
Dibs 20:56 Yeah
Margaret 20:57 You know? And am I like, am I doing myself a disservice by doing that? You know, like, am I reducing my ability to learn how to deadlift? I don't know.
Dibs 21:07 I think you're saving your back in a long time. Because especially like, deadlifts are really good, they're an amazing full-body exercise. But if you’re having something with an awkward shape that prevents you from doing it with the correct form, then it's not going to be good to do so I think you're correct in putting it up higher so you don't have to go all the way down if it's a weird-shaped thing.
Margaret 21:27 Okay. Cool. Glad to hear my laziness is good. You mentioned food and eating disorder stuff. Is that is that okay to talk about?
Dibs 21:38 Yeah, we can dig into that.
Margaret 21:40 Um and, you know, content warning for anyone who's listening, obviously, we'll talk some about eating disorder stuff and I know that that can be very hard for a lot of people. So how does one—one of the things that I also worry about as I do this, right, um—again, to just use myself as the example for everything—I didn't think a ton about food until I came out as trans. And now I think about food way more than I would like to just because of the way that my body puts on weight being in a sort of masculine way, right? And both the combination of aging and suddenly holding myself to like feminine beauty standards are—is a wonderful one/two punch to deal with. But it's hard because I also want to become more fit. But I also really don't want to fall into what I can really easily see as disordered eating and just obsession about food. And I'm wondering how you manage or how you would recommend to people to manage dealing with fitness and as relates to food and how awful our society is about food and body image?
Dibs 23:01 Yeah, it's pretty terrible because, you know, a lot of the things out there are all about eliminating a certain either food group, or food source, or whatever. And it's all about eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. So the way I reframe it is don't think about what to cut out thinking about more about what you want to add to your diet to help you either feel fuller, or to help you get the nutrients that you need. So, you know, if you're a person that doesn't drink any water, start by adding an extra glass of water to your daily intake until that becomes a habit then add another until you're drinking, you know, at least 2-3 liters a day. Yes, good job drinking your water. So (laughing) she takes a sip. Yeah, so, you know, adding things like that. So it doesn't have to be food, it can be water. It can be, you know, if you're someone that only eats two colors, brown and white, maybe start adding a yellow thing or a green thing or a red thing to your plate. So, you know, add a sweet potato if you really hate vegetables, I know mushrooms are also black and white and brown, but there a vegetables so you can add mushrooms to your plate. I, you know, I used to hate sa—I probably only started eating salad when I was like 18, maybe 19. I used to never eat any vegetables and then I realized the certain ways that I like them cooked or prepared that will make me eat them more. So, you know, add—when I have now my bacon and eggs for breakfast I will put, like, a handful of baby spinach on top. And, you know, the way that that tastes is delicious is because it's smothered in bacon juice. Sorry, the vegan. But, like, that's how I deal with it and that's how I add my vegetables in so when you're thinking about like food and eating for your body type, like, there's a couple of TED Talks out there actually that are that are titled, you know, "The Perfect Diet," or "What is the perfect diet?" And I quite liked them. I watched them all because I wanted to see what they, what dumb stuff they said. But it's actually quite good because at the end, they're all like, "The perfect diet is the one that feels the best for your body or like what makes you feel the best." Because the Mediterranean diet's not everyone, keto is not for everyone, intermittent fasting is just dumb—unless, you know, unless you are experiencing food scarcity and then, you know, of course, you're going to not eat for 12 hours, and then you have your little window of eating time or whatever. But you know, a lot of us try all these things that were just not made for us. And instead of listening to what someone else's is spouting on the newest Instagram trend of the newest juice cleanse or whatever, like, just listen to your body more and think, "Okay, do I feel bloated when I eat beans? Do I feel bloated when I eat dairy? Do I feel bloated when I eat this? Like, do I have diarrhea or gas? Or like, what is this food making you feel?" I realize I get real gassy and I get an upset tummy when I have dairy, so I try and reduce that. Like it's—if you stop—and stress is something that helps you hold weight too that is—prevents you from digesting properly, right? Because you're in fight or flight, you're not going to digest your nutrients and absorb them. So if you're stressing less about, "Oh I can't eat this, or I can't that," and you're just, you know, you're not being too hard on yourself, that's also going to benefit you because you're going to be more calm. So I like to go at it thinking of what can I add? What's something easy, just one thing at a time, to add to my routine, to add to my grocery list or when I go out dumpster diving, what's the ingredient I'm going to add—you know, add a new vegetable a week, or whatever, a new legume or bean or whatever to try if you need to color your plate, and then pay attention to what foods make you feel like crap.
Margaret 26:57 Okay, I like that idea of the adding and sort of—that's—it's one of those things that probably should have been obvious. But, I mean, I spend a a not tiny amount of time like—I mean, I do the same thing that I think a lot of people do where I kind of go through a, "Oh crap, I'm out of shape, I better go figure out what will suddenly make me better," and then get into it for about three weeks and then drop it. And so I've, clearly, I've read a lot of fitness blogs and diet blogs and things like that as a result. And I haven't run across that and it seems so obvious. One of the things, you brought up dumpster rain, and I was thinking about how I actually ate better back when I dumpster dove for more of my meals then when I stopped dumpstering. I stopped dumpstering personally because of anxiety, I have a lot of food anxiety issues. And—but then what would happen is I didn't have much money and it's really hard to prioritize greens, it's really hard to prioritize things with no caloric content to speak of, right? You know, when I—if I have $8 to spend at a restaurant or something like that, there's no way that I'm buying the $8 salad, I'm buying the $8 burrito, you know. And it's interesting because that habit stayed with me after I no longer have the same, like, financial issues. Yeah, it was only very recently that I was like, "I'm ordering a salad at a restaurant." And it was very, it was a—a whole new world.
Dibs 28:27 Delicious?
Margaret 28:28 No, it was—it was good but it was like I still have kind of this, like, yeah, but if I'm paying at a restaurant, I want to be stupidly full. Like I want to, I want to look at the last bite of food and be like, "Can I do it?" You know? And I don't know maybe that's just from, like, food insecurity. I'm not sure.
Dibs 28:49 I'm like the opposite. I'm like, "I'm paying for the salad. I must eat all of my vegetables. I have paid for it." But uh, yeah, no, I get what you mean about that habit and you want to you want to spend your money on what's going to make you feel the most full, which is totally fine. And, so hot tip to anyone who has minimal income to spend on food and wants to feel full: potatoes, white potatoes are the most satiating food on the planet. I'm sure you've seen [inaudible] this fact. Probably many times.
Margaret 29:17 I haven't. No, go ahead.
Dibs 29:19 Yeah, well, fun fact: most satiating food on the planet like per gram, what you put in your mouth is it fills you up more than anything else. So you're—I mean, they have a decent amount of vitamins and minerals in them but, you know, you want to mix it up. If you want to, like, if you find potatoes or buy potatoes, and then you find other green things like zucchini or asparagus or bell peppers, capsicums, whatever you want to call them. I call them capsicums. You North Americans very strange. "Peppers."
Margaret 29:51 I was thinking that your accent didn't sound very Canadian.
Dibs 29:54 Yes, I'm from Australia. I now live in Canada. Mysterious So, you know, you can mix that potato with other things and then hopefully it still comes out tasting like potato because obviously that's going to be the most tasty thing in your meal. But I like to just heat up a skillet, grate some potato, and then grate some other veggies on top. And then you've got this big mishmash of delicious, mushy—or crispy depending on how you cook it—vegetables to put in your facehole. And, you know, it's—so if you want something to feel full, like, don't feel—be ashamed of not eating that many green things, but have your base, you know, starchy carbs that's going to make you feel full like beans, or rice, or potatoes, or pasta, and then throw some green things on top. Like it doesn't occur to many people when they're making pasta to do more than just the pasta and the sauce, like, you can throw baby spinach leaves in your sauce or you can throw like chopped up asparagus or mushrooms or whatever other vegetable to like, fatten it up, you know, make it really chunky and more filling. And then you'll—the pasta won't sustain you for that long, but the vegetables will help you keep—stay feeling fuller for longer. So you want to eat things that are full of fiber, right, that's what's going to make you full. If you go to, like, a juice bar. And, you know, you order a tropical juice, whatever, they're going to put things through the juicer, they're going to remove the skin and you're basically getting like the sugar from three apples and a banana and a pineapple, half a pineapple, or whatever. And none of the fiber or the really good chunky nutrients that are gonna fill you up. If you actually eat—physically eat an apple and bite into it—you can't eat more than like one and a half, two apples max before you feel like you're gonna explode because you're super full. Because you're getting all the fiber and you're getting the gut, like the guts of it. You're getting the meaty part of the fruit. So it's—that's another hot tip is don't juice things, like, you want the skin you want the flesh, that's what's going to feel you—make you feel awful.
Margaret 31:59 Okay. Yeah, I like that. It seems like a lot of food stuff comes down to, like, eating simpler—like not eating like less things, but eating like—not like raw food, but like, closer to—like less, I dunno, less processed.
Dibs 32:15 Less processed. Yeah, I mean, I know it's not easy for everyone to find that, to do the, you know, no processing. Like, some people want to get a $2 burger from In and Out Burger or A&W or whatever because that's what they have access to and that's what's going to be their meal for the day and that's fine. But, like, if you—you know, dumpster diving, or you have a local grocer, or a local farm, veggie and fruit distributor down the road from you, and you want to spend a couple bucks, like, that's the best way to do it is, like the closer—the less stages from earth to you to your mouth the better, right? If it's fall off a tree, it's grown from the ground, it's come straight off an animal's back, like, eat it. Fantastic. It's going to fill you up and it's going to be cheaper than if you've gotten something that's been picked from a tree, put on a truck, gone into a factory, run on a conveyor belt four times, got put in packaging, got on another truck, and onto a shelf, and then into your hand. You're going to be paying more for it and you're going to be getting less nutritional benefit from the thing.
Margaret 33:21 Okay. So in the meals that you're describing, which are very similar to the meals that I eat, but they don't have a lot of protein in them, as far as I can tell. And I'm curious your take on the—you know, I ran across the idea that you're supposed to eat, what, half your body weight in protein every day or something? Well, not half your body weight...
Dibs 33:41 Yeah, there's a formula where you measure your body weight and then divide it by 2, and then there's—you times that by 0.8 grams, and that's the amount of protein that you—that is a minimum, quote/unquote, "minimum intake." And that's, you know, if you're like lifting weights, if you're trading. So obviously it's going to be different depending on your hormones, because estrogen and testosterone do affect us differently and how our body deals with proteins and how it synthesizes muscle and stuff like that. So it's going to change depending on your hormones, it's gonna change depending on your weight, how much weight is muscle, how much of your weight is fat, what exercise you're doing. So like, those calculators are sort of helpful for trainers as a base level so you can look at your client and—but then you have to put in all these other factors around that. So I'd say for the average person looking at that calculation, don't worry about it. We—there's so much protein—like I'm not advocating veganism, vegetarianism, or being carnivore or whatever, like, whatever you have access to, it's great. I've tried so many different diets, like, I've tried all those things. And right now I just eat what I can get my hands on and what's cheap. Um, because that's what works for me. But you can get, you know, there's so much protein in a handful of spinach or, like, you know, peanut butter or eggs—eggs or protein and fat. So if you just survive on eggs, like, I used to have a 5 egg omelet every morning. Like, if you can get your hands on meat, you don't need that much, like, I used to—when I was doing like that stupid "lose nine kilos in six weeks challenge" like, what we're eating every day was like 160 grams/180 grams of cooked meat. So like, one quarter has been removed, like 180 grams cooked meat and then 2 cups of veggies for 3 meals a day. And then, yeah, of course you're going to get thin because you're not like eating. And there was like no carbs. They were like, you have like a pinky-sized pile of mashed potato or whatever. Like that's, you know, of course you're gonna get skinny if you're not eating any carbs and you're and you're in a calorie deficit so. But you can survive on not much protein and you can also build muscle on not much protein. Like, there are so many vegan bodybuilders out there and vegan athletes. And you can—there are many sources of protein and I think we don't get taught enough about where our food comes from and what's in our food in school. You know, I think there was a video—a viral video that went around of kids being asked, you know, "Where does the potato come from? Or where does this not come from?" And they couldn't tell you whether it was a tree, the ground or, you know, they're like, "The shop? I don't know." So I think we—it's definitely important to learn more about food and what macronutrients are and what micronutrients are. So macros are your protein, fats, and carbs. Micronutrients are all the vitamins and minerals that are inside food as well. So it's important to learn about that and to know what you're getting from each different thing because you need, like, you know, life's all about balance. You want—and your body craves variety. That's why, you know, when you stop yourself silly with your main meal, your brain's, like, "Hey, you still got room for dessert." Because that's a different nutrient for your body to absorb, its sugar. So you've just filled yourself up with, you know, some vitamin A, some vitamin C, some carbohydrates, like blah, blah, blah, and then you body's like, "Hey, but you haven't had that sugary, milky thing over there." Like, that's why we can still eat something different when we feel so full, because your body knows that you need a variety of different nutrients to keep yourself going. And it sees the benefit in all of them. So, you know, eating as many different things as you can is always better than, "This is my one food that I eat every day all the time."
Margaret 37:49 Mmhmm. That's something that I'm very bad at and I have inherited been very bad at. At one point my dad who I don't think listens to this podcast, I'm not sure—went to the doctor and was like, "I don't feel good." And the doctor was like, "What do you eat?" My dad explained exactly what he eats. And the doctor said, "Every day?" My dad was like, "Yeah." You know, it was very carefully thought out thing. It wasn't like, he wasn't eating junk. You know?
Dibs 38:12 Yeah.
Margaret 38:14 And I have a similar habit that I have to fight the desire to just eat the same thing every day.
Dibs 38:22 Well, because it's easy, right? Like, that's why a lot of people do it. And I used to do it and a lot of people with anxiety do it too because it's something that you can control and you know it doesn't make your stomach upset, you know, you can be full on it. Yeah, do you, how many meals do you have a day?
Margaret 38:40 Two and a half?
Dibs 38:43 More in the afternoon? Or do you like wait a bit after you wake up?
Margaret 38:48 Yeah, I mean, okay, so—I eat a Builder Bar for breakfast or some other protein bar, which is another long standing habit of sloth, I guess. And then for lunch, you know—or sometimes a bowl of cereal or something. And then for lunch I'll eat—if I'm feeling fancy I'll cook like, you know, potatoes and some greens or something. But usually it'll be, I don't know, oatmeal or something like that for lunch.
Dibs 39:19 Yeah.
Margaret 39:19 And then dinner is like the meal that I'm like—I can't be fucked to cook. And the worst thing about—well can't be fun to cook for myself. Like I enjoy cooking with other people, but I have a very hard time convincing myself that like I'm worth the effort of, like, taking an hour out of my day, like, three times in one day.
Dibs 39:41 Yeah.
Margaret 39:42 Just to like eat food when there's this packaged thing that will make me not hungry that says it has all the things I need in it. And obviously this is sustainable for the long term. Oh...
Dibs 39:56 Well that's where, like—you know, speaking of long-term prepping, short-term prepping comes in handy. So like, you know, cooking more rice than you need and then having it in the fridge and then, you know, you can have rice as your side for the next three or four days with your dinner. Or when you make a big salad or you make a big tray of roasted vegetables in the oven, make enough so you have, you know, enough for your sides for the next three or four days. So that's something that you can do to help combat the time spent so then it's like, "Okay, this one day, I'll spend an hour or an hour and a half prepping and then tomorrow, the next day, the next day, I'm gonna thank myself because I'm gonna have to do is put it—warm it up somehow or a eat it cold." And it's done.
Margaret 40:38 That makes sense. But um, it's also a reason that I need to expand my solar bank to get a freezer.
Dibs 40:45 Yeah.
Margaret 40:46 At the moment, I have a very small fridge. And because it's winter, I don't even really successfully have a fridge because there's not enough solar power. So now I have a cooler on my porch, which is perfectly good for vegetables, but I don't know whether I would trust cooked rice to it.
Dibs 41:04 Not sure. Maybe, I've always wondered that because it doesn't get that cold in Australia. So I've come here and I'm like, "Wow, my outside is cold that my fridge. Do I need a fridge? Can I can I rent out my fridge in winter to someone else I just use outside for myself?"
Margaret 41:19 Yes, but then it's harder to keep it from freezing. The cooler on my porch is actually—at the moment it exists to keep my stuff from freezing, not to keep my stuff... Yeah, it's interesting.
Dibs 41:29 Yeah. But yeah, like it's—then it becomes hard because if you don't have storage space, or, you know, if you live with a bunch of roommates, it's hard to put put things in a fridge for yourself. But yeah, you just have to pick the thing that's small and easy to put in a little container and just pick one thing to prep that takes the longest time and then cook the other things the day of or whatever.
Margaret 41:51 No, that makes sense.
Dibs 41:52 Yeah.
Margaret 41:53 Um, so you talked about how hormones affect your body differently, right—or different hormones will affect bodies differently. And I was wondering if you could talk about that, because I think that a lot of people who are listening are trans or have other reasons why they take hormones or hormone blockers. And not all trans people take hormones, I actually personally don't take hormones. And I'm wondering if you could talk about how different hormonal systems affect your decisions about fitness and how to, how to work to the advantages of of any given hormonal system.
Dibs 42:33 Well, so I've also trained myself before I started testosterone, and I was training when I was on testosterone, and now I'm off it again. And so I've experienced what training is like with all the different hormones—hormonal combinations. So you know, testosterone will turn you into a furnace, and so you're burning calories a lot quicker then someone who runs on estrogen. Your—you build muscle a lot quicker as well. You know, lucky bastards. But, uh, so you need more food generally. So someone on testosterone is going to have a higher caloric intake to just maintain and it's going to be easier to put on muscle. But the actual training regime, or like the exercise selection, should be exactly the same. You shouldn't have any need to do a specific type of exercise or type of training because of your hormones. So a lot of—that's why I think it's such BS to put like gender on intake forms for gyms or trainers or whatever, because, like it actually doesn't affect the training that much. If you're giving someone nutritional advice, yes, you're going to need to know that. But for the exercise prescription, we can pretty much do the same thing depending on your time available and your energy levels, you're just maybe going to be lifting a different weight depending on how much experience or how much practice you put in. And, you know, I hate that standard barbells now, standard Olympic barbells, are categorized into the men's barbell and the women's barbell, because they have a 5 kilo difference—weight difference.
Margaret 44:21 Lord, just...
Dibs 44:21 If you'd—like it's so silly. If you've ever watched like, you know, a CrossFit competition, those women very strong, can probably lift more than a lot of cis men who don't work out. So like, really, strength depends on how much time you put into it. Like if you're someone that's lifting a lot, doesn't matter what hormonal makeup you have. Strength is about your body weight and, you know, how much practice you put in. So that's why like powerlifting competitions are broken up into weight classes because it's all about your power to weight ratio. It's not fair if you know a 300 pound person is lifting against a 500 pound person because they're gonna have just different power to weight ratios naturally no matter how much they practice. And so, as a, you know, as a trans person, and even as a cis person, you don't have to worry about what trainings for men and what training so women or what trainings people on testosterone or not. It is does affect, you know, the amount of calories you're burning at rest. And it'll affect your progress timeline a little bit. But you don't really have to take that into consideration when choosing your exercises. Like I always say, the perfect exercise is the one that you do, and the one that doesn't injure you. So if you're like, "Oh, I must do this specific type of training," but you're on the couch every day because you're dreading doing high intensity workout. Obviously, that's not the one for you, because you're sitting on your ass. If you're like, "F yeah! I'm gonna do boxing today because I love boxing, like, I'm gonna do some sparring or some shadow boxing," and you get up because that excites you, then that's the exercise that works for you. But yeah, like, hormones are really such a small player and, like, they choose—they decide where your body fat is, is the biggest thing that they do, right? So like, if you are a trans person not on hormones, and you want to make your chest look bigger, then you're going to just do exercises that workout your chest. If you want to make your ass look better, you're going to do exercises that target you butt. You cannot target where fat comes off your body. That's just not a thing we can decide as human beings, it just happens randomly, just depending on your genetics. But you can decide where you target the muscle growth because you do exercises for those muscles and the surrounding muscles—the surrounding like assisting muscles. Okay. Yeah, one time I was—before I came out as trans even to myself, but I, you know, it was maybe one of the first really obvious signs—I was doing weightlifting and I stopped because I started having veins in my arms.
Margaret 47:07 You know, like, muscle—like, in my, like, vein sticking out of my muscles or whatever. And I was like, "Oh, no, that is not an acceptable thing for me. I would definitely rather be a little bit weaker than have my veins popping out." So I just stopped weightlifting. Probably should have just start eating more fat maybe? I'm not sure. But it wasn't really the—I mean, okay, so that actually ties into something that I want to bring up is that—and I guess I've been kind of trying to—in the same way that obsessing about food can be really bad, ut does also seem like obsessing about fitness can be really bad. When I think about, personally, probably the time that I was physically healthiest was the time that I was mentally the least healthy, where I was incredibly obsessive about what I ate and about exercising, but it was absolutely obsessive. And I'm wondering if you have ideas about preventing fitness from being obsessive and like maybe, like, understanding like realistic goals or something? I don't quite know how to phrase what I'm trying to get at.
Dibs 47:07 Yeah. Well, that's a hard one. Because, you know, that's what happened to me and I don't know if there was any way to prevent it, but at some point you catch yourself and I think it's just one of those rock bottom moments where you're like, okay, yeah, this is a problem. I'm—you know, because I had the similar thing to you as when I was at my physical peak and I thought I was looking great and I was trading all the time, but I was obsessing over what I was eating. Like, I ended up going to hospital with a stress condition that affect my guts. And I had—I was at a festival over a New Year's and I missed the countdown, I missed the New Year's Eve party, because I was in like excruciating pain and couldn't get out of bed because I had, like, a gastro problem of like, cramping, like, all in my entire torso. It was like, terrible, because I was eating the wrong makeup of food and I was literally just stressed all the time because I was—it was—I was also working a really intense, demanding job which was in the gym. And so you have to have that moment where you're like, "Okay, cool. Well, you know, I've missed this socialization with my friends, or I'm not going to parties, or I'm, you know, I'm stressing about pre-packing food to a wedding because I don't know what they're going to serve." Like when you get to that point. Like, seriously, like, that's what I was doing. Like, I was, you know, you don't want to go out because you know there's going to be cake and someone's gonna offer you at the end and you're gonna have to deny it, like say no, like, you shouldn't get to that point. And that's when you know, things have gone too far. So like, I mean, it is really hard to avoid that but you need to just go into any sort of exercise routine or nutritional change thinking that—or knowing that it could be sustained thing, or maybe you're gonna try this and it's not going to be for you, and that's okay. And it's totally fine to not have fitness, you know, not have your life revolve around fitness. Because, like, I like to come at it as a holistic thing, like, fitness is not gonna work on its own. If you're smashing yourself in the gym six days a week, or you know, you're going for runs every day, or you're doing your home workout six, seven days a week, that itself is not going to help you holistically if you're then not sleeping because you're stressed, or you're not sleeping because your body is ruined because of all the work you're doing. You're not hydrated, you're not stretching, you're not—you just can't be calm because your heart rates always elevated because you're always moving or, you know, cooking or whatever, like, it has to be a holistic thing for your body to be working properly and for you to make it sustainable. So if—something's always going to give, you know, if you're sacrificing too much for this fitness lifestyle or this diet that you're following, it's not going to be sustainable. And then it's going to cause you problems in the long-term. So you want to think about, okay, well, I'm smashing all this protein powder and all these like supplements all the time. What about when your, like liver, it gives out later? Or what if, you know, you end up getting heart disease or you have a heart attack because you're always stressed? Like, you have to think about long-term, what's going to put the least amount of stress and strain on your body and your internal organs.
Margaret 51:34 Okay. Yeah, I've always found—it's funny, because I end up using like muscle building, for example, as an analogy when I think about different—the way that different systems work. About, you know, as far as I understand it, you need to like work out the muscle group until you damage it a little bit, but not a lot a bit?
Dibs 51:52 Yeah.
Margaret 51:53 You know, in order to trick your body into building it back stronger. And it seems like a lot of mental health stuff for me has been that way. Where like, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy, the behavioral aspects of it with like exposure therapy will be like, well expose yourself to the thing that makes you anxious, but not go overboard with it, right? Because if you go overboard with it, you just make it worse. And that's how exercise feels like, is like, you know, you could be like, "Oh, I need to get stronger." So you could damage yourself versus like, I don't know, it's an analogy I use for way too much of my life.
Dibs 52:30 I like it. No, it's good. Yeah, you need it—you need to challenge yourself a little bit, but not too much. Yes, I guess, that.
Margaret 52:38 So one of the things that I want to talk to you about because I think that—one of the things that I've run into a lot when I talk about, you know, the end of the world and fitness—and obviously, anyone who's listened to many episodes of podcast knows I'm not necessarily talking about, like, the nukes drop and everyone runs around in Mad Max cars or whatever. But actually, you know, I'd argue that we're dealing with a version of the apocalypse right now, in that it is the possible death throes of a system that has currently sustained some of us and not others of us. But a lot of people feel like anything that talks about like disaster preparation excludes them because of especially disability. And also, things around fitness I feel like tie into both disability and like size-ism. And I really want to like separate out the two because I don't believe that size is like a disability, you know, like being fat or whatever. But both of those things seem to come up a lot in fitness discussions. And I'm wondering if you have opinions about how to navigate this—how to navigate fitness from the perspective of someone who's been basically told fitness isn't for them or feels personally that fitness might not be for them.
Dibs 53:53 Yeah. Well, yeah. And that's something I'm really passionate about and I'm trying to get more into with the content that I'm putting out on my social media channels is to target those audiences who feel like, you know, the fitness industry is against them. But there is, you know, there's a tiny mini little fitness industry revolution happening right now. And there are certainly people in my in my circles who I follow who are fat trainers, who are trainers with disabilities, who are, you know—or who are then specifically targeting those minorities and saying like, "This is for you. This is your time, like you can do this, we can all do it together." And it's not that hard to change, you know, if you have a class of people of different abilities of different sizes, like it's not hard to accommodate those—that mix group as a trainer. And, you know, a lot of trainers—to be fair, like, these days, you know, a lot of degrees you just pay for, right? So it's not hard to be a personal trainer. There are so many people out there who are a fitness conditional, like, you know, it's—so a lot of them don't know, they don't have the ability, that haven't been taught, or they haven't tried to think for themselves, "How do I include these other types of people in my class." So then, you know, a few people from those memories have gone and gotten their certification and have been, you know, the role model for everyone else. So, I like to, yeah, say that I—my tagline for my businesses is "fitness for every body," as in every
The guest Walidah Imarisha can be found online at walidah.com. Her books referenced in this episode are Angels With Dirty Faces and Octavia's Brood, both published by AK Press.
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy and on instagram @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this podcast through her patreon.
Transcription:
LLWD - 22 - Walidah on Envisioning the Future 1:21:45 SPEAKERS Margaret, Walidah Imarisha
Margaret 00:14 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and this week I'll be talking to an author and activist and poet and just a historian—I'll be talking to will Walidah Imarisha who is, just, I think is absolutely wonderful. And that'll probably come across way too much in this episode. But I'm talking to her because I'm interested in talking about—well, this week is a little bit of a departure from usual, instead of just talking about the end of all things, right, we'll be talking about envisioning better things. And we'll be talking about how important—how necessary it is—to be able to imagine better things in order to make those better things real. And so we'll be talking about the importance of fiction, but we'll also be talking about what it means to envision a world, say for example, without police and prisons and how we can move towards that. And, yeah, I'm just really excited for y'all to hear this episode. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. Duh da duh daaa...
