It Could Happen Here Weekly 35

we make it. They just want to netflix and chill. You just line up the entire population of the US in a line across the US. We shoot any deer that tries across the line. I think we should do the reverse and have deer shoot people who tried across the line. It's the only thing that can protect us from the dangerous east. No, no, no, that look look well, I guess it worse in east and in the west.

We have to maintain the right to arm bears. Yeah, I'm I'm of the opinion, given how dry it is in New Mexico, that we need to sink every part of the country east of New Mexico to give it a coast that can that can keep it moist. I wonder how much of this is going to get in the final cut. Well, if you live east of New Mexico, welcome to the ocean. That's my suggestion. Um, speaking of people east of New Mexico, this is it could happen here a podcast where some of the listeners are east

of New Mexico, even though I don't recommend that. Um, I'm Robert Evans. On the call with me is Christopher Wong, Garrison Davis, Sharene Lonnie Units, and then our producers Sophie. Today we're talking about terrorism. Yeah, we do it in a little NPR voice. So uh. Recently, the same week as the Supreme Court leaked a document stating that they would be taking out Roe v. Wade and ushering in

an era of theocratic fascism in a number of states. Uh, an individual or individuals unknown in Wisconsin attacked Anti Choice headquarters building with a Molotov cocktail and spray painted graffiti on the side saying if abortion isn't safe, then you aren't either. That same group or individuals claiming to be from them, later reached out to me through an intermediary and sent a manifesto of sorts about the attack, promising

follow up attacks within thirty days. But they wrote, but they wrote in cursive, So who can say, Who can say if this actually happened. So we'll talk first. I'm gonna just go over first what what happened in like factual terms, and then we'll talk about the discourse around it. So basically, there's this attack on this UM anti choice

like advocacy organizations headquarters in fucking Wisconsin. UM it was seemed to be a pretty good molotov and that, like Garrison, you and I have watched a number of people failed to properly utilize. I watched a few people get watched one get ignited by him altop, I've seen a couple of not cops get ignited by mollotsovs um they're they're they're not like people can suck them up easily. Whoever did this did not suck them up. It was seemed to be at the moment. No one has been arrested.

Now it's possible by the time this drops, Wisconsin police will be like, oh no, there was totally surveillance footage and they fucked up and we just caught them, UM, But at the moment, it doesn't look like that's the case.

So it looks like this is somebody who carried out or some buddies, because it's entirely possible is multiple people, but carried out UM a very effective like action that did material damage to UM, part of kind of the physical infrastructure of the anti choice movement UM and ended without anyone getting caught. So that's the fact of the

actual attack itself. UM. A person who claiming to be affiliated with the individuals or group who did this reached out to a source of mine who I'm keeping anonymous, but somebody who I've known for a while with a very good track record of being accurate, and said, hey, these individual slash individuals have a communic A they would like put out UM. And I was sent on a non files link, which is a link. If you view it in a normal browser you'll get some fucked up ship.

Don't put it in a normal browser. I specified it's like you're supposed to. If you put it in tour, it will download a text file right UM. And the text file is the communic A. So using the Tour browser for that link, you can get a text file

in which they lay out number one. They named themselves UM, and the name they've chosen for their group is Jane's Revenge, which is a reference to the Jaine Collective UM, which was a pro choice group in the late sixties early seventies that UM provided women with access to contraception and abortion illegally. A bunch of them went to jail. Uh, they were pardoned after Roe v. Wade. If I'm not mistaken or at least other one more about it, send

the market the k click. Yeah, yeah, very well timed. UM. So they're calling themselves Jamee's Revenge, and they basically said, hey, if you are an organization in the anti choice movement, you have thirty days to close down your operations otherwise

there will be follow up attacks. They specifically noted the long and it's at this point like a forty years long history of terrorist attacks from the anti choice movement, many of which have assassinated doctors, something like sixteen people have been killed, UM, dozens of bombs and bombing attempts, something like a hundred acid attacks. So they made a note of all that and said that like, basically we will be UM, we will be responding in kind and

UH attacks after this initial attack will be correspondingly more severe. UM. They also claim to have a pretty wide geographic reach, said they had folks in a number of cities, UM, and that yeah, there's going to be follow up attacks UM, and they're prepared to defend their bodily autonomy with violence. So that's that's the gist of what was claimed in

the communic a UM. In terms of what I think about its legitimacy, UM, I don't have any reason to believe they're not representing the individual or individuals who carried out that attack in Wisconsin, based on the timing of when the communic was made, and based on the fact that the communicate is pretty consistent with what we saw

from the actual action. Right. So, among other things that you can tell from the physical action that was taken is that, UM, the individual or individuals who did this were pretty well organized. They carried out a competent action, and they thought there was a value in very clear messaging because there's clear messaging surrounding the attack. The communicate is very clear messaging. It does not sound like a right winger writing up a fake communicate. It's very UM.

It takes great pains to both connect itself to history, to frame its violence within the context of the violence perpetuated by the anti choice movement for decades UM, and just in general, it's the communication seems consistent with the action that we saw in Wisconsin. Now cannot say, we cannot say, I cannot say to a statement of certainty whether or not it's legitimate. One helpful thing they did is place state that there would be another more attacks

in thirty days, So we're kind of waiting. If thirty days pass and there's never any kind of follow up attacks by this group, then we can probably assume that this was either somebody bullshitting or that the heat got to too much for them and they decided not to carry out follow up attacks. UM. But we're all kind of in this holding pattern now to see what happens. My personal speculation is that UM, they were exaggerating a

number of things. UM. I think that the their claims about having members in a number of states in a capacity to strike in a number of states was more aspirational than literal UM. In that I suspect the people behind this attack, in this communicate are hoping that by UM carrying out attacks. They can inspire other people to carry out attacks and credit it to the same organization, right, which is not an uncommon tactic in the history of terrorism.

And again, this is terrorism. Like that doesn't mean I don't think, uh, they have a point or that it's like fundamentally unjust. Terrorism is just like a set of tactics that different groups can use, and it can be ethical or unethical depending on how you you choose to do that. You can attack purely infrastructure, UM in a terrorist manner, and I don't think that's necessarily unethical. And you can also attack civilians, UM in a terrorist manner,

and I think that is unethical. At this moment, these people have not done anything I view as inherently unethical. They burned a building, UM, which I think is often justified and is in this case justified. So that's that's my opinion on the matter. Let's open it up on the point you kind of closed with. I mean, yeah, they showed effective direct action. They did a physical thing. Malta's are not the best way to do like to like arsenal building, but they are good for a very

quick attack. Um. It caused this whole media thing, right, there's a lot a lot of people talking about it, then releasing the communicate through someone who can give it a lot of visibility. Uh, and then by by doing it with this with this name Jane's revenge and saying in thirty days there will be more attacks in different cities the messages that, Yeah, like you can. One way to look at this is if if they don't have tons of like you know, members are allies that they

know across different cities. Is that and anyone can do this, Like anyone can do this and call themselves by that name and be a part of this larger thing like it's you if you if you spread it around, then that it can become like this, this thing that anyone can gloam onto. It doesn't need to be you don't need to be a part of a member of a specific group. You can just do stuff and release communicates safely and add add on to the to the to

the specter. Yeah. Um, it's not hard to set up like a text drop in the same manner that did they did. It is relatively secure. Like there's no perfect if you are committing terrorism, there is no perfect manner to issue a statement. Um, but of the different things they could have chosen. This is relatively secure, especially doing

it through an intermediary. I haven't had direct contact with these people, but UM, we should probably note that there's a huge discourse that started before the communic A came out arguing that this is like a false flag attack. Yeah, that's yes, that in a long line of calling a pretty pretty well planned out direct action. When it actually happens, people will defalse to calling it an OP. We're calling it a false flag from a very people like that.

There's there's like there's like libs who say, oh, this is a stage thing to make our movement look bad. There's tank kys who think it's like the CIA planning something. There's random other folks who are like, hey, I don't know if it's legit. I think maybe it's like some it's a lot of people get very various justifications for calling pretty effective acts of direct action UM and questioning

questioning their legitimacy. I think some of this comes from because there's obviously there's the bad faith elements of this UM, but I think the good faith folks who questioned it,

there's a lot of learned helplessness there. This idea that because somebody did carry out a pretty successful direct action attack that kind of did what its intention was, then it has to have been the FBI or whoever, right, because obviously the left could never have pulled off something as as cunning as throwing a single molotov at a building and spray painting the side of it, you know. Um,

and I do think that that's a problem. Whether or not you think the solution to issues like the right wing attack on reproductive healthcare come from direct action, the fact that folks almost can't conceive of effective action being taken by the left without the FEDS being involved is really an issue. Yeah, this was a huge thing during

one of the things that we saw there. There were so many just weird conspiracy theories, and then the everything that happened very quickly was people became convinced almost immediately that anyone doing anything was it was a federal infiltrator. And you've got people, you got crowds turning people over to police. You got people on Twitter like trying to track down, um, like who was throwing malltops and videos and like one of the people they caught and they

turned over the police. It turned out had been had been. The girlfriend is someone who got killed by the cops, and so I mean this stuff, this stuff has has The stuff has real world consequences. It has already like sent people to jail, it has it has this normost demobilizing effect of me. I don't remember people two people remember the okay, the two two two big Okay, the two big Twitter conspiracies were um bricks bricks and who yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's hoping that people like people would see a major right next to a to a construction site, They'll be like, how are all these pallets of bricks showing up this there's like a construction site of block away. You're like, okay, who's distributing the fireworks? How do these fireworks get here? Never mind June. The history of like like the FBI, some people will mistakenly like throw the CIA in there. The CIA doesn't really tend to do like the domestic

facory um, they're international fay. But like, if you look at the history of the FBI fucking with left wing social movements, it's not by handing out brick palates. Yeah, but that's not what they do. We have a lot of documentation about what they do and it's not bricks. And if there is some secret group who's maliciously giving out bricks so people attack, throw them through windows, or throw them at cop cars, like who cares? Like bricks are getting throw a cop cars. It doesn't matter where

they come from. Like people are still choosing to do action. Yeah, the best example of this is is the Russian Revolution n. No. Five. The Russian Revolution of n. Five was started by a guy who was a police agent. Like his whole thing is he was he was he was working to create like unions that could be controlled by the state, and he marched a bunch of people into a square and the police shot them. And that's how and that's how. That's literally how the Russian Revolution started. Like it doesn't.

It doesn't like there's there's a there's a point, Okay, they're they're like, there's two layers of this. One is that like there there almost is never a conspiracy going on into if the conspiracy is we want to push people towards doing things. It almost it doesn't. There's a point at which it stops mattering because a lot a lot of people forget about acams rights. There when you're talking about these types of things. Usually, the more simple

the answer, the more likely it is. The more the less involved parties, the more likely the more likely it is. So if there's a choice between rad people fucking up an anti choice headquarters versus a government conspiracy to do false flag operations to make the antichos to make the abortion movement look bad, like, one of those is much more simple and much more likely. And it's people just deciding to do stuff because guess what you can You

can actually do that. You don't need to allow these these weird narratives to to like to justify your uncomfortableness at like at forms of radical direct action, because it's it's people use that false flag idea, so so they don't need to actually engage with what direct action will mean. And if it is someone's moral imperative to physically attack like physical manifestations of these sources of oppression, yeah, I

think you're right on the money there. I think one of the things that's most frustrating to me about this is it kind of suggests that a sizeable chunk of people who ostensibly consider themselves on the left are like focusing their time not on doing anything and not on

taking any action to materially change the conditions. They're angry at um, but are instead looking for reasons to disavow other folks on the left, and that that's like the primary which is if you again, if you like look at what we know Herbert Herbert Hoover was saying about the FBI's co Intel pro program was the goal of co Intel pro right, That's what That's exactly what I

was thinking. I'm just like, I feel like this promotes I don't know, a morality like race or like just like competition, where the only thing it does is just promote infighting. When you have this, like you're on your morality horse. But I think if you actually support real change, you have to come to terms with like you have to do illegal things and like holding on too, like these made up laws that someone made up about like

how to achieve change is useless. And there's i mean, like dividing up a side that's supposed to be going for the same thing. Like that's exactly yeah, it's just it's missing the point and people don't really Yeah, if you look at the right, you've got all these folks who were like legal and and whatnot, Uh, proponents of of ending reproductive health care access and any of the folks who were doing repeated acts of terrorism. And the folks who were on the legal side of things didn't

disavow those people. They were often affiliated with churches that did shoot like auction off the possessions of like extremists who had murdered doctors and ship like they were like even the most they would do is just not directly talk about those people. They didn't disavow them, they didn't like attack it because they understood that a diversity of tactics was going to be how they achieved their goals.

That it was a mix of pushing for these legal changes and carrying out so many terroristic attacks that it frightened people away from supporting UM abortion service providers and other kind of reproductive healthcare service providers. UM difference between the right and the left, though, Like Democratic Republicans are really good at uniting on this big picture, and I feel like Democrats are not. I feel like they just uh, I don't know, it's too there's too much in fighting,

and that's why it's always fractured. Part of it is that on the Republican side, you have Republicans and you

have the far right who are also Republicans. And even though a lot of folks on the far right bitch about the centrists in their upboard, like the folks who are closer to the center, they all get in line for really radical stuff, Like the center of the Republican Party always yields to the radicals, whereas Democrats do not acknowledge leftists as having anything to do with with the Democratic Party or democratic politics other than the yell at

them when they don't vote. Um. And on the other hand of things, there's a lot of folks on the left who hate liberals more than they hate fascists, you know. Um, And it's it's I think one of those is a bigger problem than the other. I think that the failure of the democratic establishment to like deal with the left at all, um, or make any kind of progress that could be seen as as actually left. Actually yeah, but

but I think I think there's they're there. I think there's structural reasons for that too, Which is okay, if if you look at what is the basis of conservative alliance, Right, if you're a conservative, you know, okay, if you're from the sort of like moderate business wing, get the party if you're from the fascist wing, get the party right, you can have one judge who gives both of you the things that you want right, because if you're if you're like the Koke Brothers, the thing that you want

is the regulation. Right, you want to be able to just like dump poison into the environments. If you're on, if you're on, if you're an evangelical, the thing that you want is uh, you know, to no one can ever have an abortion again. And you know, if if if you're like a fascist, I don't know, maybe you want like we don't give food to immigrant children anymore,

so they start to death. And one judge can give you all of those same things because the the sort of the the class and social issues of the Republican base can all be fused together without harboring each other.

But the problem with with with this with the Democratic Party is that like the Democratic Party's basis is like what's left of the Union movement, but then also like a bunch of corporations and banks and like weapons manufacturers and stuff, but then also like a bunch of angry students and also like a bunch of people from different minority groups, and all of these people like have different interests and you know, in the Democratic Party, ultimately like

the thing, the thing that they care about is keeping capitalism going. And you know if if they have to like if that means that, yeah, I mean well okay, if if if your things you want to keep capitalis and going, like of course you're just gonna throw your left wing out to the wolves, right like it. It makes sense for them to do this because because the part of their base that actually matters isn't like the

labor movement, it's like it's Goldman Sachs. I think that one of the other things that that causes people to have this like immediately anyhow someone does someone does. Like people remember like when and Nancy Pelosi's driveway got graffiti, like that was like that's never never, that's horrible. Don't graffiti Nancy Pelosi's driveway. That's evil. Yeah, like it's an

isis you did nicest there? Yeah? Everyone lost their mind and was like, oh, this is obviously a false flag, and it's like what you know, But the reason they do this is because they have they have like Democrat optics brain were like I said, if anything being about politics, every everything is just about optics. And optics and how does it look? How does it look? How does it look?