Jingle Speaker 1 01:28 Kite Line is a weekly 30 minute radio program focusing on issues in the prison system. You'll hear news along with stories from prisoners and former prisoners as well as their loved ones. You'll learn what prison is, how it functions, and how it impacts all of us.
Jingle Speaker 2 01:39 Behind the prison walls a message is called a kite—whispered words, a note passed hand to hand, a request submitted to the guards for medical care. Illicit or not, sending a cadence trusting that other people will bear it farther along until it reaches its destination. Here on Kite Line we hope to share these words across the prison walls.
Jingle Speaker 1 01:55 You can hear us on the Channel Zero Network and find out more at kitelineradio.noblogs.org
Margaret 02:06 Okay, so if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then like political or organizational affiliations that kind of concern what you're going to be talking about, or maybe like the books that you've written that are about what we're going to be talking about.
Walidah 02:22 My name is Walidah Imarisha, she and her pronouns. I am a writer and an educator. I have done a lot of work on science fiction and social change, culminating in co-editing Octavius Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. I've also written the creative nonfiction book Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison, and Redemption.
Margaret 02:46 Oh, the fact—I've been telling people for years that my favorite book against prison is Angels with Dirty Faces. And I actually have a really hard time reading nonfiction, which is kind of embarrassing because I'm an author. And the fact that you describe it as creative nonfiction really helps explain part of why. For anyone who hasn't read it yet Angels with Dirty Faces is like, um... it's talking about prisons, but it's talking about prisons from the point of view of, like, several specific people who are in prison and, well, your interactions with them. So the reason I have you on this, like, community and individual preparation podcast is—the important—I kind of want to talk to you about the importance of actually, like, envisioning something better. And because it's this kind of cliché that, like, we know what we're against, but do we know what we're for? And sometimes I kind of hate when people ask—I actually almost always hate when people ask that—because my argument is that if you're being hit with a baseball bat, you don't actually have to articulate what you would like society to be like without someone hitting you with a baseball bat before you can get someone to stop hitting you with a baseball bat. But yet at the same time I do personally want a much better society and I know that you've done this work also, yeah, with Octavius Brood, which is just labeled visionary fiction. Is that right?
Walidah 04:13 Yeah.
Margaret 04:14 Um, could you talk about visionary fiction? And could you talk about what draws you to that? And what draws you to painting better worlds and resistance?
Walidah 04:24 Sure. Yeah. I mean, I feel—I agree with you. And I think it's a, you know, it's yes/and. And so, I also think it's really important who's asking these questions, right? Are we asking these questions of each other or people from outside being like, "Well, what do you want then?" Like, I don't really owe you anything if you're coming with that tone. Um, you know, for me, "visionary fiction," I started using that term to refer to the intersection of science fiction or imaginative fiction, fantastical art, and social change. It's deeply steeped in, you know, radical organizing, in thinking and building liberated futures. It's not a utopian project, it's really more about how can we imagine the futures we want to figure out new ways to build them into existence. So we're never going to get to those perfect futures because as science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler said, we're not going to have a utopia until we have a few perfect humans and that seems unlikely. So we won't reach utopia. But I think the practice of utopia is the useful one. And really, I mean, that is what organizing is, is thinking about this world around us and how we actually want it to be and, you know, that's the foundation of Octavia's Brood, which I co edited with Adrienne Maree Brown. The premise is all organizing is science fiction. And we believe that anytime you imagine a world without the ills we fight against, without borders, without prisons without police, that is science fiction because we haven't seen that world. But we can't build what we can't imagine. And so Octavia's Brood is fantastical writing, visionary fiction, specifically written by organizers, activists, and change-makers, the folks who are, you know, in the world trying to make it a better place. And I think that intersection of imaginative spaces and social change is not just useful, but it's absolutely imperative for us to build something other than this world around us.
Margaret 06:50 No, that makes sense. I really like the quote that you just had of, we can't build what we can imagine. That—I don't know. I like that a lot. It ties into a lot of what I what I think about with my own writing. And so this is a weird tangent, but okay, so like, so you're saying it's not a utopian project, right, even though it's sort of in some ways about envisioning utopia. And utopia has this like really mixed reputation, right? And I think some of your work, you've talked about how Oregon was developed as a white utopia, for example. And, you know, I remember doing a talk—I think I've even said this on the podcast before, I'm not sure—I was doing a talk about A Country of Ghosts, an anarchist utopian novel that I wrote. And I was doing it at Tel hougen, an Indigenous info shop. And someone who was there was like, "Yeah, you know, that white people with utopian ideas destroyed everything, right?" And I was like, "Yeah, no, you're just right. I don't have a counter argument. Like, you're just correct." And so I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that, about like the idea—maybe the difference between like utopia as a thing that you're specifically trying to create versus utopia as like a direction to walk or something like that? I don't know. I don't know how to phrase this.
Walidah 08:21 No, I think that's I think that's a really useful differentiation. I think the idea—the sort of arrogance and audacity to think that we could create a perfect society, I think is rooted in, you know, everything that is against what we are wanting to build. It's, you know, it does result in, you know, in these projects, I mean, you know, Adrienne often quotes Terry Marshall talking about, you know, that we are in an imagination battle, that we are living in someone else's—specifically as black people—living in other people's imaginations. And this is the result of that— of us, you know, the world being manifested through this white supremacist imagination. And I do think it's important to talk about utopias because, I mean, so much of the goal of white supremacist hetero patriarchal, you know, capitalism has been to create their vision of utopia and to, you know, impress upon it, and press it upon the rest of the world. And so I think it's important to talk about that as utopia because it complicates the notion of utopias you're talking about, but I do think the sort of thought exercise of utopia is useful. I often quote, Eduardo Galeano and his quote of saying, "What is the purpose of utopia then, it is to cause us to advance."
Margaret 10:03 Yeah.
Walidah 10:05 Yeah, I think if we frame it in that way it becomes incredibly useful. Because as a thought experiment, to me, it roots very much in, you know, in Ursula K LeGuin's The Dispossessed, the subtitle of which is "An Ambiguous Utopia." The foundation of that ideas is these folks think they have built the perfect, you know, anarchist society and then realize, you know, the liberation we want is not a destination. And if we ever think we have reached perfection, that is the very moment that we begin to replicate the very systems of dystopian domination that we fought and give our lives for. And so I think it's important to continually think of this as, you know, as a process and a practice rather than a destination. And to continually get to ask the question, "What is our ideal world?" knowing that we won't reach it, but we will continually not only better ourselves and society, but we will create space to reimagine what we consider to be utopia. I mean, we're all growing. I'm growing. We're all messing up every day. We're all learning how to do better every day, hopefully. And, you know, so to imagine that the destination that we set at some fixed point in the past is the destination we want to go to today is—it actually does a disservice to ourselves, because it stops us from being able to grow and to continue to imagine beyond what we're told as possible.
Margaret 11:52 Wait, I thought we were just following the blueprints that Bakunin laid out. Is that not? Like? Yeah, no, I really like that. I really like this idea of that—I mean, for me, it's one of the reasons why, you know, personally, I'm an anarchist but I'm—just in general anti authoritarianism appeals to me is because to me it's this, it's a little bit clear to say like, no, no, no, no, there's not a "perfect." There's not a like, a system that you create, and then enforce on everyone, you know? It's a—instead it's always gonna be messy, it's always gonna be this process.
Walidah 12:31 Yeah. I mean, it's rebelling against the tyranny even of our past selves really. Right? Like, the plan that I laid out for myself when I was 20, you know, is certainly not the plan, you know—And even if the destination of this—even if I'm heading the same way on the horizon, certainly the lessons that I've learned along the way have deeply impacted, shifted, and changed. And if I don't allow myself the space to do that, then I've locked myself into a moment that has then become just my life.
Margaret 13:06 Yeah.
Walidah 13:07 But we do that with our movements every day.
Margaret 13:11 I like this idea. So—because it's like, we need the plans. We just—to even think of it like in terms of the individual, like you were saying, like the plan of what you were going to do when you were 20. It's like, we always need to have these plans so that we can do anything, right, otherwise—like, if I didn't have an idea of like, what I want it to be and what I wanted to do, I wouldn't make any progress. But yeah, no, that makes sense to be able to, like completely readdress it at any point.
Walidah 13:39 Well and just recognize that, you know, I mean, that the world is so much larger than we imagined, that the sky seems vast. And one point on the horizon that seems like the end point, when we reach it we recognize, oh, there is a whole infinity of sky beyond that. So why would we just stop when we've reached that point if our goal was to just continue exploring and seeing and experiencing and doing as much as possible.
Margaret 14:10 That's so good. I like, I love all that shit so much. Okay, so why then fiction? Why choosing to express that specifically through fiction, as you all did with Octavius Brood?
Walidah 14:31 Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I think again, for me, visionary fiction is about creating possibilities and as many entry points. So, you know, I think fiction is one way to do it. I think you can do it in any genre and whatever messy intersections between genres, the infinite intersections of
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy, instagram @margaretkilljoy, and on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.
Transcript:
1:16:39 SPEAKERS Margaret, Petra
Margaret 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and I use she or they pronouns. This week I'm talking to my friend Petra, who is a wilderness instructor, basically about camping, about sleeping bags and tents and tarps and how to stay warm and the fact that you need to keep your lithium batteries in your sleeping bag with you and things like that. From the context of, in case you needed to move over land in a hurry. And well, originally, I was going to interview her about both what to do in terms of when you have the right stuff to be prepared and what to do when you don't have the right stuff to be prepared. We actually ran out of time just talking about all the stuff to have in order to be prepared. So consider this the episode about going camping when you have time to gather the materials that you need, which is most of the time, right? You probably have that time right now while you're listening. Because there's one kind of interesting thing is that, as bad as things seem, they're probably always going to get worse, and like basically this is the time to get ready. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's another podcast from the network, jingle?—Here's a jingle for another podcast on the network. For some reason, I can never get the nouns right in the order of the sentences when I say this particular part of the show. I... here's the jingle:
Jingle Speaker 1 01:44 Where did you get this?
Jingle Speaker 2 01:45 Your friendly neighborhood anarchist.
Jingle Speaker 3 01:50 More of an anarchist militant.
Jingle Speaker 4 01:52 People involved in social struggles, everybody else.
Jingle Speaker 5 01:55 People have been waiting for some content radio show.
Jingle Speaker 6 01:58 The Final Straw. Thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org.
Jingle Speaker 7 02:01 If you're listening, you are the resistance.
Margaret 02:12 Okay, my guest this week is Petra. And if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then maybe any political or organizational affiliations or just what you do for a living as relates to what we're going to be talking about on the show today?
Petra 02:26 Yeah, so my name is Petra LeBaron-Botts and I live in Portland, Oregon, my pronouns are she/her/hers. I try to not have any political affiliations, actually. I find that my politics, although pretty consistent in overarching theories are sort of constantly mutating in specifics. And so I find that, and have found over the past several years, that not having any political affiliation seems to serve me better. So it's also something that, you know, and every job I've had, we've been very discouraged in terms of talking about it. But I am a wilderness educator, I guess, in the most basic of terms, lead trips, and currently teach for a community college in Portland.
Margaret 03:22 Cool. Okay, so I guess the main thing that I kind of want to talk to you about is how to camp when you're prepared to camp—so the framing that I'm imagining this particular conversation in is, you know, I reached out to you in a rush in the middle of the night during the uprising when I was like, "What would I need if I suddenly needed to move over land?" Like if suddenly the American South became a dramatically inhospitable place and I, you know, there were militia checkpoints on the roads or whatever—whatever the reasoning would be, I was like, "What would I need to get out on foot?" And, you know, I've camped a bit my life, right, and I, you know, live off grid, but there's still a lot of stuff. Like I said—I think I specifically called you to be like, "What kind of camping pad do I actually need? And also, are poles actually worth it?" And because, you know, I did most of my more active outdoors-ing while I was a younger woman, and was a little bit more physically resilient to sleeping on the ground and stuff. And so, so yeah, I guess I wanted to talk to you. We'll get into some other stuff about what to do when you don't have what you need. But I wanted to talk to you about like, when you have what you need, how do you go about camping or thru-hiking? Like, what's some of the stuff?
Petra 04:54 Yeah, I think that in planning for trips and planning for camping, there's a lot of working backwards, sort of, where do I envision myself going? How far do I envision myself going? What sort of tolerance for misery do I know that I have or not have? And working backwards, therefore, what kind of gear do I need or what kind of gear can I jettison? So I don't know that there's like a really easy answer to that. I think that being prepared tends to look like knowing the weight of your gear, knowing the number of miles that you can travel with a full backpack—and a full backpack, I mean, that's a pretty broad term because they're full backpacks that are, you know, 20 pounds and full backpacks that are 80 pounds. So, you know, how much weight can I personally comfortably carry according to the number of miles I want to travel? So yeah, a lot of working backwards and a lot of sort of not having a strict formula to work with.
Margaret 05:58 How would you gauge that if you are like, let's say you are a modestly physically active person who does not make a habit of thru-hiking or, you know, overnight backpacking or anything like that? What—how would people start getting a sense of—or people have different levels of ability, you know, I was just going to start using myself as an example. But how would you start gauging how much weight you would consider carrying and how far you think that you would try to push yourself on a given day?
Petra 06:34 I think one of the important things is to get a baseline understanding for how far you can travel before you start to feel really miserable. So that might look like, you know, in your initial stages, especially if you're not used to, say, walking up a lot of hills, is going out with very minimal equipment, going out with a bunch of water and maybe, you know, a couple of extra clothing layers, and going and walking up, you know, maybe 1000 feet of elevation gain, you know, maybe over two or three miles and seeing how that feels to your body. You know, is that already pushing it or not. And then I think another great step to take is getting everything that you think you're going to need—so there are sort of infinite packing lists that you can find online for back country trips—sort of getting together everything that you think you need, putting it all in a backpack, and then just taking that on a walk for even just a couple miles around your neighborhood or the place where you live and start to see how that feels. Because a lot of people the—when that you make the jump from day hiking to overnight backpacking, it's a pretty steep learning curve. And I think people tend to underestimate how much things weigh and they also tend to overestimate how much weight they can carry before they start to feel really miserable. So if you tell the average person you know, you're going to have to carry, you know, 35 pounds of gear on your back. 35 pounds doesn't necessarily sound like a lot of weight. But as soon as you put it on and start to move at a, you know, reasonably fast hiking pace over several miles, that weight tends to add up really quickly and start to feel real heavy.
Margaret 08:23 Yeah, that makes sense. When I was, you know, when I was younger, and lived out of a backpack, I felt like people always started by putting like, kind of, as much weight as they could possibly have in their backpacks. And then would kind of like, like, people who are hitchhiking and hopping freight trains and stuff. And then would slowly kind of just slimming down and getting rid of everything extra and then actually would then move back up to being like, well, now I want bolt cutters or some other fucking stupid heavy thing. Because they kind of know what they do and don't need by that point. But okay, well, to start with like, kind of the basics from my point of view—and please correct me if I'm wrong—the one thing that I always considered indispensable was a sleeping bag. Like, I always felt like no matter what, like, my backpack could just be a damn sleeping bag. And now I wasn't in the wilderness. I was like, in cities, so things like getting water and food were like more available. But um, yeah, I don't know. You know, it's like, I don't want to turn the show into just like a—just gear talk, right? Like, what's the best sleeping bag and stuff like that. But I—sometimes some of the gear stuff is important. And I guess it's like, not necessarily like what's like the best top of the line sleeping bag, but what's like, what's a baseline that people would be looking for? And I know it has to do with environment, but...
Petra 09:57 Totally. Sort of a few—kind of a few big characteristics I guess, to look at: The first one is, you know, if you go to like Dick's Sporting Goods and you pull a backpack off one of the—or a sleeping bag off one of the shelves, it's probably going to be one of those rectangular synthetic sleeping bags. Or they might even have like a, you know, like a fleece lining on the inside of it. You definitely want to get away from those rectangular sleeping bags, and go for something that's a mummy fit sleeping bag. So that's the one that's, you know, tapered the feet to narrower down there and then it sort of flares out around where the shoulders and torso are. And you want to do that just because you want to minimize the amount of space that your body has to heat up. So in rectangular sleeping bags, you have a lot more dead space, a lot more airspace inside the sleeping bag, which means it's harder for your body to heat up all of that air. So you're just kind of wasting heat. So mummy cut or mummy fit sleeping bags are important to look at. And then sleeping bags are rated according to their survival temperature. Which is to say, when a sleeping bag has a listed, you know, temperature rating, you should be safe, you should not die, down to that temperature. One thing that's really important to remember is that that's not a comfort rating. And so one thing that I really encourage people to think about is, do you tend to sleep really cold? You know, are you always cold when you're sleeping? Or are you the kind of person who's, you know, waking up and sweating in the middle of the night. And that's going to make a difference in terms of, you know, what kind of temperature you might opt for. I would say, you know, if I were going to pick one sleeping bag that would, you know, get me through the vast majority of conditions all the time, I would say a 20 degree synthetic bag.
Margaret 11:58 Okay.
Petra 11:59 20 degrees is, you know, that'll keep you alive through, you know, most certainly Pacific Northwest weather, you know, not being in the mountains. And you can always add in, you know, like a liner or, you know, have a hot water bottle or some of those chemical heat packs to make it a little bit warmer. But that'll keep you alive and reasonably comfortable in a lot of conditions. And then I always recommend the synthetic. They are bulkier and they are heavy, but they'll also continue to insulate even when they're wet. Which down sleeping bags won't. and especially here in the Pacific Northwest, eight months of rain, that's eight months of potentially having a not insulating sleeping bag.
Margaret 12:43 Yeah, that's actually really interesting. I'm happy to hear that because I tend to recommend synthetic sleeping bags, but the reason that I do it—and this is just to my best knowledge—is that synthetic sleeping bags are happier compacted, like, all day long. As compared to down sleeping bags need to be stored, like, outside of their stuff sack. And, you know, most people don't do what I do, which is sleep in a sleeping bag every night. It's an old habit. Dies hard. I've like—it takes so many comforters to be warm in a bed but it just takes one 0 degree sleeping bag and you're fine. And, you know, but most people probably are going to be keeping their sleeping bags like packed away, right? And if it's going to be living in the bottom of your pack, then—is that true? That synthetic is happier compacted?
Petra 13:38 Yes, well I don't know if it's happier compacted it's just less miserable when it's compacted because, yeah, if you're storing a down sleeping bag compacted, you know, in a stuff sack you're going to end up with clumping feathers and you're going to end up with inconsistent distribution of the down and so it's—you know, you're going to have sort of spots that feel really cold and that, it doesn't take a terribly long time for a down sleeping bag to end up with that clumping if it's been stored compacted.
Margaret 14:09 Okay. Cool yeah, and synthetic sleeping bags also cheaper so that's also nice.
Petra 14:16 Also that.
Margaret 14:17 And I literally don't know how down—what geese are treated—I have no idea.
Petra 14:24 Yeah, you know, there's this certified cruelty0free down now and I think it's probably bullshit, so yeah.
Margaret 14:32 Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me.
Petra 14:34 No geese had to suffer for those synthetic sleeping bags.
Margaret 14:37 So one thing I learned about sleeping in sleeping bags only more recently, which is embarrassing because again, that's been about half my life now has been the primary thing that I sleep in. It's that the loft of the sleeping bag, the like puffiness of it, is so crucial to its warming value. And so I was learning that like you shouldn't put a blanket over a sleeping bag if you're trying to maximize the efficacy of a sleeping bag. Is that something you know much about?
Petra 15:06 I wish I could comment more on sort of the physics of it. But yes, I will say that one of the reasons for that—one reason that I do know—is that the way that—the reason that down or synthetic fill, you know, the reason that it's effective is because there's air trapped in between feathers or sort of in that synthetic fill. And your—that trapped air is being heated up by your body. So your body is not only heating up sort of the airspace inside of your sleeping bag, but also in the air that's contained in the fill.
Margaret 15:43 Yeah.
Petra 15:43 And so when you compress that you are reducing the amount of warm air that can be held close to your body. So it's ultimately just making it a little bit colder for you.
Margaret 15:55 Yeah, that makes sense. Do you know if the rating of—Oh, and another question that I get asked and I, I think I have an answer to but I'm not entirely certain is, there's a rumor that goes around that sleeping in a sleeping bag with clothes on reduces the efficacy of a sleeping bag.
Petra 16:16 It's kind of half true. It's totally fine to sleep in clothes. But kind of, you know, just like we've been talking about this trapped airspace, if you are wearing a ton of clothing, then the airspace—there's just this little tiny sort of layer of air right around you between sort of your body and your clothes that you're eating up. But it's preventing your body heat from fully radiating into the airspace inside the sleeping bag. And then to that, you know, down or synthetic fill. So you can—you know, I sleep in like wool long johns and like a long sleeve base layer. But, you know, often when people are cold they'll say, "Well, I'm just going to put on all of my clothing and wear it to bed and then it'll be even warmer," which is not true. The better way if you have a bunch of extra clothing and you are cold at night is actually just to take that clothing and ball it up and stuff it inside your sleeping bag with you. Because that's just, again, reducing the amount of airspace that your body needs to heat up in order to make the sleeping bag warm.
Margaret 17:27 Okay. Yeah, and I also kind of recommend to people—like it's just something that I learned from a long habit—is that you put the clothes that you want to wear the next day, if they fit, into your sleeping bag so that they're not freezing in the morning and your life is like slightly less miserable. And then a weird random thing I've learned in the sort of modern era: I learned a long time ago that modern electronics are not designed with squatters in mind. And lithium batteries are not happy when it's cold out.
Petra 17:59 Correct.
Margaret 18:00 And so I also put my phone in my sleeping bag at night so that the battery's dead in the morning, and may or may not have occasionally put an entire fucking laptop in my sleep for the same purpose.
Petra 18:01 Yeah. When I used to work for—I used to guide for a wilderness therapy program. And, you know, we had radios that we had to carry and bags full of medication. Another thing that's really good if people don't already know is if you carry epinephrine, epinephrine can freeze and once it freezes it loses its potency. So if you have like an epi pen or epinephrine that could go in your sleeping bag with you as well. So I used to have a sleeping bag full of like epi pens and radios and batteries and then my spare radio batteries. And so every time I would roll around at night you're like, "Clunk clunk clunk clunk clunk clunk," and all my shit just, like, rolling over my sleeping bag with me.
Margaret 19:00 Uh huh. Yeah, and then also a ceramic water filters are—you have to like drain them. You can't let them freeze or whatever.
Petra 19:11 Right, because if there's water in there and it freezes it expands and it can crack the filter.
Margaret 19:16 Yeah. And I haven't had that. I haven't, like, had that happen to me yet in my personal life, but my water filter is no longer a ceramic water filter, the one on my house.
Petra 19:28 Yeah, that's why I don't—you know, it's for your house so it's a little bit different, but that's why on my personal trips I don't carry a filter anymore. I don't ever filter.
Margaret 19:37 Oh, interesting. What do you do for drinking water?
Petra 19:42 I do chemical treatment instead. So—and chemical treatment can sort of run the gamut from really super incredibly cheap up to, you know, not expensive but definitely more expensive. I use Aqua Mira which basically creates chlorine. And I like Aqua Mira because there's relatively little aftertaste. And sometimes in the outdoors I have a hard time drinking enough water, especially when it's cold. And if it's cold and my water tastes like shit, I'm definitely not going to drink it. So I use Aqua Mira, but you can use bleach. Bleach is an incredibly effective and super cheap way of chemically treating your water.
Margaret 20:27 So you should just drink bleach if—if you drink bad water, and then you just drink some bleach?
Petra 20:32 Yeah, I hear that will also solve COVID-19 too. So yeah, it's the one-two punch.
Margaret 20:38 Okay, so—no, it's actually interesting about water filters. Because I've been putting little tiny vials of chemical treatment into, like, any kind of survival kit that I pack for anybody. But for me—and I keep one like in my, you know, my day pack that goes with me everywhere, or whatever, right? Because I really like light, cheap, useful things that just, like, don't take up any space and you can forget about them. And,—but then when I imagine, like, actually, camping, I've always ended up using, you know, like, I use the mini Sawyer, that was like, the ceramic filter that I used on my house when pandemic started because I, you know, wasn't leaving my house because there was a pandemic. And so I've always seen the ceramic filters as like kind of the step up from the chemical treatment. So that's interesting to hear that you prefer the chemical treatment.
Petra 21:32 they definitely make water tastes a lot better when you filter it. I just—I, you know, they're bulky and I just often don't want to take the time to filter water. So chemical filtration—you know, and let me say this—it really depends on where I'm going. You know, I used to work in southeastern Utah, and we largely—and Southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah—and our water sources are all cow ponds. So you know, imagine brown water that you cannot see through with floating mounds of cow shit in it.
Margaret 22:08 Oh, god.
Petra 22:09 I'm gonna filter that.
Margaret 22:10 Yeah.
Petra 22:11 Definitely filter that water. But for anything, you know, in most of the Pacific Northwest, up in the Cascades, the water—I mean, we're so lucky out here, the water is so great. So I don't bother filtering that and I just will do chemical treatment.
Margaret 22:25 Okay. And for anyone who's listening who is like, "But the water so natural, I want to just drink it." You ever had Giardia? I had it once.
Petra 22:35 I have and it's horrendous.
Margaret 22:37 Yeah. It's a real bad scene. And I kind of think it would murder you if it happened in a situation where you couldn't, you know, have access to ways to get food and water in you.
Petra 22:53 Yeah, that becomes a really dangerous situation, actually, especially if you're pretty far out. Because, I guess for anyone who doesn't know, the biggest symptom, biggest sign for Giardia is really terrible diarrhea. So vomiting and diarrhea. And so you're just losing so much fluid from your body. And that just very quickly becomes really dangerous and then you're not able to walk very far. So yeah, I highly recommend—please, please do something to make your water drinkable.
Margaret 23:24 Yeah. Yeah, it's like, we think we're in a more—when you're out in the woods you think you're in a more pure environment than you are. And I've seen so many times, like, forest defense camps, or, you know, kind of more hippie backpacker types or whatever, who just are like, "Oh, no, it's cool because we're so far away from civilization, you could just drink right out of the stream." And I've seen those people get very sick. And I've been sickened by someone who I chose to trust and drink her water. And it was a poor decision because it was unfiltered water. And yeah, I've never had an experience of my life where I had to shit and throw up at the same time.
Petra 24:01 At the same time. It's so incredible. It just comes out really aggressively.
Margaret 24:06 Yeah
Petra 24:06 From both ends.
Margaret 24:07 So anyway, water. Water. Take care of your water. Okay, so so back to sleeping. You know, because this is one of the things I called you about, right, is because imagining, okay, like—I've done some cold weather camping, but I haven't like, done a ton of it. Right? I you know, I grew up in a place that has four seasons, but winter is not six months long, you know. And so—and I used to just never fuck with sleeping pads. Like, again, I was usually in an urban environment so I just find a cardboard dumpster and get a ton of cardboard and sleep on it. Which is incredibly uncomfortable. And one of the reasons it's so uncomfortable is that if you sleep outside all the time, you kind of have to—maybe everyone's body is different about this, right? But like if I sleep on my side and I do don't have enough padding, I just I toss and turn all night, right, because the grounds too hard on my hips and so I can only sleep on my back or on my belly. But then that isn't warm enough when you're cold, right? If you're sleeping and it's slightly cold, you don't want to sleep on your back, like your body will just get mad at you for sleeping on your back. And so sleeping pads, someone invented this wonderful thing called portable mattresses that should have occurred to me much younger than they did. What kind of sleeping pad do you use or recommend?
Petra 25:34 Yeah, so sleeping bags come in—or sorry, sleeping pads come in two basic varieties, two basic overarching varieties. One is a closed cell and one's an inflatable or an open cell. So a closed cell sleeping pad is like the ubiquitous, you know, yellow accordion fold sleeping pad that looks like an egg crate that you've seen, probably, you know, everybody using. So that is, that's great if you are a person who generally doesn't have any trouble sleeping, regardless of where you are. I personally would never take just that. But I have a lot of trouble sleeping to begin with even when I'm, you know, at home in my own bed. And so that sort of becomes, you know, that trouble becomes, you know, exponentially worse when I'm in the back country. So I personally take—always, regardless of where I am, but especially in the cold—I take both. I take a foam—I take that accordion fold egg crate yellow foam sleeping pad, and I also take an inflatable one. And that is just extra comfort for me, which I really appreciate because, you know, especially in the context of, you know, being outdoors for my work, work tends to feel a lot easier and I tend to be a much nicer person if a reasonable amount of sleep the night before, especially when I'm in charge of people's well-being, you know, I try to be well rested. Um, the combination of the two is, I would say, really important in the cold. Foam, you know, closed cell sleeping pads, they'll give you some insulation from the cold ground, which is great, but they don't provide a lot of comfort, you know, it's basically kind of a step up from cardboard, right? It's not that much softer or thicker. And then using an inflatable one, that's going to give you the extra comfort but using an inflatable sleeping pad directly on cold ground, all you're going to end up with is that cold ground, cooling that air inside of the inflatable sleeping pad and it's going to—it's going to draw away your—it's going to try to basically draw away your body heat until your temperature, your body temperature, is the same as the temperature of that air. So if you use the two, you have the insulation from the ground, you're not cooling down that airspace inside the inflatable pad as quickly and you're just that much more comfortable overnight.
Margaret 28:08 Okay. Yeah, I actually I tried this for the first time after talking to you.
Petra 28:13 And?
Margaret 28:14 It was great. I had just finished—I managed to maybe get trapped in a blizzard in what I thought was early fall—well actually is was mid fall—because I confusingly decided that I should drive a loan through, what's that state that's really cold? North Dakota and Montana. I don't remember which one I got stuck in the blizzard in. It was a very long day. And so I slept in my car that day, which is not particularly comfortable. And then the night after, I was like, I'm going to just fucking camp, you know. I made it somewhere a little bit warmer. And yeah, it was really, it was really comfortable is one of the nicer sleeping out moments I've had.
Petra 29:00 Yes. That's so great. Yeah, it's—for me, you know, there are lots of places where people are willing to shave off ounces and gear that people are willing to leave behind. For me, the combination, I just, it's unmatched. The quality of sleep that I get, and the comfort that I get from the combination is so worth the extra weight to me.
Margaret 29:24 Yeah, when you're talking about being grouchy in the morning, right? Like, it's like one of these things that people like laugh about, like they're like, "Oh, yeah, haha, I'm like really unhappy." But like, I hadn't quite realized, you know, how important morale is, you know?
Petra 29:41 Oh my god. Yeah.
Margaret 29:42 Like, I actually think it's probably on a regular basis the difference between life or death is like, just like, some vague level of comfort in a bad situation. You know?
Petra 29:55 Totally. Oh, 100%. You know, in all of the really terrible situations that I've ever been in, yeah, I think the reason that all of them didn't end with severe injury or death was because of some kind of comfort, whether that's physical comfort or emotional comfort, but you know, doing whatever the hell you can to try to keep morale up.
Margaret 30:16 Yeah, I could really see myself like, um, you know, you know, one of those movies where you're like trapped under a boulder and waiting for rescue or whatever? I could definitely see myself just, like, pulling out Nintendo Switch and playing Skyrim until the battery dies. You know?
Petra 30:32 Yeah.
Margaret 30:34 Because, like, yeah, morale is so much more vital than I would have expected, you know? And I—it's that kind of macho attitude of like, you know, doing without anything or whatever, right? Okay, so what is—speaking of stuff that people bring and don't bring, like, what some of the bullshit? Like, okay, so you're clearly like, for example, not—certainly in terms of your sleeping arrangements you're more maximalist than some, you know, campers and backpackers, but what some of the stuff that people think they need, that they don't?
Petra 31:19 Um, you know, gosh, a lot? I—there are all sorts of things that I think fall into this, and it kind of depends on what people are hoping to do, or sort of what kind of trip they're trying to have. So, you know, there are all kinds of really fancy gadgets that you can get, you know, I think there's now like a back country french press that you can get and, you know, a back country pour overs so you can have your perfectly brewed cup of coffee. So there's stuff like that, but I also kind of don't hold that against people because I get it, like, you know, at some point you're willing to carry the extra weight for the things that matter the most to you. One thing though is excessive toiletries. Every time—and this happens all the time—people are always trying to bring full size sticks of deodorant. I just don't get it. Because I get that there's this, you know, we have a lot of sort of cultural norms around, you know, how you smell and what you smell like. But I never really understood that. I just think, you know, we're outdoors, just embrace the fact that you're going to stink and the more smelly items that you bring, the more attractive you are to bears. It's just one more thing you got to protect from bears at night. So there's that, you know, some people will bring full-on camping pillows that are really bulky and quite heavy. People bring chairs a lot. And I think, you know, if you have back issues then that's great, whatever, do your thing. A lot of that—there are a lot of stools and chairs that are being made now that are really pretty cool and don't weigh all that much. I'm trying to think of what else people really are attached to. People tend to bring more clothing than they need. It's been pretty—I've been pretty impressed actually, I haven't seen people bring a whole lot of really absurd stuff on the trips that I've led, which is pretty good after I think 600 days working outdoors now that I have.
Margaret 33:30 Yeah.
Petra 33:32 Yeah, that's a really disappointing answer. I'm sorry.
Margaret 33:36 No, no, it's okay. Cuz I mean, that's like, I was just saying that I'm gonna bring a Nintendo Switch, right? So like—and I, you know, the things that I most immediately think of are like, I think I've talked shit on wire saws before on the show. The like, sort of like, gadgets, the like, kind of like, "tactical cool," like...
Petra 34:02 Yeah.
Margaret 34:03 You know, like, I don't know, that's the kind of stuff that I when I think of—besides, I don't know, besides, yeah, too much clothing. People don't realize that when you just go camping, you just don't change your shirt which actually has some problems down the road eventually, but...
Petra 34:18 Eventually. Do you know what a Woodsman's Pal is?
Margaret 34:22 I do not.
Petra 34:23 It's like—Oh, I wish I could—it's kind of like a smaller machete.
Margaret 34:28 Mm hmm.
Petra 34:30 Well I guess machetes come in all come in all sorts of sizes. It's basically designed for chopping wood but also sort of shaving strips of wood for tender. People have tried to bring those and, you know, really, just a just a regular knife will do. I, you know, people trying to backpack with axes and hatchets and—I mean good for you but I would say, you know, A) you shouldn't be chopping anything off of trees and B) If a log is so big that you need to chop it down in order to burn it, it's probably just too big to begin with.
Margaret 35:06 Yeah, no, that makes sense. I, yeah, a hatchet has not made any kind of level of my cut. I could imagine situations where like a machete might be useful, but like, I'm pretty into the just, like, one fuck off knife, you know, one fixed blade knife. But I know a lot of people are into folding saws, like, again, this is kind of less like three-day trip kind of thing and more a little bit of like, you know, I'm off to go start my new life in the forest eating squirrels or whatever. Um, but I feel like I would bring a folding saw in a lot of environments like to cut wood with, but I don't know.
Petra 35:53 They work pretty well. I did I have a pretty limited lifespan.
Margaret 35:57 Oh, interesting.
Petra 35:58 At least for me, you know, I've found that with heavy use, you know, six months before that thing is really warped or not really working well or part of the handle breaks off.
Margaret 36:10 Mm hmm. Okay, what do you recommend? What do you use instead? Or do you just replace them every six months?
Petra 36:18 You know, I don't these days find a lot of occasions to really take a folding saw—doesn't really feel necessary for where I'd go or where I work. So I just sort of the one standalone fuck off knife. That really does it for me. Mm hmm.
Margaret 36:34 Yeah. I love my fuck off knife. I also—I made my fuck off knife. I like was living with a knife maker and I was like watching over their shoulder for a long time. And then I was like, "Can I make one now?"
Petra 36:49 That's awesome. Has it—have you managed to get it and keep it pretty sharp?
Margaret 36:55 I am not incredibly good at sharpening knives. This is uh—I'm glad—this is the skill set that I'm like, very embarrassed that I seem to lack. It's a very fine dexterous thing. I got it very sharp when I first did it, very carefully. And then since then, honestly, I don't really sharpen it. And it still does the stuff that I need a knife to do, which is like, cut open boxes and make people not fuck with me when I'm wearing a miniskirt and have a giant knife.
Petra 37:28 Yeah.
Margaret 37:30 So like, I really need to sharpen it. Like I—you know, it's like, I can't shave with it, right?
Petra 37:38 Right.
Margaret 37:39 And I've definitely had knives when I could—I could shave with this knife when I, you know, when it first came out of the sharpening or whatever. But I don't know, what kind of fuck off knife do you like?
Petra 37:52 I carry a Mora knife, which is a pretty—it's just a pretty standard knife. I don't know, I made a new handle for it, which I really like. Because it comes with like a shitty plastic handle, you know, and I wanted something that's wood. They're relatively easy to sharpen. And I say that as a person who really sucks at sharpening things. They're pretty easy to sharpen. It's a good size. I like it, because you can both cut things and, like, whittle with it pretty well. So it's not an enormous blade. But I found it to be a good sort of all-purpose knife.
Margaret 38:29 Okay, that's cool. So what do people forget to bring all the time? Like, what are some of the things where people are like, "Oh, gee, I—" you know, I don't know, you would know the answer to this. And I could conjecture, but I'll be wrong.
Petra 38:45 Yeah, I there kind of three things that come to mind. One is, you know, people are really great about packing a stove, but are way less good about packing lighters. So you know, because then just sort of, I don't know, becomes less obvious as something that you would need. So people will always, you know, they'll have their fuel bottles and they'll have their stoves but they won't actually check to make sure that they have a lighter. Always have a lighter, always. Another thing is—sort of broadly I'm going to say something to protect your skin. And sort of two different areas of that. One is people always forget sun protection like sunscreen which, you know, and a lot of people are like, "Oh, well, you know, I don't really, you know, I just tan really quickly or whatever." Being significantly sunburned in the back country on a long trip is so shitty, it's so terrible. So even if you know you have like a broad brimmed hat, I think having that sort of extra sunscreen on top of that is great. The other thing is, if you're going to be traveling on snow, you needs some really burly sunscreen or you need something with zinc oxide in it that creates like an actual physical barrier on your skin. Because the combination of the sunlight and the reflection of the sunlight off of the snow becomes really intense. And people, you know, I personally have repeatedly burned the inside of my nose, the roof of my mouth.
Margaret 40:26 Whoa, okay.
Petra 40:26 Like all of these places that are so bad to have a sunburn. And so—and for me at least, you know, sunscreen, most sunscreen won't cut it because I'm sweating all the time. And so for that, you know, like diaper rash cream, which is like basically pure zinc oxide, is really great. It sits on the skin, it doesn't rub in, you're going to look really silly because you've got this white junk all over your face. But it's an actual barrier and also, you know, it protects you a little bit from wind burn and all of this just is such an important thing just for comfort and longevity in the back country and I think people tend to overlook that. Because they sort of figure, you know, well, as long as it's not a debilitating burn, then I'll be fine.
Margaret 41:13 Okay, that is absolutely something that I regularly overlook, so.
Petra 41:18 Yeah.
Margaret 41:19 I can't imagine the inside of my nose burning.
Petra 41:23 Oh, it's so bad. And I don't—have you ever had a second degree sunburn?
Margaret 41:27 No.
Petra 41:29 So second degree sunburn. You know, a second degree burn is when you have the formation of blisters. And as soon as you have blisters anywhere on your body in the back country it's a chance for infection. You know, depending on how bad they are, you're losing fluid from your body. So I've had many a second degree sunburn on my face.
Margaret 41:50 That's a terrible.
Petra 41:51 And it's just not fun to walk around with your face leaking fluid through your blisters.
Margaret 41:56 That would make me never go outside again. I would be like—
Petra 41:58 I know. It's really terrible.
Margaret 42:00 There's a murder orb in the sky and it's trying to murder me. That's its job.
Petra 42:05 The cursed a day star.
Margaret 42:06 Yeah. Wow. Okay, so people forget sunscreen. Yeah, it's interesting. I've been running across the like—there's like a list of like The 10 Essentials and it's like 8 years old and I could not tell you it off the top of my head. But sun protection always seems to make the list of, like, the absolute bare essentials before going out into the woods. And it has never been an essential for me. And I—but I think that's because I'm not—I mean, you know, because I haven't pushed this. I don't do multi day thru-hikes and stuff, you know?
Petra 42:44 Yeah.
Margaret 42:45 So.
Petra 42:47 Um, you know, there's one other thing—you just got me thinking about The 10 Essentials—another thing that people tend to forget, or they overlook, or they just convince themselves that they don't need it, is an actual compass, versus just your phone map. You know, I think we can do we can do so much with our phones now. And we have all of these, you know, neat devices that we can carry, that people assume that if they have, you know, a GPS, then they're never going to be lost. But there are so many limitations, so many ways that that can go wrong. And so I think people forget and overlook the fact that you need to have a map and a compass, and you need to be able to know how to use them together.
Margaret 43:31 Okay. Yeah, I was thinking about campuses as like—I mean, it's funny because compasses also fall into the, like, realm of like, if I see a knife with a compass in the handle of it, I assume it's a garbage knife and a garbage compass and like—
Petra 43:45 Correct.
Margaret 43:47 So like a compass embedded into another object is like almost always a bad scene. It seems like it's not inherently wrong, right? But there's just—if it's gonna be a quality compass, it seems like it's gonna be standalone is that—?
Petra 44:01 The tough thing is, especially if you're trying to navigate over any kind of distance, you have to—so depending on where you are in the world, there's going to be a difference between where true north is in relation to you, and where the needle of your compass points to. So there's a difference between true north and magnetic north. And that difference can be up to like 40 degrees difference. So you can probably start to see, if you don't have the knowledge of the declination, that difference between true north and magnetic north, and if you don't have a compass that has sort of clear individually marked degrees, then you can end up 40 degrees off of where you're actually trying to travel to.
Margaret 44:47 Okay. One of the reasons that I pitch people carrying a compass even if they kind of either suck at navigating like I do—because I haven't done it since I was a boy scout, which, you know, was a long time ago—or who just have no idea about navigation, is it seems to me to be like a kind of useful thing. And maybe, I don't know, this is like my own conjecture, basically to be like, well, at least I'm walking the same goddamn way.
Petra 45:14 Yes.
Margaret 45:14 So like, that was always my like, "I should carry a compass so that if I'm lost, I'm at least fucking walk in the same direction."
Petra 45:22 Totally. Even if you don't know how to do anything with your compass, if you can walk and keep—basically keep the needle pointing towards the same degree marking or pointing in the same direction, then yeah, you're more or less walking a straight line. And you're going to do better at walking a straight line with that than if you had nothing.
Margaret 45:43 Okay. Cool. I'm glad to hear that this—one of the things that I realize is that a lot of like—the things that scare people off of prepping—one thing that scares people off of prepping is that, like, it's so gear-oriented that it like, seems like it's only for antisocial people with lots of money and storage space, which is obviously like, not true, right? Those people are actually less likely to be in bad situations than the rest of us. But then also, even after that, it can be very skill-oriented. And sometimes that takes time that we can't always dedicate to this stuff, right? Like, I want to learn navigation again, for real. I couldn't do it again, you know, and I learned it 25 years ago or something. But I would love to, right? But there's just also so much other shit that I would love to do. And like, it's really interesting to learn which things you could use whether or not you have some skill and like figure it out in the woods and which things that you, like, actually probably need to figure out ahead of time. And I'm wondering, because you were telling me before we started recording that what you do is um—well here, do you want to explain the difference between being a guide and an instructor? And then the reason I'm going to ask is because I want to ask if there's things that people assume that they will be able to do that they cannot do or vice versa, things that people assume they can't do that they can do.
Petra 47:16 Yeah, absolutely. So I guess in sort of pretty brief terms, guides—in the sort of traditional sense—wilderness guides are people who take paying clients out and sort of facilitate an outdoor experience for them. That could be a backpacking trip that could be, you know, you kind of see them—I associate them the most with climbing mountains, you know, you can pay a guide who will basically close the gap, the knowledge gap, right? Will take you, a person with no, you know, background or skill in climbing mountains, and get you to the top of a, you know, relatively technical peak, get you back down safely, and will sort of cook all of your meals as you go. So I—the reason I shied away from guiding is because I find that when people are paying a guide, you know, guides are not inexpensive, right? And so I think when people pay a guide they sort of expect, "Well, you know, you are going to set up my sleeping, or you're going to set up my tent, you're going to cook meals, you're going to do all the technical stuff so that I don't have to worry about it." Right, and I just really kind of hate that. I do—I knew that if I went into that, that I would become really jaded and really cynical and really antisocial. And so what I do instead, and what I've done ever since I got into working outdoors in 2011, is I've been an instructor. So I take people who want to learn the skills into the back country and we do some, you know—I used to work courses that were 30 days long. So we'll do some really long 30 day trip, or we'll do like a—you know, we'll climb a mountain or we'll go snow camping. And I'm there to teach people how to do it as they are kind of immersed in the situation. And I really love what I do just because I—because there's a curiosity, because people feel some responsibility for their own well-being, and it feels much more like we're sort of a functioning team versus, I don't know, like a mother duck and a bunch of ducklings.
Margaret 49:37 Okay. That's cool. Okay, so when you do that, what are the things that—like, what are some of the skills that people can pick up easier than they think they can? Or what are some of the skills that people like—you actually probably need to study ahead of time? Basically, like, almost, where can you cut corners in your preparation in terms of skills, and where do you really have to focus in?
Petra 50:05 I think most outdoor living things can be picked up on the fly, you know, you can learn how to cook over a backpacking stove and even make, you know, some pretty awesome meals. And you can figure it out sort of in the back country. You can figure out, you know, how to put up a tent, you can figure out how to, you know, keep yourself relatively comfortable during the day, you can figure out how to make a fire kind of on the fly. You know, that—there are definitely some tips that make it easier, but you know, that's not something that you need to, you know, study beforehand. The two things that I would say really do require some forethought or some planning or some training is navigation, right? A lot of people think that they know how to navigate with a map and compass, but when it comes down to it, they have no idea. And I see this again and again, even in the sort of people I've worked with. And the other thing is building shelter. So putting up a tent is one thing, but trying to create a shelter, even like a tarp shelter, has more kind of nuance than you might expect. Anybody can put up a tarp shelter that, you know, kind of looks like shit and definitely won't last the night, but it takes a little more planning to sort of get a really nice weatherproof tarp shelter. And then, you know, something that I teach people in the context of my job right now and also, you know, has personally saved my life in the past is snow shelters. Digging a snow shelter is not intuitive. It's not intuitive. It's not. There are a lot of things to think about that you might not immediately think about. And that's one thing where I do think that if people are going to be in a remote situation in the snow, you oughta know how to build a snow shelter.
Margaret 52:06 Okay, that's good to know. I have no idea—I mean, I have an idea of how to build snow shelter in that I've, like, seen some diagrams and some very nice books. But you know, I have always just had tents if I'm—well, I've mostly avoided the snow because I didn't need to not avoid the snow so I would just hitchhike south because it was cold. But so okay, in terms of what you can cut corners with and what you can't, what about with gear? Like, you know, there's so much stuff that's marketed to, like, as soon as anyone who's listening, this podcast starts googling any of this shit, your ads are gonna be full of like all kinds of garbage, right? And they're gonna be like, "If you're a real man you're gonna get this real man box. And once a month, we send you a man tool." And it's always, like, some random fucking bullshit and like—and a lot of the shits, like, really expensive, right? Like, I've definitely learned—but then some of it's so fucking cheap. And like my one example that I use personally all the time is that, like, I swear by $5 folding knives.
Petra 53:15 Oh, yeah.
Margaret 53:16 Like, I have a hard time envisioning what an $80 folding knife is for. Like, I just—like, maybe it would just last me the rest of my life but I'm not convinced by that.
Petra 53:31 Yeah, you know, I think for some of these companies you do pay a premium for a lifetime guarantee, which is pretty nice.
Margaret 53:39 Yeah.
Petra 53:40 But I'd say you know, it kind of depends on how much you envision using that particular thing. Like, yeah, I might spend $80 on a knife if this knife is exactly the kind of knife that I want and I use a knife all the time.
Margaret 53:53 Right.
Petra 53:53 But personally, I just—that's not really worth it to me.
Margaret 53:57 Right.
Petra 53:58 But I will say like, I don't know if you know the company Darn Tough that makes socks. They're from Vermont.
Margaret 54:03 No.
Petra 54:04 They have a lifetime warranty on all their socks.
Margaret 54:07 Whoa. Okay, so you—
Petra 54:08 I have tested this and it's a real thing. If you develop a hole in one of your socks, you can take a picture, you can send it to the company, and they will send you a new pair of socks. Lifetime warranty.
Margaret 54:19 Okay, that's cool.
Petra 54:21 Totally worth the extra money.
Margaret 54:23 Yeah. Okay. What about like tents and—like what gear—because so much of this gear is so fuck off expensive. And yet so much of it is also available. It's funny when you're talking about the ubiquitous camping mat. And I'm like, in my mind, the ubiquitous camping mat is a blue foam mat from Walmart.
Petra 54:48 Yeah.
Margaret 54:50 Which I think is just ready to—go ahead.
Petra 54:52 I was just gonna say maybe ubiquitous just in the circles that I've been in for a decade now.
Margaret 54:57 Yeah. I have an accordion fold one now cuz I'm a fancy bitch but like, yeah, I'm curious what—if you have any other ideas of like gear that you can and can't cut corners with.
Petra 55:14 Yeah, um, you know, tents are kind of a weird story. Like the sort of cheapest tent that you can buy at like a, you know, an army navy surplus store or like Walmart or anything like that—those tents will work for sure, you know, they might even hold up to some, you know, some high winds, relatively high winds or some hard rain. They're just much less durable, and they're much heavier. So I guess really any gear can work if you don't mind carrying the weight. Because a lot of those tents that you can find at, you know, at Walmart or, you know, any like sporting goods store, or those like sort of cheaper, more basic tents. They're like 6 pounds, 7 pounds. And you know, in comparison, you know, if you buy like a really fancy tent, you can get one that's, you know, under a pound. But that's like a $900 tent. And I don't know about you, I'm never gonna fucking buy at $900 tent.
Margaret 56:21 No.
Petra 56:22 No, so—
Margaret 56:24 If I did, it'd be one of those giant camp, like, army ones that you like put a wood burning stove in and then you, like, stand outside with spears.
Petra 56:31 Like, can I have my horses inside of it? If so, great. $900.
Margaret 56:36 Yeah.
Petra 56:37 Kidding, I don't have horses. But if I did, I'd want to fit them in there.
Margaret 56:40 Yeah. Okay. Anyway, sorry, you were saying...
Petra 56:43 Oh I just said, you know, you can make a whole lot of gear work.
Margaret 56:46 Yeah.
Petra 56:47 And it's just, you know, there are going to be trade offs just because the cheaper models are going to be a little less durable, they're going to be heavier, they're not going to just last you as long, they're not going to hold up as well to extreme weather. But if you don't intend on, you know, walking a ton of miles, or you're not going to be in really crazy weather. You know, that's fine. You can get by with a tent like that, you know, that's absolutely fine. And you know, now—there are a lot of websites that are springing up now that are discount gear sites and they are absolutely worth checking, you know, if you think that you want one of these lighter weight, more durable tents. There are lots of them that pop up on these discount gear sites for, you know, 50–60% off.
Margaret 57:36 Okay.
Petra 57:36 So the the cheaper gear that's still, you know, pretty high quality—it's definitely out there. It just takes some some searching.
Margaret 57:45 Okay. Yeah, I guess it maybe on some level a tent then ends up kind of similar to, like, what I say about helmets with a demonstration. Which is, like, the best helmet is the one that you're wearing, you know?
Petra 57:55 Yeah, absolutely.
Margaret 57:56 And so, yeah, it seems like maybe some stuff you can get the nicer of. I do like all the things that like the nicer one is like not actually quite as good, like a down sleeping bag. I mean, like down sleeping bags are really—I'm certain they're great for very specific situations, you know. But, and speaking of another one, the other thing that I called you anxious about was hiking poles, and I called you about hiking poles because I basically was like, I am not as—I mean, it's funny cuz I'm in some ways more fit than I used to be in that I work on physical things all the time because I have to fix my stupid house constantly. You know, but I'm just, like, 20 years older than I used to be—well actually I'm 37 years older than I used to be if you're counting far enough back. But, uh, you know, anyway, um... Now just think about how old I am, god dammit. So I called you basically being like, "Oh, I might need poles, like, it seems like if I'm going to be carrying a lot of weight or moving across treacherous terrain, these poles seemed like a good idea." And could you tell me what you think about trekking poles?
Petra 59:07 Yeah, I am 2,000% on Team Trekking Pole. I love them. And I basically never hike without them. And even if I'm not using them while hiking, I'm always carrying them with me. So actually this kind of relates back to your question about, you know, where you can cut corners. One thing that I totally failed to mention is that if you don't need a completely enclosed tent, there are great lightweight tarps out there that are really affordable, you know, especially for something that's so compatible and so lightweight. You know, you can buy a super ultra lightweight tarp for like $30 which is just a lot cheaper than your average tent which is, you know, going to run you at least like $100 up to, you know, $900. So, lightweight tarps are great option and a lot of those can be pitched between trekking poles.
Margaret 1:00:04 Okay.
Petra 1:00:04 So you don't have to carry, you know, special tent poles or anything like that. And, you know, speaking of, you know, things that sort of serve multiple functions, the trekking pole is the unsung hero because you can use it to put up your tent. You can—they're incredibly, incredibly helpful for taking weight off of your joints. So, going uphill, they take, you know, they give you sort of a little extra momentum going uphill. And on the downhill, especially if you're like me and you have really busted knees after a lot of years of treating them very badly.
Margaret 1:00:39 Uh, huh.
Petra 1:00:40 They take a ton of weight off of that. And if you tend to end hikes with sore knees, trekking poles might really significantly help you.
Margaret 1:00:48 Okay.
Petra 1:00:49 They're also, you know, I used to be a wilderness EMT. And my favorite part of becoming an EMT, or, you know, any sort of wilderness first, you know, medical first response is first aid arts and crafts—or learning how to splint a broken bone. When you split a broken bone, you know, you need something that's rigid, that's going to, you know—that you basically strap to that injured extremity so you can prevent it from moving around. And trekking poles are so great, especially if you get ones that are collapsible, because then you can custom, you know, you can adjust the length of them. So, you know, you can fully extend them if it's a broken leg, or you can make them really short if it's a broken arm. So they're really great for that. And there's also a really hilarious story about Andrew Skurka, who's like this really famous thru-hiker and backpacker, who had a grizzly bear running at him. And he threw his trekking pole at this bear, and the bear turns around and ran away while shitting himself.