Like the only people who care about this are like weird pundits, but because because because everyone's so sort of absorbed in like the Twitter media's fear, like they think that like the actual general public cares about the things that pundits care about because the only thing they're seeing

is pundits writing angry articles. But like nobody cared like zero people, especially the graffiti thing, because man, people like dissect how someone sprayed an anarchist a. It's like if you're not aware, like a big chunk of the discord, are e it being a false flag or whatever? Was that? The incursive? Yeah, and that they did. They did as they did like um, the anarchy a inside the inside

the circle. Um. And it's wild because I mean, spray painting what they said, like if if abortions aren't safe, then you are either in cursive is a genius move. It's great because if you're spray painted in some like random punk fond that's easy to be ignored like, oh, it's just people doing like whatever, people prey any stuff. But doing it like methodically in cursive is is actually a really good choice because you're like, oh, it's like

we're dealing with adults. It's like like the type of things that people will go through their minds when they look at it is great. Um, and it's just a weird denial to assume that no one who takes radical direct action whatever write in cursive. It's just it's like the most the most brainworms thing. And it's also like it's also very clear, like like okay, so I am very bad at spray painting, right, but like I have I have used a spray paint can, and well, this

is an aged I was. I was, I was making I was making banners for stuff, So this wasn't even like this wasn't even cryings, but this is just like

regular spray painting. It's like that is hard, Like writing that incursive and having it look that nice with the spray pain can is like difficult, which you know, if if you think about this about five seconds, this makes it more likely that it's actually left just doing this because it's like, what, okay, hold on, So the anti abortion people have one person who's really really good at graffiti, and this person that they've decided yeah, theist school and

secret like learning. It's like it's nonsense, but it's like people people just people want everything to sort of like like and I think this is the other angle of this is that people think that like have this wild overassessment of the capacity of the state. Yeah, and they think that anytime something looks slightly weird, it's like, oh,

it must be the state. Like like one of the one of the things that happened with with the Brooklyn shooting tube was like you had all these people that there's a tweet going around that was like, oh, like the cameras just happened. All all the cameras, all the cameras in New York were working except the exact one that would have caught the shooter. And this is this is like everyone circled around this and everyone was like,

oh my god, this is a false flag. And then know it turned out that like the guy had literally called the police, but the police were so incompetent that like other people like saw him on the street and got to him before like the cops did. And and like the camera it turned out wasn't even like the camera that was out wasn't even the camera that like

like they had him on camera. It was a different camera, but it was like everyone everyone just immediately has this like conspiracy brain thing where they see like one thing out of context that looks slightly weird and they go, oh my god. This whole thing is is is a

state like c a like depressing. It's so depressing because it's such it's so depowering your specific you're like it ties into the learned helpless, this thing that Robert mentioned, like you're convincing yourself that we don't have power to change things, that we cannot take any physical action to change things. Um. And that's not great mentality to have if you want to improve the world or if you want to if you want to destroy the things that

harve you, Um, you do. You don't want to fall into that that specific like I don't have any power mindset because you turns out you can do stuff. Things happened, you can. People threw a ball off and broke windows and cool people sometimes do cool things, yes, just like the people stuff. Yes. The Sophie Sophie Sophie, Sophie Sophie one of the things that's interesting to me, and it it might hold some lessons for folks thinking about radical

direct action. And what gets attention and what doesn't. So obviously this attack has garnered a lot of national attention, right the fact that I think because there was both an attack and a message, there was another attack. And it's not a p that this had anything to do with the pro choice movement, UM, but I suspect it does. The Attorney General Virginia Jason Miarez UM, on the tenth of May, there was a somewhat shot into his office, like a bullet was found in the office. UM. It

was probably fired when no one was there. We don't really know more than that. It is unclear as to whether or not this is involved with things. But three days before the shot was fired into his office, he had basically Catholic groups had been planning big masses to celebrate the leaked draft opinion, and protesters had been organizing to protest the Catholic masses, and he had threatened to

charge people who protested masses. UM, because he believes the right to freedom of religion trump's the right of free speech. So it's kind of like a fucked up situation. People got angry at me ares UM, and it seems kind of noteworthy that someone shot into his office three days after this. I mean also, I mean there's been a lot of stuff like on on May eight, there was an attack on the organ Rights to Life building. Yes, yes, yes,

there was certainly appro choice. Yeah yeah, there was there, there was there was at least two multop cocktails throne and there was a break and inside. So it's like you can do things. You don't have no power like you can physical you can interact with the politics in a physical way. Um, people do interact with politics in a physical way. Yeah. And and people people have this assumption that like this is going to be incredibly unpopular. And again I want to point out burning the third Precinct.

How to higher approve of rating that both presidential candidates, which I mean I I again tend to advocate in we should elect the burning of the third Precinct in Minneapolis as president. Look every look, the way that works is the burning of the precinct takes off this and then every day you burn another precinct. So that's so that you can actually have a president. Well that is

how you fill the cabinet. Yeah, there needs to yeah, yeah, yeah, you have to eat well, yeah, all all all the staff positions filled with the Health and the Health and Human Services Secretary will be the West Los Angeles Police station and so forth. Yes, I'm really excited to see which one gets picked for the Housing Secretary. I am just on my on my toes. Just's exciting, exciting. Democracy can be quite far. Electoralism has some has some really cool,

really cool points. Yeah, hey, you you too could go in front of the National Labor Relations Board and the National Labor Relations Board is just seven? Is just seven? On fire police stations? Charred really win? So yeah, we just we just want we wanted to at least talk about this because if whenever a cool thing happens and a large swath of of of people who are ostensibly leftists or even or even anarchists default to calling anything cool a false flag or notp it's like, well, like

what do you want? Like you want people just to stay at home all the time and not do anything? Like, what's what's the end goal here? If you're calling everything that happens enough. Yeah, and also just like if you're going to if you're worried about ops and thinking of suggesting that something might be what is your line? Is it just that people broke a law? Are you saying that if people do illegal things, that's always like a government op because that doesn't seem like yourself an anarchist,

doesn't seem like a good strategy. Yeah, especially when it comes to reproductive rights, like you're gonna have to do illegal things, if people are gonna have to break exactly pick and choose. I'm a hundred percent convinced that like all of these people, if they'd seen John Brown, would have been completely convinced the John Brown. Oh, John Brown was for sure the FBI, he founded it, the original

op John Brown. I think that there's an aspect there of also like okay, if if if you're on Twitter right mostly or not doing politics, and the thing that you're actually doing on Twitter is trying to feel smarter for everyone else, and if you're the person that's like, oh hey, look all these people believe that this thing wasn't an op or like oh I A yeah, it's like it's like, yeah, okay, you you very quickly like spiral into just like every all all the all the

sheeople to smart fight this suspicious like it's it's like it's it's just a bad like looking at an element of event and going oh, this is weird, but in a way that is oh hauh, isn't this weird? It must be the government, Like that's that's just a bad

way of thinking. Like in in the mirror hours, in the mirror minutes after anonymous people broke into the Portland Police Association headquarters back in I think was July, just mirror hours, people were calling it a false flag that the police were dressed to the black block the people

and started protesting. The Feds. Yes, they alleged that this was like I guess the FBI or Homeland Security trying to get protesters angry at the cops again, which is I mean, for one thing, if actually happened, if there were to be a point where the left wing had the FBI fighting or the FBI or Homeland Security whatever fighting with local police over who was getting protested, that's

a win. That's a that's a big, solid capital dub for the But people like the FBI is a block breaking into the police union building and trying to light it on fire, you're like, well, doing doing less physical, let's be honest, doing less damage to that police union building that I have seen my friends do when attempting to deep fry French Fries. Like I have watched people do more damage to their living rooms than that protested.

The people's astonishing because like there was so many people at that action, and so many, so many people using the moment to to actually gain like physical political power for a brief a brief moment um, and to take that away from them is just as a bizarre impulse. And I would like to see it end, especially as we're going to see hopefully see that people will realize that that that direct action is going to become more and more important for securing your personal rights and securing

your personal freedom. And also I would say these people, Okay, if you want to be completely sure if that something is happening is not an off, do it yourself. Stop yelling about it on Twitter. Do it yourself. Then you'll know it's not an off as a general rule. As a general rule, look at France. What do the French do whenever something they consider a right gets taken away from them? They burn downtown Paris down, They light banks

on fire. They like Paris. Everyone who has gets select did to a position of power in France knows that if they cross certain lines, the capital will be ungovernable UM, and there's a reason why French people have such quality healthcare. Well with with with that note, I mean, I can't believe we're ending on the note be be like the French. I just is that is the friendship made a lot of good calls, a lot of bad ones to not trying to whitewash France, but there's a there's a number

of things they got spot on. Anyway, we will we will be counting down the days until that thirty day marker, and who knows, maybe other attacks will happen with people also calling themselves Jane's revenge because and obviously this is something that we as journalists have no opinion on one

way or the other. We're just reporting, just pure reporting. Anyway, Listen to listen to people who did cool stuff, to to hear about the Jane collective, and maybe also recreationally read about what different civilian groups are doing in Ukraine and the degree to which a wide variety of incredibly available tools UM can can be repurposed in neat ways. All right, I think I think that I think e'spisode that's a good sude. Hey, everybody welcome to it could

happen here, and it continues to happen here. UM. I'm Robert Evans. This is a podcast about things falling apart and what to do after that happens. And we are all currently dealing with the falling apart of several decades of progress on reproductive justice. UM. The Supreme Court leaking that UM they are coming for Roe v. Wade and UM. Yeah. Today I'm here with Christopher Wong and Sharine Launie Unice UM and my producer Sophie. We have two guests from

the bridget Alliance in the Midwest Access Coalition. We're going to talk more about what they do in a second.

Broadly speaking, both seek to UM attach people who are looking for reproductive healthcare and abortion access UM but cannot get it easily in their area UM with clinics and the things that they need in order to get to the clinics, including transit and you know, time and hotels whatnot, UM, in order to make it easier to get access to that kind of healthcare in places like the Midwest, where folks have been spending decades making it much more difficult

even prior to this recent ruling to get that kind of healthcare. So I'm gonna let our guests introduce themselves. UM, you've got the floor. Well, Hi, I am O'Dell Shelley. I am the executive director at Deep Bridget Alliance, and I'm gonna introduce my counterpart here. I'm Diana Parker trusta

from the executive director of the Midwest Access Coalition. And yeah, so you'll have been in some ways kind of dealing with elements of the post row world because obviously, like you know, we're all focused on the Supreme Court decision that's in the pipeline, but um, anti choice activists have been working very hard to essentially create a post row world in chunks of the United States prior to this point.

So you all have been kind of dealing with the reality that a larger number of people are going to be living under for a while, right. Yeah. Yeah, MRURI has been able to effectively bad abortion state for years now. I think, Uh, there's maybe a handful of abortions that the one clinic there are able to do because of all of the trap laws, um, which is the targeted restrictions for abortion providers, uh, and the waiting period so

people have to go to another state. Kansas Iowa or Illinois, Missouri. Um, and we've been helping those books for years, and UM, I'm going to guess this. I mean, just because you've been living in with this for a while, I'm gonna guess the announcement last week did not come as a total surprise. The timing of it certainly did, which for Diana and I came at the heels of a conference that we were at thankfully together, which is was kind of just pure luck for us so we could actually

commiserate together. But no, ultimately this is not a huge surprise. I mean, I think we're all still waiting to see what actually happens in June. That the writing has been on the wall for months, in years, if not longer. And you know, as you were just pointing it out, essentially, for organizations like the bridget Alliance and the Midwest Exist Coalition, we have been existing already because the protections of ROW are insufficient to actually secure abortion access for all in

this country. So this has been our lived experience, and preparing for this moment has um It has been a long time coming, and I'm sure there have been a number of conversations that have been going on about what to do and how to prepare for this right because the primary change is going to be, at least initially until some they make some sort of federal push that states that have some sort of functional access to abortion are going to be flooded with an even higher number

of people in need of care. Um, could you kind of walk us through what sort of steps have been taken to in order to kind of brace for that impact, so to speak. Yeah, So I think a couple of things. And and the first to sort of pull back on that for a second is to say that part of preparing for what's to come has been our orgs in

the community that we exist in. This this incredible expansive landscape of different types of organizations that have existed for decades to secure abortion access where the laws were insufficient, where um people were faced with barriers like income and

equity and geographic inequity and the unavailability of providers. UM. This network, though, has existed largely unseen, and so a lot of preparing for what is to come is really embracing our existence, feeling affirmed in that and in our value, not shying away from the expertise within this community which is held book by volunteers as well as staff UM, and so I think a lot of the last couple of years has been focusing on really trying to harness

that expertise and that knowledge and compassion and the fact that many of the people who are leading a lot of the efforts in the reproductive justice movement are people who have had abortions themselves, which is a enormous and valuable part of how this movement moves and hopefully will continue to center the people most impacted by the fall of row UM. I think, more specifically for Bridget and or its like MAC preparation means deepening our relationships with

the clinics that we work with. They are critical, of course, and their sanity is critical to abortion access. Is making sure that we have the sufficient funding to continue to staff train that volunteers systematically and mindfully UM, and ideally do so in a sustainable way so that we're not all overwhelming ourselves with the sudden surge of need and

the sudden surge of impact UM. And then you know, for Diana and I even personally, it means deepening the relationships that US practical support organizations have with one another, because no one organization is going to be able to help every single abortion seeker who will need to travel. It will rely upon really strong and transparent collaboration. So those are some of the things that you've been focusing on.

One of the things that strikes me as a problem that's going to be, if not immediate, been pretty imminent for y'all is we've already seen threats and promises from legislators in some states to attempt to criminalize leaving a state where abortion is illegal in order to get access to healthcare. How what what kind of preparation is even possible for that sort of world, because it does seem like we're staring down the barrel of that. Yeah, I think the only preparation we can have right now is

to expect that the corners will allow them to do that. Um. They're very creative now that they've seen a going to effect and hold on as the law of the land, even though it's in direct violation of federal law. UM scode us the highest code court of our country, UH is the one that has been allowing that to happen. And so that sends a huge message to all these UH force birth legislators that you know, bring us your worst take on the law. We will find a way

to let you keep it. UM. We're we're working with you on this, and UM, you just need to get bolder and bolder and see what you can get away with. So we can't really predict how they're going to do that, although Missouri has indicated that they're going to consider an a guessing as it's fertilized a resident and um, a resident of the state, that they have, you know, responsibility for protecting um completely ignoring the fact that it's growing

inside a complete human being that has rights. UM. But that's that's the latest that I've heard of them figuring out how to restrict someone's someone's travel um M. But it would require a significant shift in how we understand constitutional law and um the basis for our legal system. Yeah, and that that seems like something that I don't know, like really genuinely seems to be on the table in

this moment. I mean, we have I think it's Louisiana who's trying to like part part part of their bill is that they like literally it says that they can disobey the federal government, which we had a civil war about that. We had we had a nullification crisis about that we like, so, yeah, I guess I'm wondering what your impression is on like how far this can go?