Margaret 1:01:59 Damn.
Petra 1:02:02 Scared the shit out of this grizzly bear with this trekking pole. Which I just love the visual of that so much.
Margaret 1:02:12 Yeah, I um—I hope I am never in a situation where I ever have to consider this.
Petra 1:02:18 Me neither! So yeah, I think trekking poles are absolutely worth it.
Margaret 1:02:25 Okay. Yeah, when I was younger I would, like, seek adventure, you know? Being like, "Adventure. That's cool." And now I'm like, "No adventure is when bad stuff happens, that's what makes it adventure." I'm like, if I go hiking, and all I can say is like, "Man, that waterfall was amazing." You know, like, that's a better trip.
Petra 1:02:46 It's been great.
Margaret 1:02:48 Yeah. Okay, the one other gear question—I mean, I'm sure I could talk to you gear way longer than this. The one other thing that I wanted to ask you about because I've been trying to look into for my own work is—"work," work have been prepared.
Petra 1:03:06 It's work.
Margaret 1:03:06 Yeah, well especially now that I do this podcast. Um, do you carry an emergency radio of any kind?
Petra 1:03:12 I don't. But let me say that that is something that I feel really terrible about. And I—that's sort of my next gear purchase, is a radio. There are a bunch of different kinds. And they're—one of the reasons that I haven't gotten one yet is that this is one technology where it feels like—or sort of one back country technology—where it feels like the technology is improving so quickly, that I keep waiting because I don't know, you know, the next iteration is going to be able to like microwave a bag of popcorn for me while I'm out. But, you know, there's a spot, there's a personal locator beacon, there's the Garmin inReach, they're all of these different options. And they kind of differ in terms of, you know, some of them just allow you to alert, you know, search and rescue, and you know, sort of your designated emergency contact when there's an emergency. So basically just has like a big red panic button, more or less. And then there are ones that let you text people and receive texts, which is nice, especially if you need to—you know, one problem with, like, the big red panic button scenario is that you can't actually tell search and rescue what's going on. They can pinpoint your location, but they don't know if it's, you know, is this a heart attack? Is that a broken bone? Can you be evacuated on foot? Do you need a helicopter, all of that.
Margaret 1:04:40 Right.
Petra 1:04:40 And so it's nice to have the text capacity so you can say, you know, one patient, 30 years old, broken femur, need a helicopter.
Margaret 1:04:53 Yeah. I—it's funny because I worry about that kind of stuff. Mostly because my version of—well I mean I like camping and from a camping and backpacking point of view, those make a ton of sense. But if I'm, like, right wing militias have taken over the region that I live in and I would like to leave. I don't imagine carrying, like, anything that locates me being a positive to my my health and safety. But I'm—but I could imagine either wanting a radio that can transmit, or even just like the like, the little like portable shortwave and FM and weather and whatever, radios. I don't know. Have you messed with any of those at all, or?
Petra 1:05:38 Not a lot. No, I really haven't. I think it's a great idea, though, sort of, as you mentioned, you know, it all kind of depends on what function you specifically need. And I think having some kind of communication that is not reliant on cell service is is great, you know, and that is another one of the 10 Essentials, right, is some sort of emergency communication device. And, you know, our phones are great, but our phones also tend to not, you know, work terribly reliably. So yeah, I don't have any great words of advice with those particular things. But I do think that having something like that is critical.
Margaret 1:06:18 Okay. Well, you know, I had this whole section prepared of asking what to do when you don't have all the stuff with you that you want to have. But we're coming up on an hour already and I guess maybe this is a conversation mostly about how to, you know, the gear that you might want to bring with you when you're preparing rather than what to do when you're, you know, surviving with just a fuck off knife and whatever. Is there anything, like, anything that you want to bring up—last words of advice, things that you think the listeners should hear? Or that I should hear?
Petra 1:07:00 Not really, I think that I do—I guess there is one thing I want to say, which is just that there's a whole lot of material out there that's going to tell you, you know, what you should bring what you shouldn't bring. And I think that people really just figure out what works for you. Because it might be something you know, maybe a tarp, a lightweight, tarp, works great for you. And great, like, that's what you should take. Or maybe you are the kind of person who needs, you know, sleep is really difficult for you. And you need a little bit of extra luxury when it comes to your sleeping setup. And that's great. You know, have that. Because I think, as you, I think, so correctly pointed out, right, morale is so important. And if we—I think the outdoor community, right, we're obsessed with gear, but we're also really obsessed with like denial and denying ourselves comfort, right? Which is great in some situations, right? If you're a thru-hiker and you want to hike 50 miles a day, great, you're probably going to have to ditch a lot of gear.
Margaret 1:08:06 Oh God.
Petra 1:08:06 But for most of us, for most of us, we're not going to be traveling that kind of distance, and bring some things that make you feel comfortable because that is ultimately going to keep you safe, right, is if you've had enough sleep, you've had enough calories, you've had enough water. You know, if you chemically treat your water and you hate the way it tastes, and that makes you drink less water, bring a filter, you know, then it's really worth it. So I think for a lot of these things, just like test out different sleeping situations, try different methods of treating your water, figure out what kind of food you like when you're hiking because there are lots of things that I like when I'm hiking that I really don't like at all at home.
Margaret 1:08:50 Like what?
Petra 1:08:50 So you know, figure out what those things are.
Margaret 1:08:53 What are they for you?
Petra 1:08:55 I—so I'm like not a candy person at all. But Sour Patch Kids in the back country are like the greatest thing in the world. And also just, like, regular—I think now they call it—hopefully they have changed it away from calling it "Oriental" ramen, because who approved that?
Margaret 1:09:15 Yeah.
Petra 1:09:16 I think now they're calling it their soy sauce flavor. But the soy sauce ramen, I can't get enough of it in the back country, and instant mashed potatoes.
Margaret 1:09:24 Oh, okay.
Petra 1:09:26 Yeah.
Margaret 1:09:27 That's cool.
Petra 1:09:28 And especially when you mix the two of them together.
Margaret 1:09:30 Yeah. I'm trying to think of like, yeah, when we would do forest defense basically like as soon as the food supply runs would come, all of the sugar just gets eaten right away. And at some point, people developed a rule where only tree sitters are allowed to get candy just because like to get people to do tree sitting, right? You know, you like, you need something nice dude.
Petra 1:09:57 And it's funny because I have such a—I normally have such sweet tooth, but not in the back country. I am just like all salt all the time.
Margaret 1:10:05 Okay. This is because you're sweating more you think?
Petra 1:10:09 Yeah, I think so. I assume that that's what it is, and so my body just permanently craves sodium. But yeah, and—oh, and potato chips, even if they're like crushed all to hell, like, potato chips in the outdoors are so great and I never eat potato chips at home. So yeah, just figure out what you like and what you crave when you're outdoors.
Margaret 1:10:31 Yeah, that makes sense. And, you know, now you have a good excuse whoever's listening to go camping and go hiking and learn more about this stuff. You know, learn what you prefer. Oh, I wanted to ask you, are you a tent, bivy, or tarp sleeper?
Petra 1:10:51 Tarp if it's—if the weather's nice. Tent in sort of snow and alpine situations. I hate bivies. I hate them. Some people really like them. They're lightweight. They pack down really small. But I don't know if you've ever had an MRI before. An MRI is like my worst nightmare, right? Because your in this tube that you can't escape from and it makes a shit ton of noise and that's basically the same.
Margaret 1:11:23 Okay.
Petra 1:11:24 So I hate them. But what—my perfect shelter actually, which is something that I don't, doesn't really fit into any one category that you mentioned, is a pyramid tent, which is kind of like a cross between a tarp and a tent.
Margaret 1:11:42 I have no idea what this is.
Petra 1:11:44 Okay, look it up. It's my favorite shelter.
Margaret 1:11:48 Okay.
Petra 1:11:49 Absolute favorite shelter because it's really roomy, it's really small, and it's really light.
Margaret 1:11:54 Okay, cool. That sounds great. Yeah, I never fucked with tents, because my threat model was always not animals, or even necessarily weather, it was like people, right? Because I'm sleeping places that either I'm not supposed to be or I just don't want anyone to see me anyway because people are incredibly cruel to, you know, people who are sleeping places that they should—you know, that aren't in houses or whatever. And so I just never fucked with tents because I was like, "No, that's the way you get caught, right?" And so a bivy to me seems like the best of all worlds, right? But I've only slept in one once. I just finally got one. And you know, I always just slept like out with no shelter or under a tarp. And then—if it's gonna be raining—and then—but now I have a bivy. And I've only got to sleep with it once and I'm like, I don't know. I haven't figured it out yet. And I haven't slept in the rain with it yet. I think I might hate it in the rain. But I don't know. And that's the whole point of it.
Petra 1:13:01 Yeah, they're really miserable in the rain, at least in my experience, and in the wind. The other thing that I really don't like is you can't keep anything dry. Like, if you have gear—the thing I like about tense is, you know, if the weather's really miserable, you either have a vestibule created by your rain, you know, your rain fly that you could put your gear underneath, or you bring your gear into your shelter with you, With a baby, you're just shit out of luck, man. I hope the weather is not going to be bad because everything's going to be out in the elements and I find that whenever I sleep in a bivy, I wake up to like a totally soaked backpack.
Margaret 1:13:40 Even with like the cover over the backpack or whatever.
Petra 1:13:45 I use a—I don't use a rain fly or rain cover for my pack. I use a like a trash compactor bag inside it.
Margaret 1:13:55 Okay,
Petra 1:13:56 Which is way cheaper and way more durable, but then also just allows for the sleeping bag to get totally—or the backpack to get totally soaked.
Margaret 1:14:04 Cool. Yeah, nope. That actually, that makes sense about bivies. I'm so sad. Why did you killjoy my perfect solution to all problems? Well, now I have a new perfect solution, it's a pyramid tent.
Petra 1:14:15 I thought you liked the killjoy.
Margaret 1:14:18 Aaaaaaah I see. Yeah, it's almost like I took it as my last name. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all this knowledge. And, yeah, I hope that you're doing as well as you can, as things go wild in this world. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the podcast, please tell people about it on various social media or even in person. Although right now it's not a good time to talk to people in person. You should avoid all people all the time, because no one should have a pod. If I don't get to have a pod, no one gets to have a pod, but you should tell people about the show. If you liked it. If you don't like it, you probably didn't make it this far. I don't know, unless you hate listen to podcasts. What a strange thing to do. You need to reconsider your life choices. If you want to support the podcast more directly, you can do so by supporting me on Patreon. My Patreon is patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. And I ostensibly put up a scene every month. But actually now I've been so focused on this podcast that I've fallen pretty far behind. But I do put music up there and I do put up zines and there's also a whole backlog of, like, almost 40 zines and a bunch of songs and things like that from my various bands. And there's no behind the scenes content for the podcast. There just isn't. Sorry. I already feel weird doing exclusive content at all. And actually, it's not actually particularly exclusive content if you live off of less money than I make on Patreon, just messaged me and I'll get you all of the content there for free. But, yeah, in particular, I'd like to thank Chris and Nora and Hoss the Dog, Kirk, Willow, Natalie, Sam, Christopher, Shane, the Compound. Thanks just for making this possible. And thanks to you all for listening. And I hope you're doing as well as you can all things considered. I need to come up with another way to say that instead of all things considered because I think that some radio people have already taken that particular phrase. Anyway. Be well.
Our guest Deviant Ollam can be found on twitter @deviantollam.
Our host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy, on instagram @margaretkilljoy, and on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.
Some (but not all of the links) and such referenced in this show:
the "Deviant Keyring" includes: FEO-K1, EK333, 222343, C415A, CH751, 16120, 1284X, plus Jiggler Tools
Transcript:
1:16:11 SPEAKERS Margaret, Deviant
Margaret 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host Margaret Killjoy. I use she and they pronouns. This week I'm talking to Deviant Ollam, who's a security researcher—a hacker basically—only instead of just hacking computers, Deviant hacks his way into buildings as part of, doing physical pen testing of—basically breaking into buildings to see how it's done. I'm excited to have Deviant on the podcast for a lot of reasons, and I think that you'll get a lot out of what he has to say about how so many keys, you know, so many locks in this world all use the same keys and what those keys are, and learning how to let yourself in. And also a lot of this is really useful when you think about your own security, when you think about the ways in which people might be able to access you through your various means of physical security. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's another podcast from the network. Well, it's on another podcasts jingle. It's like a little well teaser for another podcast on the network. Doo doo da doooo!
Jingle 01:22 Kite Line is a weekly 30 minute radio program focusing on issues in the prison system. You'll hear news along with stories from prisoners and former prisoners as well as their loved ones. You'll learn what prison is, how it functions and how it impacts all of us. Behind the prison walls, a message is called a kite. Whispered words a note passed hand-to-hand, a request submitted to the guards for medical care. Illicit or not, sending a kite means trusting that other people will be farther along until it reaches its destination. Here on Kite Line we hope to share these words across the prison walls. You can hear us on the Channel Zero Network and find out more at kitelineradio.noblogs.org.
Margaret 02:02 So this week I'm talking to Deviant Ollam, and if you could introduce yourself with your name, which I guess I just said, and your pronouns and any political or organizational affiliations—maybe what you do for a living might be relevant to this particular episode.
Deviant 02:17 Sure, so thank you for having me on. I'm Deviant Ollam, I use he/him pronouns, and I show up a lot in odd places in the hacker world and on the internet. Most people who have ever come across me or my work probably know me for something relating to the physical security space that can stem from locks and lock picking where I am on the board of the Open Organization of Lock Pickers. TOOOL is a nonprofit that has been teaching about locks and lock picking to people for decades now it seems. And we run the Lockpick Village at major events like DEFCON and a lot of smaller regional events as well. I own companies that work in this space. I am a consultant and covert entry technician. I'm a locksmith, I'm a safe technician. But the physical security world is pretty broad. So it gets into matters of, you know, maybe security on the road and security moving around in cities. I have plenty of affiliation, as do other people in my family, with people who are, we'll say sometimes disadvantaged in the security side of things, either people who are housing insecure, or I do a ton of work with the Sex Workers Outreach Project—so SWOP and SWOP Behind Bars. I have lectured and talked to sex workers and other people in the communities that have to kind of move through cities in ways that either they are not noticed—so you don't want to stand out—or they have to position themselves in environments that their security might not be 100%. So I have a whole talk, actually, that's just called "From Street to Suite." And it's like, imagine, you know, a high rise building and there's this room up in a nice high floor that seems safe. What are all of the steps from the curbside all the way up to that room and all the barriers that should protect you or inhibit someone from getting up there? And let's walk through, like, knocking each one of them down. And that goes hand-in-hand with a lot of the work I've done that isn't really lockpicking but has to do with lock bypassing or bypassing of access control systems. Things like key to like systems people have this famous key ring that they've been building now in the community. I gave this talk in South Dakota once and people like always freeze frame right at around the half hour markm like 30 minutes 30 seconds in, where there's this list of keys that I always carry—it's a small list, right? But now there's—it started, like, eBay auctions which show up and it was calling it like Deviance Key Ring. And then there were on Amazon, like, frequently bought together. And now there's just a locksmith in Portland, Oregon area who just runs hooligankeys.com and it's a list of like my keys and other keys. I don't make these keys, right, but I'm kind of popularized the idea of having a go kit with a certain set of keys in them, cuz why pick the locks when you can just operate them like an authorized user.
Margaret 05:08 Yeah.
Deviant 05:09 And we can get into the other side of the more kinetic physical security of firearms and the like. I've been a frequent participant in the firearm community for ages and ages. I think much of the gun culture is a dumpster fire. But friends of mine, like my buddy, Ian, who runs Forgotten Weapons, is just a very mellow, very happy, kind guy. My buddy Karl— Who runs In Range TV. Yeah, Gun Jesus and the sauerkraut? Absolutely. Yeah, Carl has always taken tons of incoming fire from a lot of the edge floor type gun community people because he speaks out very plainly and very loudly about Black Lives Matter, about fighting against racism and fascism. He's the one who runs to gun matches where, like, furries will routinely show up. "Oh, hello, nice to see you again. You're gonna run the whole course of fire in the first full suit? It's pretty hot today."
Margaret 05:29 Gun Jesus. That's the most 2020 shit I think I've heard all week. Yeah, I wanted to have you on the show because, you know, I was reaching out to one of our friends in common. And I was like, well, who does physical pen testing, you know, who does this stuff of basically figuring out how to get into places that either you're not supposed to be or maybe have been abandoned? And, you know, and my friend said, "Oh, you need to talk to Deviant." And I was like, okay, and so I looked you up and I was like, oh, this is literally the person that I've been watching the YouTube videos of for the past—you know, it's not like—about once a year I guess I'll watch a talk of you talking about how to spit your drink through doors to trigger motion sensors.
Deviant 06:44 A lot of people have seen that opening the bank late at night.
Margaret 06:47 Yeah.
Deviant 06:48 With a glass of whiskey.
Margaret 06:49 Yeah. So from a prepping point of view, you know, you said that you have these these keys on your go kit. Would you consider yourself a prepper?
Deviant 07:02 So yeah, it's one of those very loaded terms, where, if you if you use the phrase "prepper," on paper that can just mean a certain set of skills—collecting certain skills, collecting certain tools. But if you use it in conversation, a lot of people attach a bunch of politics to that and a bunch of worldview to that. There's some people who are, you know, if you hear someone's a "prepper", you might think, well, they're planning for something they think is coming. As opposed to, if you tell someone, well, yeah, I mean, I learned first aid because I hike and, you know, I learned gun skills because personal security and maybe I'm going to go hunting, people attach different meaning to why are you learning these things. So on paper I could certainly be described as having a prepper's mindset. My wife and I, for example, will toe in the water gently on this one, right? Every six months we do an evac drill from house, right? We live in a major metropolitan area. It's relatively geologically stable—not like when I was in Montana, where nothing will ever hit Montana. But let's say there was climatologically a really bad flood that were in a coastal area. If you just had to leave, fast. Well, you can do the run around your house like a nincompoop thing. Or what we have is we have a large bag with, like, plenty of, you know, clothes for a few days, you know, some medical supplies, duplicates of medicines, but we also have in the small guns safe—because like the bulk of the guns are all in the basement or in the cabin or somewhere else—like the bedroom gun safe contains within it some household valuables, the bedroom gun, and a list. And it's just literally the comfort of: okay, you open the gun safe, there's a backpack underneath it. Step one is if you have to—like if the house is on fire, throw everything from that little lockbox, which is about all the bits of precious in the house, and the gun in the backpack, get the hell out of the house. If you have another five minutes, well then you grab items like two and three, you know, you go—you step it down. The cats are like items two and three, basically. And, you know, then if you have another five minutes, well then there's, you get some art off the walls. She's created a lot of art over the years and I have, you know, I went on Amazon, I got $7 little zipper art sleeves. So within 20–30 minutes, the truck could be meaningfully loaded in a way that if we had to like leave the house and potentially never come back or not get back for six months to a year, we'd be okay. Like, better than if we ran out of the house with mismatched socks, one boot, and a magazine of ammo for gun we didn't grab. Like, so just doing that every six months. And it's a pain right? Like, it's a pain to load all this heavy crap into the truck. Because the last things on the list tend to be, like—if you have five more minutes, just grab more ammo, grab more ammo and then drive, you know, grab a couple fuel cans and throw throw them on on the roof rack. Don't even strap them down. So it's a pain, but each time we do it, we iterate for better.
Margaret 10:09 Yeah.
Deviant 10:10 We're like, oh, wow, why is number seven—that's back upstairs. I should have grabbed that first. If I was running downstairs, I should just grabbed like her flight bag. She's a pilot, you know? So grab her flight bag. Because if we ever need to rent an aircraft, get on a plane, leave. So iterating for better, it's soothing to me. It's very calming. Now, does that make me a prepper? Because I have done probably way more than most of the population for a disaster that I don't think is ever coming.
Margaret 10:35 Right.
Deviant 10:35 I think we're a very resilient region out here. We have a very strong municipal infrastructure, we have a very nice culture. People are pretty easygoing in the Pacific Northwest. And, yeah, do I think anything's gonna really ever jump off horribly? No. But if that makes me a prepper, because I want to just know that I, you know, could leave if I had to? Sure. I'll wear that label.
Margaret 10:59 Yeah, I mean, that that actually, that's one of the whole kind of points of the show is to—I don't, I guess I'll use the word "prepper," a lot just as a shorthand, but then, you know, usually I pretty much just talking about individual and community preparedness, because I throw in the community in there, because otherwise I'm just talking about a different thing than people think that I might otherwise be talking about. But I really like this idea that your "toe in the water" about it, and you're like, "Oh, I mean, don't get me wrong, we have our list and the priorities written then we do drills." That is more than I think that most people, even people who sort of would identify as preppers, or are being really into preparedness, bother doing.
Deviant 11:38 Probably. Because I think that doesn't cost me anything, right, two days out of the year? And it's not like it's a day-long activity, literally it's a half hour fire drill.
Margaret 11:47 Right.
Deviant 11:47 Versus people who literally tie up a lot of their personal resources and space with stuff, Like this—a lot of people think of prepping as stockpiling with no skill-building and no community-building. In fact, that was really—I think it's a profound statement about society and how the certain mindset is that when the pandemic hit a lot of people who were that kind of like Burt Gummer, in the movie Tremors, right, like that generation of prepper. They were preparing all their life for a disaster that didn't come
Margaret 12:20 Right.
Deviant 12:20 The disaster wasn't, you become a warlord up in the pines in the hills and have, what, a harem of like disaffected citizens who turn to you as a warlord god, and they bow down for your spare beans and guns. That wasn't the that wasn't the disaster we got, we got a disaster that basically said, you have to look out for your neighbors and watch out for one another and be kind.
Margaret 12:42 Right.
Deviant 12:42 And in community.
Margaret 12:43 Right.
Deviant 12:44 And it made a lot of people really frickin sore about that fact. Because they're like, oh, that's not the disaster I wanted.
Margaret 12:53 So to shift into the—one of the things you mentioned is that, you know, things are key to, like, and this is something that I think I really lit up about. I mean, I've known how to lockpick for a while, like, I'm not, I'm no expert at it, but you know, occasionally it's very nice to get into public restrooms or dumpsters or things like that. I would never obviously advocate anyone do those sorts of things. But um, but I was reading the story the other week about wildfire out west. And it was talking about how at one point in order to get emergency crews out of an area they had to use heavy equipment to push all the abandoned cars out of the road. And I was thinking about heavy equipment. And then I was, I knew I was going to be interviewing you, and I was thinking about how apparently most CAT equipment all uses the same key. Is that, is that true?
Deviant 13:41 Oh yeah. That is very, very similar. Caterpillar, Kubota, like all these major brands, Genie Lifts, Sunbelt, a lot of them tend to have uniform keys—not even a key series of a small number, but like a key. And if you ever see a lot of equipment, the keys—we're using key in a broad sense—a lot of them are barely more than safety interlock switches with a little widget that's kind of a little fork of metal or something. The Caterpillar one looks more key-like than others.
Margaret 14:13 Okay.
Deviant 14:14 But yeah, a lot of these devices, they just have—this really gets into a term that I love. And I've been meaning to do a video on this for ages. It was inspired by—every time someone posts like a clip on Twitter or on Instagram of like a fence. They're like, "Oh, I'm going to my neighbor's apartment building. Look at this fence, I can reach right over it and I can hit the latch from the other side." There's a concept that I wish society understood better, especially in the security world, which is that there can be security products, security, meaningful locks, and then there can be symbolic locks.
Margaret 14:51 Yeah.
Deviant 14:52 The fact that someone has a perimeter fence around their apartment complex, and yeah, like you could reach over the bar or they can reach through the bars and hit the thing on the other side. It's not that no one can get past it, it might not even be that high a fence, right? It might be a five, six foot fence. The point is, it's a demonstration of commitment. If you are discovered on the other side of that fence, you can't pretend that it was an accident. You could go, "Oh, I just wandered through here. This isn't the way to shop?" Like, you did that, you know you did that. So a symbolic lock, in many of these devices, it represents a moment of commitment, like, I'm going to operate this machine now. You didn't just bump or flip a button, like no, you took a key and stuck it in a hole and turned it.
Margaret 15:39 Right. And you were carrying it.
Deviant 15:41 That's, yeah, that's what those, a lot of the heavy equipment really is. They're safety interlocks and they are positive confirmation that you are asserting, "I am supposed to be doing what I'm doing," even if you're just asserting it to yourself or the ones around you. But that's why these keys don't have to be outrageously complex. And in fact, the customer service side of things would be a nightmare. They don't want to have customers calling and saying, wait, I need to order another key. What's your serial number? Well, it's on a data plate that's long been scraped away by gravel and rust.
Margaret 16:13 Right.
Deviant 16:13 Like, I don't know, my serial number to my front end loader is you know, so yeah, a lot of these large pieces of equipment in our world are in fact all very, very keyed alike, and anyone who wants to poke about this some more, you can look on Amazon right now. Tornado is the vendor. Tornado makes the heavy equipment key set. And it comes in different iterations, different sizes of key set. The largest one is almost like 100-some keys. But it's not an unattainable price, right, these aren't complex keys. A lot of them are just stamped pieces of metal. So yeah, we have that in our bag on our covert entry jobs. And we've been able to—I've never taken like a boom lift and gotten on a roof just that way. There's probably some OSHA violation involved if I do that. But I could. I've demonstrated to clients walking around job sites, I'm like, so if you want to turn this key you can. For liability I shouldn't, but if you want to start trying to start that up, Oh, look at that it started up. Okay, turn that off. Turn that off. Turn the oil pressure off too. Okay. You know, but uh, yeah, like just having a giant tea set that opens a ton of stuff, that's nice to have around.
Margaret 17:19 What is the um, you know, so I've looked into this key set, and I've done literally the same thing where I googled, you know, "Deviant key ring," and, you know, yeah, I found lots of spare keys here and there on Amazon with like, notes about sell only to locksmiths. And then eBay has like "pen tester key ring" where you can buy, you know, for pretty cheap you can buy like a whole bunch of elevator keys and RV keys and I don't know whether the heavy equipment keys are on there, including some stuff that's like, the Ford police cruisers, for example. And—
Deviant 17:55 Oh yeah,.
Margaret 17:55 To be real, the reason I didn't buy the key ring is because it had the Ford police cruisers on it and I, I think about my own threat modeling. And I personally think it is more likely that the police are going to be curious about the things that I own, then that I'm going to have an opportunity after the apocalypse to need to pilot a vehicle that is part of the Ford fleet series. But I'm curious if you know much about the legality of acquiring, owning, using keys like this.
Deviant 18:29 Right, so the main part that can trip you up—so almost in any instance keys are not defined—now I'm not a lawyer—but in my readings of most statutes, keys are not defined in the same way that lockpicks are defined under the law.
Margaret 18:47 Interesting.
Deviant 18:48 For those who don't know, and TOOL, the 501C3 has actually done legal research. Our lawyers have pulled the lock picking laws and all states. So most states have a burglary tools statute and that is, you know, tools or implements that could be used to commit burglarious offenses and things like that, and felonious entry, and it's very flowery language that's often outdated to our ears today. Most states will have an intent clause for any type of multi-purpose item. So for example, burglary tools aren't just lockpicks. A crowbar can be a burglary tool. A pipe wrench can be a burglary tool. But those, you know, they sell those at Home Depot. People own those and don't go to jail. How is this possible? Because intent. If the circumstances of the situation demonstrate that you may have criminal intent, you're facing different legal ramifications for owning that crowbar.