Like do do we get to the point where states can just like tell the federal government no, Yeah, yeah, I mean that's what the architect of the st law essentially told The part is that they don't have jurisdiction and all the law is that they have passed in the eight hundreds are actually um enforceable, and the federal government has no authority to stop them, and uh they are the fifth district An Scotus has indicated that maybe you are right, maybe that is the correct way to

interpret our constitution. Um. So I feel like all of that, all of our decades centuries of um figuring out what the law means for this country is just up in the air, and we may be looking at laws now that are just more and more buzzarre. Um. As long as you know the GOP and the Right have control over so many bodies of our government. You it really is,

I can't even fathom. I don't think we can predict what's going to come honestly, UM, I mean I'm also wondering to put it crudely will legislators in states that are currently committing because we have seen a number of states, California kind of leading the pack committing to maintain um access to to to abortion and other forms of reproductive

health care, they are being threatened right now. Do do you like, do you feel like you have a good chance that they are going to back you, especially in the event of, you know, laws that would potentially open people like you up to criminal charges just for trying to support people in getting you know, reproductive health care outside of their state. Is your question? Do you do we think that elected officials that are pro choice are

going to back us? Yeah? Yeah, yeah? Do you like it's entirely possible that we're going to see some sort of federal law that not just criminalizes abortion or even like prior to that criminalizes aiding people in seeking a ortion outside of states that have banned it, right, Like, that's on the table. How does that change the landscape for it? Do you suspect that, like in kind of a similar way to how some of these some of the legislators and states trying to ban abortion and said,

like we're just going to ignore federal law. If that contradicts our state law. Do you think that, um? Do you think that pro choice legislators in states you know, like California are going to be willing to go to the mat and protect you? Or are are we? I mean, yeah, I guess I I know this is kind of an unknown, but I'm kind of these must be conversations that y'all are having, right, I mean, I really freaking hope that they are. And if they're listening, please please prepare to

do so. And it's been really heartening to see states like California and Oregon, in Illinois and New York and Connecticut for instance, UM, come up with really clear language around their support of not just choice, which was the language of the past, but abortion and are saying that and are starting to invest in things like abortion funding and travel to themselves actually, you know, put forth their own efforts to contribute to people who will need to

travel into their states. UM. And you know, Diana was just speaking the other day with a bunch of elected officials in Chicago. So I think I think this is also why what I was talking about earlier in terms of orgs like ours coming coming into the light is so important. Is that we were going to need those relationships with those politicians. We're gonna need them to know us and see us and understand that we're a critical part of how we're going to serve their constituents and that, yeah,

we're going to need them to back us. Will they I can't say definitively, but I really freaking hope. So yeah, yeah, and hopefully those you know, as O'Dell said just now, I was UM in a press conference yesterday, the city the Mayor's office announced this fun to support abortion procedure funding and practical support. And my hope is with UM, municipalities will talk to each other and give each other the models for doing UH this protective, preemptive UH support

for people traveling to our states for abortion care. And UM yeah, I'm in with talks with the a c l U in Illinois to talk about potential UM bills that are floating around to even further protect UH puption in this state. Specifically, I know of one that wants to explicitly protect providers from being extradited or sued or shut down by prosecutors in other states that want to claim that they have to jurisdiction because like like I said, they figured out a way to give residency status to

fertilize eggs or something. Yeah, it's just completely fun that that's kind of what we're staring at right like that that's the thing that you have to be concerned with, is like out of state law enforcement. I don't know, like and and that's the thing. No one knows what it's going to look like, right Like we know that they have a vested kind of interest already in doing parts of this through bounties, which is kind of like

the thing that I'm worried about. Are we going to see like out of state law enforcement bounty hunting people trying to folks up with reproductive healthcare? And I guess that's just kind of an unknown at this point, but it's right, and it really depends on like our local protected state juristics, Like how far are they going to go to protect us from those entities that are going

to try to come in for us? Um. Just just today, one of our staff members tweeted about practical support funds and who to support throughout the country that provides the sort of travel logistics for people, and they got followed by a sheriff department in Missouri Yeah, so they're already out targeting and surveilling uh, abortion seekers and that people

who support them. Yeah, and of course I'm sure that there's a degree to which some of these folks are working with um, shall we say, like nonstate actors in order to like, I know they've been prepping with that

for a while as well. Um, what is I mean one of the things that I know because I've been having some conversations with friends of mine who are and like I guess we could say adjacently adjacent organizations to to where y'all work and who are at in some cases the convention you were at, who are concerned that

as providing people with reproductive healthcare becomes illegal. Um, there's going to be a lot of fair weather friends kind of revealed and I I am interested, like, is this a thing that in order to be engaged in providing people with reproductive health care you have to be willing to engage in illegalism at this point? Like is that where we are? That's really interesting question. Yeah, as as members like as bribing C threes, uh, you know looked

at by our state governments are federal governments. We can't engage in anything that's legal UM. But people have forever on their own dumb things that the state has considered illegal in order to have bodily autonomy. UM. There are people who can't afford it. There are people who are just so far from the nearest clinic that they can't

even fathom how to make that trip. Uh. They're undocumented folks. UH. There are people near the borders that can't even physically move past a border trick point because they're just trapped there and can't get care UM in other parts of their state where it's available. UM. So they're that that will be a thing. I think that is going to increase, because the need will not decrease UM. And I do not,

like my organization can't really see anything about that. But you know, personally, I'm like, you do whatever it takes to live your life and thrive. UM laws are made up especially now. Yeah, that is nice to hear, because I, you know, I try to keep abreast of the sides of this fight that are you know, working through five o one ses and and the like, and and engaging in electoralism. The people who are you know, doing stuff like trying to figure out ways to UM provide access

to like miss pills and whatnot to people. UM, because that's just where we are. We've talked about the degree to which you guys have already been living in some people's future, you know, just because of the specific nature of what your organizations have been doing. UM, and the degree to which you know you knew some of this is coming. What has surprised you outside of just like the fact that it got leaked ahead of time about kind of what we've seen in the last weekend change.

Mm hmmm, mm hmm. I think I am. I'm not so much surprised by the response from folks. UM, I'm a little frustrated that it took this moment for people to realize what has been happening in this country for the past decade, few decades. Honestly, this is this is a very long game, uh for the antis. But ever since Trump was put into office and started just flooding the federal courts with very young, very anti conservative judges, UM,

and SPA was a huge flag. UM. But I think I was surprised that there was a mass amount of people that we're going to step up when the decision came out. UM, it's it gives me hope I hope it's sustained for the many many years we're going to need uh practical support and abortion funds while we fight for legal rights. Um. Yeah, so I guess the surprise

is a mixed it's a box bad for me. Yeah, I was gonna say something similar that I think I've been pleasantly surprised at how well educated and informed a lot of our supporters and newer supporters are about. As Diana mentioned, the existence of abortion funds and practical support organizations. That practical support is and being talked about is huge. We couldn't get this conversation into the media a couple of years ago, So like, this is really remarkable and important.

But what's more, there seems to be also like a different understanding of why we have to exist. Um, it doesn't seem to be shocking people quite as much. A but there certainly are still tons of people who are shocked by this, But for many they're not shocked that for some abortion has simply been inaccessible and what those

reasons are. Um. And you know, that's thanks obviously to a lot of the really hard, important conversations that have been had over the last couple of years about racial justice, and I think that, you know, it's a silver lining for sure, but I'm I'm grateful to find that the depth of the conversations is there now and hopefully that means that the commitment is going to be sustained in long term, because this is a little bit of deja vu for us in the sense that we've had little

moments like these ever since our organized aations existed. Um, when a single band goes into place or is threatened to go into place, this like swell occurs using my hands a lot, which obviously you can't see if you're listening to me right now, So I'm gonna put my hands down, um, and you know, and that and that brings out a lot of really incredible donors and a lot of really incredible offers for volunteers, and and then

they tend to go away. Um. And especially when when Biden was you know, elected, and there was definitely this like moment where everyone was like, Okay, we're cool, right, which this guy hasn't said the word abortion, but we're still fine, and we're not we're like the furthest from fine. So yeah, again, like pleasantly surprised that people seem to have um, a sense of why we're here. Yeah, I

just wanted to bring up the website. Did Biden say abortion yet or its like it's so unfortunately hilarious to me, um, but I'm just really glad it exists. Um. And then they someone reached out to the someone in the Biden administration to make a comment on this when the when the the draft was leaked, and they said, well, we tweeted it or like whatever it's and it's like it's he said it once in a tweet and like once in like a statement or something. So I just think

it's there, you go. I don't know what more we want, but like, I just think it's important to what you were saying earlier. Um, how legislators in Oregon or California, like it's so important they're saying the word abortion, not just pro choice, because I think a lot of people are a lot of people are scared about that word for some reason or it sounds scary to them if they're not that educated about what pro choice means or

what abortion means. So I think I have a little bit more hope seeing more people even saying that word, um, because it really has pro choice. Yeah. Yeah, I think the statistics is something like the antis have been using the word abortion three times as much as we have, and that is why it's so stigmatized and difficult to talk about. And I definitely try to encourage people to say the word abortion, to talk about abortion with everyone

they know, just so we can stop hiding. I guess kind of the last thing I'd like to ask, and we can we can cut this bit if this winds

up not being something you want to get into. But have you have you felt an additional need to worry about given how public you are in your advocacy personal protection UM as things kind of have heated up, you know, we were we were recently at the conference that you mentioned before, UM, and it definitely with all of my colleagues in one place, it definitely made me feel a little vulnerable for myself and them. But honestly, the people who are targeted or the providers by far UM, I'm

not worried about my physical safety. UM. I'm worried about the physical safety ever of our providers and the fact that our government is responding to peaceful protesters outside kavanas Um House and talking and and asked for I think Susan Collins on the sidewalk outside her residents results in legislation being immediately they all somehow got together for once in their lives to do something about the terrorists who chalked sidewalks by legislators home. Um uh is it's it's

really demoralizing. Um because we have our providers have seen violence and um yeah, they've seen violence on this every day, murders, asset attacks, bombings. Um. Yeah, Chris Sharine, do you have anything else you wanted to get into. Yeah, I wanted to ask one thing, so, you know, Okay, seeing this sort of increasing fectlessness or politicians even by their standards, and you know, the response to this being let's give more power to the U. S. Marshals, which is great idea,

the worst idea I've ever seen. But what can just people do about this in it? You know, I mean we've talked about like giving to abortion funds, but like what how how can people get involved and how can people get involved in a way that's sustainable of the long term. Yeah, I mean, definitely give to abortion funds, give to practical support organizations like the Midwest Access Coalition and the bridget Alliance. Um. If you are interested in volunteering,

reach out to your local organization. UM. There are a couple of really great resources for lists of those organizations and where they are, like the National Network of Abortion Funds UM. And you do bear with all of us because we are handling a flurry of emails and that's incredible, But we won't be able to plug you in immediately. UM.

It might even take a little bit of time. But then I think that you know, voting is still critical, especially in local UM, in any local elections, especially if we're thinking about how we're going to prevent the possible criminalization of abortion seekers and of abortion providers, we need to make sure that we've got the judges and good local elected officials at the very least, So do not

stop doing that. UM. Yeah, I think those would be the things that I would say, focus on and the thing that I always say, which is just like talk about it. Like I am totally that person who is like the downer at the dinner party talking about abortion, But be that person and go and talk about it and share why it's important and how it's not just about abortion, and it's not just about women, it's about families, it's about parents, it's about queer folks, it's it's about immigrants,

it's about miners. Um, You've got a lot to be worried about right now, So don't stop talking, listening, reading, consuming whatever you can. Yeah, And just to jump off that, if you are in a safe state, you're not going You're not going to be safe forever. Uh, They're gonna come after us. They're going to come after the legislators. The supreme courts of those states. They're usually a thin margin, um as far as conservative versus progressive judges on state

supreme courts. So find out who your local org is that is leading that voter turnout to make sure that people are voting for the right judges go in. Um. And also I wanna lift up escorts. Escorts are on the ground many days of the week. They will put you to work and they're going to be needed more and more. UM. Yeah, I think that's that's all very important and a good note to end on. Does anyone else have anything else? Or are we um? Should we should?

We Let y'all get back to your very important work. UM, And thank you again for for making the time for us, absolutely, thank you for covering us and talking about it. Yeah, happy to do so we'll be we'll be continuing to to do that. And I hope you all, um, um, jeez, I don't even know what to say. Like, I hope you. I hope you function up for the people who are sucking shut up, you know. But I hope the support doesn't like dissipate as like the trend goes away or whatever.

You know. I think that's so disheartening if that happens. And like, hopefully the flood of emails but not necessarily remains a flood for you. But like, I hope that people are actually serious about doing something. And um, I think this time they might be just because I keep being surprised about little things, so I'm not gonna expect anything anymore. Maybe people were surprising, But I really appreciate the work you do. Um, So thanks for coming out to talk to us. Thank you for us talk to

your zoom h six about crack cocaine abuse. Some amount of crack cocaine is perfectly normal for recording device you to use. It is part of the recording industry. But everyone can overdo it. And if your zoom h six starts not reading cards or for example, stealing from you in ordered upon your stuff to buy more crack cocaine. You might need to do an intervention. This has been Robert Evans and a public service. And now about the zoom h six handhold recorder? How's that? Are we good?

Is that a good way to introduce a podcast? What depends an That's a great question, Sophie. Scholars have debated for decades which show this is. But personally it is the opinion of myself, uh and a large body of researchers at Oxford and Cambridge that this is It could happen here a podcast about how things are falling apart and how maybe put them back together one of these days figure it out. I'm here with Garrison and Chris. How are you guys? How are y'all doing? Just just

absolutely splendid. I'm extremely excited that every time I leave Twitter as a new mass shooting there's there was, Like this has been weekend. There have been quite a few mass shootings in the last forty eight hours, and there's a non zero chance there's been at least one between when we record this podcast and when you listen to it.

I'm not trying to be flippant. That's just a reality. UM. So I think we're going to talk about the two most recent ones, one of which UM was the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York by a four chan motherfucking white supremacist very much patterned after the twenty nineteen eight Chan shootings, particularly the christ Church massacre UM, and then the day after. I guess it's not technically a mass

shooting because only one person was killed, thankfully, UM. But there was a shooting that was certainly an attempt to be a mass shooting because he attempted to close the exit and stop people from leaving at a Taiwanese church UM in southern California, UM, which was stopped by the congregation before nearly as many people could get killed. UM. It appears to be it's just come out, UM, motivated by nationalist hatred of Taiwan by a Chinese man. UM.

That's the broad understanding of both. Its complicated. Yeah, I'm sure we'll get into that that, but we should probably deal with them chronologically. UM. The Buffalo shooting is it's one of those things I made a big chunk of my bones as a journalist in the field that I used to spend most of my time reporting and covering the eight Chan shootings, and after every one of those in twenty nineteen, I had an article within about two hours. I haven't written anything about this one. I don't plan

to because there's not much to say. It is what we've seen before. UM. I know there's some debate over how much of the man as there should be, over like how much of the manifesto you can take at face value, which is none of it, um and, as to whether or not there might be something more going on here. But it is kind of my opinion from the information we have, that this is the kind of attack we've seen before and the kind of attack we will probably see again more than once before the years over.

You know, this is someone who was radicalized primarily against uh, the immigration or the existence really of people who are not white in the United States um and believes that the best way to cleanse the country of people who are not white is to carry out mass shootings that will radicalize other people and that will lead further to the breakdown of civil society in the United States by pushing it kind of like hot button issues like gun control,

UM in order to further you know, it's an accelerationist sort of attack. Um. So yeah, that's that's what I'm seeing here. Yep. I mean it's yeah, like like we said, it's very very much riffing off of christ Church. I mean at least over half of his manifesto was like specifically richized manifesto, which, of course that manifesto itself was

was ripped from a lot of other manifestoes. It's kind of just just a series of like launching the medic language from one shooting to another, just kind of compiling into this massive conglomerate that's all based on trying to

convince more people to do the same act. Um. That's really that's that's why when people are like talking about this and people try to limit the attention on the manifestos and that kind of stuff, because it's it's all crafted specifically to get other people to do the exact same thing. Um. It's it's filled with themes, filmed with filled filled with in jokes, full of like in grip up group stuff to convince people to kind of go down a similar path, and all of it's carefully crafted

that way. The one really interesting thing about this is that there's not only manifesto, but also like unless seven hundred pages of diaries that he posted as well, um and logs from from like over like like like from a long, long, long time, tracking his inner thoughts. But also like again, he posted it and he knew he was gonna do this, So there's no telling how how accurate that is. It's all it's all in this package

that he wants to present to people. So a lot of the navvy gritty are is not even worth talking about in a lot of a lot of cases. No, and I'm not I think there's broadly speaking, things you

can learn. And I'm also to be clear, I'm not against searchers studying, and I think it should be absolutely I am against just finding a thing in there and like posting it like when I when I made my post, I was pretty careful to note a couple of things that seemed consistent based on other aspects of the like things that he claimed about his radicalization that seemed consistent with what we were seeing, Like he noted that he was primarily radicalized online. That seems plausible to me because

of how fucking online the manifesto is. Um like and and it's one of those folks are not entirely wrongfully bringing up the fact that the great Replacement White genocide sort of conspiracy theory that seems to have motivated this fellow is basically identical to Ship Tucker Carlson says, that's not not that that's not what radicalized him though, but that's not what radicalized Yes, this is not a dude

who was watching Fox right. That's something I've been frustrated by looking at the discourse because yes, obviously Tucker shouldn't be talking about this because he's normalizing this very rhetoric that you find in these manifestos, but he did. He did not find this from Tucker. This is like it's it's it's a whole whole different ball game. Um. And when there's that conflation, I do find it to be

slightly frustrating. Yeah, And some of the problem with discussing this is the problem with discussing basically any of these attacks, is that the mass media coverage of it is nearly always going to flatten it to a degree that works in the favor of the people who are using this as propaganda of the deed. And we can talk about maybe are there ways to detern that you know, I've I've definitely that's something that I've spent a decent amount

of my career kind of struggling with. It's it's a tough thing to do because, um, one of the things that's very frustrating that we've we've seen in the wake of this attack, and that we see in the wake of basically every politically motivated attack is a whole bunch of people from a whole different bunch of belief systems, insides immediately trying to spin it in order to push the narrative if they think is useful for the attack to have, and some of them believe legitimately what they're saying.

Like the folks, I think most of the people who are like this is you know, Tucker Carlson's doing are generally just folks who have not spent as much time in the fever swamps as we have. And see, oh, Tucker Carlson's talking about this this guy carried out of shooting. They must be related, right. I don't think that's like,

that's wrong, but I don't think that's malicious. And then you get folks who are malicious with it, right, like you have stuff the folks right one of the one of the narratives we've seen form, particularly from what I like to call the ship head left. Um is folks being like, well, there was a sun and rod, the black sun. It's a Nazi a culti symbol. People who are more nerds about Nazis will even quipped that, but that's that's the broad strokes of what it is, um.

And it's it's a symbol that's definitely on some as of gear. It's also on a has been on a bunch of ships well before there was an as. It's all over the place. And um, the reason he did it, the reason he had a black sun on some ship was not because of the as of but allien um it. In fact, he talked about wanting to break up NATO a bunch, but it was because the son and rad was on the chest of the plate carrier of the christ Church Shooter. Yes, but there's always a big fan

of the christ Church Shooter. There's all of these people who are like, yeah, authoritarian left or whatever, who are being like, oh, how can Americans condemn this attack when this guy is using as of imagery and there there's no telling how genuine they are with this, Like there's there's no telling if if they actually know what they're doing, or if they're just or if they're just being like if they're purposely misinformed, or what's going on. It's like

he doesn't mind, it doesn't matter. But yeah, my my assumption with those folks is that they are doing it because if you are a competent, paid propagandist, you want to always be pushing the narrative in a way that

furthers whatever it is your job to push. And if your job is connecting Ukraine to every bad thing that happens, and a mass shooting that has nothing to fucking do with with Ukraine or the Ukrainian government, um, if you can connect it back to them, then you're back in your wheelhouse, right, Because maybe you're not so strong talking about the fact that you and some of the people around you have been friendly with fucking Tucker Carlson. Uh and he pushes a similar narrative to the one this

mass shooter used. Maybe that's uncomfortable. What is comfortable is saying, no, this guy who did this bad thing is tied to these other bad people who are tied to this group that my entire career is about attacking. That's a much stronger position to be in, you know, if you're you know,

a propagandist. It's just like you see folks on the right who don't want to grapple with the fact that this was a right wing or who carried out a terrorist attack, um, based on an ideology that even motherfucking Ben Shapiro has pushed elements of. Um, you don't want to deal with that, So you call him a leftist because we saw the same thing with christ Turn he could Yeah, he made a couple of vague he's not

a leftist. He repeatedly identified himself as right wing and as a fascist, as a Nazi, UM, as an ethno nationalist, UM. But he made like a couple of vague comments that they're taking out of context and being like, see, he was on the left, but she wanted to happen what

he wanted to happen. That's why he put it in there. Right, It's like it is like it is all part of the bit, it's all this, it's it's it's it's all of this like like irony poisoned thing that they do on purpose to give any one a propaganda out or give anyone a propaganda. It's all yeah, if you'll remember it before, it's not it's not new, but it's frustrating yea. In the christ Church Manifesto, tarrant Um said that he'd been radicalized by Candice Owens, who's like a person who

says a bunch of shitty, fucked up stuff. I don't like Candace Owens, but like had nothing to do with that guy's radicalization, right, Like, that's not that's not where he's fucking coming from. Um. But he did it because he wanted to, because because it's sucking. It's ship posting,

you know, it's to muddy the water. It's to get people like it's too it's to reduce the ability of people trying to grapple with what has happened, to accurately see what has happened and accurately identify the problem and respond to A big, big motive for this stuff is to cause this kind of social and discourse chaos. Right.

They want people, they want everyone to be confused, and they want everyone to be fighting each other and distance agreeing on basic terms, right, and the whole the whole point of this is to encourage gun control legislation, which we'll get the right match to cause people to be more willing to do mass shootings or to do a tax against government. Right, it's it's it's all part of

the very basic accelerationist like talking points and tactics. So, and the confusion is not accidental, it's all it's it's all in if you, I think a good way to look at this, if you like fighter planes and helicopters in a combat zone will have a type of countermeasure they will launch if someone shooting a missile that's like a tracking missile, heat seeking or whatever at them. It's called chaff, and it basically it looks to the missile

the same as a helicopter does. So you shoot a bunch of these out and the missile goes and hits something that's not the fucking hell copter, but to its sensors looks like a helicopter. That's what they're doing. They're shooting out chaff. They're getting you to like about box with shadows rather than potentially landing a blow against like

the central problem. And the central problem is not an easy one to grapple with without all that stuff around it, right, because the the issue here is how the way in which the Internet enables radicalization, the way in which online communities are prone to radicalization, UM, the way in which, uh, the conservative media and aspects of like just basic American history play into this specific people who want to do violence in this way for this reason, UM, which is

why the cops don't notice them even when they're on their radar, which is why that like the warning signs don't get spotted. Um. And the ways in which, I think, more than anything, the ways in which the Internet has created a perfect incubation chamber for radical violence. And that is one of the stories here right. UM. You know people are focusing on gun control, um, which this guy bought his gun in the state of New York, which

has the most restrictive gun laws in the country. UM. Was more relevant even if you're on that end, is this guy was deeply involved in like tactical Reddit. This guy was heavily involved in in tactical videos and training videos and talking with other people about the best weapons, the best ways to use them. And if you watch the I don't watch the video. But he was competent, he engaged, competently, he did he maximized his ability to do damage he took out somebody, um with a gun

who was attempting to stop him. Um, that ship, the stuff that he did to prepare tactically worked, and the kind of tactical chunks of of of reddit of the Internet which are not all right wing, but a hell of a lot of them are, and a hell of a lot of them have gone in very scary directions in the last couple of years. Um. Not only do I suspect contributed to his radicalization, but I can say certainly contributed to his ability to effectively kill people. Yeah.

I mean he had like over five pages just on what helmet he picked out. He had pages on what socks he was wearing, which is not which is for multiple reasons. It's one to make the actual act more effective. It's two to inspire not like discourse like this, but also to to get people to replicate what he did. Right. It's crafting all of these symbols that people can be like, oh he picked out these socks. I mean, I'm gonna

these socks. It's it's it's all this branding thing. Um, we should take we should take a break, and then I want to come back and talk about some me medical language stuff. You know who else can give you good advice on socks? Oh all right, here's ads okay. Um, I want to talk about some medical language stuff because this was all heavily riffing and I specifically use the term riffing um off of the christ Church shooting, uh, which itself was riffing with other stuff. Right, but he

went so far. I mean, the the christ Church shooting was a copycat shooting of the Anders Breddock shooting, or at least descendant of whatever term you want to use. But that's what inspired the christ Church shooting. And it's I mean, he was for for the Buffalo shooting. He was testing on different live streaming platforms. He was doing all the stuff to craft a very specific image, and like images are very very very powerful. We've talked about like me magic before if we want to get silly

about it. Um, but he was very very much involved in crafting these things that could be replicated visually. Um. That's that's why he wanted to live stream. It's so bad. It's that you just the same way, the same way of christ Church was And this is like really important for why we don't share this type of stuff and why we why we specifically clamped down on this, on this, on this style of propaganda, and why we really encourage people not to share it, not to look at it,

not to do that stuff. Because he he does in the few parts of the manifest that that he did right, Um, he does. He did say like watching the christ Church video was very impactful for him, which I don't disagree with. I'm sure, I'm sure it was. He he did even and he did great links to recreate um. And this is why we people who are like researchers and people who kind of hand try to handle this kind of stuff um in like in their time on Earth, uh,

are so particular about this. Like a a thing last year, like a year and a half ago, there was this film company based in New Zealand who wanted to make a christ Church film. Uh. And they want they were going to film a recreation of the shooting. But they said, like, oh, but it's too to show the horror and to show

the impact on the victims. Doesn't fucking matter, it matter, It matters zero amount, because once you put that language into cinematography, you are giving them basically ammunition to help create propaganda and will get more more people killed. This is why the same thing we see the same thing on fucking um roadblocks, we see people recreate the christ Church shooting on roadblocks. There's actually a major problem, like a year ago, specifically, it was a huge problem people

recreating the footage inside this game engine. And it's it's specifically, it's it's very it's a very powerful tool that they used to spread around. It's targeted specifically people ages twelve to eight teen. This this guy was eighteen years old. Um, it's he was heavily involved online gaming. He was really heavy Reddit user, specifically, um, he loved Discord. So it's these are the places where where it spreads even more so than a now to Yeah, and I would say

we know. And that called him like a four chance shooter because number one he definitely was familiar with with Pole and number was there he announced his livestream there. I do agree with you read it was a bigger part of his radicalization. I suspect and in a lot of and Discord probably, and I suspect he did purposefully minimize the extent to which conversations on Discord were part

of his radicalization journey. In particular, that would be my assumption at the moment, but for countering this type of rhetoric, in this type of propaganda, right, because they're they're trying to make themselves look cool, they're trying to make themselves look tactical. They're trying to look they're trying to make themselves they look like they're in a video game. They make it look like they're in a movie. Right, they're trying to be cinematic. He was, he was testing on

different cameras. Um, he tested like a GoPro, he just said, he tested out his phone camera, right, trying to get this specific look. And we just we just talked about how he was tactically proficient in some ways, but in handling this type of thing. We have to when we're crafting counter stuff to make this, to make this thing less likely, we need to not even focus on that. We need to make them look stupid, make them look juvenile, make them look like they're pathetic, make them look like

they're stupid and silly, like they're Larper's. That's one of the things that saved god knows how many lives. At kind of the high point of the eight Chance shootings in nineteen was that fucker in Hall, Germany, tried to carry one out and got the piss beat out of him by a dude at a mosque um and was photographed the next day in court just covered. It's like beat two ship um. That image probably save some lives. They want to be cool, they want to be mimic,

they want to be spread around as a symbol. And we need, like culturally, need to. Yes, this is obviously very scarce, this is a very real threat for many for many people, many people of color, many black people, many many Muslims, people of different religions, Jewish people, queer people.

But we need to when when specifically crafting rhetoric and propaganda against these things, we need to make them look pathetic, right that that that that's what it needs to be framed as, because if you make them look scary and competent, that's actually gonna make these things worse because they love that, right Like as if you film the Christ, if you do any kind of like movie about the Christ shooting, no matter how you shoot it, they're gonna love it.

If you're shooting people in pain, they they want that. They want that. It's that's that's what they're looking for. You need to specifically frame this as these people larning and these people being pathetic and people being terminally online um and having bad social skills like you need you need, you need to frame it in this way that makes them look not desirable because their whole point is to

craft is desirable and visually stunning propaganda. Um. And I think, yeah, that's that's that's I've been thinking about this for the past because it's just been so much. But like I identify these people, isn't the problem? Right? Like this guy he was he was talked to you by by counselors last year because they were for he was them to do a school shooting. Um, Like there was a lot of the red flags and stuff. And like he was he was taught, he was talked to you by people

before this happened. Like he wasn't an unknown factor, He wasn't an unknown of the vector to make to make this, to make you know, to be this a person that can do this. But there's there's no way. People are very people are good at finding these people before they do it, but we're bad at actually stopping them from doing it once we found Once we find them, Uh, there's there's really no power to stop it um and

interrupting any kind of radicals Asian pipeline. It's really hard, so it's more about laying the groundwork to make the

pipeline look pathetic so it's harder to happen again. But always counting this stuff is frustrating because if there's a good strategy and wouldn't be here, be be deeply I want to move on to the tent in California, but at the at the end of this to close out, be deeply suspicious, if not outright contemptuous of anyone who posits a simple solution to these shootings, whether that solution is gun control, whether it's expanded police powers, whether it's

fucking arming everybody so that they can shoot shooters, anyone who proposes a simple solution this, This is a deeply complicated problem, um, because we let a number of horrible, horrible obvious problems go on for way too long, and the solution to this will be painfully agonizing lee difficult and will take time, and there is there is not

a simple, all encompassing way to deal with this. Um. One of the things that you can do right now to better prepare yourself to potentially deal with this problem is take a stop the bleed course, carry an iPad I fact and a gunshot wound kit um as often as possible. And that continues to be my best immediate advice to people, um, because that there's no downsides to doing that and it could and does save lives and other shootings. All right, let's move on in other dudes,

in other news. The next shooting. Yeah, hooray, Yeah, Okay, this is a weird one, UM, and I think the thing we need to make clear of front is that this happened yesterday. Um a recording still yeah, a top of recording. Details are still emerging, and it's weird. There's a lot of potential to so so for people who don't know, Um, a Presbyterian church in California was attacked by a Chinese guy. This is this is a time

when East Church, Um, it's mostly senior citizens. And okay, so there's there's a few important things up fronts that people should probably understand about. This one is that Okay, so Taiwan. Taiwan is ruled by military dictatorship. But for like basically the better part of of the post World War two period, it is ruled by military dictatorship run by the Nationalist Party of the CAMPT. The cam T is extraordinary in this period. It is extraordinarily violent. They

they assassinate people all over the place. They kill people on American soil. They killed they trained death squads in Latin America, and you know, they're they're they're known for the sort of humanity communism, but eventually they're sort of toppled by revolution isn't quite the right word. But as you know, the CAMPT as a party is still around today and as one of the two sort of major

like Towny's political parties. But they're not like the sort of desk they're not exactly the sort of des squad mafia party that they were through most of the twentieth century. Um the sort of the sort of progressive forces that work to overthrow the dictatorship. A lot of them coalesced into a party called the d d P. And one of the things about the d DP is, and there's a lot of sort of complicated Towny's political stuff here, but they are very very closely connect connected to the

Presbyterian Church in a lot of ways. And this I don't know the specifics about this church, but there is there is a very strong connection between and then the d d P are Okay, pro independence is putting it too strongly. But if you're a pro independent, like you want to want to be an independent country and you don't want them to sort of like either continue, Well, okay,

this is the problem with town these politics. It's enormously convoluted. Uh, there's a lot of stuff going on something at any time, and these people are gonna get mad at you if

the supplications they're making. But yeah, the short version of the story is that the sort of anti CCP pro independence e forces are and the sort of like progressive movement is sort of lumped into the d DP and those are the people who are getting shot like because yeah, because again there's there's a very strong connection between Restbyterian Church and the p UM and the KMT who again, I mean, okay, they've had an extremely complicated relationship with

the Communist Party over the last hundred years. It's incredibly baffling. But they've basically swung around towards being more favorable to China. And there are there are some fact extremist factions of it that are that support unific like just unification Um, what seems to have happened here is okay, So this the shooters families seems to have been like deported from China to Taiwan, and he like did not like it in Taiwan. And and this is where it starts to

get very murky. Um. The police statement we have says that you know, it's about sort of racial like it's it's it's it's an anti Taiwanese animus, but that can mean a lot of things. And yeah, and then this this again, I keep saying it's murky, and it's because it's it's genuinely murky. There's a chance that this is one of one of the things that's been happening since

the Hong Kong protests. He is a solidification in mainland China sort of anti of anti Tiwanese sentiment has sort of lumped in in this sort of like nationalist anti Hong Kong thing. There was there was a hardening of rhetoric against Taiwan, but also there's a lot of there's a lot of people in Taiwan, like like especially canti hardliners on the hard right who like really really really intensely hate like the sort of like the sort of progressive,

anti CCP, pro independence people. And you know, and this is something we don't we don't know what his affiliation is. He was like like he was like into like his sixties, right, yeah, well and and this is this, this is this is weird because there's a lot of things that that could be true about this because of how old he is, like again, you know, I mean he is around when the KMT is is straight up with Deska Party, right, so it could be that it could be she's sort

of like independently radicalized. There's been some like rumors might be too weak of a word, but there there there have been some kind of sketchy reporting that like his ex was leaving for Taiwan and that that may have played a part in it. But you know, violence between the KMT and people who don't like the KMT is a the that there wasn't a There was a very large amount of in the US for a lot of reasons.