Margaret 19:41 Yeah.
Deviant 19:42 Now lockpicks, specifically, we start to get into items that aren't necessarily multipurpose items. They're not multi-use. Lockpicks kind of only have one real use. So again, in many burglary tools statutes, lockpicks are called out specifically as greater scrutiny. And there's a handful of states, the most famous for would be Virginia, Mississippi, Nevada, and oh, it's killing me here. Is it? Is it Ohio? Oh my god. There's one other state that has uh... Yeah, there's one other state where it is prima facie evidence—on its face this is evidence of your ill-intent because these tools, hey, come on now, this is not a crowbar that can do many things.
Margaret 20:23 Right.
Deviant 20:24 You know, this is obviously criminal. Now, keys on the other hand, keys are on the other side of the coin. Keys are much more likely to have a legitimate purpose than they are to have an illegitimate purpose. And if you can demonstrate any kind, you could say no, like, I have a product that this key opens, you know, this is my key. It's one of the funny things about—do you know, this is another key to like fact. I know we're jumping around but the listeners are tracking hopefully. When properties are abandoned and they fall into the control of HUD or a number of other agencies that have to do foreclosure work. If a property is semi-derelict, or at the very least, if a contractor is brought in to assess the condition of a property before a bank sale, most of those properties get rekeyed. They get rekeyed to a set of standard lock and keys. So a standard set of Quick Set locks, a standard set of padlock key—there's one padlock key is literally—I did a video about this on my channel—it is the most common Master Lock key in the world. Because there's just oodles and oodles and oodles and oodles of locks with this one key because all across this country properties that are abandoned have padlocks on gates and other entrances. They're all the same key. Now, if you own that key, and only the key, that's a bit of a noodle scratcher. Someone might say, you know, why do you have this key? What are you doing with this? But remember, I said it's also the most common frickin lock.
Margaret 21:50 Right.
Deviant 21:51 Because they're vendors on—if you look on Amazon I found these locks for $1. Because they have to sell tons of them to contractors. Well, if you own the lock and the key, then it's a lot more plausible why you own that key. Well, this is the key to my lock. So the idea of a police cruiser, you know, key. And this, we're talking about the Ford Motor Company, as most automotive manufacturers, they have what's called fleet keying is an option for many—if you want to buy a bunch of models of car from one vendor, they say, "Can you keep them all alike?" A vendor can do that. And they have a key series, like the 1284X, the most common one, is just the first entry in that key series, the 1294X the I think C101 C102. But if you own no Ford vehicles and you've never even worked for a company that drove Ford vehicles, again, someone might say, "Well, why do you have this one particular key?"
Margaret 22:42 Right.
Deviant 22:43 If however, someone had ever in the course of their employment been a taxi driver, been any kind of delivery, any kind of vehicle driver where you might have used a key because that was the key—if you had a fleet keyed vehicle, that's a person who might have a plausible explanation as to why they have that key. So everyone's life is different. And everyone as you point, everyone's kind of risk profile is different for what questions they may have to answer based on the things they own.
Margaret 23:09 Yeah, yeah, I sometimes—it's kind of awful, but sometimes I see people with really cool lockpick earrings and I think to myself, "You don't interact with police very often."
Deviant 23:20 Yeah.
Margaret 23:21 And maybe that's unfair.
Deviant 23:22 And custodial—oh, yeah, and custodial detention is a special animal under the law. Again, not a criminal lawyer. But I do know that there are certain things like duty to inform where if you have keys or lockpicks or anything on you, or possession of a handcuff key—there was a famous case—famous for the lockpicking world—just some poor unhoused person who was getting rousted about by the police. I think he was known to the area he was, they were just one of these people that just get targeted and harassed routinely, right? And the cops had them in their cruiser again, but he had a piece of jewelry. He had like a necklace that included odd stuff on it. One of them was a handcuff key.
Margaret 23:59 Mm hmm.
Deviant 23:59 Well, that was considered evidence of attempted escape from police custody, the mere possession of the key.
Margaret 24:05 Yeah.
Deviant 24:07 Without informing them, and how quickly was he arrested? How quickly was he processed and detained and then left alone? Did he even have an opportunity to say, "Hey, I have this key on me"? That's unknown. Right? That's interesting. I only know about duty to inform on like, you know, in North Carolina where I live I have a duty to inform officers that I'm armed as a concealed carry holder.
Margaret 24:28 Yeah.
Deviant 24:29 And the idea of having a duty—I mean, you know, it changes my, again, it changes my threat assessment. I'm like, am I more likely to be in a situation in which I need to tell a cop that I'm armed and therefore see a potential escalation in that entire encounter? Or do I, you know, it makes me wonder whether I should carry a gun on a given day as someone who carries a gun for self-defense. And so that's interesting to see that applied to locks and these—you know, because in some ways I want to say, like, these pen testing key rings seem like brilliant Bug Out Bag items, right? Like just—now of course you have, you figured out the best deal of all, which is that your job is that you get hired—correct me if I'm wrong—your job is that companies come and say, "Hey, can anyone break into our servers, including physically?" And your job is to break into their server rooms. And in which case owning all of this stuff is actually like, I mean, you get to write the stuff off on your taxes, like I, I assume it's kind of just chill for you. For the most part, and also I'm not at all blind to the fact that I just walked through the world in a much, much more of a friction-free state because I, the way I present, like I have a very frictionless interaction with most parts of society. I have a lot of privilege. But even if I didn't have that, having the job—as you point out—having the job, being a locksmith, being a safe technician, having things that are just, well, it's the same reason that a chef might have chef's knives on them. Like, why are you carrying a bunch of knives? Oh, that they're a chef. Okay. I guess so. Why not?
Margaret 26:11 So what do you carry in your like, in your day-to-day?
Deviant 26:17 Sure. So we'll start with the sort of most minimal. I have a smartphone, right? And I started adding—there's a little, like a little pouch. It's not one of those fold-open wallets that holds my phone. But there's just stuck adhesive stuck to the back of my phone case, there's a little pouch that contains one credit card and my passport card. And this is the thing, like, if I grab my smartphone and just leave the house I can meaningfully have an entire day out and about because I have one piece of ID—and it's my favorite piece of ID, by the way. Whenever I get a new passport I always get the passport card as well because it is, like, it's the most ironclad government ID. It's a passport, literally, but it has no address on it. So you know it's your it's your passport, it's just here's your passport number and here's you. So it says yes, I am an American, this is my age, this is this is my name, and then you can—I can say "fuck right off" if you want to know anything else. You know, I don't want a bar that I'm going into to know where I live, I don't want, it's not their business, right? If I were to ever interact with an authority figure in a state that requires you to show ID after, you know, Bellevue, Nevada, like, here's my ID. I have identified myself and that is all.
Margaret 27:35 Yeah.
Deviant 27:36 But that phone which I said is in a phone case, inside of my phone case, if I peel the phone case open, I have a couple more things. I have some very thin bypass and decoding tools that can be used to work on—there's a very popular style padlock, this little multi-wheel brass-colored padlock that Masterlock makes—a billion people have clone this padlock at this point. But that, you can just bypass those, you can pop them open. And, for example, when I lived in Montana there was a gun range that I had, I was able to go shoot at this gun range. And that was what their gate was always locked with. Well, every now and then they would change the combination. And they were not always great about communicating that combination change and it was a rusty old lock it didn't work well, I didn't like run—and it's cold. It's frickin Montana—bringing gloves off. But I could bypass the lock faster than I could try to fiddle with the combination,
Margaret 28:30 Right. What is the bypass—
Deviant 28:33 So go ahead.
Margaret 28:33 What is a bypass for a combination lock?
Deviant 28:36 So that particular lock, the multi-wheel lock, the original of which was called the Sesame lock, like "open sesame." And then Master cloned it and other people have cloned the design. That would be called either the Sesame Lock Bypass or the Master 175 Bypass. That's the model of Master makes. It is just inserting this thin blade into the body of the lock next to one of the wheels and rocking it, you're trying to rock a little plate of metal on the inside and springs a lock right open.
Margaret 29:05 So it's like carving a door kind of.
Deviant 29:08 Almost, almost. You're triggering a release in a way. That same little mini tool, that same thin blade of metal, can be used to decode many, many multi-wheel locks. So if you've ever seen properties that have locked boxes outside—very popular is a, probably again, the most market penetration you're going to see is Masterlock and they're competing clones that are this sort of gray and black, vaguely trapezoidal, pear shaped lump that's either mounted to a wall or it has a little horseshoe on top, you know, a shackles, it's mounted to like a doorknob or a handle, as the Master 5400 series key box. That and all of its clones, by sticking a blade of metal in next to the wheels I can run the wheels and you can feel where they catch and you can pop key boxes open. So again, I've gone to air bnbs for—I've been traveling and the host didn't send the check in email, or you know, I love being way out the middle of nowhere so I'll get cabin with Tara or something. You drive out, it's late at night, the host has long since gone to bed, no cell service. And you're like, ah shit I didn't get the combination for that. But it's one of those dumbass key boxes. So I'm like, alright, well, I could decode this. And then get inside the cabin. And now there's WiFi, great. Oh, now I can get the connection. Oh, well, that was the combination that I found. So I have tools like that under my phone case. I have a little piece of, you know, soda can metal, like the soda can padlock shame, right? I have a couple—
Margaret 30:35 Is that something that goes in between the—it goes, like, into where the, what the shackle, the U at the top of a lock?
Deviant 30:43 Mm hmm.
Margaret 30:43 Is that what that is?
Deviant 30:44 Yeah, so slipping a piece of metal—and people have talked about this online and you can google "beer can padlock shim" and you'll see people doing this. It's putting a piece of metal, a thin piece of metal, in just the right spot next to the shackle and jamming it down into the lock body will—as you analogized, it's like credit carding a door—you can slip the latch on the lock to spring the catch open. Okay, now, what I'll do is I don't always walk around with a multi-tool with scissors on it. But I don't need scissors if I've already cut the metal. So I'll pre-cut the metal, a couple of them, and leave them under my phone case and I haven't folded them into shapes. So they're nice and flat, they take up no space. So I have a variety of little tools like that under my phone case. I have, you know, SIM card, tool, and some other stuff.
Margaret 31:29 Okay.
Deviant 31:30 So that's my most basic, at my most basic, every everyday carry because I always have a phone on me. And those basic tools are in my phone case. Now if we were to move it into my pockets, I always have a very tiny lockpick set. In fact, my buddy of mine, lockpicking lawyer, and he's done a lot of multi-wheel lock decoding, it's one of his specialties that he'll scramble the wheels on camera and then flip the lock back over and decode it rapidly with or without bypass tools.
Margaret 31:58 Okay.
Deviant 31:59 He's done a little pocket set video that he has. I've got a similar pocket-sized set. It's basically chopped down lockpicks. And there are, there are some other folding pocket sets that are popular for people to have. Mine just happened to be a set that I'd evolved over the years.
Margaret 32:15 I can—my one thing I can brag about having picked a lock once in my life, I mean, I was ah, I was living in this squat in the South Bronx and someone booked a show. But all the PA was locked in his room. And then he was late to the show and the show wasn't gonna be able to start. And so I walked around and looked in the gutter until I found a street cleaner bristle that wasn't old and rusty.
Deviant 32:41 Yeah.
Margaret 32:41 I bent into a tension wrench and then use a safety pin as a pick.
Deviant 32:47 Hell yeah!
Margaret 32:47 And I picked the padlock and saved the show. And it was like, of all of the locks I've picked in my life, which is not a ton, right? I was like, this is it. It was all worth it. I did something good. He was really mad when he came home and then I broke into his room. But I feel perfectly justified.
Deviant 33:06 Absolutely. I think that's a win in my book. That goes really well. Because this person had an obligation to others and, you know, that people, friends got to step in and make sure the show must go on.
Margaret 33:15 Yeah. Okay, so you carry the tiny chopped down lockpick set.
Deviant 33:20 Mm hmm.
Margaret 33:21 And so of course lockpick set you need like all of the different weird things, right? It needs to be at least like, like 15 or different lockpicks, right?
Deviant 33:28 It's pretty minimal. It's just a couple of rakes, a little, a little hook and a little diamond. And a variety of turner tools. I have more turner tools jammed into that than I have pick tools. Because, again, most situations that—these are expedient situations where, like, maybe I'll throw this at the situation, see what happens. And if it doesn't work in a few minutes, I'm probably going to pivot to try something else, either go get proper tools or what have you. And this—it's funny, this loops back around to sort of that other prepper thing where I said a lot of preppers are just collectors of stuff. Where, like, this is my go bag and you start putting more and more crap in it so you can't even carry it around.
Margaret 34:07 Right.
Deviant 34:08 Then like, how useful is it? So yeah, I've tried to keep my stuff that's on me as minimal as possible.
Margaret 34:13 Right.
Deviant 34:14 I've taken things off of my everyday carry key ring in the past, as opposed to trying to add to it with every new whiz bang fun thing. And that everyday carry key ring is the one that shows up—uh, it's shown up in a few talks. But the one that everyone shares is this talk I gave called "I'll Let Myself In." It's about halfway through that talk that you see this set of keys, which we can talk about now. I can rattle them off by memory.
Margaret 34:39 Yeah, if you want to talk about what they open too. I found that that's kind of, is the most handy of these talks, you know, because if you just—I think people like these talks because they like to imagine, like, the power that access grants them, you know?
Deviant 34:55 Oh, absolutely.
Margaret 34:56 So, so sure, what's on your everyday carry key ring?
Deviant 35:00 Sure, so there is—and this is the one that I would use the least, I actually have just demonstrated it so often that I carry it with me—there's an elevator key called the FEOK1. This is, if anyone has seen a lot of talks about elevator hacking, this comes up a lot. Most elevators, much like heavy equipment, have industry default keys. Each brand of elevator will have their unique set of keys that their fixtures just tend to be key alike. Well, the FEOK1 was meant to be a superseding standard that across brands of elevator, this would be the emergency fire service operation key. This was pushed as a standard in the past and has later been walked back because people realize it's a huge security risk. But being able to demonstrate to clients rapidly, hey, this key probably puts your elevators in fire service mode, you got a good chance of it, here to want to try it? That key—which also, this is another interesting thing about moving around buildings. Elevators, if you're in an area that has by code adopted the FEOK1, well, it costs money to rekey your elevator, and you have to recertify it if you start tinkering with it, you know, the panel, right? So it's a solution that many buildings—and you start noticing this, I'll say this and then people listeners will be like, oh, oh, man, I think I've seen that, and they're gonna start seeing it more. Let's say you own a building, and you have Otis elevators—big name in the industry, right? Well, your default Otis elevators going to have a fire key that's going to be the UTF key, that's Otis's fire key. And maybe you've got eight elevators in a bank and you've got another elevator down in the parking garage. You don't want to rekey all these elevators, that's big bucks.
Margaret 36:42 Right.
Deviant 36:42 But you've got to comply with that FEOK1 thing. Well, you can call up supplier like Vader Products are Adams or some other company that supplies the elevator industry and get a little red box and mount that in your lobby. And if you start walking into big buildings and offices and hotels, you might start seeing these little red boxes on the wall. That box can be keyed to FEOK1. And inside that box is your building's fire key and a lot of times other stuff. The elevator equipment room key, the key to the roof, the key to the sprinkler valves, and a lot of stuff just winds up in those red boxes. So on penetration jobs, I have my elevator key but I've never had to futz with the elevator that's, you know, a thing we don't do without special permission. But if I could pop that red box on the wall, suddenly I've got half the keys to the building.
Margaret 37:33 Right.
Deviant 37:34 So that FEOK1 is always with me. Available online, if you ever search for it online and you see a lot of different vendors selling it, you're not sure who's who. I'll tell you this, I don't work for them. Ultimate Security Devices is this sort of scandal of the industry. This is the real—here's the tea, let's dish out the scandal of the gossip world, right? Ultimate Security Devices is Northeast Lock. Northeast Lock, huge vendor, huge vendor and supplier—aboveboard vendor and supplier in the elevator industry. Ultimate Security Devices is them selling stuff out the back door. It's literally like the owner's wife who started an eBay account and then started a website, and the industry gives them a ton of shit for it.
Margaret 38:19 Mm hmm.
Deviant 38:20 And every now and then their site kind of like went away and then it comes back. They move a lot of product out the back door to not anybody, they'll sell to anybody. Okay, so that's your FEOK1. There are two keys that I always have for access control boxes. One is a company called Linear. The Linear company has a lot of press—these are like the sort of telephony boxes that, were there like an intercom system and you usually dial through a directory and they're, they're popular on, like, multi-tenant buildings, either apartments or office buildings.
Margaret 38:55 Okay.
Deviant 38:56 Linear. The official key to all the Linear boxes is the 222343 key, which, again, if we dig into my talk, it's not always sold into that name. It's sold under older obscure names, but Linear has one key and if you get it that opens a lot of Linear boxes. But the big one for these telephony boxes that people, again, like if they see my talks, they've seen some slides. You can spot them a mile away. Doorking systems.
Margaret 39:23 Yeah.
Deviant 39:23 Doorking is this vendor that has a very distinctive feature. On their boxes they have these three big buttons, the A, Z, and call. They have these scrolling, you know, to dial through the directory buttons, these big round silver buttons. And you start spotting those, you know, from your bike just going down the block. You can look and be like oh, Doorking, Doorking, another Doorking. All Doorkings from the factory since I think the 90s have been keyed to the 16-120 key. That is the Doorking key. They have more keys in the series. There's a young kid who got in touch with me, his name is Austin, Austin Tipo. He reached out and he's like, hey, look, there's all these other keys. There's the 16-122, the 16-123. And he found, you know, he ordered them from a supplier, we were comparing the bidding on them. Like, fascinating, there's a whole key series. Never in my f-ing life have I seen anything else used except the first one in the key series.
Margaret 40:14 Uh huh.
Deviant 40:16 So I have that on me. And then the real other last couple of winners are what we'll call cabinet keys. If I'm doing jobs and server rooms and technical spaces, the EK333 key, the MK333 key, is just a very popular server rack key. It opens a ton of stuff in data centers and servers, which is useful if I want to look like I belong there. If I've broken in or there's some other technician doing something, I can just turn to any direction to a big rack of stuff and start shoving this key and it's probably gonna open it. And I just look like I'm servicing something and they're like, "That guy must work here."
Margaret 40:52 Right.
Deviant 40:52 "Is he with Verizon, what does that guy? Johnson Controls?" So yeah, the EK333. Um, C415A is an older key. I've started to drop it from some of my key rings. But that used to be, it would just open a lot of dumb wafer locks, it would open cabinets and locked panels. But the big one, the end-all-be-all, is the CH751. The CH751 key. And there's a whole like subreddit just for CH751 people sharing photos of where it works. That is the everything key in North America. Every rinky dink wafer lock, which is a type of very cheap cabinet-style lock. Every rinky dink lock that's just holding shut everything from toilet paper storage in the bathroom to, like, the phone cabinet over here, to this little locked panel on the outside of a, you know, building that has the water control for the faucet. It's a good chance that it might be CH751. It's the most overused key in America. Say again?
Margaret 41:54 A lot of RVs also, right?
Deviant 41:56 Oh god. Yeah, the default key for RV is not for the ignition typically. But for all the panels, all the outside panels and doors and patches.
Margaret 42:06 Okay.
Deviant 42:08 Yeah, so that's my default loadout.
Margaret 42:11 Yes. So a lot of your work it seems like one of the things that you're trying to do is be invisible in the various places that you go, you know, you're talking about how like, as soon as you start opening, opening things with keys, everyone just assumes you're supposed to be there. I suppose that's the, the idea is that rather than walking around with a crowbar, which probably doesn't look as good to bystanders?
Deviant 42:31 Yeah. But yeah, there's something that comes from having the confidence of someone who just looks like they belong there. Someone who looks cool as a cucumber. And I have the—it's like rock climbing if you're free climbing versus rock climbing on a belay rake, right? If you know you're not going to die, you might make that very perilous leap to get another handhold because you're emboldened by the sense that no harm can befall you.
Margaret 42:57 Mm hmm.
Deviant 42:58 The fact that on jobs I know I'm not going to get in trouble, I'm literally supposed to be there even though I'm doing things that would otherwise be illegal. It allows me to present this air of—like, even when security guards interface with me.
Margaret 43:11 Right.
Deviant 43:11 They say, "What are you doing here?" And time—there was a job that again—we've told this story on some other show long ago, my buddy Rob and I were literally breaking in—like we're using bypass tools. We had just set off an alarm and we're trying to get through another door. And these security guards kind of come into this big warehouse space. And Rob just thinks we are roasted. As security guards like, "Oh, well could you put that stuff down?" These big under door bypass tools. "What do you guys doing here?" And I just looked at him I was like, "Well what does it look like we're doing here?" That was just like—I just clap back with, "What does it look like we're doing?" And it broke his brain because we didn't try to run. We didn't Thumper and offer like, "Oh, well you see my sister sick and I got—" we just, we could not be arsed to care. Which is what your average, like, you know, Verizon guy or Comcast technician would do if you caught caught him on the job like, "Hey, what are we doing that wiring boxes?" "What do you need me for? Is this your wiring box? Get on my way," you know?
Margaret 44:11 Yeah.
Deviant 44:11 So being nonchalant is a form of invisibility.
Margaret 44:15 Mm hmm.
Deviant 44:16 And this is, you know, if you're in a bar, and someone next to you is acting all shifty and touching their pockets and looking at you and looking away, you'd be like, what did this person put something in my drink?
Margaret 44:26 Right.
Deviant 44:26 But if the person next to you in the bar is staring off into the middle distance, half the cigarette is ash because they're stuck in their own brain and they're not caring about whatever you're doing. That's the person that drops your threat radar usually, like well, they clearly don't look like a threat there. They don't care about me. I shouldn't care about them. So yeah, being able to look like you're just preoccupied with whatever mundane task you're doing, it makes other people more dismissive of you.
Margaret 44:51 Yeah. No that makes sense. It also it—I'm glad you brought up the fact that, like, it's probably a lot easier for you to be cool as a cucumber when you know that at the end of the day you're not going to jail because you've, you know, been hired to break into this place. But I bet it's still probably good training, good practice, to learn how to interface with folks.
Deviant 45:14 Oh, yeah.
Margaret 45:15 One of the things that I—
Deviant 45:15 Lie. Lie all the time for no reason because it's just practice.
Margaret 45:22 One of the things that we used to always do is, you know, I—for a while I would make my living as a busker. I would play accordion on the street. And it's really good cover. You know, if my friends are hanging a banner down the street and they need someone to look out, you just—two crusty kids sitting by the side of the road, they get ignored by—I mean, they don't get ignored by cops. But cops aren't coming up being like, "You all are involved with this direct action that's happening," you know, they're just gonna harass you about anything else. It's kind of awful but like, there's just so many different ways to sort of be part of the landscape in people's minds.
Deviant 46:01 It feels especially insidious to—it almost feels like appropriating a space that's not ours. But we have absolutely done sort of stakeouts of target buildings wanting to see like when employees come and go, wanting to see when their guards are there when—maybe they don't guards at night—and adopting either that sort of posture or, not all of our team are musically inclined, right? But adopting the posture of someone who's unhoused.
Margaret 46:27 Yeah.
Deviant 46:28 We've had somebody just—because you actually, especially—look how many of our clients, as you point out, are tech firms, right? The biggest invisibility shield imaginable is being an unhoused person, a distressed person in San Francisco.
Margaret 46:41 Yeah.
Deviant 46:41 Because, quote unquote, we'll call it "respectable society," goes out of their way to not notice you.
Margaret 46:47 Yeah.
Deviant 46:48 And yeah, we've had teammates just kind of sit there under like a ratty blanket with a Starbucks cup with a couple coins in it. And they're mentally, like, literally on the back of a pizza box. One girl, she was just taking notes. This woman was taking notes of like, guard patterns on the back of this pizza box. And the front of the pizza box was, you know, "Came out to parents, kicked me out, anything helps, god bless."
Margaret 47:11 Right.
Deviant 47:12 Yeah, it—by all means, I never thought of the busking idea, too, because that is kind of—it's almost the societal equivalent of that whistling, like, whistling nonchalantly so as to not be thought of as a threat.
Margaret 47:24 Yeah, totally.
Deviant 47:26 Like whistling Row Row Your Boat or something.
Margaret 47:28 Yeah, what you do is you get one person playing the instrument and then the other person is just like, sitting next to them with a radio, you know, but they're just like, just sitting there. And they're the one keeping track of what's going on. And I, you know, I used to make a couple euros, whatever, to do that in Amsterdam.
Deviant 47:44 Oh, yeah.
Margaret 47:46 And yeah, actually, I was listening to this—I tried listening to an actual, like, a proper prepper podcast the other day while I was driving and it was this guy who had infiltrated Antifa. And the Proud Boys were good people but the Antifa in Portland, they would have killed him if they'd known who he was—and all this like just fucking bullshit. And I'm like, how do people take preparation advice from people who are so afraid of their neighbors? Because that's—anyway. But the way that he infiltrated the the Portland protests, this right wing journalist, this like right wing war correspondent guy, he dressed up, uh, you know, as a unhoused person. And what's funny is that he wasn't invisible to the protesters. The protesters were like, offering him like things and trying to talk to him and like, hey, this might not be a good space for you to be in right now but how are you doing? And of course, you know, he then goes on to demonize all of them. I didn't actually even make it all the way through it but I just thought—
Deviant 48:44 He's not that dickbag who did like, "I wardrove and I got all these sim, you know, IMEI," he's not that guy is he?
Margaret 48:50 No, although that person who was lying—
Deviant 48:53 Right.
Margaret 48:53 Just got doxxed today.
Deviant 48:56 I saw. None of that held water like, what they're claiming didn't make sense. And I'm not a real ones and zeros techno-head, but I was like, well that's bullshit.
Margaret 49:03 Yeah, I was caught up in all that. And they were like, trying to claim I'm a leader of Portland Antifa which is really interesting because I'm in southern Appalachia. And also, they claim they got it by wardriving. But my last name is spelled with one "L" on Facebook and nowhere else. And they doxxed me with one "L" and by doxx I mean my name is on a list. Like, sorry. Um, it makes me I mean—I don't know, I don't want to like—I need to knock on wood about some of this. But you know, they like to—I mean, they're fucking LARPing. They're trying to act like they're, like, super elite doing all this amazing stuff. And it was just like some guy in fucking North Carolina who sat at his day job and, like, you know, trolled people social media. Anyway, what would you—Oh, I actually have a question about a specific tool that I got really excited about but I've never had a chance to use. It's these eight-way keys, these like wrenches that are not really keys. It's like triangle wrenches and shit. And they're meant to open like gas lines and water lines. Have you seen these? They're like the little like cigar-shaped?
Deviant 50:18 Oh, yes.
Margaret 50:19 Are they? Are they what they're cracked up to be?
Deviant 50:23 Yes, they are really useful. In fact, I believe Silcox or Cel-Celox? Silox? That is one of the types of those, it's like the little square or triangle one. There is an eight way—It almost looks like a little ninja star.
Margaret 50:38 Yeah.
Deviant 50:39 There's an eight way, like, adapter that's the best one. It's again like cheap on Amazon. It's actually two cross-shaped ones that fit together. And they—because if you had eight points that close together be hard to get a lot them to stick into holes.
Margaret 50:52 Yeah.