And even though the CAMT is sort of like I mean, the their alignment that China has like flipped in the past about forty years, I I don't know, I'm really really desperately hoping that that's this isn't going to set off because I mean there's already been a lot of especially around Hong Kong, there's been a lot of physical violence, like people attack each other at protests about between for example, people who's prot their Hong Kong protests and Chinese like

CCP nationalists. But this is something different, very weird, very embedded in the time in these context and I don't think we fully understand what's going on here. Um, the everything again is like this guy like he lived in times one, like he was speaking Taiwanese, like when when he was essentially like going into this church to infiltrate before we shot everyone. So like he this isn't like this. This this is and I think people are reporting it

like this because they don't know what's going on. But like this, this isn't a case of like a guy who is from mainland China who like decided that he hated to time when these people like this, he he was there, he like he speaks, he speaks time when he's he like understands the time when he's political situation very in depth, which presumably is why he targeted the specific church. But other than that, it's it's the motives

are still kind of murky. And this is the other problem with it, which is that like the sheriff's like there's no way that the sheriffs have any idea what they're looking at, like that they're apparently reading his personal notes, and it's like, I don't trust their analysis of it. Good lord, no, yeah, like these if you weren't here, we would have to find someone else who understands that

conflict in order to talk about it. I don't feel comfortable like trying to figure out or analyze that guy's notes. I sure as ship don't trust some fucking sheriff's like, yeah, this I don't know, And I think that that's I

don't know. I will say like this, I think was like the worst possible scenario for what that shooting is about, because this is a kind of this is a kind of violence that was really intense, like right after World War Two and sort of like and you know, there there's been periods where like, yeah, I mean people have been like people have gotten killed here, but it hasn't

been that violent in a long time. And I don't know, I'm hoping this is just one guy who had a particular grievance who I don't know, like was it was

pushed by sort of external factors. But if this is a sign of like if this is a sign of sort of anti Tiwanese like nationally, well, okay, so there's one other thing that that we need to talk about because that's unclear because there's two kinds of potential right when Chinese actually lizab met play here, and it's unclear which one is happening because there are there are people who are right wing Chinese nationalists who are like pro CCP right, but there's also a kind of like a

kind of like it shifted, but there's also like a a like a KMG nationalist based right wing Chinese nationalism which favors sort of like reunification with China, but is is not the same thing as as the sort of mainland nationalism and has its own particular, like very local political grudges like with with the d DP and with the sort of like progressive movements in time one and I don't know and anything beyond that is kind of like trying to figure out which one it is, like

we just don't know unless the police, unless the police actually decide to like show us this guy's notes or like give us recordings of what he's been saying. Uh, we're not gonna know. And maybe maybe by the time this is out, like they will be more stuff. But right now it's very muddled, very bad. The fact that this guy also I think was an American citizen but was born in China has gotten every like even even the Chinese media outlets are saying extremely weird stuff because

they're confused by it. So it is a it is a muddled is a muddled mess, I mean, and everything about this last weekend's been uddled. There's been so many different mass shootings this weekend, there's been people being paranoid about copycat mass shootings. And now yesterday there was reporting that a gunman entered a church in Buffalo. Um. That

was not actually true. It's someone someone in the church yelled, um, like there's a gunman or something or like or like get the gun down or something, um, and it caused people to create this this kind of rumor, but that there wasn't actually someone with a gun. It was it was this someone was like reacting to the sermon that was that that was being had. Um. But yeah, everyone's been super paranoid about every stuff and all this kind

of stuff as as they should be. So sorting through sorting through all this stuff is very complicated and uh, not a great time because it's not it's not fun um, and we shouldn't have to do it, but it sucks. Do you think it's also worth noting that the police did not stop uh, I know, specifically they did not stop the one in the church, the past pastor, a pastor hit the hit him with a hit him chair, and then they hog tied him with an extension toward and then the police came, which is so um. I'm

sorry they were ever in that position. They should never have to be in that position, but it's turned out more and more people are having to do because it's not also the first time that a mass shooter has been stopped by someone hitting them with a chair. If I'm not mistaken, that's how the Gifford shooter was stopped eventually, or part of how he was stopped to somebody fucking decked him with a chair. Yeah, it's it's really useful

to have something beyond just your limbs. If someone is trying to shoot you with a gun, ideally you get away but if you can't get away, trying to hit them in the face with something heavy is certainly a choice that has saved a number of people's lives. God what, what an absolutely dogshit country. It's not a great time.

And when I you know, I noted earlier anyone trying to sell you like simple solutions, and I mentioned gun control on that, which is not to say that like the outrageously easy, how how ridiculously easy it is to get any kind of gun in this country. Obviously that's a factor in these shootings. My my um hesitance to take gun control as a if you'll forgive the term magic bullet to fix any of this is number one,

the sheer number of guns that are already propagated. Number two, the fact that a lot of gun control measures boiled down to making it harder for poor people to get guns, and neither of these shootings seem to have been poor people shooting up um folks. And uh just also the fact that while some states are capable of passing additional gun control. Number one, New York's basically done everything it's constitutional to do are e restricting gun ownership um and federally,

Biden and their Dems can't protect Roe v. Wade. There's sure a ship not gonna pass any federal people want as well, Like they're specifically doing this to get this stuff started so that it increases plays. Whether or not to agree with my fundamental claim, you don't have to. You can believe that if gun control were to be passed, it could be the solution, but it's not gonna be.

And so like as as regards those of us trying to survive, um, we have have to look in other directions because you're not going to get an assault weapon span it's just not happening. Yeah, I mean the one good I don't I don't say good thing. But it has been nice to see people slowly uh dropping the whole like load wolf terminology, that is a positive development because these are not not a load wolf. It's it's part of a very it's part of an intentional effort

to cause these things to happen. Part the groups may be decentralized, but they are not anything they are but they Yeah, they are decentralized in acephalis, but they are deeply, deeply sophisticated and connected, just not in a way you can drone strike easily. Well, yeah, and I think I would have some target suggestions anyway, get knifefac, do stop, and don't don't feed into their propaganda in the way

their propaganda um organized with folks in your neighborhood. Yeah, okay, well kids, adults, boys and girls, and individuals of non binary or other gender identities. Uh. Cats who happened to be listening in um Airwolf the helicopter if you're listening in everybody, every sentient creature listening. You know, I do

believe that things can get better. So part of that is not letting the crimes that these the things that these people do, Like, part of the purpose of an attack like this is to make people feel hopeless and overwhelmed. It's to blackpill you, you know, to to to utilize some of their terminology. So the way to fight against it is, among other things, if you're talking about immediate things you can and do, go out and do something

nice to help people. Yeah, and you know, I would say like as as a sort of like one brief last note, like, yeah, like in Taiwan, they overtow the dictatorship and oh hey, it turns out people stop getting assassinated by the knteen American soil. So, you know, over overthrow your governments, and you too can make peace with your enemies. Yeah, overthrow your government, overthrow another government. You know,

it's all good. It's all good baby. Hello everyone, welcome to It could happen here at the podcast about things falling apart and sometimes have you come put them back together. Today it's me Garrison, Chris, our producer, Sophie and Uh. Andrew joins us. Once again. I love that guy. Oh me too, me too, Hi everyone us another episode of Andrew talking about whatever he feels like talking about. Okay, today's episode, Um, I am happy to announce that I

finally finally finished Don't Have Everything by gradually. It took it took a while, you know, there was some points in time, some weeks it just went by. Why I didn't even like make a dent um. You know, life got in the way and stuff. But I finally finally finished it and I get to talk about it and say, you know, with some authority that I've read Don't Have Everything. You know, Yeah, it's a very dense book, but it was worth it. I mean, there are some critiques that

I've been taking into by some authors in the field. UM, And so I highly reco when people look for critiques as well, not just you know, taking it and consuming who will sale, but in addition to those critiques like on with those critiques, um, such as by people like um, what is politics on YouTube? And also a couple of academic writers as well, I think you could get a lot out of the book, and I certainly have. Yeah, this is it. This is a this is a very

good book. And I'm excited to talk about it because I read it like it was a while ago now like it's like five months ago or something. Didn't talk about it. I've been like waiting for I've been trying. I've been I've been picking up bits and pieces of it, but unfortunately my book list to get through is way too long at the moment, so I've not been able to actually dive fully into the text itself. Um. But it is definitely on my lest after I get through

my twenty other books I need to read for my job. Yeah, it's a lot, it's a lot. Um. At least we got to read books for a living. It was something adjacent to that. Um. And I mean it is a difficult book. I would say to like discussing its entirety, and I didn't. I don't tend to not to read any parator or anything, Chris, but I don't tend to talk about the entire book, you know, because that's like several hundred pages. Yeah, you know, and each chapter covers

like so so much UM. But I actually wanted to talk about chapter four in particular, UM, where the authors explore the concept and the origins in a sense of cultures, UM. In one particular segment, I mean a lot of mysteries of the upper pyliarithic that we don't know, right, I mean,

that's why the mysteries, um. But you know, we've come to learn, you know, through the course of the book that this assumption that everything was just these small tight nic bands, um, and that was just the entirety of the human social arrangement into the States. You know, at least it's new to the layman to realize that this is not necessarily the case. You know, UM, that there is a lot more political structural, you know, dibuicity in that time period. We don't know at that point in time,

you know, what languages pe who were speaking. You know, of course linguists have been able to like reconstruct like proto languages and stuff. And I mean, I'm just a hobby Linquist, just like I'm a hobby everything else. But I think it's been really cool to see how linguish is just able to do that. Like, can we just take a second to realize that, like linguists able to take scraps of existing languages and just kind of piece them together to get a sense of like how they're related,

Like how do you all do that? Um? But there's a lot we don't know, right, We don't know about their language and know about their myths, you know, um, their conceptions of the soul, what their favorite foods were, even know they ate, but we don't know what like

Joe Skeleton thoughts about his breakfast that morning. But what we do know is that, you know, from the Swiss Alps to out Mongolia in the Upper Polithic people were using a lot of the same tools, um, playing a lot of similar musical instruments, carving similar rather interesting female figurines, um,

wearing similar ornaments, and conducting similar funeral rites. And there's also reason to believe that people actually traveled a lot more than we would expect them to do, and tra actually traveled longer distances than we would expect for that time period. I mean we don't have they didn't have rather you know, like cars or or chariots or trains

or planes or anything like that. So to think that these long distance um journeys were occurring, you know, places like Australia or in like North America is just really

interesting to think about. Yeah, I was one of your fing talked about like one of the things I thought was really interesting about this is the way that they talk about culture areas where you have these like, yeah, you have these like very large I mean like almost like like half continent sized areas where people are speaking similar languages, like the same language, and you have these like you have like these clan structures that are like you know, you you you you can go from like

and go from like Missouri, and you can end up in like Mississippi, and you'll be in a place where they still have like you know, the sort of like four basic like plan lodges are still the same, and

you'll beat people who are like from your clan. And he has this really interesting line about how like sort of kind of intuitively like the world's gotten like the world, like even even when there was like people spread over geographic distance, like the world sort of got larger as technology you progress, and not sort of like smaller in the way that people sort of think about it, because like I don't know, instead of there being these sort of like mega like culture areas, you can go from

one place to another and you'll there'll be people who speak the same language and you can sort of slot into the like systems that are there. You suddenly have this incredible diversity of stuff, right right, So I mean specific to like North America. You know, um, we had all these different clan structures. We usually tend to think of, um, you know, these groups says and you know, especially like your immediate relations with people that you know, it's like

clue skin family, that kind of thing. Um. But there's actually, at least in some studies of hunt together as, there's some suggestion that their composition can be quite cosmopolitan. So, you know, you have these groups and biological relations might only make up a small percentage of like total membership. They're actually drawn from a wide pool of individuals of a larger stretch of area, and you know, not all

of them even speak necessarily the same first language. UM. This is YouTuber Indigenous NICs YouTuber named twin Rabbit, and he had this excellent, excellent video. I need to rewatch it on planes sign language, which is this um method of communication that Indigenous Americans UM used across you know, the plans to conduct trade and diplomacy and discussions even

if they didn't share the same language. Um. In Aboriginal Australia, people were able to travel halfway across the continent, moving across people who spoke entirely different languages and still find you know, camps that had people of you know, their same to atomic mighty you know, and those people were we treated like their brothers and sisters, you know, so like no hanky panky, but you know they had this

this you know, cross continental bond of like hospitality. From the Great Lakes you know, to Louisiana Bayous, you can find settlements of people speaking entirely, entirely separate languages, unrelated to their own. And yet still you will find you know, bear clans or elk clans or beaver clans that we're

obliged to host and feed them, you know. UM, And we could only really guess as to like what kind of systems were like and how those systems might have worked for eight years ago, you know, in the upper pyioithic. But what we do see with the you know, similarities and material um uniformities and stuff of these different tools and musical instruments and stuff suggests that there might be a bit of a similar system in place at that time.

Roughly around like twelve BC, we start seeing like new pottery, you know, getting dropped. We started to see the outlines of more specific cultures and specific areas, new stone grinding tools, new ways of preparing and eating wild grains and roots and the vegetables, um, different ways of chopping, slicing, creating, grinding, silk and training, boiling and storing, smoking and preserving meats,

plant foods and fish. And so when we start to see something that really brings people together, and that is cuisine and cuisine you know, being the birth of cuisine, being the booth of like really more specific cultures um, you know, the kinds of soups and porridges and stews

and broths. And basically what they were talking about was the way that people who like wake up and eat fish stews every morning tend to, you know, develop a different center themselves relation to their world, compared people who might wake up in the morning and eat some porridge with like berries and wild oats, you know, and then from there they start to develop different tastes and including you know, in in dancing and drugs and hair styles.