Deviant 50:52 But yeah, that's the perfect kind of thing—we have one of those in our grab it and get out of the, you know, get out of the house—in that bag kind of tool. Because again, like you there's plenty of places where you go to a rest area and for no reason, like, the water fountain is turned off or the water faucet is turned off. And not because it's like cold in the winter, just because, well we—I don't know. Who knows. People might get free water, that would be terrible. But yeah, those kind of things. Those, I know hikers who carry them a lot.
Margaret 51:19 Right.
Deviant 51:20 Because they're in the middle of nowhere. They just want to refill their water and for some reason the water valve is turned off somewhere like with one of those non-handle, you have to stick a thing in a hole.
Margaret 51:30 Yeah.
Deviant 51:30 So I've known trail hikers who have those on them.
Margaret 51:33 Okay, yeah, because those are, you know, if I'm too nervous to walk around with a bunch of keys that operate heavy machinery when they clearly look like I'm up to no good. I do feel like something like that in a go bag, to me is just like—I mean, one of the reasons I think what having it is, yeah, turn on water, Or even like, turn off the gas lines in your building if you're leaving because of an earthquake or whatever, you know. And apparently they open maybe subway doors or something I'm not, I'm not sure.
Deviant 52:08 Like the cars, the subway cars?
Margaret 52:11 You know, they claim this and I'm imagining more like maybe the—like windows or something I don't know, you know, the ones that have—
Deviant 52:19 It might be the emergency—so a lot of like mechanical doors—door operators on subway car and things, there's an interlock, right? When there's no power the gears are statically stuck, they're like a screw cog gear, right? So if you can pop an interlock, then the door becomes free sliding. There might be something like that. I've never looked that closely but now it makes me curious if mass transit type doors have a little, a little hole next to them, that would make sense. And again, it's that little slightly extra level of commitment, where it's not just a thumb turn where any, any like 12-year-old kid waiting for like the trolley to start moving could just turn it and then bone the door. But these are the kind of keys that like every emergency vehicle has a little set of Silcox keys in it, you know, so that kind of makes sense to me.
Margaret 53:10 Yeah, the symbolic locks, I think about like, a lot of people who live on land will have gates, right and you know, a gate that has no camera on it or whatever, like anyone can get past them, a lot of them aren't even locked. But a lot of them are pretty much there just for the like, the security of like, you put up a no trespassing sign and a gate and even if the gate is unlocked—it depends. I think there's a state-by-state—the police can't come in without a warrant. Or if they do, you can say leave, you know. And so it's not about, no one can get past this gate, how would anyone ever figure out how to like drive around the gate or something, right? But it's still a useful thing. And it's funny to me because I don't love a world of like, locks and fences and gates and stuff. But, you know, while we live in this world, it seems to make sense to figure out how to keep ourselves safe.
Deviant 54:08 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Barriers demarcate as much as they deny or delay entry.
Margaret 54:15 Yeah.
Deviant 54:15 And it's—as you point out the insidiousness—it's almost like copyright law. Like companies have to be dicks.
Margaret 54:22 Mm hmm.
Deviant 54:22 If they don't protect their patents and trademarks, they lose them. They're like, "Well, you didn't try to protect that." So they have to send all these cease and desist crap.
Margaret 54:28 Yeah.
Deviant 54:29 As you point out with your property, there's different protections under the Fourth Amendment for open fields versus curtilage. And curtilage is defined only by the boundaries that are, you know, enclosing it and a properly designate-able, like, this type of fence—and this was a very clear cut—not even like a barbed wire fence. But as a proper picket, you know, like you have a fence that limits visibility. These are all things that play into the factor of what level of privacy is someone trying to set for themselves. And that actually informs under the law what expectation of privacy or invasion of privacy is occurring under the Fourth Amendment?
Margaret 55:07 Okay. That shit's so wild. When you do your work or when you would imagine leaving and needing to be able to move through the world in a—where law looks very different—do you consider, like, most of what you do seems to be like non-destructive methods of entry, right? Do you also do destructive methods of entry like, you know, crowbars and bolt cutters and things like that?
Deviant 55:32 Yes. When authorized. We have definitely done that on different jobs. And sometimes, like it's—I just did a job on an army base last week where somebody—there was a GSA safe, like, wasn't operating correctly, I had to, as the sanitized language in our industry is, I had to "neutralize" the container. And it was very destructive, it was very loud in the middle of this like, you know, unit, I was just going to town with power tools.
Margaret 56:00 Okay.
Deviant 56:02 But outside—perimeter fence, we have definitely done some destructive work on perimeter fence when authorized. It's also really fun to trench under fences quietly or climb them. There are tools that are just known as "fence climbers," they look like these, oh, they're kind of J hook-looking tools where you can slip them through the fence on a chain link fence.
Margaret 56:23 Oh, interesting.
Deviant 56:23 And it just turns into a ladder instantly. It's, yeah, if you look up like, you know, "fence climbers" as a tool, you'll see that they're are these little folding feet that you can go boop, boop, boop, and then up over the fence, and boop, boop, boop, pull them out the other side.
Margaret 56:37 I miss being small enough that like, I remember when I suddenly was like, too large to just magically be able to climb chain link fences. You know?
Deviant 56:45 I have not been able to do so unaided for a while. I remember like, you know—
Margaret 56:50 I mean, when I was like a little kid. And yeah, your feet fit inside the link.
Deviant 56:56 Yeah. Your sneakers, you toes would be right in there, it was perfect.
Margaret 56:58 Yeah. Okay, yeah, because one of the reasons I asked about like, you know, people used to sort of laugh about it with dumpstering. I mean, most of the way that people get into dumpsters is usually sort of bypassing locks and things where you can like pull the hinge out of the back of the, you know, if it's locked in the front you just pull the hinge out, and then you pop it open the other way. Or, like, if it's a plastic lid, you can kind of just like, sometimes just jump on it, and it bends enough that it—
Deviant 57:23 Yeah.
Margaret 57:24 Goes through. But then you know, some people would be like, okay, we're gonna pick this lock. And then someone's like, well, it's a lot faster to just cut the lock. And now obviously you're changing your relationship with that particular grocery store when you cut the lock. But I just I think of like, I don't know, sometimes the expediency of destructive methods of entry seem um—okay, well, like another example of this: The first time I really hung out with locksmiths was when I was a squatter in Amsterdam and there would be—and squatting was legal. But it was only legal—so it's kind of similar to what you're talking about but like a hair more dangerous in that it's illegal to break into a building, even if it's empty, unless you successfully break in before the police stop you, and put a bed, table, and chair inside. And you can do all of that while the cops are outside trying to stop you as long as there's enough like people preventing the cops from getting to you. It was this weird game. It ended in about 2011 or so when they legalized squatting again.
Deviant 58:32 Oh, man, I never knew that.
Margaret 58:33 And so you'd have these teams of squatters who were mostly professional locksmiths. But it was interesting because they never picked locks. They would go the night before, they would check it out, and they would come back with crowbars and wedges. And they would break open the door because they have to do it in like 30 seconds while cops are trying to arrest them for doing exactly what they're doing, It's very... It's very weird. But so I grew up with that—I grew up? I was an adult—but like, you know, that—I came up into understanding physical security from this more destructive angle. I don't know, I was curious whether you had work with this kind of stuff.
Deviant 59:08 That's why—no, I mean, I'm not usually one to wish that any kind of destructive means was employed. I really do like the bypassing element because it splits those two worlds.
Margaret 59:20 Yeah.
Deviant 59:21 It's—bypassing can be as rapid as something destructive, but as light touch as a non-destructive entry, as a manipulation attack.
Margaret 59:31 No that makes sense. So you're not gonna throw a crowbar in your go bag?
Deviant 59:38 Probably not. I do in the truck. Like, in our truck we have, you know, bolt cutters and big pry bars and things. That's just because there's a job box in the back of the truck that has a bunch of different tools in it. And if you're in a situation where something is badly, you know, if literally, someone says hey, I need to get in this thing. I have no other way in. Well, okay, take out the bolt cutters with big cheater bars on them I guess.
Margaret 1:00:01 Yeah. Okay, so we're coming up on an hour. And so I guess I kind of wanted to ask whether you have any last thoughts or things about individual community preparedness or about physical security penetration. Including like, if someone's interested in knowing more about this or even getting into it professionally, do you have any advice for them?
Deviant 1:00:24 Sure, the real key word and that you've used there, and it's so very, very often absent from these discussions, is the word community.
Margaret 1:00:31 Mm hmm.
Deviant 1:00:32 You know, any kind of preparedness—it's like that whole, well, alright, I've got my gun with my magazine of ammo in it. Well, when you exhaust that magazine of ammo, either you better have really, really neutralized and like, prosecute every single threat in the vicinity. Because if you're out, you've just called a ton of attention to yourself and now all eyes on you. Like, what are you doing? You need to have your next move planned. The same thing holds true for any kind of preparedness, where, you know, much of what I said from the very beginning—Tara I, like, our plan is not, hey, let's get everything in the car and then what, like live in the car up front of the house? No, the whole idea is to get to the next place, get to the next page. Either get out to the cabin, get over to this person's house or that person's house. So having a community of people that expect, you that you say, if you ever picked up a phone and said something is bad, I'm coming, we would say, "Yeah, the guest room is ready, I'll pull down the Murphy bed." Or Likewise, if we call them and say, "Wow, it's no good here. Can we come out there?" They say, "Yeah, you know, we've got the whole separate property, you can take the tiny house on the east side of the property."
Margaret 1:01:38 Mhmm.
Deviant 1:01:40 So anyone who thinks that—and I think this is really the failing of that old generation of like, kind of 80s prepper, right?
Margaret 1:01:48 Yeah.
Deviant 1:01:48 That was a person who was in it for themselves. I don't want to paint any community with a broad brush like that. But a lot of that mindset was, "Well, I need to be ready. So I can withstand so that I can come out on top." Is really that—if you boil it down that's what a lot of I think the old mindset was.
Margaret 1:02:07 Yeah.
Deviant 1:02:08 And I really think that's dumber than shit.
Margaret 1:02:10 Yeah.
Deviant 1:02:11 Because it has to be: What do we do together?
Margaret 1:02:14 Yeah.
Deviant 1:02:14 Like, what tools do I have that you don't have? What skills do you have that I don't have? And having a network of people that you can turn to. If I encounter any—if I encounter a weird firearm I've never seen and I'm trying to figure out how to make it run right, I will call Carl is better than that at me—than me at that. Like he's just better. If someone else has, you know, dropped a deer, I can clean it, gut it, get prepared. But I say well, what else can I do with this deer? Well, Rich, you've been hunting deer since you are way younger than I ever have. What do I do with this deer? Having more people that you can turn to and having more skills—our brains can only learn so much so fast.
Margaret 1:02:52 Yeah.
Deviant 1:02:52 But someone else who knows music, someone else who knows medicine, that's how we—What's this? It's, um, hang on, I can check my notes... Oh, society! That's right. We've been doing this for a while. It's called fuckin society.
Margaret 1:03:06 Yeah. It's actually really good idea.
Deviant 1:03:09 Yeah.
Margaret 1:03:12 Yeah.
Deviant 1:03:13 Yeah. That's the part that gets lost in a lot of these weird Mad Max fantasy, "I'm the lone survivor" plans that people have. I don't get it.
Margaret 1:03:22 Yeah. I've talked a lot about how people and relationships are sort of the best resource that one could possibly have for almost every crisis situation.
Deviant 1:03:32 Yeah.
Margaret 1:03:33 And, yeah. Yeah, the bunker mentality is kind of what I usually end up calling it and it.
Deviant 1:03:40 Yeah, it's a good phrase.
Margaret 1:03:41 It's what turned me off of any of this stuff. But then at some point, I just was like, well, you know, I like being prepared for things. And, you know, a couple years ago a friend of mine, who I'm hoping to have on the show, is an environmental land use engineer. And she studies how food moves around the country and its environmental impact. And, you know, a couple years ago, like, she called me and she's like always the person that kind of calm me down for most of my, like, random political rants. But she was like, there's a decent chance that there's going to be interruptions in the food supply. And I was like, okay, like, at that point, you know, the thing that—that's when I started buying buckets of beans and rice. And I don't like, I haven't, like, filled, you know, sheds and sheds with them. But I'm like, "Well, I would like to be able to feed 10 people for six months in the worst case scenario," you know? And everyone's going to have different things that they're going to want to prepare with, but that's one that made sense to me. So.
Deviant 1:04:43 Yeah, were you speaking to her around like last March or April I guess?
Margaret 1:04:47 No, it was actually, it was about two years ago. It was a—well, maybe even a little bit longer than that, maybe three years ago. And it didn't come to pass but it was some stuff around drought that was happening a couple years ago that basically like, you know, and she called me back to be like, you know—okay, I don't think that that is actually happening this year. It wasn't like sound the alarm, you know? But yeah, no, it, it definitely—the sort of joke that I keep making is we're all preppers now, you know, and that, like, most people need to have at least three weeks of food at home now if they can afford it and have a good enough home to keep three weeks of food, you know?
Deviant 1:05:31 Yeah. And at the very beginning of the pandemic, when it was still—god I don't want to—I'm not dismissing this at all, but it was quirky fun to some people, like people called it "the breadmaking phase."
Margaret 1:05:44 Yeah.
Deviant 1:05:44 How many people were reaching out to—some people had starter for sourdough and some people didn't. And some people were sewing a lot more because they had a sewing machine and some people didn't. I personally was, like we had, we had plenty of yeast because Tara ordered it. We do have a sewing machine, but other people were borrowing it. And I was Johnny Ammo Seed around parts of Seattle because nobody could buy ammo. I was just giving away 556 to anybody. Like, just take these two mags and keep them around. Okay, get me back later. Get me back later. Yeah, I I share what I have and this is what I got.
Margaret 1:06:16 Yeah, no, it makes sense. It actually, it's funny, at the beginning of it all I was looking at my like, 400 rounds of 556. And I was like, well, ammo prices are up and 400 rounds is enough. Now I'm like, "Oh, god, I should have bought it when it was like only 50 cents a round."
Deviant 1:06:33 Yeah, that's perpetually—I mean, we all look back on what firearms used to cost and things that you could have bought them. That's a losing game in my mind to play. You fool yourself into thinking what we could have done. But thankfully—I've been divesting more and more of my ammo. I have been letting other people who go to the range with me—because up here in Seattle, in the Pacific Northwest, I've had a lot of people reach out to me from communities that aren't necessarily at home in the gun world. In fact, I just was on a podcast talking about this recently—Liberal Gun Club has a podcast—where I was talking about like a bunch of traditionally, like BIPOC people or LGBTQIA people have reached out like on DMs and said, "Hey, I'm interested in guns. I hate all the Trump bullshit at gun ranges, but you seem safe to talk to, can you tell me about guns." So a few of us will go to arrange us together. And these were folks who are just getting into shooting during the pandemic. And I was like, "Well, here, just, here's 50—box of 50 of 9 mil, like just use it and don't buy the $2 a round. Don't do that, please."
Margaret 1:06:44 Yeah. Yeah.
Deviant 1:07:38 I'd much rather it be purposed for this right now because I will always get some more later. And that same sort of mentality of, if I really get through two or three ammo, like a couple magazines with a pistol, you got to be on the next page. Because that's not a sustainable solution solving problems that way, right? Okay. Something's wrong if you haven't transitioned to the rifle or gotten the fuck out of dodge.
Margaret 1:08:03 Totally. No, that's actually—I really like that as a practical example of like, one of the things I talk about a lot in this show is that the reason to get the stuff while you can get it is so that you can get it to the people who need it when it's no longer available. And, you know, if nothing else, like, walking around a demo early on in the uprising handing out KN95 masks to people, you know, because it was like, well, I'm sitting on 100 of these and this is where they belong, and it just felt—I was like, ah! Cuz I had a hard time connecting, what do you do as like, when you're the person who thinks about preparedness, and it's hard to get your community to think about preparedness? Like, I remember at one point recently I was talking to my landmates and I was like, look like, if nothing else we have all that food. And my landmate was like, what, but did you stockpile salt? I'm like, yeah, of course, I have a giant can salt up—oh, you're making fun of me. And like, of course, I have a giant can of salt. I'm annoyed that I don't have like giant cans of coconut oil, you know? But that goes bad.
Deviant 1:09:10 That's true.
Margaret 1:09:11 But yeah no, so I really like that you been doing that. And I've had the same experience with firearms where people who I know from, like, you know, pretty strong liberal backgrounds are just like, well, I'm queer and don't want to die. What do I need? And then they hate that my answer is an AR 15. They hate it. But I explain why and then they think about it and they either do or don't, you know? Yeah.
Deviant 1:09:42 That's literally the the one-hour sort of talk that I give on a privately open/semi open sort of Zoom maybe once every month or so now. It's just people who are in that position where they're like, this isn't my community but I want this knowledge. I don't want to look foolish and waste money. What do I do?
Margaret 1:10:00 Yeah.
Deviant 1:10:00 And I have this whole little rundown of a talk.
Margaret 1:10:02 Yeah.
Deviant 1:10:03 There's a billion talks out there that are like, "Intro to Fire Arms."
Margaret 1:10:06 Yeah.
Deviant 1:10:06 That's fine. That's out there. I have what I call—it feels like, for many of us who weren't the popular kid because I certainly wasn't—it's like going to a new school, and you're in the lunchroom for the first time. And you're like, where do I sit? Am I gonna be an idiot? Am I gonna? Am I gonna have no friends? Am I gonna make a bad impression? It's little questions like 223 versus 556. Are they the same?
Margaret 1:10:27 Yeah.
Deviant 1:10:28 And I walk people through. I'm like, well, clearly they're not because they have different names.
Margaret 1:10:31 Right.
Deviant 1:10:32 But the technical answer is they effectively are except for small minutia.
Margaret 1:10:36 Yeah.
Deviant 1:10:36 And then the very technical answer is, but that small minutia means a whole lot to a few very serious people. And here's the details.
Margaret 1:10:44 Yeah. Oh god, yeah. And all that stuff, like turns people off anyway, I think, when you're just like, have to like, know, all of this super specialized vocabulary when it's like—but then it's funny, because then I, you know, I started off being like, "Oh, fuck all the super specialized vocabulary." And then the more I dive into it, the more I'm like, "Oh, that's actually kind of interesting," you know. But it's the same with all prepping shit. I'm like, mostly I just want people to fucking buy extras when they can of their food and like, have some plans and start talking to their friends and neighbors about what to do in terms of times of crisis, you know?
Deviant 1:11:22 Yeah.
Margaret 1:11:23 Well, I think I've probably stolen enough of your time. How can people who want to see more of these talks or—how can people find you online?
Deviant 1:11:34 Well, I am at davianollam, the unpronounceable, unspellable, you know, get it wrong easily name: D-E-V-I-A-N-T-O-L-L-A-M, or probably down in show notes or something. I am that on many platforms. I am on YouTube. I'm on Twitter, I'm on Instagram, I mostly just a professional swear word sayer on the internet. But I did have this blog post that I'll throw you a link to, it's kind of the—people often email me, I regularly get people who reach out and say, "Hey, you know, I really, thank you for this material. It's been really enlightening. But what you do is so cool. How do I get into that field? I think I might be able to do this." And I have a whole answer, it's like a very long answer that I've been tweaking and adding to over the years. And it's mostly sort of my own story of the path I took and everyone's path is different, but it's hopefully full of some guidance that people might have. And I'm happy to share that link to anyone who wants, and the industry is always growing. The tech community and the hacker world are nothing if not expanding and welcoming, I hop—if you talk to the right people. There's a few fashion hustle hackers, but fortunately, no one pays attention to them anymore. Yeah, this is a great community to be involved in. Don't be afraid to reach out, don't be afraid to ask questions. I think the hacker community is really defined as welcoming to those who come with a thirst for knowledge, not a pretense of "Oh I'm the biggest badass in the room." You're not gonna get traction with that. But, "Hey, what you're working on, it looks cool. Can you tell me about it?" Is a great way to start with a lot of people.
Margaret 1:13:09 Okay. All right. Well, thank you so much.
Deviant 1:13:13 Thank you for having me. This is wonderful.
Margaret 1:13:19 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please tell people about it, please post about it and tell people in person and stuff like that. Word has been going out about the show and that makes it kind of all feel worthwhile to me, because the goal of doing this is for people to hear it. And if you tell algorithms, the algorithms will tell other people that what you listen to is worth them listening to. So it's why liking and sharing and subscribing and rating and reviewing and all that bullshit has a really disproportionate impact in terms of, you know, the amount of time it takes to do those things—which is actually really fucked up and I feel really dirty every single time I advocate that people do all those things. But that's the way of it, at least right now. If you want to support the podcast more directly, you can do so by supporting me on Patreon. my Patreon is patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. And I put up a lot of scenes, although I'm pretty far behind on that because I've been focused so much on the podcast. But there's still like almost 40 I think scenes at this point they can go back through and read if you want and so put up different music from my various projects and things like that. And if you make less money than if you live off of less money than I make on Patreon, just messaged me and I'll get you everything I do for free because that's the direction that money should go in as much as money should exist. But in particular, I would like to thank Chris and Nora and Haas the dog, Kirk, Willow, Natalie, Sam, Christopher, Shane and the Compound for making this podcast possible. And I'm particularly excited for all the support I've been getting because now I'm able to hire transcriptions—a transcriptionist? Transcriber? I haven't actually asked her what her job title is. But I've been able to hire someone to transcribe the episodes and I hope that that makes it more accessible to more people. And I, you know, it's a lot of work to do that. And I'm really appreciative of the transcriber who's listening to me right now typing this—well, not literally right now, but will be listening to this later and typing it. So it's really funny to be typing about yourself, isn't it transcriber? (Transcriber note: yes it is.) Anyway, I hope everyone listening has a really great time in the near future, stays safe. Thanksgiving was always shit. It's never been anything but shit. And it's extra shit this year. And everyone has their own opinions about that. And the dark is coming for us, but then the sun will return.
If you have been contacted by federal law enforcement as a result of the uprising, contact the National Lawyer Guild's federal defense hotline at 212-679-2811
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy and instagram @margaretkilljoy. You can also support her and this show by sponsoring her patreon at https://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. Your support has allowed us to get transcriptions available of the podcast for folks who gain information better that way!
Transcript 1:13:23 SPEAKERS Margaret, Mo
Margaret 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the End Times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. I use she or they pronouns. In this week's episode I'm talking to Moira Meltzer-Cohen, who is a lawyer—not just any lawyer, but is my lawyer. It's kind of weird that you get to use the possessive on lawyers. We're going to be talking about repression and how the government likes to crack down on protest and revolt. And we're going to be talking about, basically, know your rights, like how to interact with the police and how to interact with the feds. We'll also be answering some questions that you all had from social media. And we keep referencing the fact that we're going to talk about grand juries in this episode, but during the course of the interview we don't in fact get to it because Mo is a remarkably busy person, as one might imagine, in this particular time in the world, and didn't have time. And also, the episode was already gone on for about an hour. We will almost certainly have her back at some point in to talk about grand juries because they're an important thing to understand from an anti repression point of view. However, at the moment, primarily, people are dealing with police and federal law enforcement. And so that's what we focus on. This podcast as a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network.
Jingle 01:39 Rebel Steps is a podcast about taking action. Season one offered insights into how individuals can join movements. Season two focuses on the ways people can work together to build these movements. Organizing in groups presents many challenges. How do you care for each other and protect each other in the midst of political struggle? How do you lift up the voices of everyone in your group? How do you work through the inevitable disagreements? All of these questions have complicated answers. As I explore these questions. You'll hear voices and stories from my community in New York City, spotlighting a range of organizers from the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council, Outlive Them, Pop Gem, Democratic Socialists of America, Libertarian Socialist Caucus, and more. Just like the first season, I returned Paulo Friere's quote, "What can we do today, so that we can do tomorrow what we cannot do today," but this time with the realization that building our capacity will necessarily happen alongside others. Find Rebel Steps on Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts and check us out on Twitter or Patreon.
Margaret 02:55 So, welcome to the show, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then any organizational or political affiliations that you feel like make sense with what you're going to talk about.
Mo 03:07 Sure. I'm Moira Meltzer-Cohen, everyone calls me Mo. I am—my pronouns are she are they and I am affiliated with the National Lawyers Guild, and I am a non-denominational anti-authoritarian.
Margaret 03:26 We seem to be getting a lot of those recently. I think that's good. So I first met Mo when we were both working on a campaign for someone named Jerry Koch who was a political prisoner who, I guess, is now a lawyer.
Mo 03:39 Yeah, he is.
Margaret 03:41 And that's amazing. And, and yeah, Mo was just out of law school and then managed to write a motion that got someone free in a way that I think, to my understanding, kind of changed some of the ways that grand jury defense is done in this country or is understood in this country. Is that overly hyperbolic, or?
Mo 04:03 That is hyperbolic. I wrote a motion that is a type of motion that has been used since I think the 60s or 70s called a grumbles motion. It just, it's unusual, partly because grand jury litigation is unusual. But I don't think it was precedent-setting but it was—I didn't expect it to work. And it did.
Margaret 04:32 Okay, so you saved, you changed everything and—but you did very specifically set someone free right out of law school, as I understand, or right after passing the bar. And so we met doing work on that campaign and then ever since then Mo has been kind of the card that I keep in my pocket and a literal and metaphorical sense of—I mean, I've literally had nightmares where the police are holding me and I'm like, "I have to call Mo, you have to let me call Mo!" And then like Mo has come in and saved me.
Mo 05:09 I promise I'll do my best.
Margaret 05:11 And Mo has also done a lot of work for a lot of trans prisoners, including you were part of the most recent campaign to get Chelsea Manning out of jail. Is that right?
Mo 05:21 That's right. I did not represent her while she was serving time after the court martial.
Margaret 05:28 Mm hmm.
Mo 05:29 I represented her more recently, when she was subpoenaed to give testimony before a federal grand jury, and was then confined as a result of her refusal to do so.
Margaret 05:40 Okay. And so I wanted to get Mo on the show because I mean, for one thing, you know, she's an amazing lawyer. And also because so much of her work has focused specifically on anti-repression work. And, you know, okay, so what am I doing talking to a lawyer on a show that's extensively about preparing for, you know, end times or bad times or crisis or disaster? And, I mean, if you're listening to the show, you probably understand that revolt is absolutely an essential part of individual community and even probably species survival at this point. And, of course, revolt will always come with legal consequences, because what does one revolt against but a system that usually has laws and things. And so that's why we have lawyers on our side. And so I want to talk to Mo today about—we're gonna talk about a couple specific things, and we're gonna answer some questions that came from you all. And some of the stuff that we're going to talk about is we're going to talk about what to do in terms of when the police—like how to interact with the police, how to interact with the feds, and then we're going to talk about grand juries, which are annoyingly complex and not a simple thing to wrap your head around. But I think a very important part of repression and anti-repression to understand. Does that kind of cover what you're hoping to talk about?
Mo 07:04 Sure.
Margaret 07:06 Okay, so let's start with the real basics. Let's start with a Know Your Rights. You know, I'm walking down the street, maybe I'm leaving a protest, and the police are like, "Hey, come over here, we want to talk to you." What do I do?