I remember last are on the book um the David's point out that some addigenous um Nat American groups who actually known for specific hair styles. And I kind of knew that based on the fact that, you know, we tend to associate mohawks with people, you know, mohawke cair style mohawk people, but I didn't realize that, you know, other groups also had their own kind of like culturally

specific hair styles, right. And there's also like courtship rituals and forms of kinship and styles of rhetoric, and so of course you still have these large cultural areas in the Mesolithic, larger than some nation states. But he's starting to see a bit more specificity, in a bit more diversity in shorter um spans of area. If we look at now, for example, where you know, we have in the Amazon all these different languages and cultures that co

exist merely kilometers from each other. I think the overall trend of human cultures, you know, the past tens of thousands of years, has been the opposite of marginalization. And it makes me think a bit about the whole concept of the nation states and how it tries to like bring people together to this like one narrow conception of what it means to be you know, X, y Z, and how humanity naturally seems to like resist that and

naturally seems to like split all from that. Like, even when you have situations with the forceful spread of English in you know, the Caribbean colonies, you still see like a diversity springing up with a bunch of different unique creoles and dialects making the language something different. You know what, if not for the enforcement of language satidization through the school system, I think you would actually see an even more rapid um explosion of you know, linguistic diversity developing

out of these creoles and dialects. You know, like a couple of centuries from now, you know, Patua and and Creole and British English maybe entirely incompatible. Even in Britain itself. You know, you might have a case where London English and I don't know, Sussex English or whatever starts to sound like entirely different, and I we already have that with accents. But just to see how, you know, even in short spaces of time, a short as a century or two, because for example, trend add Um was not

always an English speaking colony. Um, we actually spoke French creel for the most of our history and only in the nineteenth century did we have that period of Anglicization where English was you know, brought in Um. And to see that in that short space of time and that handful of centuries that you know, you're not already has its own unique English based creel, you always just fascinating

to see. Um. There's something really interesting to me about the way this process plays out because it's it's it's almost like because you have this sort of like like you have this period in the Mesolithic, all the period names are blanking out I had, but like like you say, yeah, like you have this period where you have kind of like you have a lot of cultural standardization, like spread across a long period like a bunch of places, and

it's used sort of as a mutual aid thing. It allows people to travel because you can go a place and know that like there will be people who are like you there and they will take care of you. And it's interesting to me. It's like, Okay, so this breaks apart as sort of like these these new cultures, like as people develop local cultures around like food and around just like Graver has this thing that he loves

talking about. These were talking about for ages called scisolo genesis, which is like you have two people, you know, it's

like I think I think they're his ositional examples. Like if you people who are arguing with each other and they like disagree minor ly over like one thing, and then by the end of the argument, like they're they've they've taken like completely mutually opposed identities to each other based on an incredibly minor disagreement, and you get this with yeah, like you get cultures to sort of like define themselves against each other and like they have things

that they like and things that they don't like. It's interesting to me that that you see you see the state trying to sort of like reimpose that kind of like like forty year old cultural commogity on all of these places that are like incredibly not homogeneous but they're doing it for like the opposite reason. They're doing it because they need senatorization in order to sort of like make their make their bureaucratic like systems work better and make their sort of like seeing like a stage kind

of thing. Yeah. Yeah, And also like, like I mean, this is a huge thing. Everyone in the in the like the early the late nineties and early two thousands thought that like the extent of capitalism on the around the globe was going to make everything exactly the same, there's only one culture, and that like kind of really

didn't happen. But there was this real sort of I don't know, like that there was this real sort of fear that that it wasn't just gonna be the nation state spreading like homoganization, but like capitalism was going to

sort of like spread imoganization. And I guess I guess the thing that they round up doing againstead was like figuring out that you could just sell everyone into their individual cultural niche, which to some extent, yeah, because like we see McDonald's in the US and the McDonald's in Bangladesh and McDonald's in Japan, and they sell all of the same McDonald's stuff, but they've also like sort of specified to the you know, specific country. Yeah, we have

the worst version. The US is the worst version of it, by the the the like Taiwan has one that has like they have like rice sticky rice patties. It's it's so much better than Yeah, I mean, I will say that if I did end up traveling to Taiwan, McDonald is probably be the last place I would want to go. Yeah, I mean we wanted beating there and we we were we had to catch a plane, so we wound up eating like Taiwanese McDonald's airport food because we had like

five minutes. It was a you know what they say, what airplane food? Um, but yeah, that's exactly us. Well, to get into actually the whole idea of cultural differentiation, you know, um, and this this tendency of humans have to subdivide and to distinguish themselves from the near buzz. And I mean it's not to assume that, you know, this differentiation comes from like differences and like language, you know, with you know, language splitting off over the centuries and

people associating with their native language and ethnicity. But that really tell the full story, you know, Like for example, in northern California in the early century. The Ethno linguistic map had really a jumble of languages that drew from entirely different language families, you know, as distant from one another, as like Arabic and Tamil and Portuguese. And yet these

groups still shared you know, broad similarities. You know, how they went about gathering and processing food, you know their most important religious rituals, how they organized their political life. Um. And they also managed to keep themselves distinct. You know, you have the Iroque and the Hoop and the Karak

and so forth. And I mean, to some extent, these identities did map once linguistic differences, but their neighbors, we spoke different languages, still had more common with them than people who came from their same language family in another part of North America. Of course, you know, European colonization had like a severe impact on like how neat Americans

were distributed. Um. But we still tend to see this trend of how like these modern nation states they went around at the time to you know, or the population. Since these neat Ethno linguistic groups, you know, this idea that the world should be divided into these like homogeneous units to their own history and everyone has a claim to like a certain territory and all that. It's I mean, it's really a concept that is born onto this mythology

of the nation state. And you know, of course we have to be real careful before we project those kind of uniformities back in time. Yeah, it's definitely really like two years old, like it it's pretty young, yeah, exactly exactly.

But um, there are some concerns, you know, with the concept of culture areas because that whole notion of culture areas came out of North American museums who wanted to arrange their stolen artifacts to illustrate their theories of the different stages of human adaptation, you know, like Colover's lower savagery and upper savagery and lower lower barbaris sum and

so on. And so they hadd to in whether they were an organized these artifacts based on like language, family or regional clusters um or some sort of like traced

history of of of regional of ancient migrations. Right. Eventually they realized that you know, this way of organizing into regional clusters seemed to work best the art and technology of different Eastern Woodlands tribes had some very similar um things in common compared to like trying to group people be sturn like say the Athabascan language or all the people who relied on fishing or all people cultivate to

me is um. And they were able to find similar patterns in the Neolithic villages of Central Europe, you know, finding these regional clusters of domestic life and art and ritual and so like. This whole cultural area concept was kind of a way of pushing back against this way of you know, talking about humanistry that like ranked populations

into higher or lower anything. You know, this this idea of of claiming that you know, people were of a certain superior genetic stock and viciouslynd fance level of technological evolution and so rather this there's been there was a shift in anthropological focus to look at the diffusion of more cultural treats like ceramics and sweat lodges and you know, the treatment of young men or certain sports um as.

They wanted to try to understand how these different tribes of certain region came to share this mesh of culture traits. So one of the people who were thinking on this,

you know, whole culture traits cluster idea. Um, it was guy named bous right, and he wanted to figure out why is that, like geography seemed to define the circulation of ideas, you know, with like mountains and dests form these natural barriers, and how basically the diffusion within those regions was basically historical accident, a legal hypothesizing that there was some sort of like way to eventually develop a kind of a natural science, developing how and even predicting

the ebb and floor styles, habits and social forms. And eventually muscle Mouse pulls up, you know, and he's basically taught obviously, like right, bunch of essays on nationalism and civilization, and he says it's basically, this whole idea of cultural the fusion is nonsense because it's based on a false assumption. And the false assumption is that the movement of people, technologies,

and ideas is some sort of rarity, something unusual. Instead, Mouse argues that like people in past times traveled even more than people do today, and it's just that when these people interact with people of other cultures and they see their cultural traits, they reflect on that and find a way to relate that to their own cultures, right, so that people who are traveling back then, obviously all of them, you know, we're aware of basketry, you know, or or or feather works or whatever the case may

be that other people were use in a couple of miles away, seemed to be said for like certain drum rhythms, or certain you know, games, or like For example, he spent some time focusing on the distribution of the ball games around the Pacific Ocean, around the Pacific Rim from Japan's New Zealand to California, and what he realized is that while people pick up certain ideas cittain traits from other cultures comes down to how they'd want to be

defined against their neighbors, against their closest neighbors. The question becomes less about why certain culture traits spread, but why other culture traits didn't. Because if you were aware of all the things that your neighbors and stuff are doing,

all these foreign customs and arts and technologies. I mean, we know that the Silk Road, for example, when we talk about the Silk Road, you know we had a silk road going from China all the way into Europe and all across the Silk roop all across Central Asia and West Asia. And despite that constant you know, sharing of ideas, not every idea that you know came from China or came from Pussia or I don't know if

Pusia was arounding the Silk Crew. But you know what I'm saying, Like, not every idea that was along the Silk Crew everyone necessarily picked up on, even if it was a technology that might have benefited them, because cultures effectively structures of refusal. So for example, um, there's this

guy on YouTube Religion for Breakfast. He did a video recently on the pork taboo in certain cultures and certain religions, right, and one of the things he pointed out was that the taboo tends to be strengthened in times of like repression so for example, or in times of cultural um definition. So for example, he is pointing out that in the period of Roman conquest, the Jewish people were more inclined to define themselves as you know, against the consumption of pork,

compared to the Romans. You know, for example, the Chinese are the people who use chopsticks, you know, they don't use knives and forks, So you're the tie the people who use spoons and so on. You know, it could just be said said that, you know, it's like aesthetics, like styles of art or music or tim man and is of course those things won't differ. But even like technologies that have like an adaptive or utilitarian benefits might still be risk, might still be refused by people who

might even benefit from them. For example, the Athabaskans in Alaska refused to use Inuit kayaks despite the fact that there are a lot better to suited for the environment and their own boots, and the Inuit, for example, don't use Athabaskan snow shoes um at least in the time that Master Mouse is writing. And then, of course this is a self conscious process, you know, this is a process where a debate and discussion of all these different

customs would have been occurring. You know, for example, in the Chinese courts when different foreign styles and customs would you come into the lands, there will be debates and arguments put forward by you know, the kings and the advisors and their vassals, you know, discussing, you know, whether they would ride the horses or drive chariots, or adopt like the man chew dress codes and customs, and so

society's mouth said lived by borrowing from each other. They define themselves by the refusal of borring than by its acceptance. The question of how culture areas form and how culture has split off is definitely a political one. The decision to adopt a certain form of agriculture, or to cultivate a certain crop more specifically, or to adopt a certain

style of dress. It's not just like a matter of like mere utility of maya or caloric advantage or material efficiency, or it's also a reflection and questioning of the values that that group of people holds or purport to hold, who they consider themselves to be. And I to think about the development of cultures, you know, I'd like to think about how our ancestors are, distant ancestors even consider themselves.

You know, it's easy to just fall into this trap because it's a very common cultural troop that you know, once you go before the invention of writing or whatever, all of all ancestors are just like boga boogle cave men kind of thing. But to think of them as self conscious and politically um conscious, politically considerate, thoughtful actors, not you know, static or passive props um. It's just I think it's it's I think it's just very cool.

I think it's very cool, and I think we should keep you know, these developments, these this recognition in mind as we you know, in the modern time look to try to transform the cultures we live under and to try to develop new values, new values of like anti authorityanism and anti capitalism and of you know, agree to priority on mutual aid and on egalitarian and social relations. Yeah.

I think there's a lot of very interesting political consequences of of thinking about this, because like, I think that there's there's sort of like two tendencies that that we sort of get stuck in when we think about like our social structures, which is there's there's there's one which is the sort of like I guess it's called capitalist realism, which is the assumption that like nothing else could possibly like, this is the only system that works, nothing else can

possibly exist, and that's unproductive. You know, you go back and you look at like any other culture society, and it's like, well, no, like there's unbelievably nearly infinite number

of ways you can organize your society. But then I think I think the second one is that, like, yeah, if you look at this sort of cultural diffusion and cultural refusal stuff, you see a lot of examples of people doing stuff that like under sort of like classical economic or like sociological laws, they shouldn't be doing, right, Like, there there's no reason why you shouldn't using more efficient canoe if you're in a place of the part of

the world that's like extremely hard to surviving, right. And I think that there's this tendency to sort of like reduced culture and reduced just all of the ways that our social and political systems function to these sort of like oh, the the product of these like abstract historical forces and like it's all like tech, it's all determined by technology, and like how you farm and stuff like

that's just not true. Yeah, I mean not the material conditions on you know, very important and understanding um, you know, how these cultures develop, and that's one part of um don't Everything that I found was a bit lacking. I think that not all the time those thoughts were clearly connected. Oh, I'd see, But I do think people put too much stock in solely material materialist um explanations and that kind of ends up precluding or leaving out the more messy

human round of explanation. Yeah, And I think I think part of why this happens is that, like it's much if you assume everyone he's like behaving a quality to historical forces or like the thing that they're trying to do is like maximize, um, they're trying to maximize their utility and they're trying to like maximize the amount of calories they have. It that that's a very easy thing to like you like think about numerically, right, Like it's

a very easy thing to refuse the numbers. It's extremely difficult to refuse the numbers, like to do to reduce two numbers. A society that is like I'm going to I'm going to intentionally make my life harder for myself because this is the way we do things, and we've decided we don't want to do things like other people. We've decided that we have some kind of political value that we have that makes it such that we're going to like induce difficulty into our lives and like that,

I don't know, like that that kind of stuff. The the fact that culture is not just a sort of like superstructure that gets that's like a product of like some kind of economic base like that that is very important and something that gets ignored or downplayed constantly that I think I don't like. I think like, yeah, I think I think you can argue that everything like maybe

goes too far in the other direction. But I'm I'm sort of okay with that, just because we've been so far on the side of like everything is historical forces for so long that you need something to remind people that, like, societies make conscious political choices, and not only have they made conscious political choices for like times of thousands of years, I like, we also can make conscious political choices that are not just sort of like pure reflections of like

however many tons of iron have been extracted, and like what percentage of like workers are currently working in hospitals versus like making cookies or something. Right, Thank you for that ooh analysis, Chris, I agree that that's a joke, Like twelve people will get I I love you if you if you understand that joke. Also, I'm sorry, yes, so you can wrap it up. Carson Um. All of this has been very fascinating. What what I've learned the most is that I need to finished reading all my

books as that I can read the Dawn and everything. Um, I know I like, I like got it from my dad for Christmas because um, because I knew that it would be uh at least I think I did. My memory could be I could actually be wrong. I could have only intended to get my dad for Christmas and forgotten to actually get it. But I've been reading it to I've been meeting to both buy it for myself and get it for other people because I've heard a lot of interesting things about the book. So it is

definitely on my list. It's been a pleasure listening to. Uh, you'll discuss it, um Andrew. Where can if people want to check out more of your your work? Where could where could they go about that? Right? So you can still find me on Twitter and underscore see and Drew when I'm not um hiding, And you could also find me on YouTube andreism YouTube dot com, slash andreism, where I post radios about also stuff, random stuff. You know

that I'm thinking about politics, history, Well that jazz. A few days ago, as the time of recording, um Andrew put out a wonderful video on a solar punk stuff. Um, I have no idea what this episode will air, so that it's probably been like a month or two or something. But definitely check out the Andrewism channel. It's one of my favorite spots too. Uh watch something. When I feel like I can't put any words on the page, I go watch your things because it's very helpful. Um. Yeah,

so that doesn't for us Today. You can find us that Twitter and on Twitter and Instagram at happened here pod coos out Media. You can find me posting about hyper objects and liminal spaces at Hungry bow Tie And I heard that you have a Twitter, Chris. Yeah, it's at mc h R three. You can find me mostly complaining about other people who are doing mean isn't wrong?