Mo 07:22 Um, I mean, the first thing that I want to say is some of this varies state by state. But by and large, you know, you do have some pretty established constitutional rights. And the first thing I would say is if you're approached by an officer, and they ask you a question, you know, in the same way that if some stranger walks up to you, and starts giving you the power quiz, you have no obligation to stick around and talk to them. You know, you have no obligation necessarily to stick around and talk to the police. So the very first thing that you would do is you would say, "Am I free to go? Or am I being detained?" And if they say, "Well, you're not being detained," then you bounce. If they say, "No, you are being detained." Ask why. They might not tell you, they might make fun of you, they might tell you something that's completely off the wall. They might say, "Well, you fit the description." But whatever they say or don't say, it's information. And I want to be very clear that, you know, asking these questions, it's not magic. Very often the police neither know nor care what your rights are, you know, most of this stuff that I'm going to say isn't particularly powerful in the moment of a law enforcement interaction. But it's still really important to ask these questions and invoke the rights that I'm going to try to teach you to invoke, because later when you're in front of a judge, if you have done this, then your lawyer can make certain kinds of arguments and try to mitigate the harm that can be caused by interactions with law enforcement in ways that, you know, your lawyer can't mitigate that harm if you have not invoked your rights.
Margaret 09:22 Okay.
Mo 09:23 So you want to say, "Am I free to go? Or am I being detained?" Because if you don't ask anything, you know, any further interaction that you end up having with that officer is going to be construed as something that you consented to.
Margaret 09:39 Right.
Mo 09:40 Right. And so if they say you're free to go, bounce, if they say you're being detained, ask why. Make a note of what the officer looks like. If you can see their badge number, make a note of it. If you can see their name, make a note of it. I mean, mentally obviously—you are probably not standing there with a notebook. If they ask if they can search you, say no. If they try to search you, say, "I do not consent to this search." Very often it can be really important to say, "I do not consent to this search," very loudly and clearly so that other people around you and their videos can pick it up. Right? Because an important part of being able to argue that you invoked your rights is being able to provide evidence that you invoked your rights.
Margaret 10:30 Right.
Mo 10:31 Right. So you want witnesses you want people's video to reflect that you said you didn't consent to a search.
Margaret 10:40 Yeah, one of the things... go ahead.
Mo 10:42 Well, again, this doesn't mean that they're not going to search you.
Margaret 10:45 Do they have a right to search you for like—like I used to, you know, when I was more of a street kid and squatter and things like that, I would be stopped by police on a regular basis, two or three times a day, at least twice a week for about a year or two. And one of the things that always seemed like it was part of that encounter was at the very least sort of their right to basically, like, pull the clip knife out of my pocket.
Mo 11:11 Mm hmm.
Margaret 11:11 And that kind of thing. Like, what are they allowed to do, regardless?
Mo 11:15 So they're allowed—if they have a reason to stop you, they're allowed to pat you down over your clothes to look for weapons in the event that they have a reasonable fear for their safety. Now, who gets to define reasonable?
Margaret 11:30 Them, I'm guessing.
Mo 11:31 Yes, they get to define reasonable and this is relevant, basically, you know, all the time, right? Who defines the word reasonable? It's going to be the police, at least until you get in front of a judge. This is relevant, for example, with another thing I was going to say, which is you have a right to film the police, you have a First Amendment right to film the police and the performance of their official duties from a reasonable distance.
Margaret 11:58 Mm hmm.
Mo 11:59 Right. So it's not a crime to film the police, it can be unlawful to do anything that the police can construe as interfering with their duties.
Margaret 12:09 Okay.
Mo 12:09 Right. So, you know, certainly I would advise someone against getting in between an officer and the person they're trying to arrest in order to get a better shot. You know, and if the police ask you to back up, what I think can be useful is to say out loud, I'm backing up and take one step back. Right.
Margaret 12:34 Yeah, that's usually what I've managed to do is basically be like, "Okay, how far do you want me to go," and then I walk like two feet. And I'm like, "This good? I'm here now." But that's actually usually me kind of often trying to—I would never interfere with the police, but maybe have the police pay more attention to me than the people that they would prefer to be paying attention to in that moment, is something that sometimes occurs to me. And so I try to play this very polite game of, you know, continuing to engage them to ask them very specific questions about how far I'm backing up.
Mo 13:12 Okay.
Margaret 13:14 This is gonna be an episode where I tell my lawyer many things that Mo probably wishes I didn't do. Now that I realized…
Mo 13:22 That—you know, just as long as you're aware that this conversation is not privileged.
Margaret 13:27 I don't have—Wait, no, but I thought this whole podcast was privileged now, I thought that was the whole thing?
Mo 13:34 Oh, I don't think there's a podcaster privilege.
Margaret 13:38 Interesting, interesting. But if I have enough clout, then I'm immune to the criminal justice system?
Mo 13:46 Well, I mean, I think that that's clear, because we can see what happened to certain Twitter accounts, once people stopped having enough clout.
Margaret 13:54 Mm hmm. Okay, so just to continue to interject with like, along the way of like—yeah, whenever I've done that, "Am I being detained?" I've actually had a much higher success rate than I initially thought I was going to have with that tactic.
Mo 14:12 I think that if you have an opportunity to ask, you may have pretty good success with it. The thing that usually happens with most of my clients is there's never an opportunity to ask, right? People are—I mean, I work a lot with protesters. So I do a lot of stuff with mass arrests. And in a mass arrest... You know, I have had one experience where I observed a group of people who were kettled, shouting in unison, "Are we being detained?" And the officers eventually determined that they didn't have a basis to detain them, and so they let them go.
Margaret 14:53 Amazing.
Mo 14:54 But typically in a mass arrest, cops show up, use arrest as a form of crowd control, and everybody sort of gets taken off the street with—and there's no opportunity to say, "Am I being detained?" You're just knocked to the ground and flex cuffed. But to the extent that you have an opportunity to ask these questions they can be, you know, it can sort of force a decision. And sometimes that decision will be, you know, we don't actually have enough cause to hold this person.
Margaret 15:27 Okay.
Mo 15:29 I think the more important stuff is being able to, you know that's—asking, "Am I being detained? And if so, why?" Is good for information gathering. Even if it doesn't result in you being released. Right? Saying, "I don't consent to a search," is really important down the road, because if you've explicitly said that you do not consent to a search, anything that may have been yielded or found in a search that you haven't consented to can be suppressed as evidence, right? It would be considered an unlawful search or it could be considered an unlawful search, a violation of your Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure. And a judge might say, "Well, yeah, okay, we found this thing on you during a search, but we can't use it as evidence against you because we obtained it— the police obtained it unlawfully."
Margaret 16:31 Okay.
Mo 16:32 Right,
Margaret 16:32 At what point are they allowed to—go ahead...
Mo 16:35 So they are allowed to pat you down over your clothes to check for weapons if they have a reasonable fear for their safety which, of course, they get to define. And that definition is expansive, you know, so in order to then search you, you will be—if you're arrested—you will be searched incident to arrest, okay, right? The circumstances under which they are, quote, "allowed" to search you are extremely complicated, extremely fact specific, can vary from state to state, are different depending on whether you are walking around, are in a car, are in your home, are in someone else's home, are in someone else's car. So I don't think it's particularly useful to get too into it, because in any event, you're not going to win an argument with a police officer who wants to search you.
Margaret 17:29 Right.
Mo 17:29 Right. The sort of bottom line here is to say, "I'm not consenting to any searches." Now that said, people know, really, what is safest for them. And sometimes, it can be safest to consent to a search. I'm not going to advise you to consent to a search, but I'm going to respect your expertise about your own safety.
Margaret 17:55 Okay.
Mo 17:56 And that's a personal decision that you're going to have to make in the moment.
Margaret 18:00 Right.
Mo 18:01 What I want you to understand is that you don't have an obligation—you don't have a legal obligation—to consent to a search, no matter what the police tell you.
Margaret 18:13 Right.
Mo 18:14 And ultimately, the question of the lawfulness of a search is not a question that could be answered by a police officer, or by you. It's a question that's going to be answered, if at all, by a judge. Later.
Margaret 18:28 Okay.
Mo 18:29 And so arguing about the lawfulness of a search is probably a great way to escalate things out of control.
Margaret 18:37 Right.
Mo 18:38 But if there's a way for you to say, safely, "I don't consent to this search." You can do that.
Margaret 18:45 Yeah, like kind of ah—when I talk to people, I personally—and this is clearly legal advice, because I'm not a lawyer—I basically tell people to try and be like, polite but firm with police. You know, my literal, like, thing I would just say constantly is, "I'm sorry, Officer, but am I being detained?" And I would like definitely say, "Sir," I would say like, "I'm sorry, Officer," I'd be very polite, but I would always be like, you know, "I do not consent to a search," or whatever.
Mo 19:18 And you and I have certain characteristics that make that less dangerous for us to say, than, you know, and so, you know, policing—the issue with policing, it's not about law, it's about power. And the distribution of power is uneven in very predictable ways. So when I'm talking about the law, I want to be very clear that the law is a separate thing from power. It's a separate thing from justice. You know, this is what your rights are, here's how you can invoke them.
Margaret 19:51 Right.
Mo 19:53 I cannot stress enough that there is a difference between what your rights are and what policing looks like.
Margaret 20:01 Yeah. Yep.
Mo 20:05 So I'm going to move on from searches. You know, just to reiterate this, again, it is a fool's errand to argue with a cop about whether a search is lawful. What you can do is invoke your right against unlawful searches or against unreasonable searches by saying, "I do not consent to this search." You need to know that if you are arrested, you will be searched when you get to the precinct. If you are arrested, the very first thing that you should do is start saying, "I am not resisting."
Margaret 20:40 Okay.
Mo 20:40 Because police officers almost universally will start screaming, "Stop resisting," whether or not you are resisting. And it can be really important, again, for evidence that's going to be gathered and presented later if there is evidence that you were saying, "I am not resisting."
Margaret 20:58 God, I fucking hate police. Yep. Okay.
Mo 21:03 The other thing that you need to say—and this is the one sort of invocation of rights that is powerful and that you do have control over—is I want you to say, and I want you to practice—everyone listening to this, I want you to practice ten times a day saying, "I am going to remain silent and I want to speak to a lawyer." You have to say that you're going to remain silent.
Margaret 21:30 Okay.
Mo 21:30 And then you'll have to actually remain silent. Because if you don't actually remain silent, you have waived your right against compelled self-incrimination. The Fifth Amendment is in the constitution for a reason. There is never a compelling reason to talk to a cop, before you have spoken to a lawyer.
Margaret 21:57 Okay.
Mo 21:59 It's okay to tell the cops things that they already know about you like your name, your date of birth, your address.
Margaret 22:09 Are you legally obliged to provide that information and or an ID?
Mo 22:13 It depends. It depends on what state you're in. Some states are what are called "stop and identify" states where it's an independent crime to refuse to show ID or to refuse to identify yourself. Other states, it's not a crime. But it's—it can make your life much harder. So for example, in the state of New York, if you're stopped on the street for something that would be considered a ticketable offense, a summonsable offense, a cop can write you a summons on the street and cut you loose if you show them your ID. And if you don't, they will take you in and process you until they can confirm your identity, which is, you know, four to eighteen hours out of your life that you're not getting back.
Margaret 23:01 Right.
Mo 23:02 So, you know, my advice is typically that anything you can do to abbreviate an interaction with law enforcement is desirable, like the longer and interaction with law enforcement goes on, the less good it is, the less safe you are.
Margaret 23:17 So my general understanding of like, where that would come in, and the process would be like, a cop is like, comes up to me and is like, "Let's see your ID." I say, "Am I being detained?" And if he says, "Yes, you're being detained," I ask, "What for?" And then he gives me a bullshit reason—I've literally been told because I don't know who you are. That was once the reason I was being detained. Which I was like, I had a feeling that wasn't gonna work well in court. But I also had a, like, at that point it seemed to me that there'd be no reason to argue, because a cop is allowed to say whatever they want, as far as I understand about why you're being detained, even if it's not later justifiable. So at that point, once I'm being detained and they want to see my ID, at that point I give them my ID. That's like the understanding that I've been under for a long time. Would that...
Mo 24:02 If they give you a chance. Right? I mean, this is all—I want to be really clear. again, like, when I'm saying, "Oh, these are the questions that you ask," a lot of times, you don't get an opportunity to ask all of these questions. Right? So even if you get a chance to say, "Am I being detained?" So for example, I was arrested once doing jail support. And what happened was that the cop rolled up and said, "Let me see some ID," and I said, "Am I being detained?" And then I got thrown in a van.
Margaret 24:34 Right.
Mo 24:35 Right. So...
Margaret 24:42 Yeah, so your mileage may vary. Yeah.
Mo 24:44 Yeah, mileage may vary. That's exactly right.
Margaret 24:47 Okay.
Mo 24:47 Um, again, the police very frequently neither know nor care what, what the sort of phases of an interaction are legally supposed to be. So, you know, I have a lot of people ask me things like, "Well, when can the cops kick in my door?" And, of course, the answer is: whenever they want to. The cops can kick in your door at any time, for any reason, or no reason at all. The question is, what do they say later to justify it? And again, that's sort of the same thing in this situation. So, if you are asked for ID, it can be really important to know, given what whatever state you're in, whether it is an independent crime to refuse to identify yourself. In some states it is and in some states it is not. In all states, I would venture to say, it can make your life much more difficult if you refuse to give ID. I want to take a second and talk about trans people and the apparent, you know, the inability of police to perceive gender non-conforming people as who they are based on their ID.
Margaret 26:09 Right.
Mo 26:12 You have a First Amendment right to use any name you want to use, whether or not it is your legal name, as long as you are not using that name to avoid civil or criminal liability.
Margaret 26:26 Okay
Mo 26:27 That said, if you're having an interaction with law enforcement, you know—again, this is a safety calculation that you are going to have to perform for yourself—it is not a crime to tell the police, you know, whatever your real name, the name that you use, to give them that name. It can make your life harder.
Margaret 26:53 Right.
Mo 26:54 And depending on what state you are in, there may or may not be any training or protocols for the detention of trans prisoners. Right? So you shouldn't get charged for giving the police a name that is not your dead name. But it can present some complications with respect to, like, what happens if they print you, or what happens if they look at your ID, or they demand your ID and the name is different and, you know, if your appearance is different than your ID.
Margaret 27:38 That's why I always refer to, instead of a dead name, I tend to think of it as my Fuck You name. Because the only people that I'm giving my legal name to are people like, fuck you, like, I don't care about you to tell you my actual name. And obviously every trans person is going to handle that differently, you know, in the same way of like navigating walking through this world. Like, if you go to a demonstration, choosing what your gender presentation is versus like what your ID says it's like, obviously, super complicated.
Mo 28:11 Yeah. I mean, it's a whole sort of separate thing that I could like, really get into, but I don't want to minimize it, right? I'm not want to say like, Oh, it's fine to just give the police to tell the police, you're not giving them your state name and to give them your real name. You know, do what feels safest. And I'm not saying that you never will be charged for, like, what would be called, like, false personation. I have certainly—not in quite a while—but I have seen people charged with false personation when they give their real name and not their dead name. It is always immediately dismissed.
Margaret 28:56 Cool.
Mo 28:58 But it's scary. And it's traumatizing. And it's, you know, it's an act of violence by the state that's targeted to be transphobic.
Margaret 29:11 Yeah.
Mo 29:11 And it's a shitty power move. I'm not going to say that there aren't consequences to it. Of course, there are. Cops are notoriously transphobic, as are many judges, as are many prosecutors. I suppose, as are many defense attorneys, I guess. But particularly depending on where you are in the country. But I do want to sort of reassure people that, you know, I don't think there are lasting legal consequences for just using whatever name it is that you use and the pronouns that you use,
Margaret 29:50 Okay.
Mo 29:51 Okay.
Margaret 29:52 So, to go back to—okay, in this situation, you're now in jail, and you're saying, "I would like to remain silent," if you do end up talking, you said that that ends up like ruining your—it gets rid of your your right to remain silent. Can you then—you can then re-invoke that?
Mo 30:10 Absolutely.
Margaret 30:11 Okay.
Mo 30:12 Absolutely. So this is really important. So you say, "I'm going to remain silent and I want to speak to a lawyer." Then you remain silent. If the police are asking you questions about, like, "Do you know, do you expect someone at your arraignment? Do you have a lawyer? Would you like a phone call?" Obviously, you know, answer those questions. If they start asking you questions about what you had for breakfast, what your favorite baseball team is, anything that is substantive, my advice would be to stay, "I'm going to remain silent and I want to speak to a lawyer." I genuinely do not think there is a reason to engage with police about sports, politics, music, the weather—literally anything, ever.
Margaret 30:55 What if they just want to be your friend? And then you can make friends with them? And then they'll just let you go?
Mo 30:59 Mm hmm. Yes, it has never worked. I very frequently say you cannot talk yourself out of an arrest, but you can always talk yourself into a conviction.
Margaret 31:11 Mm hmm.
Mo 31:13 Please don't talk to cops. Please just don't do it. We really, really want you to invoke your right to remain silent because you cannot unsay something you have said to a cop. Right? If you need to use the bathroom, say you need to use the bathroom. Okay, if you need a drink of water, so you need a drink of water. That said, if they give you a bottle of water, don't touch it to your lips, because they'll take it. They'll take that bottle and collect your DNA from it and put it in a database.
Margaret 31:47 Oh god.
Mo 31:49 So that's cool. And normal. And totally not dystopic.
Margaret 31:55 Yeah.
Mo 31:56 Anyway. But if you need, you know, if you have human needs: food, water, a phone call a bathroom, medical attention. Or if someone that you're in with needs those things, say so. Advocate for yourself. Do what you need to do. And then re invoke your right to remain silent. And if they start asking you questions about anything that happened leading up to your arrest, anyone you hang out with—if someone in your cell starts asking you those questions. You know? Don't answer those questions. That's nobody's business. That is information to which the state is not entitled.
Margaret 32:35 Mm hmm.
Mo 32:36 Right? We don't do their job for them. So invoke your right to remain silent, talk to the extent that you need to talk in order to get your needs met or in order to advocate for other people, and then re-invoke your right to remain silent.
Margaret 32:54 How do you get a lawyer in this situation?
Mo 32:57 Typically, you are either cut loose at the precinct with some kind of ticket that says, "Come back to court on this day," or you're going to be taken in front of a judge. Typically, if you're taken in front of a judge, you will have a lawyer appointed for you, either at that time or very shortly thereafter. There are states where you have to apply for a public defender. And that process sometimes is very onerous. You know, so you may not be given a lawyer before you, before—I would say—you need one. But you know, you're not going to be when you get in front of a judge, you shouldn't be asked any questions other than "How do you plead?" So there's not a lot of opportunity to incriminate yourself at that point. What I would say is, you need to understand that when I talk about invoking your right to silence, I'm not just talking about things that you say directly to cops. I'm talking about like, anything you say, quote "publicly," not just to a cop, but anything that a cop could discover can and very much will be used against you. So if you have been arrested, don't post about it necessarily on social media. Certainly don't do that before speaking to an attorney. Don't talk about anything that happened leading up to that arrest to anyone except your lawyer or maybe your doctor or your therapist, right? Because those are relationships where there is a privilege, right? Where the things that you say to those people don't have to be disclosed.
Margaret 34:40 Like this podcast.
Mo 34:42 Right. Like this podcast is totally privileged, Margaret. It falls under the attorney podcast or privilege.
Margaret 34:52 Yeah. Okay.
Mo 34:55 I'm going to get us fired.
Margaret 35:06 Does that kind of cover your rights in casual encounters, detainment, and arrest?
Mo 35:11 Yes.
Margaret 35:12 Okay.
Mo 35:12 Yes, I really cannot stress enough how important it is not to post about protests or unlawful activity or who you're hanging out with at the anarchist bookfair on social media. And if you're doing the live streaming thing, or taking photographs or trying to do some kind of documentation, the people who need to be observed in this situation are police officers because they are the people who have power that they abuse, right? So if you feel very strongly that you need to take pictures at protests, take pictures of the police. Because taking pictures of protesters, even if they're not doing anything unlawful, can have really serious legal consequences for them. So if you see somebody and, you know, the cops can see someone in a photograph who, you know, they believe might have witnessed something unlawful, that person then can be the target of a grand jury subpoena, right? Which we'll talk about in a minute. But I mean, it can be extremely disruptive to somebody to be called before a grand jury, even if they don't know anything about the crime that's supposed to be investigated. So, you know, I just—please, please stop posting pictures on social media. I would like fewer clients!
Margaret 36:45 That's how you know you're a lawyer on the good side. "I want fewer clients."
Mo 36:51 I want my whole profession to be obsolete.
Margaret 36:54 Yeah.
Mo 36:55 But in the meantime...
Margaret 36:56 Yeah. Um, should we talk about grand juries?
Mo 37:03 Yeah, I also wanted to talk about something... Oh, yeah. Don't take pictures of protesters, because, um, there's like a whole group of non state actors, who will doxx you. And we don't need that either.
Margaret 37:19 I think that there's somewhere—and it's probably more complex—and this really gets into the—maybe you're the wrong person since you're a lawyer and you have—where you're coming from about it. There is this like, awful balance between, on some level, the visibility of these demonstrations is what has allowed them to generalize. And there's a certain amount of safety that I think that can only be found through the generalization of revolt, right? And I feel like I want people to, like, do a better job of like—I mean, you kind of covered this. It's like if you're going to, you know, film these things, like film the cops instead of the protesters or whatever. But like, the pictures of the burning cop cars are a huge reason why these results are so big. On the other hand, people's lives are ruined, because there's pictures of ruined cop car—burned cop cars.
Mo 38:08 Look, I will say this. I say this a lot. People get to make their own decisions about the degree of visibility they want. And so when I'm saying don't take pictures of protesters, you know, what I really mean is like, consent is important. And maybe people who are in those group shots haven't—or those crowd shots—haven't consented to that.
Margaret 38:33 Totally.
Mo 38:34 And I think that, you know, you don't have to stop talking about your politics on social media. Like saying that you're an anarchist on social media at this point in history is not unlawful. It's still covered by the very First Amendment, and you can do that. And, you know, it doesn't mean—you know, anything that you put on social media, of course, has the potential to invite increased scrutiny of you and your community. And that doesn't mean that the solution is self-censorship. I think the solution is courage. But I want people to be aware of the risks that they may be running and the ways in which they may be inviting increased surveillance.
Margaret 39:22 Yeah.
Mo 39:23 Of not only themselves, but their friends.
Margaret 39:26 Yeah. And especially like, what were you talking about, about shooting pictures of crowds and things like that, you know, because it's a it's a different thing between someone who—and I even, I wouldn't... You know, it's a different thing between posing in front of a burned out cop car with no one else behind you. Which is a terrible idea, like, actually. But it's—obviously if you're taking pictures of people attacking a cop car, it's a very, very different situation. Okay, so we just took a break to talk about how we're going to how we're going to organize the rest of the episode and We determined it would be more fun to cut to some of the questions from Twitter and Facebook first. And because you all had a bunch of questions, and they're not quite the same script that Mo has to give to day in and day out to teach people their rights. So, let's see... So one person wanted to ask about jury nullification and what that concept is and whether or not that's like a useful thing we should be pursuing.
Mo 40:36 Um, I think that, as I said before, the law is not always consistent with justice, and certainly is not a one-to-one correspondence. And jury nullification is a concept that acknowledges that. And jury nullification is basically when a jury determines that the person who is on trial did, in fact, engage in the conduct alleged, and that that conduct was, strictly speaking unlawful, but they determined that they believe as a matter of conscience, that the law criminalizing whatever the behavior was is itself so unjust that they refuse to enforce it. And so they find the defendant not guilty, basically, as a matter of justice, even if they know very well that there's no serious debate that the defendant did, in fact, do whatever it is they were alleged to have done.
Margaret 41:44 Okay. That sounds gloriously optimistic in a way that I might not share. Okay.
Mo 41:49 I think it's—it is something that happens and certainly defense attorneys can advise juries that that is a that is a possibility. A defense attorney can certainly say, you know, you are not required as a jury to come to a unanimous conclusion and, in fact, you must vote your conscience. You are legally required to vote your conscience and so you cannot, you know, you must not allow yourself to be bullied into reaching a verdict or into agreeing with your fellow jurors. You know, I think there are—it has some utility. I think it's a really fascinating concept. I know there's a really lovely illustrated zine about jury nullification.
Margaret 42:40 Okay.
Mo 42:40 It's by the guy who wrote, "Go the Fuck to Sleep."
Margaret 42:43 Oh, wow. Okay.
Mo 42:46 Yeah. It's a fascinating concept. It is lawful for a jury to nullify.
Margaret 42:53 Okay. Does that take consensus of the entire jury?
Mo 42:56 Ah, no.
Margaret 42:57 Interesting. Cool. Okay. So then the next question, which I'll say how is was originally phrased and then possibly present a rephrasing? "How do I stop paying taxes entirely and never get caught in Minecraft?" Which I might—the question that I would maybe ask—I actually, I warned you ahead of time that I was gonna ask this question. I clearly am not advo—whatever. Anyway, I would, you know, the rephrasing might be, "What are the means by which tax evasion laws are enforced?"
Mo 43:29 The IRS has federal agents, and you can be federally charged for tax evasion. I am a lawyer and my job is not to advise people on what they should do or what they should not do, but to advise them of the potential consequences of various courses of action.
Margaret 43:50 Okay, and so the course of action is that if you evade paying taxes, and they can especially—I'm under the impression that if they can prove that you tried to evade paying taxes for like—that you actually, not that you like, fucked up and forgot to pay but that you like, consciously chose not to pay. That's when it becomes like, a bigger deal, right?
Mo 44:09 Yeah, I will say this: if you can't pay your taxes, and you are in touch with the IRS about that. They're—they will work with you. If you are trying to evade your taxes, you can end up doing some fairly serious time. So I think that's just a cost/benefit analysis if you're going to do for yourself, my man.
Margaret 44:38 Yeah,
Mo 44:39 Uh, you know, is it worth it to you to do a whole bunch of time in federal prison? Maybe it is. That's not a choice that I would probably make for myself. And that's not necessarily something that I want for you, question asker, but it's also not my decision.
Margaret 45:01 Okay. Yeah, I'm under the impression that especially like, sometimes higher profile people who don't like the government sometimes get audited more than other people. I don't know, this is—
Mo 45:14 Yeah they do.
Margaret 45:15 And so that is a good reason to consider your public nature versus how carefully you pay your taxes.
Mo 45:24 Yeah, I think it's really important to think through, you know, whether your goal is to be visibly smashing the state, or whether you feel more effective avoiding the state. And you often cannot do both.
Margaret 45:45 So it's the one crime at a time theory.
Mo 45:47 Hmm. I haven't heard that. I'm gonna have to think about that.
Margaret 45:52 One crime at a time is like, wear your seatbelt while you're like, have stuff in your car that you don't want anyone to know about. Don't j walk on your way to the demo. You know? That kind of thing
Mo 46:05 I, I think it's a—you know, this has to do with ethics, right? Like, what are your goals?
Margaret 46:12 Yeah.
Mo 46:14 What will help you achieve those goals? How badly will your objectives be undermined if you go to federal prison?
Margaret 46:20 Yeah.
Mo 46:21 Because unless your name is Mumia, you are not as effective in a jail cell as you are out of one.
Margaret 46:32 Yeah.
Mo 46:32 I mean, also, how effective could Mumia have been if he weren't in jail cell?
Margaret 46:36 Yeah. Okay, so—
Mo 46:41 —so that was depressing.
Margaret 46:42 Yeah. Let's move on to two related questions. Okay. Well, the first one is: any recommendations for pursuing a law career as a radical?
Mo 46:53 Be prepared to be really broke?
Margaret 46:55 Mhmm.
Mo 46:57 That's pretty much it. You got to love what you do. You got to love the people you're doing it with. Um, I think it's absolutely possible to be a radical and to be a lawyer, but it looks different than most law careers.
Margaret 47:15 Yeah.