I guess that's most of what I post about. Love that for you, you two will be able to differentiate between the sixteen different For exceit, it's not even there. Used to be long ago into galaxy, far far away, and made a decision, and that was that I was going to sacrifice my brain to understand the different kinds of maoism. And if you two want to understand why it still exists in all twenty varieties of them, yeah, go there. If you don't want to do that. Do not,

You'll be happier. Well, what a ringing endorsement. Uh? Good bye? Everyone go I don't know, should we should? Should we plug up people at the other shows? Yeah? I guess everyone's tune dead at this point. I hope they've all stopped at the podcast player. I think I think, Uh, yes, go outside and be free there, I can you can you can edit that into something that is more concise. Sorry, Daniel Slash, I don't care. Yeah, it's well, it is the podcast. It could happen here, but for once, it

is not about the world falling apart. It is entirely about putting it back together again. Uh. And and joining me to talk about putting it back together again is zero of the other people who are normally on this podcast. But I'm joined by Shannon and John Horonomus, who are part of the team of Organized Is working on the Dual Power Gathering. Shannon, John, Welcome, Welcome to the show. Hi,

thank you, hey. So, I guess the first part of the Dual Power Gathering is dual power, and I think we should walk through what actually that is, in what our sort of visions for it look like, because Man, I know we've talked about this on the show before, but that was a very very long time ago, but which I mean like probably only like seven months, but you know, it feels like ancient history. So yeah, I guess do you two want to talk about what dual

power is and how how do you do? Yeah? Sure, I'm gonna stop trying to think about what happened seven months ago and trying to Okay, you said that. I was just like, oh wow, Okay, no, never mind. Um So, dual power, John, how about I go ahead and share with our audience what is sort of the poetic language that we have up on the website from the the organizers, and then we can kind of like break it down and talk about it. Um yeah, that works for me,

all right. So of the website texts such dual power is a way to imagine the moment just before our movements converge, as the possible becomes the actual, when the seeds of social transfer nation we have sown for generations bloom, when the old world begins to wither and new worlds can be born. Is a way of thinking about how

we got to that moment and beyond it. Dual power is the project of building self determination, mutual aid, solidarity, and direct democracy in our communities by creating spaces that empower us all and from which new and mansipatory institutions can emerge. It's a pretty So what does that mean?

So what does that mean? UM? First off, I want to say like a shout out to a lot of people have been working on this vision of what dual power is for years and years now, and that includes UH, A lot of groups UM that we are either in conversation with or have been taking inspiration from. UM. One of the biggest, I think most developed groups that's doing that work is Cooperation Jackson and Jackson Jacks Mississippi, UM and UH. I think the goal is people went up.

Oftentimes when people do like here dual power, if they don't have any other UM context for it, but they

are maybe from the left. They've heard about this moment in the Russian Revolution when there were these two competing like uh, you know, basis of power in like Russian society while they're undergoing this revolutionary change, and uh Lenin wrote like a pamphlet about it, calling it the dual power and looked at it as like a thing that needed to be like overcome by you know, workers in Russia UM, to like establish a workers state UM, which

they kind of outlined in a book called State and Revolution.

And but when we look at like they were describing, we kind of look at this as I think that emerges in any time when there's a social revolution and kind of unfolding in a society where you have various classes who are like changing like social relations, workers, peasants, UM, different groups of people who like have like a class they have come together around a class interest and overthrowing their oppression, and they have to go through stages of

building their collective power their collective identity there, and they're kind of like overall strategic movement in a particular direction UM, and they create this tension between the existing state order and a newly emerging like uh, like social revolution that's like overthrown, challenging uh and overthrowing that like UM power. So that being said, we want to ground that. We want to ground that a little bit in a like

less historicized context or whatever. We could say maybe that's the work that we're doing to build up the institutions and relational structures that we need to care for ourselves in each other UM as we moved through uh sort of like different states of like institutional organization in the society. Right. So when we're thinking about how do we meet our basic needs together in ways that are not dependent on the oppressive institutions that we're trying to overthrow, we're talking

about dual power. Yeah, it's like any time working class folks, And it's like in a broad definition, communities, people who aren't necessarily working but like depend on like taking care of each other or who do the work of reproducing every you know society, UM basically build their own independent power like uh to like to be able to fight

back and to challenge the you know, the status quo. So, like there's a lot of things they're kind of percolating that we've been like that have been happening in North America that takes inspiration from areas of the global South, UM,

but also our homeown, homegrown like traditions, UM. So that could be in anything from like your local mutual aid network to uh, your local tenant union to like a rank and file UM union of like Amazon workers or teachers or care workers, um, you know whose existence puts them in conflict with the state capital um and like patriarchy, settler colonial relations um, you know, like indigenous protectors um, folks who are building up places where the more developed

it becomes, the more it kind of built its own momentum. And you have spaces that are like autonomous, fully like autonomous regions from like state power and to begin to like pick apart at capital and like reconfigure are like relations of like how we make things, to do things and take care of each other in like fundamental ways. And we have lots of beautiful examples of this from

the like organizing history not even that long ago. And people will be familiar with some of the Black Panther programs or some of the programs that were integrated into the farm workers movement, and some of the programs that were put together by the anarchi feminists who were trying to support women's bodily autonomy and secure abortion rights through thing like mutual aid healthcare and and things like that.

So we'll see there's like a lot of really beautiful examples of this work happening over time around successful organizing movements. And we're all really excited about what's going on now and we want to see that just to sort of come together and flourish. I think it's important to think about dual power or something that's like, I don't know, like I I think there's a lot of people who look at it as sort of like dual power is planting a garden. It's like, I mean sort of, yes,

but like there's you know, they're there. There's there's sort of two components of it, right, There's there's this sort of there's a defensive component and an offensive component. There's a component that's about taking care of each other, and there is a component that is attack. Right, there's there's there's a component that is the people who are preventing us and taking care of each other need to be

stopped from doing that. And so yeah, I think I think it's important to, yeah, think about different kinds of like different kinds of institutions that you would not normally think of as doing the same thing, as being part of the same struggle. And yeah, I guess that brings us to what YouTube and a lot of other people have been working on. For god, it has been this is this has been in the work for a long time. Yeah, which which which is the which is the this? Uh,

dual power gathering. And yeah, I guess you want to talk about what what that is because yeah, yeah, well, you know, we've all been sitting around the past couple of years dreaming about being together, and so I think this is kind of the fruit of that dream. Right coming up at the end of July, UH, we're inviting everyone out to the Indiana Dunes for a camping trip.

UH and during that time, we're hoping to see a collaboratively produced event that incorporates everything that the participants can bring to it, which we know far exceeds the uh sort of even the scope and vision of the Orangizing Body. So we're really trying to, um, just create a space for people to come together who are interested in these ideas,

who have various levels of experience working with it. That will be valuable to everybody, from people who are brand new to this stuff and just want to learn more about it, to people who have have been doing it for years, for decades even UM. And yeah, that's sort of sort of the the underlying ambition of it is

to get people together in space. You know, a lot of us have been to these kinds of events before and felt like the most important thing that we got out of that was the relationships that we were able to build and the people that we were able to meet that we could then carry on ongoing dialogues with, and that we could find inspiration uh in in those dialogues and in those connections that would birth new projects that you know, we don't yet know are even possible.

And so this is kind of, at least for me, like that's the really important ending sighting force of the of the plan. Yeah. Yeah, I think that, like they're the some of the things about this I think are really like it's been like really a collaborative effort to

come up with this thing. Like we had the discussions about this is a thing that needs that we thought need to happen because at the end of like by the end of the middle of one, we're like, look, clearly, we've all been through so many different experiences over the

last ten, fifteen, twenty years. At this point some of us are getting to be elders, and um, we uh and we need to like, um, it feels like it's now is an excellent a really great time to have like a actual conversation about where we where we're coming, where we are, where we're coming from and where we're going, and how do we translate these experiences into like networks of like trusting relationships and sharing, um sharing of all this knowledge is like we need to debrief like the

like the past five years I think in particular, have been like it's like crammed. It feels like, you know, the whole saying like some some years nothing happens, and some you know, in some months decades happen or phrasing or whatever, and it's like so much stuff has come.

We've all gone through so many things and come to like uh, and we're seeing people who didn't have like maybe a stance on various political things or are like seeing their communities torn apart by like the real lived experience of like climate change and wants to and need

to do something about it. That sort of thing like bringing in people who have lots of experience with people who have maybe are just now figuring things out and really kind of like musing and taking this as an opportunity to maybe to generate new knowledge so that we're going to be like kind of like clarifying what we've gone through and where we're heading, and um get people like in the same space who like might as a like I do a lot of union ship, So I'm

always thinking about how do I get like rank and file union radicals in the same space as like a like a neighborhood abolitionist or a tenant union organizer or a community land trust and getting all these like different groups because together and then like thinking about how they overlap in support and build off of each other because we I think the operating theory of many of people who are involved in this is that every context is different where we're organizing, but many there are many kind

of principles that can kind of translate across context, but the context will shape very like like the I was just talking with one of the organizers who's like twenty minutes away over in northwest Indiana, and you're like in Gary, and you know, those areas and their contexts for building something like a an ecosystem too power organizations is going to be very different from my context where I am like down the street from this big global center of

capital that's like University of Chicago and like, and it's doing all in my neighborhoods being gentrified by two billion dollar corporations. And I've got a big nurse union, whereas they're in the middle of like a neighbor community that's being actively divested and destroyed, like just like eating away at by like because capital just pulling out and has been doing that for basically as long as you've all been.

At the same time, y'all are dealing with the same like biosphere complications and climate change implications, and so yeah, we're thinking about the ways in which like the kinds of affiliations that makes sense for us to be successful in our projects are like, you know, they're not just they're not just local, they're not just national, they're not just continental. There's like a lot of different things that

are going on there. And that's the only way for us to really like sort out who we need to be in coaligion with on any particular issue is to know everybody, uh and to try to understand better there they're specific contexts and their specific experiences. And I think there's like, you know, I think, you know, to to John's point about you know, how much has changed in the last two, you know, handful of years or whatever, I think one thing that we've all come away from

the pace of change is pretty humbling. You know, um, I think we definitely all we gotta we got. We took in a bit of the humility around around that what is it that we actually need to do? We are definitely not prepared for it, you know, And it doesn't matter how many decades we've been doing this organizing work. We just are not ready for how quickly things are

changing right now. And the only way for us to get ready is to make sure that we shore up and strengthen the networks of people that we can rely on to produce kind of positive interdependence um as we move forward with the continued chaos that is the contemporary world. Yeah,

I mean. And then part of this is also like thinking about because the way this is structured, this isn't just like a series of panel discussions where we've like the organizers have curated like you're gonna listen to you know, uh, so and so who's like you know, a prominent tenant organizer so and so. It is like a prominent like uh like in like climate change direct action work. Like the goal is is that we like specifically chose a

format and officially it's called like like an unconference. But the way I think of it is it's like which which comes out of tech, which I find kind of irritating, But that doesn't. But the core of the idea of the thing is is that we're coming into this space in generating new knowledge, not necessarily sitting there and receiving a bunch of knowledge from people who designate as like movement leaders or experts. That doesn't mean that people who don't have a lot of experience and a lot of

like skills aren't going to be there. It just means that we're going to be. Because one of my things is popular education coming from the tradition of like pala Frere and like um everybody learning together is like it's like taking those principles and kind of like doing them in parallel in various circles. Where there will be a circle here of like cooperative organizers or people who want to get coops off the ground. Will be a circle here of people doing land us work. Will be a

circle here of like unionists. There will be a circle here of people doing like abolition work, and or interest are people who are interested in all those things are getting those sorts of things off the ground, and as they work through like a like they present tell stories share ideas, do debriefs on like the various things that

we've all been going through over you know whatever. How far back our timeline is depending on how far which elders decided to attend UM, but then taking that knowledge with our facilitators and then being like, you know what, I think that these two conversations are happening kind of like in parallel would be better if they were merged together and beginning to kind of like build that sort of like and so the idea isn't necessarily come away with like a pre like we're not setting up like

a like a predetermined set of conclusions for people we believe and based off of we've been having monthly community

calls for people who are going to be attending. All the different groups of folks who will be coming to this is going to be I think like the depth of experience is going to be really phenomenal UM and people coming from We definitely have people confirmed who are coming from Canada, people who we may be having folks with experience the indigenous communities is uh in Mexico, we maybe have We're fairly confident we're gonna have people who are like just come from areas like northern Syria and

iraq Um and taking all these different ideas and experiences and then generating next like coming to new conclusions, maybe unexpected conclusions or things that we didn't quite that we weren't anticipating, but maybe asking new questions. Right Like, this is a kind of intended to be a prefigure of space for engaging with things where we don't know what the right answer is. And I think we all need to release sit with the fact that we do not have like a clear right solution into the problems that

we're facing right now. Like I've been kind of pulling on the slogan a little. It's like no gods, no masters, no right answers, you know, just like get used to it. We need to be more creative and we need to

be more open to experimentation. And you know, there's just a lot of there's a lot of stuff that's going to be coming at us fast, and you know, this is a we we we hope this can be a space where we can kind of take some time to slowly get square with what it is we're going to have to be thinking about, even if we don't know

what to do exactly yet. So I had I had a really good experience where I was listening to like one of the like a person who came out of Act Up giving a talk in my neighborhood, and she was saying, because we had had questions, is this going to be about a lot of theory? Are we gonna be talking about of abstract stuff? And um, this organizer was like, you know, Actup had no theory, right they did.

They took action, and the theory followed afterwards. And so the idea that we're like necessarily having coming to this with like the right answers already figured out is just not like something that I think it's going to be a super generative discussion. The idea of coming up with like coming up with orientations and thinking about like where we are heading kind of in a general sense, and then seeing how that unfolds and builds is I think a big, key, key aspect of what we're trying to

do when we come together. We're just not to say yeah, which is not to say that there won't be theory, because that's not up to us. That's up to y'all. So you know, um, I probably don't know like what I'm really interested in is having conversations about like doing mental health care, you know, and like, for me, the theory is less interesting than you know, like talking about what we actually need in the spaces that we work in.

But that's you know, that's where I'm coming from, and everybody else is coming at this from their own perspective too, So I'm really excited to see what people bring to that space and what we can get out of it. Um by just thinking that we all are contributing something constructive to that conversation. And then also there's gonna be a lot of discussion about like literal practical skills, like here's how you like, here's how you uh. This has

always been the perennial thing. This is how you pick a lot, This is how you uh, this is how you organize comms at like at like a like on a picket line. This is how you pull together uh a demand letter for like a list for like tenants, like you know, these are the sorts of things that like we're gonna be talking, We're going to be doing concrete skill shares. Plus these discussions about our experience is and sharing our stories and you know, hopefully we're gonna

come away from this. A big goal of it is to um come up with a lot of like different like um, just like content. We're going to be recording videos and uh like uh audio and like also and then transcribing things and writing things up. And we're hoping that once we're then we're gonna have a big report that we can share out with people who can't attend. Yeah, privacy concerns obviously considered. So yeah, for sure, Yeah, there is Consent is a big is a big thing with

us as organizers. She should help. So yeah, you would think, but you know, not everyone is down as you would imagine. Okay, so basically we're building a perfect little utopia for like four days and you'll come out because we're going to fix the revolution. So kidding obviously on on on kind of crete level, Like what does like a day here look like? Like what do what are what? What what are we doing? Oh that's fun, that's a fun question.

Uh if I may, John, Yeah, yeah, go for it. Um. What we're thinking right now, basically, is it a day.

It looks like we get up in the morning, we drink coffee, we have breakfast, and we have a little assembly check in to see how things are going, if we need to make any major adjustments, and we put up a uh sort of schedule for the afternoon's events that was populated from the conversation that was happening in the evening the night before, and anything that anybody wants to bring up to that schedule that happened between yesterday

and this morning. Uh, then we're gonna roll off into um basically what would be some of the kind of like things we already know for sure that we wanted to see happening that we could get on a on a sort of schedule ahead of time. So some of these skill shares that were planned that would require kind of like replanning or maybe some discussions that people reached out ahead of time that they definitely wanted to have so that stuff would be happening earlier in the day.