Mo 47:16 The only lawyer I knew before going to law school was my grandfather, who had gone to law school for free at night at the Y in 1932. And he was a labor lawyer. And I didn't really know, up until I went to law school, that there were people who wanted to become lawyers for reasons other than standing up for justice, which is hilariously naive. But I just was like, very sheltered in this way. And so the only role model I had for what it meant to be a lawyer was someone who, you know, whose heroes were Sacco and Vanzetti.
Margaret 48:04 You do have a different background than most of my friends.
Mo 48:09 That's probably true.
Margaret 48:11 I think it's cool.
Mo 48:12 And so, you know, when I was deciding to go to law school, it didn't really cross my mind that there were other ways to be a lawyer than the way that I am currently a lawyer. But then, when I was in law school, I was sort of flabbergasted and demoralized by how committed to law people are.
Margaret 48:41 Would you say there's—in my head, I think of there's like three alignments of lawyers and like a DND. sense, and that there's people committed to law as like a principle—in the same way that I believe in anarchism, I believe that anarchism can never be attained, but you always strive for it. I've met lawyers who have the inverse of that, right? They're like—because in my mind I'm like, the law doesn't work. Look around. It's a terrible system. And then they're like, yeah, but we try and make it better. But like, not make it better in like a social justice way, but literally, like a law as an abstract concept way. Then there's the anti-authoritarian lawyers who go to law school to learn tools by which to navigate a system that we all have to run into. And then there's the like, in it for the money lawyers. Which is funny because when you're talking about like, if you want to go to law school, prepare to be poor. And it's like—I feel like the average person going to law school, in my head, is going to law school for the inverse of that. But maybe I have a misconception of...
Mo 49:46 I don't know. I don't know all the lawyers. I don't know. Sorry. You're gonna have to do some editing Margaret.
Margaret 49:53 Okay, that's fine. I'll just cut out my whole part of that—my whole alignment spiel.
Mo 49:56 No, I like your alignment. I actually really like your alignment.
Margaret 50:00 Okay.
Mo 50:00 Um, yeah, I mean, I don't know, if I have a ton of advice. I think it's really hard to be in a profession that incentivizes—frankly, that is like a harm-maximizing model where the law is truly set up almost universally to diminish the self-determination of my clients, and to maximize the self-determination and lack of accountability of the already powerful. And that does not draw meaningful distinctions between things that are unlawful and things that are harmful, such that people are punished for things that are not harmful, and cannot be held accountable for things that are. Like, that is a hard thing to deal with. And on the other hand, like, you know, I love my work. And I feel really fortunate to be able to work with the people that I work with. And be in a community of people who care about the same kinds of things I care about and who struggle along with me to make my job obsolete.
Margaret 51:19 Okay. So if you want to be very effective, work all of the time and be very tired, becoming a radical lawyer is a decent course of action.
Mo 51:31 Yes.
Margaret 51:33 That makes sense to me. That's probably part of why I didn't end up a lawyer. When we were doing that campaign for Jerry, Jerry ended up a lawyer. And I, you know, I toured around the country giving talks about grand jury processes, and lawyers would come some of the talks, and then be like, "Oh, you actually you did that better than they gave it to me in law school." Not to just like—because I'm actually an amazing lawyer, but I'm trying to say. But, um, and I was like, "Oh, maybe I should, maybe I should go into law." And then I was like, wait, no, I like I'm like, spending good chunk of the day, like, just like kind of staring at the leaves or, you know, not talking to people. Um, okay, so to tie into that question, what can non-lawyers do to aid and support a radical law agenda?
Mo 52:23 Be on support committees. Do jail support. Write letters to political prisoners—so write letters to prisoners! Join Anarchist Black Cross, join Black and Pink. Get involved with your local chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. That's it. That's it. That's the end. There's no other things you can do.
Margaret 52:48 Emotionally support the already-tired lawyers that you know. Bring them food. I would bring you food right now. Before we had—before we started this talk, I was like, I am so tired—
Mo 53:00 I wish you could bring me a nap. My at-rest state that since June, is vibrating with exhaustion.
Margaret 53:11 Yeah, see, most people don't vibrate when they're tired.
Mo 53:16 I am actually, I'm fine. I don't want to I don't want to mislead you. I am generally fine. For some reason. I'm just very tired today.
Margaret 53:24 So okay, a couple people wanted to ask about basically how like, now that radicals have guns, now that like leftists have guns, which is sort of new on the scene in the past years or so. I mean, obviously, you know, that goes back way back. Right. IWW is perfectly content to have rifles and the Battle of Blair mountain and all those things. But there's been a lot of questions about how like, lawyers who know gun laws tend to not like leftists, and progressive lawyers tend to not like guns, or not know much about guns and gun law. And so there been some questions about basically how you find that—and because I know there's been a lot of, or at least I've been hearing that sometimes gun laws are being used against, like to target radical communities and things like that.
Mo 54:19 There was a lawsuit that was brought after Charlottesville that targeted a lot of the militias that had come down for that stupid rally. But then it also targeted Redneck Revolt, right? I mean, that's like the kind of liberal thinking in the law that like places a lot of faith in The Law without a lot of nuance that I think can be really damaging. So yeah, I mean, I think this question asker has a—it's a perspicacious question. I don't have a great solution. I mean, for example: So one thing I would say is that more radical lawyers in more rural areas are more likely to have a grip on this. Because there are, culturally, there's like, a lot of places in the United States where having guns is really very common, and is not necessarily a matter of political alignment. I would say like, in places like New York City, where the city itself, the municipality itself, has like extremely stringent gun laws. New Jersey also has extremely stringent gun laws. San Francisco, right? There are certain places where there is sort of this, like, liberal distaste for firearms that ends up being kind of a weird proxy for your politics.
Margaret 56:01 Hmm. So like, of you have a gun, and then therefore your right wing?
Mo 56:07 Yeah. And I don't think it's like—I don't think it's a good thing. And I don't think it's a necessary thing. So I think there are parts of the country where that's the case. But I also suspect that like, places that are more rural and places where it's like much more typical for people to own guns, gun ownership is not a proxy for your politics. And so I think that there are definitely parts of the country where you're not necessarily going to only find attorneys who are conversant with gun law who are NRA members.
Margaret 56:43 Right.
Mo 56:45 Right. I just, I think that's a problem that is born of a certain kind of geography more than a certain kind of politics.
Margaret 56:58 Yeah.
Mo 57:00 I don't know a ton about gun law. But I do think that there's—I think that there are attorneys who are not super conservative or like, explicitly white supremacist who do know about gun law. Okay. And I certainly think, you know, let's like actually look at the ways in which state repression has been brought to bear against black and brown communities by a gang law. There are definitely defense attorneys who work with communities that have been subject to intense state repression, that is basically on the basis of gun ownership, who definitely are going to know about self-defense law and gun law, who are not going to be super conservative. They're just not necessarily going to be working with like, ant-racist white people. So yeah, I think that, you know, when we're talking about like, radical attorneys, or movement attorneys, like, I think we are actually doing a disservice to the profession of defenders who might not be doing work that is explicitly politically motivated, but they're definitely defending against prosecutions that are politically and racially motivated. And they have that expertise and are useful resources to our communities. But like, they might not be visible to like anarchist communities because they're actually on the ground doing the work of like day-to-day defending against racialized state repression that maybe isn't legible to white anarchist groups.
Margaret 58:54 That's a really good point. And are there folks sort of within the framework of lawyers that I feel like most people in movement spaces that I'm and talk about is the NLG, the National Lawyers Guild—and are there lawyers within the nlg? Who might be more from one way or another versed with gun laws? Or is that still not really as much part of NLG culture?
Mo 59:24 I don't think it's super part of NLG culture at this point, because it's only pretty recently that we're seeing people at protests—the people who we defend at protests—being armed.
Margaret 59:43 Yeah.
Mo 59:44 Like, that's just a more recent development. But again, I think some of this is just about geography. I think like, guild lawyers in places like South Dakota and Oklahoma and West Virginia are probably going to have a lot more fluency with their gun laws than people in New York City or Newark.
Margaret 1:00:09 Right. Okay, so we just talked about what to do if the cops are stopping you if you're getting arrested. What about when feds are coming around and knocking on people's doors?
Mo 1:00:19 Yeah, so this is actually really important right now. We're seeing a lot of federal involvement in protest in what are more often and typically historically understood to be matters that would fall under state jurisdiction. So we're seeing federal agents policing protests, we're seeing the assertion of federal jurisdiction based on really tenuous grounds. And taken together with, you know, Trump's claims over the summer about Antifa as like a domestic terror organization, and Biden's sort of parallel identification of anarchists as categorically a criminal identity. Federal power is being consolidated and escalated to repress First Amendment protected activity nationwide. So the first thing that I want to say is, we started a hotline. The National Lawyers Guild started a federal defense national hotline, you can reach it at 212-679-2811. For folks to call in the event that they have an encounter with federal law enforcement.
Margaret 1:01:23 I'm just gonna say it again. It's 212-679-2811. Okay, sorry.
Mo 1:01:29 And so if you call that hotline, you're going to get me and you're gonna be able to have a privileged and confidential—and if you call me back on Signal—a secure conversation about this. What I mean by an encounter with federal law enforcement is not that you got hurt by a federal agent. That's kind of a different issue where you're going to want a civil rights lawyer.
Margaret 1:01:54 Okay.
Mo 1:01:55 What I mean by an encounter with federal law enforcement is, federal agents call you or visit your home or work, or you or someone close to you gets arrested by federal agents, or you are served a federal grand jury subpoena. This is not the right hotline to call if you've been hurt by police at a protest, although I will refer you appropriately.
Margaret 1:02:14 Okay.
Mo 1:02:15 And it is not the right hotline to call about whistleblower matters. But if you call this hotline, you can have a privileged conversation about your rights, risks, and responsibilities, and I will do my best to refer you to the most appropriate legal resources in your geographic area no matter where you are.
Margaret 1:02:32 Okay.
Mo 1:02:33 So the—basically, the most common kind of first contact folks have with law enforcement—with federal law enforcement—is a door knock. So historically, this is the most common way that federal agents interact with activists in person is via door knocks, where they just attempt to approach an individual in their home or work and see if they will speak to them voluntarily. I cannot stress enough that you have no obligation to let law enforcement into your home without a warrant and you have no obligation to cooperate with law enforcement investigation. Certainly not before talking to a lawyer. I am not being contrarian. Declining to answer questions is not evidence of guilt, whatever they may tell you. It is protected by the Constitution. And failing to exercise your rights can be extremely dangerous for yourself and others. There is just never a reason—never a compelling reason—not to consult with a lawyer before answering questions posed by law enforcement. So if an agent knocks on your door, get in the habit of finding out who was at the door before you answer it. If they say, "We just want to talk," it's cops. If it's law enforcement, ask if they have a warrant. And if you're able to do so call your lawyer or call that hotline immediately.
Margaret 1:03:58 Okay.
Mo 1:03:58 If they have a search warrant, ask them to slide it under the door.
Margaret 1:04:05 And then you're looking for a signature on that, right?
Mo 1:04:10 Yeah, you want it to have been signed by a judge within the last 10 days.
Margaret 1:04:13 Okay.
Mo 1:04:14 If it is an arrest warrant, you can walk outside and shut the door behind you. I honestly would say like, ask them if you can surrender yourself later with an attorney. And if they have a warrant and they say no, walk out and shut the door behind you. Because at the very least, you know, you can by surrendering probably avoid further violence and protect your home from intrusion. If it's a search warrant, stand back from the door and read it aloud so that you know what they're allowed to look for and where, and the agents know that you know what they're allowed to look for and where. If they don't have a warrant, you don't have to open the door.
Margaret 1:04:59 Okay.
Mo 1:05:00 What I want everyone to be able to truthfully say is, "I am represented by counsel, let me get your name and number and I will have my lawyer call you." The reason I want you to be able to say you're represented is that once law enforcement knows you're represented, they can't approach you directly without a warrant. So, you know, either say, "I'm represented by counsel, leave your name and number and I'll have my lawyer call you." Or if you don't yet have a lawyer, say, "Let me get your name and number and I'll have my lawyer call you." And then call the hotline.
Margaret 1:05:32 Okay.
Mo 1:05:34 So what will happen after that—what should happen after that is your attorney would call them try to figure out what they want, if there's a prosecutor who's working with the investigation, anything else we can find out. And then this attorney can be the sort of conduit between you and the state, to the extent that there needs to be any kind of communication and a bulwark against state intrusion. And honestly, typically, this is sufficient to put an end to the inquiry, because the feds often want low-hanging fruit. They don't like dealing with lawyers. They want to see if people will talk to them voluntarily, and if they won't, that's often the end of it.
Margaret 1:06:14 Okay.
Mo 1:06:15 If that isn't the end, the sort of two most likely outcomes are an arrest warrant, in which case, you need an experienced criminal defense attorney—preferably one who is really able to listen to your goals, which in the event that you are someone who's like being targeted because of your participation in a social movement, your goals may be less self-interested then defense attorneys are kind of used to or are trained to assume.
Margaret 1:06:41 Right.
Mo 1:06:44 So your, you know, first most likely outcome if the fed doesn't just go away after hearing from your lawyer is that they issue an arrest warrant. And otherwise, another possible outcome is that you get a grand jury subpoena. And so we'll talk about grand juries in a little bit.
Margaret 1:07:05 Okay. And then... So one of the things that I try to talk to you about with people is to remember, don't like, like, really, really don't lie or tell the truth, especially to feds?
Mo 1:07:19 Yes.
Margaret 1:07:19 Like, it's always best to just never lie or tell the truth. Like, I mean—
Mo 1:07:23 It's extremely dangerous to talk to federal law enforcement.
Margaret 1:07:27 Yeah.
Mo 1:07:31 It's extremely dangerous to talk to federal law enforcement because it is a federal offense to lie to federal agents. And they're, you know, trained to elicit things that can be construed as lies. And if you do lie to them and aren't able to correct, like whatever material misrepresentation of fact, then they can use that as leverage against you to try to get you to cooperate in their investigation. Because they'll say, well, you lied to us and that's a five year mandatory minimum. But if you cooperate, we won't prosecute you for the perjury or for the material misrepresentation.
Margaret 1:08:13 Right. Which includes like—
Mo 1:08:15 So the best thing is to just say nothing, to say, "I'm represented, leave your name and number, and I'll have my lawyer call you."
Margaret 1:08:23 Which includes even stuff like, if they ask about your roommate, don't say like, "Oh, she doesn't live here."
Mo 1:08:28 Right?
Margaret 1:08:29 You know, just literally just the like, shut—you know, ask for a card or whatever, right?
Mo 1:08:35 Yeah, no matter what they say, no matter what they say to you: "Leave your name and number and I will have my lawyer call you."
Margaret 1:08:42 Okay. And then at that point, they call the hotline, and everything works out well, from then on.
Mo 1:08:49 I cannot anticipate the behavior of police and prosecutors.
Margaret 1:08:54 Ah, interesting. Okay.
Mo 1:08:55 But I will say that typically, in my experience, things work out less badly if you call a lawyer. Yeah. Than if you talk to federal agents on your own.
Margaret 1:09:08 Is there from a legal point of view—a lot of the advice that's going around right now in social movement circles that I tend to appreciate is the idea that if you get visited federally, there's no reason to keep that to yourself.
Mo 1:09:19 No, absolutely not.
Margaret 1:09:20 Because they know they visited you, so...
Mo 1:09:23 Of course.
Margaret 1:09:25 And letting people know that you got visited I think helps make people paranoid and then make bad decision—no, um, help people like be aware of their own risks.
Mo 1:09:34 Here's the thing, state repression exists 100% of the time. Sometimes you're fortunate enough to get a reminder.
Margaret 1:09:41 Yeah. That's so dark. Is that the note we're ending on?
Mo 1:09:47 Sorry.
Margaret 1:09:47 No, it's okay. It might be the note we're ending on.
Mo 1:09:50 Oh, I'm so sorry.
Margaret 1:09:55 Well, thanks for being on and we'll try and have you on in the future when you have a chance to talk about grand juries. But for now it seems like police and federal agents seem to be the primary things we're dealing with, at least at this moment. So.
Mo 1:10:08 Yeah, in most parts of the country, that's the case. I think that might change.
Margaret 1:10:11 Yeah.
Mo 1:10:12 In the coming months, but yeah, we'll see.
Margaret 1:10:20 Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, then please tell people about it. Actually, also write down the NLG federal defense hotline number, which is 212-679-2811. And it'll be in the show notes. But you know, write that shit down. I guess, keep it by your door. God, what a dark time. But, you know, that's a thing. And so if you enjoyed listening to this episode, please tell people about it. Please tell people about it on social media, please like and comment and review and subscribe and do all the things that tell algorithms to tell other people to listen to it. And also just, you know, tell people in person. That's been happening more and more, and it's really heartening to see. It makes the effort of this worth it. And also this week is the first week that we have transcription that's coming out alongside the episode and I'm very proud of that and very excited about that. And that's I've been able to hire someone to do the transcription who is a single parent and certainly could use the work and that's thanks to y'alls support. If y'all want to support financially, you can. You can support this podcast by supporting me directly on Patreon. My Patreon is patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. And if you back me there, then there's all kinds of zines and music and various things up there. And also, if you make less money than I do, like, if you live off of less money than I make on Patreon in a month, don't back me on Patreon unless you really want to but, you can just message me and I'll get you all of my stuff for free. Because that's the way that money should work. And as much as money should—money really shouldn't exist—but that's completely beside the point. In particular, I would like to thank Chris and Nora and Hass the dog, Kirk, Willow, Natalie, Sam, Christopher, Shane and The Compound for making this episode and the show possible. Yeah, that's all I got. Stay as safe as you can. Actually, you know, there's one thing that I want to focus on, there's like something that that most that really gets at something where, you know, what matters is courage. And courage is not—this is my own words of it or probably some shit I stole off a meme on the internet or something—but courage is not the absence of fear. It's the overcoming of fear. And in order to stay safe, we need to stay brave. The bunker mentality is the cowards mentality. I should stop recording now. Have a good week.
On this episode, host Margaret Killjoy ruminates on the philosophical ideas of how and why to get involved in prepping from a non-individualistic point of view. She also answers questions!
You can follow Margaret on twitter @magpiekilljoy and instagram @margaretkilljoy or support her on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy
In this mini-episode, Margaret answers some feedback about the previous episode.
You can donate to our guest's training of QTBIPOC via cashapp $armqtbipoc or venmo @armqtbipoc
The host can be found on twitter at https://www.twitter.com/magpiekilljoy, on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/margaretkilljoy, or on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy
The Indigenous Anarchist Federation can be found on twitter @IAF__FAI Their website is one of the best preparedness resources available for protestors and other rebels: https://iaf-fai.org/
Camp Red Sleeves can be found on twitter @redsleevesaca They run a monthly fundraiser to maintain their anticolonial mutual aid efforts and if you enjoyed this episode please donate to them
Other websites referenced on this episode include: https://www.indigenousmutualaid.org and https://www.indigenousaction.org/
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy, instagram @margaretkilljoy, or patreon at https://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy
The guests provided us with some resources:
Herbal first aid aftercare for those who have experienced police violence: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14nVeF6auCIqQRBh-q3gyEmV5POiYur_Z/view
Seed, Soil and Spirit: an herb school for QTBIPOC and allies with social justice framing: https://www.seedsoilspirit.com
Rootwork Herbals: an online and in-person school: https://www.rootworkherbals.com/herbal-education
Excellent free foundational herbal medicine resources from Jim Macdonald: https://www.herbcraft.org
Introduction to herbal medicine book from Rosemary Gladstar: https://www.storey.com/books/rosemary-gladstars-medicinal-herbs/
Herbal first aid wound care from 7song: https://7song.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Herbal-First-Aid-Wound-Care.pdf
Free online herb school with the late great Michael Moore: www.swsbm.com/school/
This is an herbal respiratory infection protocol. Good for the upcoming flu season: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12b09xsVmA0_6nDTjgqFtxZXnT8CTkClMKDyqPOi-jOk/edit
Youtube channel with educational herb and gardening videos from Joe Hollis at Mountain Gardens: https://www.youtube.com/user/mountaingardens/featured
Ideas for an herbal first aid kit. Make your own! https://learningherbs.com/remedies-recipes/herbal-travel-first-aid-kit/
Learn about Bidens, a weedy and abundant herb that works wonders on serious infections: https://radicalvitalism.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/bidens-as-an-herbal-antibiotic-a-case-study/
Indigenous perspective on relations with plants: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer: https://milkweed.org/book/braiding-sweetgrass
How is our individual health tied to that of our communities, our society and all of life on Earth? Read about Radical Vitalism: https://radicalvitalism.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/radical-vitalism-by-janet-kent-and-dave-meesters/
Herbs for grounding in turbulent times: https://radicalvitalism.wordpress.com/?s=herbs+for+grounding
Herbs for when you are freaking out: https://radicalvitalism.wordpress.com/?s=emergency
Zines: Ease Your Mind: Herbs for Mental Health https://firestorm.coop/products/4003-ease-your-mind.html
Under Pressure: Herbs for Resilience https://firestorm.coop/products/12035-under-pressure.html
On the radical potential of herbalism: Using the elements as a map through the ever-changing and increasingly challenging territory, for individuals and movements: You are Nature: Working with the Elements for Change: https://radicalvitalism.wordpress.com/2020/02/01/you-are-nature-working-with-the-elements-for-change/
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter at https://www.twitter.com/magpiekilljoy and instagram at https://www.instagram.com/margaretkilljoy. You can support her on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy
Robert Evans can be found on twitter at https://twitter.com/iwriteok Some of his podcasts (which can be found wherever you listen to podcasts) include Behind the Bastards, It Could Happen Here, The Women's War, and Worst Year Ever.
Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter at https://twitter.com/magpiekilljoy Her patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy
Kitty can be found on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/kittystryker and twitter at https://twitter.com/kittystryker
Her five-day preparation article: https://thebolditalic.com/be-prepared-a-5-day-ish-guide-to-basic-emergency-prepping-86960f03279
Margaret can be found on twitter at https://twitter.com/magpiekilljoy and on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy
In this episode I talk with Mixæl Laufer of the Four Thieves Vinegar about their work offering access to medications that are sometimes unavailable. We discuss their work on the epi-pencil, the open source apothecary microlab, aboritificants, naloxone, and other wet chemistry drugs as well as offering some introductory information about how people extract hormones, insulin, and thyroid. We also talk a good deal about what it would mean to live in a world in which access to life-saving and life-improving medicine is actually accessible.
Mixæl Laufer can be found on twitter at https://twitter.com/MichaelSLaufer The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective can be found online at https://fourthievesvinegar.org/ The open insulin project, referenced in this show, can be found online at https://openinsulin.org/
This episode covers what demonstrators might want to know about wearing body armor. We cover the types of armor, how to source them, how to fit armor to different body types, what you can and can't skip for cost savings, and more.
If you choose to wear body armor, we recommend IIIA level vests for soft armor (bulletproof vests) or level III+ for hard armor (plate carriers). Soft armor is substantially lighter and more convenient, but only protects against handguns.
We are not advocating for escalation, only for individual and community defense and for our ability to continue to demonstrate as safely as we can.
Nwcg.gov has some online training for firefighting. readyforwildfire.org is for basic home hardening / prep fireadaptednetwork.org is a directory of folks working on fire resilience in various areas Calpba.org has all the prescribed burn associations in California
Bex has compiled this list of supplies and where one option of where you can source them:
IFAK Build 🦇 Current lowest price per kit: $95.25 (This doesn't include tax, shipping, or bag/pouch for the kit)
CAT Gen 7 (1) $30/each: available from NAR, Chinook, Rescue Essentials, etc
ETD (2) 4" flat, $7/each: https://www.narescue.com/flat-emergency-trauma-dressing-etd.html
Chest seal (2) Hyfin twin pack, $15/pair: https://www.narescue.com/hyfin-vent-chest-seal-twin-pack.html
Hemostatic gauze (1)
ChitoGauze z-fold, 3"x4yd, $32/each (on sale) https://www.rescue-essentials.com/chitogauze-xl-otc-3-x-4-yds-z-folded/
Celox rapid Z-fold, 3"x5', needs med auth to purchase? $34/each https://www.rescue-essentials.com/celox-rapid-z-folded-red-packaging/
QuikClot combat gauze z-fold, 3"x4yd, $43/each https://www.narescue.com/all-products/massive-hemorrhage/combat-gauze-z-fold-hemostatic.html
Sharpie (1) Staples 12 pack, $8/12 on sale (.66/each) https://www.staples.com/Sharpie-Fine-Point-Permanent-Markers-Black-12-pk-1812419/product_371792
Gloves (2 pair) Nitrile exam gloves size L, $13/100 (. 52/kit) https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-12549L/Nitrile-Gloves/Uline-Exam-Grade-Nitrile-Gloves-Powder-Free-Large
Shears (1) 7.5" stainless Shears, $3/each https://www.rescue-essentials.com/emt-shears-7-5stainless-steel/
Zipper bag for gloves (1) "sandwich size", $3.50/50 (. 07/each) https://www.staples.com/Glad-Resealable-Sandwich-Storage-Bags-50-Box/product_134708
I've spent most of the past two months researching police weaponry and how to stay safe while challenging state power. In this episode I discuss gas masks, respirators, goggles, and filters. My guest for this episode is Jack, my bandmate in the band Alsarath ( https://alsarath.bandcamp.com ).
Much of this information can also be found in the article A Demonstrator's Guide to Gas Masks & Goggles, published by CrimethInc: https://crimethinc.com/2020/09/02/a-demonstrators-guide-to-gas-masks-and-goggles-everything-you-need-to-know-to-protect-your-eyes-and-lungs-from-gas-and-projectiles
you can support this show and my other projects on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy
You can donate to the fund for US medical volunteers returning from Syria here: http://paypal.me/RojMedical
I recommended the podcast Worst Year Ever's episode The Reasonable Person's Guide to Prepping and you can find that here: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-worst-year-ever-49377032/episode/the-reasonable-persons-guide-to-prepping-59450250/
For gear lists I recommend theprepared.com
The Jane Addams Collective can be found online at https://janeaddamscollective.org/
The full text of the book Mutual Aid, Trauma, and Resiliency can be found online at https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-jane-addams-collective-mutual-aid-trauma-and-resiliency
A transcription of the episode, provided by a comrade who desires to see more accessible anarchist content:
S01E04 Aine on Isolation, Loneliness and COVID-19 Live Like The World Is Dying
Anyone in NYC interested in organizing with MACC can find out more at https://macc.nyc/
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter at @magpiekilljoy and at http://www.birdsbeforethestorm.net/
You can support the show at http://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy
The guest Zoe Martínez works in public health in the UK
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter at @magpiekilljoy and at http://www.birdsbeforethestorm.net/
You can support the show at http://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy
Kitty Stryker can be found on twitter at @kittystryker and at http://kittystryker.com/
Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter at @magpiekilljoy and at http://www.birdsbeforethestorm.net/
The following transcript was provided by a comrade who wants to help us make this show more accessible:
S01E01 Kitty Stryker on Anarchist Prepping Live Like The World Is Dying
#0:49:20.4# Kitty: Right, exactly. Exactly. And again, I think that we use paperwork as a penalty for so many people that... Maybe mucking up that system a little bit is a convenient little thing I can do on the side. So I... Yeah, I guess... And all of that is completely separate from thinking of having invaders come and try to take my apartment away from me or something. That... I usually strategise for that by thinking about what my plan are if the cops get even more out of control.