Um that you know, we're we're talking about having sort of just like sandwich bars and you know, make your own lunch kind of situations going on. There should be a lot of different things happening in different geographical locations on the site, so you kind of get get a choice of where you want to go. It's not like

there's one big event. Um, we're going to try to group things that are sort of thematically similar in so that they're nearby each other in case you want to go around and see, um what the different kind of stuff is going to be. And then in the afternoon it's going to be like I mean, okay, of course

this is like how we're intending right now. The afternoon would be the discussions and skill shares and events and circles and spaces that um, we're generated out of the conversations that have been happening in space so that people came and thought, you know, we had this conversation yesterday that really inspired me. Let's talk about this, and I'm

going to make space for that. So we're gonna have big map where you figure out where you want to go, and you're gonna be able to wander around and meet people. Were trying to incorporate a lot of events that make it easier to meet other people that you don't know yet. Um. Where there's gonna be tables where you can do arts and crafts. There's gonna be game space for whatever kind of games you want to play. There's gonna be places for kids to hang out. There's gonna be a quiet

tent where you can take some contemplation time. You know, at some point we want to do it like a kind of brief circle for people to deal with what they've been kind of going through in the world. And you know some uh you know, utopia, envisioning arts space, you know, these kinds of things like where um, you know, somebody wants to teach someone else a dance. Like that's the kind of thing that we're really hoping can go on.

In the afternoon. Uh, then we would be feeding everybody dinner, and we kind of had this idea we've been playing with that we would have two campfires after dinner, and one campfire will have kind of an open forum where anybody can talk for like ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, you know whatever however long people need who are there, depending on how popular that is, and just kind of air everything that's in their head. And we'll have a note taker so we can try to incorporate what comes out

of those discussions into the next days agenda. Um. And so that's sort of like what we were what we were envisioning. And then for the other campfire, because people who don't don't forget this, the other the other the other camp fire for people who are like done with talk, I need to just sit and stare at and flames for a little bit. Yeah, I imagine I'll be going back and forth between the fires, so you know, that's

also an option. But the idea is to get kind of like somewhere between I think when we were calling us like somewhere between a conference and a music festival, you know what I mean, Like there where you're able to sort of move around and you don't have to go and sit in one place and do like, okay for this hour, this is where you know, it's it's it's meant to be a bit more informal, um and we're hoping that that makes a lot more space for people to sort of explore and people to meet other

people that they don't already know. Because I don't know if that if that, if that sums up sort of like what I'm imagining, because that's like, you know, that's the spirit. So I think if that's the question, like what does the date look like, well, hopefully it's fun. You know, that's kind of the main the main thing we're thinking here, So make it sort of low stress and low stakes place that we can talk about some of the highest stress and highest stakes questions that we

have to deal with. So yeah, and like that being said, like because we're modeling it this way specifically based on people's experience with like the Symbiosish Federations founding conference, that sort of thing where there were a lot of stakes and people were trying to kind of like funnel different discussions through different ways. And this is not a necessarily critique of how that all went down. It's just like based on our experience and our experiences with those sorts

of things. The goal is too for this to be if it's successful the first of many of these sorts of things, UM, many of these kind of gatherings and discussions, and to provide a model for how it could happen. But to keep um, we deliberately decided that this we're not going to make like a bit We're not going to have big points of unity debate and discussion and

voting on assembly sort of thing. We will use assemblies for you know, certain things like setting up like our community agreements and that sort of stuff, and kind of like getting the days rolling and kind of getting the days closed. But the goal is like to not is to bring people into conversation who haven't who maybe don't have the basis of trust for those bigger collective like discussions yet, but maybe they will later. But the goal is for now is we're getting We're building and expanding

our networks. We're building, expanding our trust with different people and building expanding our knowledge so that we can go out and do kind of work that we think we need to do to I don't know survives as a species on this planet. So um, that's one of the reasons why if there are some people are like, oh, I don't know, it seems really kind of wishy washy. It's very that was a very deliberate decision based on previous experience from organizers who have been to these sorts

of things. And the goal is really too, to have a place where we can have discussions about high stakes issues without being so invested in it that we feel like if our concept of how to solve that problem doesn't come out as the like solution, that we've somehow failed. So it's like, yeah, I was to say that I think one of the one of these things that you

that you brought up there, that's really important. It's like not even just in these previous conferences or congresses or gatherings that we've been to have we seen to be a problem. But basically, at least I can speak for myself in a lot of organizing spaces that I've been in over the past, you know, like fifteen years that

I've been pretty active in in the organizing universe. Um, basically that one of the main problems that we have with this kind of like space of trust that we definitely know that we need to be able to work together and moving forward, is that we don't really have shared language a lot of the time. And we think we do because we use the same words, but we often use them to mean different things, or we often use different words to mean the same things as well.

And then we come from kind of different organizing cultures and a lot of different places like that some are more are less. We should say that maybe that there there are different places where you show solidarity in a different way, you show good faith, and you show that you're committed in a different way. What it means to be democratic in a space seems different depending on this on the tradition that you that you may be come from. So what we're really hoping to do is kind of

makes space to incorporate all of that. So we were was joking it was a camping trip, where many camping trips fit, you know that like that there should be an opportunity for people to kind of like learn to talk past those those barriers that we might have to understanding each other, and like that success would really look like people coming away believing in other people's commitment to get this done and with the kind of contacts that they need to support each other moving forward as things

come up in different places, as opposed to just like here's a solution, like here's a blueprint for how to get this done. You know that relationship that you have with a person who has had that experience in the past is going to be way more valuable than any document they give you based on their experience, because you're gonna be able to say, well, ship, I wasn't expecting

this to happen, Like what do we do? And then you can talk through that with them, and like that's really I think that's really the foundation of our being able to share this knowledge with each other is that we have the opportunity to kind of engage in these ways that are more focused on the kind of just the sort of dynamism of the of the challenges that we're dealing with right now. So emergence is a big thing.

Things are always gonna like things that are always going to be changing, Like, uh, we are we need to be prepared to deal with a world that's gonna be throwing challenges at us that like we haven't like we haven't had solutions for and like because we're going through that's like really kind of like catastrophic like uh the moments of like uh climate change and um, I mean, I don't know how else to say it, but like and and so it's it's like engendering the idea, the

idea that we're constantly evaluating what's happening around us, both like at our local level and across the regions and global and then taking new knowledge in and coming up with new solutions um in a real like in like a truly experimental way, like thinking about things is like experiments, and how we're going to like come up with new solutions to these problems because it's just well, like as we kept telling people, because when we're out there trying

to bring groups in everyone's selling us our capacity. This sounds great. Our capacity is incredibly low. Uh. And that has just been across the entire spectrum of organizations, and that includes huge, big, put together organizations like you know unions versus little mutual a groups. Everybody is dealing with this like feeling of exhaustioning like capacity. Our goal is to get people together so that they can build capacity UM through these discussions and to be prepared for things,

because capacity is always going to be an issue. And our goal is to get people to this point where because they're um, their mindset is okay, new challenge, Let's think about it critically and come up with solutions that fit this moment as supposed to keep trying to force things into UM preset like easy. I mean, I don't want to say easy, but like I think that sometimes like everyone's trying to mind history for the like the

one weird trick to solve all these problems. And I think that the one weird trick is that human beings are creative, critical thinking machines. Like our our brain is like this thing for taking in information and generating new new thought and action, and we need to embrace that UM because if we don't. I don't think we're going

to be very successful certainly. And the yeah, and these times of just increasing uncertainty, that kind of humility and flexibility and like continue building of comfort with that uncertainty is going to be super essential to our being able to maintain even sort of like the basic ability to

take action. And I think so we're going to have to like continue to like to lean into that uncertainty and to sort of I think, you know, kind of historically the being comfortable with things changing and being comfortable with uncertainty is actually one of our great strengths, right because we can actually start to get moving while everybody else is still going, what the hell? You know? And so I think, you know, that's going to definitely be

something that's going to serve us. And Yeah, anyway, I have I have one last I question on an extremely practical level, which is like what is the like facility situation here? Like how what what are what are people

sleeping in? Uh? So, like right now where we like we have camp space reserved for people, um, and so we understand the camping is not always super accessible, but we are very fortunate that like the National Lake Shore has specific accessible facilities UM for folks, and we do have disabled like UH comrades coming to this event, and we're working on making sure that those UH that their particular needs don't keep them from participating fully in the events.

There's UM the discussions and circles themselves will be UM at like shelter space UM a bit away from where the camping is happening, so we're organizing transport between us to split those spaces UM. For people who cannot camp, we are working organizing some hotel space for folks UM, and then for people who can camp but don't have any equipment. Our goal is to work going to UM basically acquire like enough camping equipment for a sizeable chunk

of folks to come. And UH. It's like literally today walking through a Walmart with my daughter looking at their camp equipment in pricing out things like sleeping bags and camp like sleeping mattresses, intense that sort of thing. So yeah, if people have have stuff they want to donate to the cause to like, I think we should be able to take some of that in. I think we were just talking yesterday about the possibility of having like camp

gear repair zone. So if you have things that you find at the thrift store that like a tour intent or something like that will help you fix it. You know, we just want to make sure that everybody has these supplies as well, because they're they're broadly useful. I know I've used my camping gear in uh some politically motivated ways in the best I think that it's not bad for people to have it if you need it. Also, you know, the camping aspect of it is also it's

more of a feature than a bug. Like there's like a like so to so to speak, like the pandemic is not over yet, as we're like seeing right UM in spite of everything that like a ruling class is desperately trying to get us to agree to and so having um the accommodations outside and doing the doing the actual events like out of doors where there's lots of ventilatation.

We think it is like right now one of these events so that we're not going to get so that people aren't going to come away from this UM getting sick, which is really important m from I mean as a person who's recovering from COVID COVID rounds two UM and

as a healthcare worker. That was one of our big concerns because when we started making these plans, we really weren't sure what was going to be happening in terms of the pandemic, and having it out of doors was just like a sure fireway that we knew that we could at the very least, we can minimize the chances that people would be getting sick from just showing up and being s space together absolutely, and we're definitely encouraging people who are coming together with friends and comrades and

little groups to self organize their camps as much as they would like to do that UM to sort of make plans together to limit the UM you know, the need for spaces. You know, we're sharing up tents and all this kind of stuff to the extent that people are comfortable with that that you know, people, if you need to get in touch with people from around you, if you don't know anybody, you can reach out to us.

If we know anybody else who's looking for somebody to try to coordinate with, will definitely put you in touch to. Something we want to be able to do is like offer some of these connective services to help people UM to link up with people who are coming from from their areas or people who are interested in the same kinds of things. UM. And so we're kind of thinking of ourselves in the organizing body is facilitators of those connections and trying to imagine how what we do will

make those connections most likely to happen. UM. So in terms of the of the facilities as well, I think we we've talked about trying to get some camp stoves together for people who need to use sort of a kitchen space to try to limit the amount of things that people need to bring for that, but definitely feel free, uh to bring bring your own stuff and and and set up whatever whatever you need and let us know if you need help from us. Well, we'll do our

best to accommodate. And people are getting fed, like so we're playing and having meals arranged and that will be vegan and uh with the caveat that Folks who want to have separate food, like do their own self organized like cooking with that other thing, they that they're really committed to. UM. And we're playing and having like all the necessities of like lots of water, make sure that

like we've got first aid lined up. There's gonna be street credics who are participating in the work of organizing all that harm reduction UM and just generally like like some of the other things that didn't really mentioned, Like we know that we're bringing a bunch of people with a lot of big ideas and big personalities together, and that means we're probably gonna have to deal with some conflict. Maybe I don't know, so having UM conflicts, uh, like

people who are good at media and conflict. We're going to have a crew of people who do that. We're working on child watch training because this is going to be the family from space, making sure that we know how to take care of each other in case like shady people from outside trying to do something like whatever. Like our goal is to just make sure that like this is UM as safe as it can be, bringing

people together as successful as it can be. Understanding implementations of who's gonna be You're gonna be outside, so there might be you know, all the some of the fun of having like a collective group of people all outside together,

which can be a lot of fun. Like I'm I'm waiting for karaoke and for UM like our open mic and people bringing out like instruments and like just having like you know, we're people discussing like, um, you know some soccer uh potentially being a thing, um determining like placing bets on who's going to be more into soccer based on various ideological fin views and past experience, and yeah, hit us up if you want to play some music, if you've got an idea for something fun that sounds

cool to do. And just to come to circle back to this, I think, like with the point about conflict mediation, I just want to make that like super clear. Just because we're not going to spend half a day trying to come up with community with the points of unity does not mean we don't have expectations about how you act in this space. So our plan is basically to say, like, don't be an asshole. And then that means you know, like in all the ways that we know, uh that

those things can happen. And then if somebody accidentally is being an asshole, where somebody's are accidentally being an asshole like that, those are things we can we can manage because we all know what it is that we're doing here. Um, So it's definitely not a free for all you know it's a this is a space where the normal things we would expect in space are expected, you know, explicitly. Yeah. Oh well man, I'm excited. Yeah, I'm looking forward to people.

I don't know. I don't actually know how widespread bonfires are in the US, but we do a lot in the Midwest and bonfires are a great time. I'm excited people to experience that. It's it's good. Um. Yes, so I guess, um do you you if anything closing that you want to say? And also where can people find

this and attempt to go to it? Also when is it happening, because that's another important It's going to be July UH twenty nine one UM, and attendance is free, there's no there's no charge, but we are soliciting donations. So we're doing a fundraiser UM through Open Collectives UM and we spend very generously given UH an offer of matching donations from one of the organizers who got like I got a little bit of a chunk of change to kind of contribute to that sort of thing. We're

very I'm excited about that. So if you go on to you can follow us on Twitter, and I believe that's at Dual Power. Uh to let me tell the chat. I think it's at Dual Power. Gathering is our Twitter and um the website is dual dual power dot org. Yes, yeah, um yeah. If you go on the website, you'll find the links to everything you need to know. You can get in touch with us. You can like, you know, give us your your feedback, if you love it, if

you hate it, if you've you know whatever. We're We're probably not going to change the whole thing right now, but show up and we can change it at the time. I'll also say we do have like an organizing discord and people who are like serious about like getting involved in want to have things like I want to come to this and with things that they have specific visions

for now. It's like absolutely time to get engaged with that because we're like we're working towards making getting people into the like who are the participants to really own the event itself, So that'll be like that's something we have. I believe We're gonna probably two more community calls wanted

June and one in July. Every one of those calls has been really amazing, lots of great people, um, and during those calls are gonna be doing some training on because you've got to do some prep work when you're doing this kind of like generative discussion like popular education, like unconfidence style. UM events like coming to them with a little bit of un understanding of what that looks

like is really key to being successful. So um, we encourage people who want to come get signed up, and then we'll get into our mailing list, and our mailing lists is where we disseminate like when those calls are happening, and also pomping our discord as long as you're cool and agree your community very manol like bring you in and get all sorts of shipped together. We're very excited for people. There's still a third number of thoughts open for the events itself, were like almost half way full.

So yeah, I mean definitely, we're We've been trying to think about this as an event that we would want to go to, and we wanted to be an event that you want to come to also, so help us make it. So yeah, yeah, that's that's yeah, this is really exciting. I'm god be going to it. Yeah. So yeah, thank thank thank you, thank you to you both for joining us, for talking about this, and I'm excited too.

I'm excited to see lots of people there. Hey, hey, I mean we've all been wanting to see each other for two and a half years, right, So I miss you. I missing your face with dimension. Yea, I'm sick of you're flat face. Yeah, thanks so much for having us on to talk about it. Really looking forward to it. I mean, we're getting closer and closer. It's just like it just gets more exciting and also a little nerve wracking.

But thankfully a lot of people have been stepping up on a very I'm confident that's gonna be really like a really great thing. Yeah, and we will we we will have links to everything in the show notes. Um. Yeah, this has just make it happen here. You can find us in the usual places happen to your pot and stuff. Alright, goodbye, have fun. Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.

For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sore Sayspher It could happen here, Updated monthly at cool Zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.